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

[DrMacintosh]

1 hour ago, Silverflame said:

there has also been concerns raised users with impaired vision who rely on 3rd-party apps for accessibility features

Source 7 seemed mainly worried about transcribers not being able to transcribe content on Reddit:

Quote

Unfortunately, new Reddit, and the official Reddit apps, just don't provide us with the levels of accessibility we need in order to continue effectively running this community. As well, the Transcribers of Reddit, the many dedicated folks who volunteer to transcribe and describe thousands and thousands of images on Reddit, may also be unable to operate.

For general accessibility concerns, I would take those up with your operating system of choice. Many operating systems, such as macOS and iOS have industry leading accessibility features. If the user choose to not use said features to make their lives easier, that is not someone else's responsibility.

 

Reddit should be accessible, and it mostly is. Laws like the ADA mandate accessibility, so companies build accessibility features into their products and people either use the features provided to them or willingly choose to not use them. Those that choose to not use the features have no grounds to complain imo. Reddit charging for API access does not impact the use of screen readers.

 

Can Reddit improve its accessibility? Absolutely. But using third party applications and services that attempt to back port accessibility into Reddit is not how accessibility on the web is supposed to work. The source of the content needs to be accessible.

[RejZoR]

I'm using Infinity on Android, I guess I'll just stop using Reddit then. Most of their higher up official "Reddit mods" are butterfaced morons with god complex anyway and their official app sucks.

[Silverflame]

1 hour ago, art12354 said:

I haven't tried any of the fediverse alternatives, but I'm wondering why you feel like they aren't easy to use? Is the federated nature of it confusing or something else?

So the federated nature is part of it, yes. The lack of A Single Instance (tm) is likely to be confusing for users. Most regular users don't distinguish between "internet" and "browser", "email" and "gmail", "web search" and "google", etc. so asking them to make sense of multiple instances will likely just lead to confusion (which one do I sign up for? does it matter? why/why not? which one is the original/best?). Which increases friction meaning people won't switch. The largest (federated) alternative to Reddit seems to be Lemmy, and both of the apps for it are in alpha [0,1].

 

In terms of ease-of-use, open-source software (OSS) unfortunately tend to classify UI/UX as a trivial afterthought, and as a result it doesn't get much attention if any [2,3]. Things like Blender are the exception rather than the rule, because the kind of developers who start up OSS projects tend to focus on the internals rather than the interface. And when people then come along and want to improve things, it gets pushed to the side as unimportant or, in the worse case, they find a hostile community [4] who rejects any kind of change (e.g. the Thunderbird redesign which was long overdue and well-researched, but attracted controversy [5,6]). UI is hard (e.g. [7], amongst other examples) but few people developers seem to acknowledge that (and those that do work for companies, not OSS projects)  : /

[0]: https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa
[1]: https://github.com/buresdv/Mlem
[2]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3170427.3188467
[3]: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9140320
[4]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3528579.3529178
[5]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoLb6aHakno
[6]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P28jZTobvM4

[7]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qct6LKbneKQ

 

[BearTiger913]

I deleted my r*ddit account yesterday and I'm not looking back. Life goes on.

[Silverflame]

37 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I really dislike the transcript of the call though, as the Apollo creators comments I 100% agree sounded like a threat to Reddit, or I can understand how it could be seen as a threat (and in a call which could make or break your company making "jokes" is not the place or time when you are intermixing it with some potentially ambiguous wording).

Yeah the choice of words there could definitely have been better, "quiet down" sounds much more like it's about kicking up drama than heavy API use...

[Skiiwee29]

@Silverflame I have merged your thread into the already existing thread surrounding the reddit changes. 

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, Silverflame said:

 

 

In terms of ease-of-use, open-source software (OSS) unfortunately tend to classify UI/UX as a trivial afterthought, and as a result it doesn't get much attention if any [2,3]. Things like Blender are the exception rather than the rule, because the kind of developers who start up OSS projects tend to focus on the internals rather than the interface. And when people then come along and want to improve things, it gets pushed to the side as unimportant or, in the worse case, they find a hostile community [4] who rejects any kind of change (e.g. the Thunderbird redesign which was long overdue and well-researched, but attracted controversy [5,6]). UI is hard (e.g. [7], amongst other examples) but few people developers seem to acknowledge that (and those that do work for companies, not OSS projects)  : /

 

I think this is always the albatross around the neck of OSS. 

 

Most OSS software starts as "f*** you, I'm taking my toys home" rejection of some software that everyone uses, but has some political, or economical restriction that makes using the software expensive or time consuming to comply with.

 

You see this hostility from developers of things like LibreOffice, when you ask why can't you do X, and they basically tell you the feature exists if you install a series of software work-arounds. Like good grief, LibreOffice is not a replacement for Microsoft Office, because half the features needed (like embedding images or videos) do not work. Likewise "photoshop replacements" that none have the UX structure of photoshop, so getting people to switch to it, may as well be learning new software.

 

All these alternatives to social media all contain the exact same problems. They silo the data, so that means nobody can find/discover anything, many things based on "fediverse" are completely useless.

 

Go back in time and ask, why did any specific service fail? Do you all remember the time that the instant messengers (AIM, Y!, MSN) agreed on a protocol, and then were subsequently all eliminated by the incompetence of their respective companies? AIM stopped existing in 2017, 2 years after Verizon bought AOL and basically shut everything down. If you owned a mac, you might remember that the precursor to iMessage was a third party AIM client. Microsoft merged all it's services into an SSO, so Skype, Xbox, Hotmail, etc now used the same login system, and that basically exterminated MSN.

 

We have the proof already that "fediverse" will not work, because it has not worked before. IRC and Usenet still exist, but are largely unusable to being 99% spam, and illegal-to-possess materials.  When forums on the internet are abandoned in favor of discord, the forums fill up with the same kind of spam and illegal materials.

 

It's like we don't want to learn the lessons of services past:

1. If it requires an account, it will not be adopted

2. If it requires identity verification, it will not be adopted

3. If it requires special software (something other than a web browser), it will not be adopted

4. If it requires posters to be real people (eg not businesses or fictitious entities) it will not be adopted

5. If it requires blind trust, it will be quickly eroded.

 

Like facebook fails 4 of these. Twitter fails 3 of these. Reddit fails 2 of these, IRC fails 1, and Usenet fails 1. Email itself is the only one that passes, but to actually run your own email server fails 2 points.

 

And what's the supposed answer? 

1. Instead of accounts and identity verification. Simply require chains of trust. In order to communicate with each other, you must exchange codes. This is pretty much what "PGP" was intended to do, but nobody actually uses in practice. Once you have each other's codes, communication by any digital means must use those codes, otherwise it will be rejected. No usernames, no camping on valuable digital real estate. Basically you build a mutual friends list, and whoever is "Bob Nobody" who YOU know to be "Bob Nobody". No spam can exist, because you explicitly opted in, and you can also delete codes you don't want anymore.

2. Communication platform must be neutral. It must simply accept all encrypted communication, and only those with keys can read it. No ads can be inserted, no tracking can be done, no policing of content can be made. You can effectively create a P2P chat/photosharing/videostreaming system where only the people with your keys can see it, because it's individually encrypted with keys that are meant for you and you alone.

 

If you are concerned that bad guys might use something, well too damn bad. The reason why we seem to keep re-inventing wheels over and over again is because someone (eg government, business, law enforcement) assumes the worst of people, and thus they want back doors into it, or because the company wants to profit off the data, and wants to be able to track and sell it.

 

Fediverse seems to be re-inventing usenet and IRC, with all the flaws that came with it. No discoverability, high rates of spam, camping of usernames and identities, literal DDoS wars fought over usernames and channel ownership.

 

Basically we've seen the consequences of "peer to peer" systems before, and the result of that is that data just disappears when people stop being interested in it, or it becomes weaponized.

[Drazil100]

I honestly welcome the change. If they want to destroy their site then that opens room for competition. When Skype turned terrible for instance everyone started hopping over to Discord. When tumblr banned nsfw content... I don't know what replaced it but good riddance. If Twitch wishes to squeeze it's creators dry then YouTube or maybe Kick can be a good alternative.

Where there is a gap in the market there will always be someone trying to fill it and I would honestly rather see someone who cares about making a good experience on top rather than someone who is in the extract as much profit as possible phase of their business. 

[Arika]

12 hours ago, BearTiger913 said:

r*ddit

why'd you censor reddit?

[Faer-Anne]

Seems like part of the problem is that we keep shooting for this golden goose, and the only way we are happy is when it's dead.  There's a tech theorem that suggests you get Privacy, Security, or Ease of Use, pick 2.  There's another that replaces one of those with data integrity.  The truth is, we can't have it all, because people exist.  It's an unfortunate and inalienable truth.  As long as people exist, and people are the target, then you're gonna have a conflict.

But...

You can have subsets.  Silos.  Right here, on this very site, we have a silo.  LTT forums doesn't even attempt to create space for other communities.  This isn't a forum for the latest rock operas, and LTT doesn't try to make explicit space for it.  It could come up in conversation, but there isn't a dedicated space for it.

Our choice is clear here, we can either continue burning everything down because "The internet must all be connected."  Or we can accept that not everyone needs to be exposed to everything.  We aren't a hive mind, why do we all need to know and see everything?
Personally, I'd love to see webrings come back.  Natural linking between hosts, because of unforced interaction.  That was the jam.  Make discoverability a natural thing again.  Imagine if instead of subreddits, we just had independent forums, where when you have an overlap, you suggest people visit each other.  Sure, you're gonna have a smaller userbase, purely on the difficulty of identity setup.  But I think a proper Web Identity standard wouldn't be that hard long term.

[wanderingfool2]

20 hours ago, Silverflame said:

Yeah the choice of words there could definitely have been better, "quiet down" sounds much more like it's about kicking up drama than heavy API use...

Yea, for me it makes me think what exactly did he say to them originally when trying to negotiate the API terms as well.

 

All the articles as well in regards to cost is pretty much from what he's said, I haven't seen any actual reddit documentation that mentions the pricing for API access.  No doubt it would be high given the number of apps closing down, but maybe the rates some of them were given were also inflated due to their attitude.

[LAwLz]

According to the AMA the API will be free up to 100 calls per minute for OAuth authorized clients. Over that and it's 24 cent per 1000 API calls. 

In other words, if you are logged in you'd be able to do 100 actions (open thread, view image, like/dislike, reply etc) every minute without it costing anything. 

 

That seems very reasonable to me and certainly wouldn't end up costing millions for an app like Apollo, if they required their users to login. The limit is 10 actions for users not signed in but I don't see that as a big deal. 

 

 

 

Maybe this have changed since the backroom meetings and this announcement, that the original plans were different, but from what I can tell the danger is over now (except no NSFW in third party apps). 

I don't see any reason for third party apps to shut down anymore, except if they do it out of spite or something. 

 

 

Edit: Never mind. It's 100 API calls per app, not per user. In other words, it doesn't fix the issue of apps like Boost and RIF. 

[starsmine]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

According to the AMA the API will be free up to 100 calls per minute for OAuth authorized clients. Over that and it's 24 cent per 1000 API calls. 

In other words, if you are logged in you'd be able to do 100 actions (open thread, view image, like/dislike, reply etc) every minute without it costing anything. 

 

That seems very reasonable to me and certainly wouldn't end up costing millions for an app like Apollo, if they required their users to login. The limit is 10 actions for users not signed in but I don't see that as a big deal. 

 

 

 

Maybe this have changed since the backroom meetings and this announcement, that the original plans were different, but from what I can tell the danger is over now (except no NSFW in third party apps). 

I don't see any reason for third party apps to shut down anymore, except if they do it out of spite or something. 

100 per min is not really much at all. and it still fucks over mod tools
you can hit that scrolling through the comments or searching them. That AMA left a more sour taste in my mouth with the CEO lying his ass off (as proven, with receipts). 

Also not allowing NSFW calls is just stupid, for what reason? 

In terms of accessibility apps that DrMacintosh brings up, yes, they have to meet ADA and yes the OS has tools, but that does not mean its fine to cut off apps that go above and beyond the requirements of those laws to meet the accessibility needs/wants of their users. 

[Taf the Ghost]

5 hours ago, starsmine said:

100 per min is not really much at all. and it still fucks over mod tools
you can hit that scrolling through the comments or searching them. That AMA left a more sour taste in my mouth with the CEO lying his ass off (as proven, with receipts). 

Also not allowing NSFW calls is just stupid, for what reason? 

In terms of accessibility apps that DrMacintosh brings up, yes, they have to meet ADA and yes the OS has tools, but that does not mean its fine to cut off apps that go above and beyond the requirements of those laws to meet the accessibility needs/wants of their users. 

The NSFW calls makes sense with where legal environments are going. You can question the logic behind age verification (and the privacy implications), but it's going to be a common thing going forward. But it betrays a lot of the reasons behind the entire move: forcing everyone onto a platform they control because it's legally safer for them while also making more money for them.  That part is an outcropping of a rolling factional battle that doesn't get much big media coverage, but it's very real. It also matters that the "amateur" adult entertainment realm is a massive source of human trafficking and is much of the cause of specific changes to regulations around NSFW content.

 

As for spez, he sold out a long time ago. Which isn't too surprising. All of the "major mods" are controlled by either Marketing Firms or Intelligence Agencies. They've known this for a long time, though they've apparently been terrible at extracting money from that understanding.  It's a very different situation from Jack over at Twitter, but he was sent out there to play PR cover. 

 

The bigger, overarching question is about the API Pricing in general. I have a hunch I know what's going on. And it isn't suddenly VC cash drying up in the industry. We'll have to see how things play out.

[starsmine]

1 hour ago, Taf the Ghost said:

The NSFW calls makes sense with where legal environments are going. You can question the logic behind age verification (and the privacy implications), but it's going to be a common thing going forward. But it betrays a lot of the reasons behind the entire move: forcing everyone onto a platform they control because it's legally safer for them while also making more money for them.  That part is an outcropping of a rolling factional battle that doesn't get much big media coverage, but it's very real.

Whilst there Is some legal experiments with age verification going on, there is no reason to preempt those legal experiments with experimentation that damage your brand and traffic when it fails to address the new laws that are being implemented, let alone any new ones that may be tried in the future.

1 hour ago, Taf the Ghost said:

It also matters that the "amateur" adult entertainment realm is a massive source of human trafficking and is much of the cause of specific changes to regulations around NSFW content.

Your statement here is just false. While there is human trafficking in some spaces, calling it a massive source of it, and doing the one thing that is proven to make it worse is asinine, see fosta/sesta. There are far better ways to handle it than to make it not possible to do API calls on it. This is not even perfect is the enemy of the good situation of that is the fundemental logic as again, mod tools. 

[Erebuxy]

So your business model is entirely centered around others' business. But some how, the other business does not get a cut of your business, and your business could potentially make them less profitable? 

 

I am not sure how that even flies in the first place... It's honestly just a matter of time. 

[Taf the Ghost]

24 minutes ago, Erebuxy said:

So your business model is entirely centered around others' business. But some how, the other business does not get a cut of your business, and your business could potentially make them less profitable? 

 

I am not sure how that even flies in the first place... It's honestly just a matter of time. 

There have been API call fees for years. They decided to raise the price something like 100x. Means either they were extremely negligent with their pricing for the last decade, or they view the access as far and away more valuable today than it was a year ago. So either they've been insanely incompetent or they're lying through their teeth about the reasoning.

[Erebuxy]

2 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

There have been API call fees for years. They decided to raise the price something like 100x. Means either they were extremely negligent with their pricing for the last decade, or they view the access as far and away more valuable today than it was a year ago. So either they've been insanely incompetent or they're lying through their teeth about the reasoning.

 

Or they simply cannot burn investor's money anymore, and actually need to make more money to pay back the initial investments. 

[Ydfhlx]

On 6/10/2023 at 5:12 PM, wanderingfool2 said:

Yea, for me it makes me think what exactly did he say to them originally when trying to negotiate the API terms as well.

 

All the articles as well in regards to cost is pretty much from what he's said, I haven't seen any actual reddit documentation that mentions the pricing for API access.  No doubt it would be high given the number of apps closing down, but maybe the rates some of them were given were also inflated due to their attitude.

If reddit had anything to prove app developers share part of the blame, they would certainly show it. Or, in other words, all the proof that we have points to reddit being 100% at faul - so I am quite sure if there was any proof suggesting otherwise, reddit would show it.

 

Apollo dev even urged the CEO in AMA to back their claims, to no avail.

 

---

 

As a different topic, I wonder if Reddit wants to make quick buck of training AI.

[kpluck]

5 hours ago, Erebuxy said:

So your business model is entirely centered around others' business. But some how, the other business does not get a cut of your business, and your business could potentially make them less profitable? 

 

I am not sure how that even flies in the first place... It's honestly just a matter of time. 

You clearly have no clue what is going on.

 

-kp

[AlTech]

3 hours ago, Erebuxy said:

 

Or they simply cannot burn investor's money anymore, and actually need to make more money to pay back the initial investments. 

Iirc Reddit's CEO wants to take Reddit public on the stock market and Reddit needs to be profitable for them to do that.

 

Reddit is (probably) not profitable at the moment. We know some other social media sites like Twitter (even before Elon took over) and YouTube are also not profitable so it wouldn't be a shock to find out Reddit isn't.

 

I imagine Reddit is trying everything it can do it to make itself profitable and this probably means either effectively killing off apps that don't show Reddit ADs or encourage purchasing of Reddit Gold/Premium (very likely) or an attempt to somehow monetize the API much more than they did before (not likely).

[wanderingfool2]

28 minutes ago, Ydfhlx said:

If reddit had anything to prove app developers share part of the blame, they would certainly show it. Or, in other words, all the proof that we have points to reddit being 100% at faul - so I am quite sure if there was any proof suggesting otherwise, reddit would show it.

Except it's about what you consider "fault".  Do I think the API prices are insanely high?  Yes, but it's their platform and they really can set the prices they want and at that point as well based on what I could guess by the published numbers the API price that Apollo was saying would be roughly 2x the "cost" if based on users.

 

Then you have the audio call that Apollo DID intentionally leaked, and at least the bit that was transcribed I 100% agree with Reddit, it sounded like flat out extortion masked as joking.  So much of it was phrased in ways that could be interpreted as a threat...especially when the call is already cutting in and out.  The general thing is you do not make jokes like that during a meeting when they have already asked for clarity in what you are talking about

 

From the call.

Quote

Me: No, no, I'm sorry. Yeah one more time. I was just saying if the opportunity cost of Apollo is currently $20 million a year. And that's a yearly, apparently ongoing cost to you folks. If you want to rip that band-aid off once. And have Apollo quiet down, you know, six months. Beautiful deal. Again this is mostly a joke, I'm just saying if the opportunity cost is that high, and if that is something that could make it easier on you guys, that could happen too. As is, it's quite difficult.

 

Given it was spoken by @LinusTech a few things I would like to note in regards to the Apollo creator's post.

Depending on how Reddit calculates monthly users, his number might be off by a factor of 10x - 20x, while I do think the API cost is high without final costs it's impossible to actually know...after-all Twitter prior had huge MAU but was losing money massively on users.  So the general sentiment that it's too high can only be guessed at realistically.

 

Also, that blackmailing/threat claim, I 100% agree with Reddit, in a call where you know the other side is having you cut off one doesn't talk about "Apollo quiet down, you know, six months".  Overall what I see of the situation is both parties coming away from it with different takes on how the conversation went.  I highly dislike that he clipped out the portion that caused the initial confusion.

 

Should be noted as well, some of the other claims like the promise not to change the API in 2023 didn't have full transcripts, so again it could lack context.

 

Also another note, while Canada is a one party consent, I'm not actually sure if publishing the recording is totally in the right.  I could be wrong,
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-193.html

but I do believe there are limits in what you are allowed to use the conversation for.

 

I do feel that it's overpriced, but I don't feel like there is a lot of hate for Reddit simply because it's being made out to be Goliath that needs to be brought down.

[Zodiark1593]

44 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Iirc Reddit's CEO wants to take Reddit public on the stock market and Reddit needs to be profitable for them to do that.

 

Reddit is (probably) not profitable at the moment. We know some other social media sites like Twitter (even before Elon took over) and YouTube are also not profitable so it wouldn't be a shock to find out Reddit isn't.

 

I imagine Reddit is trying everything it can do it to make itself profitable and this probably means either effectively killing off apps that don't show Reddit ADs or encourage purchasing of Reddit Gold/Premium (very likely) or an attempt to somehow monetize the API much more than they did before (not likely).

This is kind of a trend I see with a lot of tech companies nowadays, especially in streaming. There seems to be great pressure to cut costs, and turn a profit, and companies do appear to be willing to become the bad guy to do it. 
 

Also, I have to wonder how dire Reddit’s finances are. Compared to Instagram, for example, Reddit (at least the site) seems to be far lighter on ads, which leads me to believe their ad revenue is fairly small. 

[Needfuldoer]

On 6/9/2023 at 8:41 PM, Kisai said:

You see this hostility from developers of things like LibreOffice, when you ask why can't you do X, and they basically tell you the feature exists if you install a series of software work-arounds.

Or better yet, "It's open source; you write the feature you want!"

[Mark Kaine]

On 6/9/2023 at 8:21 PM, Silverflame said:

Things like Blender are the exception rather than the rule

wait, are you saying blender has good ui?