Reddit pulls a Twitter. Third Party Apps will cost some developers $20 MILLION/yr.

[AlTech]

17 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Of course. That is always the case with APIs. That is neither a good or bad thing. Just because Reddit could change access does not mean they will. In fact, it would be basically impossible for the API access to not be at Reddit's discretion. 

 

So I don't really understand what your point is with this comment. 

That not all the dedicated mod tools are necessarily excluded from the API charges.

[Stahlmann]

The mods got outplayed and they were reminded that their power fantasy is nothing more than a fantasy. This whole boycott situation was never gonna work as soon as they announced an end-date for their thread locks. Reddit is just sitting it out while the impatient users turn on the mods and the whole situation resolves itself.

 

The average redditor doesn't care about some API change that doesn't affect him in the slightest. He just wants to see booba and the moderators took them away. The moderators are the bad people in the eyes of the normal user, not the reddit CEO. Just look at the NBA subreddit. People absolutely hate the mods for locking it.

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

This anology is wrong on so many different levels, principally because it doesn't represent the nature between non-dedicated mod tools and dedicated mod tools.

 

A better anology would be eating a meal at a coffee shop vs a restaurant. You can food at both but restaurants are designed specifically for eating food but coffee shops tend to also sell food.

 

In this respect, both can be said to be places where someone can eat.

I don't see why this matters but sure, let's go with your analogy. In this case some people are using the word "restaurant" to mean "coffee shop", which makes people believe restaurants are closing down, which they aren't.

Just because a coffee shop could be used for similar things to a restaurant does not mean the words can be used interchangeably. They shouldn't, because it can lead to confusion and wrong conclusions being reached.

 

Reddit, I and I would assume most people, does not view "mod tools" and "Reddit clients" as the same things. The developer of Apollo clearly designed the program to be used for browsing first and foremost, and not moderating. Therefore, it is neither in my eyes nor in Reddit's eyes a "mod tool". Calling it a mod tool causes unnecessary confusion.

 

 

Let's say a new law passed that outlawed establishments that served coffee from operating unless they also served meals that were prepared by a professional chef. Basically, a law that bans coffee shops but not restaurants.

Saying "this new law bans restaurants" is unnecessary and just causes confusion. Just say it bans coffee shops. Talking about the "restaurant ban" and then trying to muddle the conversation by bringing up how restaurants serve the same purpose because they also serve coffee just seems malicious to me, to try and garner support from people who care about restaurants but not coffee shops.

Losing coffee shops is already a bad thing, so why the deceptive tactic of trying to paint it as restaurants closing as well?

 

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

It does if a not insignificant portion of mods use an app like Apollo.

Again, all I am asking for is more precise and clear labeling. Apollo is not a mod tool just like a restaurant is not a coffee shop. Apollo is a client that has some moderating capabilities, but they are far from the primary use which is why it is barely mentioned anywhere.

There are different rules for "mod tools" and other things, so it's important to keep the terms separate to avoid confusion.

 

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

As I'm sure Ford wouldn't have mentioned on their website about the Crown Victoria being used by police when they still sold the Crown Victoria to consumers.

Just because A is B does not mean B is A.

 

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Which video?

The official trailer for the app, and the website.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Just because the video didn't spend a lot of time talking about it doesn't mean it won't impact the mod community in a large way.

I have never said anything to the contrary. 

 

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I'm still not sure where I substituted Apollo for "Mod tool" but they are frankly interchangeable as moderators use it as a tool.

 

Some people might not call a heat gun a repair tool but it is frequently used in mobile phone repairs. Does this mean it is not a tool? No.

I can link you to some posts where you did, but since you in this post say you think it is interchangeable I'll just skip that.

They are not interchangeable. It is very important that we don't use them interchangeably because there are separate rules and restrictions applied to them. Not by me, but by Reddit.

We shouldn't use "coffee shop" and "restaurant" interchangeably when talking about a law that would ban coffee shops but not restaurants. Likewise, we shouldn't use "mod tool" and "Apollo" interchangeably when talking about a change that will affect Apollo but not "mod tools" (the de facto use of the word as well as the terms outlined by Reddit).

 

A heat gun is a tool, but if you told someone "can buy me a mobile phone repair tool" chances are they wouldn't get you a heat gun. A heat gun would probably not even be in the first three things they would think of just from that description. It's important to use precise and accurate language that can't be interpreted in the wrong way. Everyone has to agree upon what terms mean in order to have a conversation, and using overly broad terms that do not fit the definitions used by external parties just causes needless confusion. 

 

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Many tools that moderators use will no longer be available because of these API changes. That is a fact.

I have never said anything to the contrary. 

 

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Not at all. I am merely pointing out one of the principal arguments you have advanced was wrong.

Which argument exactly?

 

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

That isn't an unfair characterisation of the situation.

No it isn't, because those were the people I was addressing in my original comment. It might be an unfair characterization of your position, but that's because you were not the person saying those things. I was addressing those people in my original post, and then you jumped in afterward by responding to me.

I feel like you interpreted my posts as defending Reddit and then felt like you needed to argue against me because "Reddit bad, anyone who defends Reddit is my enemy". 

 

I agree with you on a lot of things. I just wanted to clear up some misunderstandings people seem to have about the situation.

I am not saying "we should ban coffee shops". I am saying "people who are worried about restaurants closing have misunderstood the situation, it's coffee shops that are in danger, so that's what we should focus on".

Pointing out that polls seem skewed, or that mod tools (as defined by de facto use and Reddit's terms) and bots won't be affected by API changes is not the same as being pro the API changes or being against the protests. I just want people to have a good understanding of the situation. Getting people to have a good understanding of the situation requires the use of precise and descriptive language, not vague and overly broad terms that encompass other things and as a result, could lead to people jumping to the wrong conclusions.

[AlTech]

Summary

 

Reddit's CEO has been exposed as lying about discussions that took place during the Interview he did with the Verge.

 

He claimed RIF was unwilling to work with Reddit about API Pricing which has been debunked as not true. He also stated that he wanted Reddit's API to be monetized because 3rd party apps were using Reddit for free.

 

This has also been discovered to be not true. Some 3rd party applications such as RIF have revealed that they made an arrangement with Reddit to pay them for API access, among other things, from 2012 onwards BUT the scheme to compensate Reddit for API access was shut down by the current Reddit CEO Steve Huffman when he became CEO in 2016.

 

All of his claims about 3rd party Apps not wanting to work with Reddit have now been debunked and it is clear that Reddit is the one that didn't want to work with 3rd party developers.

 

Steve Huffman also previously stated that Reddit wasn't designed to support 3rd party apps but this has been debunked by Reddit's collaboration with RIF from 2012 to 2016.

 

Quotes

Quote

On Thursday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told me that the developer of rif is fun for Reddit (RIF), a popular third-party Reddit app for Android, did not want to work with Reddit on the company’s planned API pricing changes. However, the developer, Andrew Shu, tells me that’s not the case — and shared emails with The Verge that appear to back him up.

 

Quote

However, based on emails we’ve seen, it was clear that the two sides did actually talk.

 

Quote

Thursday’s interview is not the only time Huffman has allegedly taken an aggressive stance toward third-party developers. In his announcement that he would be shutting down Apollo, Selig claimed that Huffman told Reddit mods that Selig “threatened” the company. Selig released the audio and a transcript from his conversation with a Reddit employee that showed that while the employee originally interpreted Selig’s comments as a threat, they cleared up the matter and agreed that threat was a misinterpretation.

 

Quote

Shu also tells me that RIF was paying a “sizable revenue share” to Reddit beginning in 2012, which was during Yishan Wong’s tenure as CEO. Shu says he says initiated the talks with Reddit to create the agreement, which allowed for the licensed use of Reddit’s trademarks. (At the time, the app was called “reddit is fun.”) Shu says Reddit terminated the agreement in 2016 — which was the year after Huffman took over as CEO.

 

My thoughts

Whilst it is vindicating to finally have evidence and prove that Steve Huffman, a known manipulator after he admitted anonymously editing reddit posts in the /r/TheDonald subreddit which criticised him whilst CEO, has lied and that the 3rd party App developers wanted to work with Reddit, it is not clear that Reddit or it's current CEO would be willing to concede any ground regarding the API pricing.

 

Sources

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/16/23763661/reddit-rif-is-fun-developer-ceo-steve-huffman

 

Warning: Contains some swearing.

[AlTech]

Good news. Some subreddit are re-opening, but there's a slight twist: The protests will continue until morale improves .

 

Photos of John Oliver are now featuring more prominently on Reddit because some major subreddits have voted to change their rules to only allow new posts to be photos of Jonh Oliver as a continued form of protest .

Quote

The results were conclusive:

• r/pics: return to normal, -2,329 votes; “only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy,” 37,331 votes.
• r/gifs: return to normal, -1,851 votes; only feature GIFs of John Oliver, 13,696 votes.
• r/aww: return to normal, -2,691 votes; only allow “adorable content featuring John Oliver, Chiijohn [a mascot], and anything else that closely resembles them,” 48,506 votes.

 

For his part, John Oliver is supportive of the move and is encouraging it .

 

https://twitter.com/iaohnoliver/status/1670179738348933120?

Quote

Three huge subreddits, r/pics, r/gifs, and r/aww, now only allow posts about comedian and Last Week Tonight host John Oliver. The subreddits have reopened after participating in the ongoing protests toward Reddit, and after each community polled users, the new rules are now in place.

 

Quote

r/pics (more than 30 million subscribers), r/gifs (more than 21 million subscribers), and r/aww (more than 34 million subscribers) offered two options to users to vote on: have the subreddit return to normal, or to only allow content featuring John Oliver.

 

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/17/23764729/reddit-users-pics-gifs-subreddits-john-oliver

[jagdtigger]

Louis Rossmann covered that yesterday:

 

[SorryBella]

Im not pitying Reddit community, i pity whoever having to step on the glass floor to fix the bloody mess that this asshole made.

[wanderingfool2]

33 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Reddit's CEO has been exposed as lying about discussions that took place during the Interview he did with the Verge.

 

He claimed RIF was unwilling to work with Reddit about API Pricing which has been debunked as not true. He also stated that he wanted Reddit's API to be monetized because 3rd party apps were using Reddit for free.

 

This has also been discovered to be not true. Some 3rd party applications such as RIF have revealed that they made an arrangement with Reddit to pay them for API access, among other things, from 2012 onwards BUT the scheme to compensate Reddit for API access was shut down by the current Reddit CEO Steve Huffman when he became CEO in 2016.

The above is what I have as in general an issue with all these "reddit evil" type of topics, it's glomming onto portions of a sentence and then it quickly goes through the game of telephone until people are saying things as though it's truth instead

 

Let me say this first, the article DID NOT say RIF was paying for API FEES.  They were paying for trademark usage, which is two very different things.

 

RIF very much wasn't playing ball when it came to talking. Let's look at what Reddit said

Quote

well, not with RIF, he never wanted to talk to us

Now, lets take a look at what RIF said

Quote

Shu replied, “given the info is public, I don’t see a phone call being productive. Please let me know when there is any new information to share that hasn’t been made public.”

So yea, no.

 

RIF's essential argument is that they feel the prices are too high, and they want to pay a "reasonable" rate...which gets back into the who calculation based on expected revenue per use (which I do feel Apollo's math was wrong)

[zim2323]

I still can't find a good reason to use Reddit.  Been happy without it for decades.

[Qyygle]

On 6/17/2023 at 3:54 AM, LAwLz said:

Mod tools are excluded from the API changes. 

I am not sure where the idea that mod tools are going to die comes from, but it's misinformation. 

From what I understand, the issue is many people actually use the full third party apps like Apollo and RIF to deal with moderation on the go.

Either they’re straight up just better at accessing the reddit web tools (being built closer to the old reddit site/website) or simply more ui friendly and accessible than the rather useless actual reddit app.
They can say mod tools are excluded all they want, but when the main 3P apps Are the mod tools for a huge chunk of the moderators, it doesn’t really matter

[LAwLz]

19 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The above is what I have as in general an issue with all these "reddit evil" type of topics, it's glomming onto portions of a sentence and then it quickly goes through the game of telephone until people are saying things as though it's truth instead

What I don't get is that there isn't even any need to do this.

I think there are plenty of arguments to be made about how these changes are bad (for users). There is no need to try and do amazing feats of mental gymnastics to make things appear worse than they actually are.

 

But whenever the Internet bandwagon latches on to some flavor of the month drama it always seems like the world becomes totally black and white, and it becomes a sport to try and paint <insert bad guy of the month> into the most terrible person ever. Everything that ever gets said should be interpreted in the worst or best possible way. No nuance allowed, no benefit of the doubt given, and only one side is worth listening to because everything they say is 100% true and the other side is a liar.

[AlTech]

35 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The above is what I have as in general an issue with all these "reddit evil" type of topics, it's glomming onto portions of a sentence and then it quickly goes through the game of telephone until people are saying things as though it's truth instead

 

Let me say this first, the article DID NOT say RIF was paying for API FEES.  They were paying for trademark usage, which is two very different things.

Eli the computer guy said it in his video. They were paying for both trademark and API usage.

35 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

RIF very much wasn't playing ball when it came to talking. Let's look at what Reddit said

Now, lets take a look at what RIF said

So yea, no.

Not true at all. They were willing to talk but Reddit was the one blocking any progress with the situation.

35 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

RIF's essential argument is that they feel the prices are too high, and they want to pay a "reasonable" rate...which gets

It is possible to charge a reasonable amount if money for something. It's not like doing so would hurt Reddit if they were profitable. They only have themselves to blame for losing money for the last almost 2 decades.

35 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

back into the who calculation based on expected revenue per use (which I do feel Apollo's math was wrong)

So you're calling the Apollo dev a liar then?

[Azek]

This whole debacle was a great excuse to cut reddit out of my web browsing habits.

[AlTech]

57 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Louis Rossmann covered that yesterday:

 

I know. I wanted to expand on it cos he didn't cover it as much.

[LAwLz]

Just to be clear, because some people in these types of arguments have trouble with nuance, I also think the news about Reddit's API changes is terrible. I will probably use Reddit a lot less when I lose access to Boost for Reddit. I think Reddit has made several mistakes with these announcements. What I am against is deceiving people into joining "my side". I want people to have as good of an understanding of the situation as possible so that they can reach their own conclusions. In order to get people as good of an understanding as possible, it is important to not use hyperbole language, not use overly broad terms, and be very precise and direct with what is being said. The people I have been arguing with in this thread are those I feel haven't been doing that for various reasons.

 

 

3 minutes ago, Qyygle said:

From what I understand, the issue is many people actually use the full third party apps like Apollo and RIF to deal with moderation on the go.

Either they’re straight up just better at accessing the reddit web tools (being built closer to the old reddit site/website) or simply more ui friendly and accessible than the rather useless actual reddit app.
They can say mod tools are excluded all they want, but when the main 3P apps Are the mod tools for a huge chunk of the moderators, it doesn’t really matter

I completely buy the argument that some portion of moderators uses Apollo and other Reddit clients for moderating purposes. I have never argued against that.

My issue is calling clients like Apollo "mod tools", because they are by definition not "mod tools". Reddit has made it clear that "mod tools" (bots, RES, Toolbox for Reddit, etc) go under separate terms and will not be affected by the API changes. The same goes for accessibility programs. Yet, I have seen countless people who strongly believe that the API changes will kill those tools. You just have to do a quick Google search and you will find hundreds of people who believe for example RES will be killed off, or that blind people will no longer be able to browse Reddit, and it is utterly false.

 

That is why I think it is so important to not use the same terms for two separate things that are treated differently. If people keep saying "mod tools are going to die" then people will assume that tools specifically designed for moderating will die, and they won't. 

 

It matters a lot because using the same term for two things that are not treated equally will confuse people, and there is no lack of evidence that people are confused and misunderstanding what is actually affected by these API changes. I really get the impression that some people think that the ends justify the means, and are willing to mislead people into thinking the threat is bigger than it is by using overly broad terms to fool people into thinking more things will shut than then what will actually shut down. I disagree with that tactic on a fundamental level. I think it is morally wrong and completely unnecessary. 

 

 

The reason why I think it is unnecessary is that "Reddit is killing third-party Reddit clients" should be enough to get people behind a cause because the news that third-party Reddit clients are going to die is bad enough news on their own. There is no need to try and make the situation seem worse than it really is by using broad terms that make people think other things, such as "moderation tools* and accessibility tools** are being killed".

 

 

*moderation tools in this context meaning "a tool specifically designed for moderating, and whose primary audience are moderators, not regular users".

**accessibility tools in this context meaning "a tool specifically targeting people with special accessibility needs such as the blind, and not a program that is primarily used by abled people".

[linkboy]

9 minutes ago, Azek said:

This whole debacle was a great excuse to cut reddit out of my web browsing habits.

 

Same here.

 

I'll still use the site due to the information there, but I'm no longer posting there. Just get the information I need and then bounce.

[Mr. Rabbit]

29 minutes ago, Azek said:

This whole debacle was a great excuse to cut reddit out of my web browsing habits.

I've been on Kbin and using RSS to get my news.

Hell, even started helping a project that scrapes sites and turns them into RSS, which lets me practice my code a bit.

[wanderingfool2]

16 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Not true at all. They were willing to talk but Reddit was the one blocking any progress with the situation.

Read the quote.

"I don’t see a phone call being productive"

One party sends emails, and eventually sends a menacing email because the dev isn't responding and then the dev by their own admission doesn't want to go on a phone call because they don't feel it's productive.  That is by definition RIF not wanting to talk.

 

20 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Eli the computer guy said it in his video. They were paying for both trademark and API usage.

It's the game of telephone again, and it's also coming from developers who are trying to paint themselves in the best light

 

20 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

It is possible to charge a reasonable amount if money for something. It's not like doing so would hurt Reddit if they were profitable. They only have themselves to blame for losing money for the last almost 2 decades.

It doesn't matter if YOU feel that Reddit should be making a profit even though they might not.  It's funny how so many people seem to think that Reddit must be somehow profitable or that they should be easily capable of being profitable.  The majority of popular websites did not make money for a long time, and ones that do often are the ones who sell user data.

 

Even Google was getting close to failing until they used targeted ads, Facebook relied on funding for years,  YouTube was burning billions a year, Twitter only had like 1 profitable year, and Amazon was neutral for years (making their bulk of their money on AWS).

 

I've said it in the other thread, but if you look at how many users Apollo said they have and assume Reddit's revenue to be $600m a year you come out to about the rate Reddit was charging.  Where as Apollo took a very simplistic view which doesn't factor in that a lot of the users were like 1 once a month users in their calculation (which obviously doesn't contribute to the revenue stream in the same way)

 

30 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

So you're calling the Apollo dev a liar then?

To an extent, yes.  Everyone is taking his calculations for face value when he blatantly is arguing in bad faith with his calculations.

 

https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/31/popular-reddit-app-apollo-may-go-out-of-business-over-reddits-new-unaffordable-api-pricing/

Admitted 1.3 - 1.5 mill users, and in Apollos reddit he says 

In his reddit post he says the two

Quote

Apollo's price would be approximately $2.50 per month per user

Quote

The price they gave was $0.24 for 1,000 API calls. I quickly inputted this in my app, and saw that it was not far off Twitter's outstandingly high API prices, at $12,000, and with my current usage would cost almost $2 million dollars per month, or over $20 million per year.

At 1.3 mill users, that cost per his would be $3.25 mill / month under his claim in the reddit post.

 

So yea, the only way he could have gotten that $2.50 an user is, lying about how many users he has, lying about the API pricing, or rounding everything in his favor which would be effectively lying (i.e. he would have to assume 800,000 users, or $3.25 mill reddit cost). 

[AlTech]

3 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Read the quote.

"I don’t see a phone call being productive"

One party sends emails, and eventually sends a menacing email because the dev isn't responding and then the dev by their own admission doesn't want to go on a phone call because they don't feel it's productive.  That is by definition RIF not wanting to talk.

 

It's the game of telephone again, and it's also coming from developers who are trying to paint themselves in the best light

In that one instance they did not want to go on a call after hearing how they talked to Apollo. They were willing to talk previously and Reddit refused to budge on their position regarding pricing or extending the transition period beyond 30 days.

 

3 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It doesn't matter if YOU feel that Reddit should be making a profit even though they might not.  It's funny how so many people seem to think that Reddit must be somehow profitable or that they should be easily capable of being profitable.  The majority of popular websites did not make money for a long time, and ones that do often are the ones who sell user data.

It'a not the responsibility of app developers who effectively built up Reddit's value to subsidize Reddit's existence because Reddit can't figure out how to their site profitable

3 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Even Google was getting close to failing until they used targeted ads, Facebook relied on funding for years,  YouTube was burning billions a year, Twitter only had like 1 profitable year, and Amazon was neutral for years (making their bulk of their money on AWS).

 

I've said it in the other thread, but if you look at how many users Apollo said they have and assume Reddit's revenue to be $600m a year you come out to about the rate Reddit was charging.  Where as Apollo took a very simplistic view which doesn't factor in that a lot of the users were like 1 once a month users in their calculation (which obviously doesn't contribute to the revenue stream in the same way)

 

To an extent, yes.  Everyone is taking his calculations for face value when he blatantly is arguing in bad faith with his calculations.

So the person who has no reason to lie is the liar and the company with no reason to tell the truth is telling the truth?

 

The Apollo dev has not argued in bad faith. Reddit's the one who made up the lies about the Apollo dev  blackmailing them.

 

Apollo was forced to publish the audio recordings to defend himself from lied that Reddit perpetuated knowing they were lies.

3 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/31/popular-reddit-app-apollo-may-go-out-of-business-over-reddits-new-unaffordable-api-pricing/

Admitted 1.3 - 1.5 mill users, and in Apollos reddit he says 

In his reddit post he says the two

At 1.3 mill users, that cost per his would be $3.25 mill / month under his claim in the reddit post.

 

So yea, the only way he could have gotten that $2.50 an user is, lying about how many users he has, lying about the API pricing, or rounding everything in his favor which would be effectively lying (i.e. he would have to assume 800,000 users, or $3.25 mill reddit cost). 

Each user in his current app uses significantly more API calls than you account for in your calculations.

[wanderingfool2]

15 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Each user in his current app uses significantly more API calls than you account for in your calculations.

NO, that is now how it works with the statements Apollo made

 

Statement 1:

Apollo has 1.3 - 1.5 million users

Statement 3:

Reddit is going to charge $2 mill / month based on current usage

Statement 2:

Cost per user is $2.50

 

Those are factually inconsistent statements.  Statement 3 was a statement where he said the cost which accounted for all API calls.

 

 

19 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

So the person who has no reason to lie is the liar and the company with no reason to tell the truth is telling the truth?

 

The Apollo dev has not argued in bad faith. Reddit's the one who made up the lies about the Apollo dev  blackmailing them.

 

Apollo was forced to publish the audio recordings to defend himself from lied that Reddit perpetuated knowing they were lies.

Do you seriously not understand that Apollo and RIF have a bunch of reasons to lie still/bend the truth in their favor.

 

Okay, so where is the "proof" that they used the term blackmailing?  As I've stated before, the threat, comment is I think 100% valid on Reddits end.  The part of the conversation that was perceived as a threat doesn't magically go away just because in the call they "made peace with it".  As I've said again and again, Reddit stated in the call that they wanted to take every comment seriously, and then from the call log there is clearly audio issues on someone's end with cutting out.  At that point one doesn't make the statement asking for $10m to keep quiet.  Just because it was "clarified" doesn't mean that sentiment that Reddit felt didn't exist or that they believed it was just a "misunderstanding"

 

25 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

It'a not the responsibility of app developers who effectively built up Reddit's value to subsidize Reddit's existence because Reddit can't figure out how to their site profitable

"built up value"...ie. Apollo had ~4% of the active users, paid nothing in.  One would have to be very naïve to build an app around a company accessing the API for free and not except things to potentially change suddenly.

[wanderingfool2]

I would be glad to allow the community to vote on whether or not a subreddit is blacked out.

 

Speaking as someone who was on a community on Discord where apparently the Owner of the discord didn't like a few people in the community, kicked them from the server, then when people got upset deleted the entire server.  It took the community months to be recreated and we still had lost all that conversational history that was important to documenting...all because one person out of 10,000 got their feelings hurt.

[Fasterthannothing]

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The above is what I have as in general an issue with all these "reddit evil" type of topics, it's glomming onto portions of a sentence and then it quickly goes through the game of telephone until people are saying things as though it's truth instead

 

Let me say this first, the article DID NOT say RIF was paying for API FEES.  They were paying for trademark usage, which is two very different things.

 

RIF very much wasn't playing ball when it came to talking. Let's look at what Reddit said

Now, lets take a look at what RIF said

So yea, no.

 

RIF's essential argument is that they feel the prices are too high, and they want to pay a "reasonable" rate...which gets back into the who calculation based on expected revenue per use (which I do feel Apollo's math was wrong)

People are too but hurt over this entire API thing. If Reddit can't make enough to stay afloat then its a moot point if they should hand out API access for free since there would literally be no reddit. ITS A BUSINESS not a charity organization.

[AlTech]

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

NO, that is now how it works with the statements Apollo made

 

Statement 1:

Apollo has 1.3 - 1.5 million users

Statement 3:

Reddit is going to charge $2 mill / month based on current usage

Statement 2:

Cost per user is $2.50

Where did you get $2.50 from?

 

His app's premium version is $2.50 per month of which he keeps $1.75 after the App Store's extortionate fees.

 

Some of the remaining $1.75 is donated to some artists who help create artwork for his app. This leaves him with probably around $1 per month or less to pay Reddit.

 

His app used 7 Billion (with a B) API requests in May 2023.

 

$0.24 per 1000 API calls * 7,000,000,000 = $1.68 Million per month.

 

So he rounded up to 2 Million. Not meaningfully larger but there is some difference I grant you.

 

Assuming the app has 800,000 users he would need to charge each user $2.73 just to pay Reddit's fees and Apple's payment processing fees.

 

But many users are not paid users. The Apollo devs says only 50,000 out of the 800,000 users are paying users.

 

That means each paid user(assuming all of them stayed and didn't change to the free version) would need to pay $43.68 per month just to cover Reddit's fees and Apple's payment processing fees. I say it just covers those things because the dev wanted to get paid a bit of money for working on and maintaining the app.

 

Is $43.68 per month reasonable to you? Cos if his paid subscriber base stayed the same that's what he would have has to charge them. But as he points out, most of his paid subscribers are on yearly plans and so would not be billed $43.68 per month.

 

Assuming half of his paid users are on a pay monthly plan that means he'd need to charge them $87.36 per month until all of his paid subscribers are renewed at $43.68. 

 

Is that reasonable to you?

 

7 Billion API calls is a lot but he said he could reduce the API usage of his app if given more time but Reddit wouldn't give him more time to work on that.

 

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Those are factually inconsistent statements.  Statement 3 was a statement where he said the cost which accounted for all API calls.

No.

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

Do you seriously not understand that Apollo and RIF have a bunch of reasons to lie still/bend the truth in their favor.

Why? Reddit have said they won't back down. There's nothing to gain for either of them by lying.

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

Okay, so where is the "proof" that they used the term blackmailing?  As I've stated before, the threat, comment is I think 100% valid on Reddits end.  The part of the conversation that was perceived as a threat doesn't magically go away just because in the call they "made peace with it".  As I've said again and again, Reddit stated in the call that they wanted to take every comment seriously, and then from the call log there is clearly audio issues on someone's end with cutting out.  At that point one doesn't make the statement asking for $10m to keep quiet.  Just because it was "clarified" doesn't mean that sentiment that Reddit felt didn't exist or that they believed it was just a "misunderstanding"

 

"built up value"...ie. Apollo had ~4% of the active users, paid nothing in.  One would have to be very naïve to build an app around a company accessing the API for free and not except things to potentially change suddenly.

Why? Businesses can't operate on surprise. They need advance warnings of things in order to prepare.

[AlTech]

4 minutes ago, Fasterthannothing said:

People are too but hurt over this entire API thing. If Reddit can't make enough to stay afloat then its a moot point if they should hand out API access for free since there would literally be no reddit. ITS A BUSINESS not a charity organization.

Nobody's asking Reddit to be a charity. People are just struggling to figure out why Reddit wouldn't gradually increase the price or give the devs more time to prepare for the change; especially if they knew the change was coming.

[Eaglerino]

I'm starting to side with whoever makes reddit mods the most upset