This guy has no R: comments from Reddit’s CEO that will make users even angrier
June 16, 2023
0
Reddit’s management had signed an ordinance that will allow bricks to be submitted to third-party application developers from June 19. With this edit, Reddit’s Access to the API
Reddit’s management had signed an ordinance that will allow bricks to be submitted to third-party application developers from June 19. With this edit, Reddit’s Access to the API is now paid.
With the disruption going on for years, popular Reddit applications like Apollo would be sentenced to pay hefty fees of $20 million a year, so it decided to shut down. About the platform for Reddit to take a step back mass blackout protests although it seems like none of this will work.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says they won’t back down
Speaking to The Verge’s Jay Peters, Steve Huffman continued his remarkable statements after the protests. Huffman began the interview with a comment about the protests, first posted on Reddit. a platform created by its users emphasized that.
“One of the main points I want to make today is that Reddit is a platform created by its users. My favorite analogy for Reddit is a city analogy. Cities are physical things, but they are actually living organisms created by their citizens. I think Reddit is pretty much the same. We are a platform and technology company on the one hand and a living organism on the other hand, this democratic living organism created by its users.
These democratic values run deep on Reddit. Every now and then there’s a protest in cities, and I think that’s exactly what we’re seeing right now. Even if we disagree, we appreciate that users care enough about protesting on Reddit, can protest on Reddit, and then our platform is resilient enough to survive this sort of thing.
His comment on the API was “This is our business decision and we’re not going back”:
“We have had blackouts in the past where there was a little more room for mobility. But the crux of this blackout is the API pricing change. This is our business decision and we will not go back on that business decision.
We were clear to go into this, and I think that’s one of the reasons why our users were probably upset about this blackout, because there was nothing to gain.”
The closure of Apollo surprised Reddit:
“We were also clear that we were willing to work with apps that were willing to work with us, and that hasn’t changed. Now the two biggest apps (Apollo and Sync) have thrown in the towel. This was unexpected, but we’re still talking to the others. And you know, we’ll see where that leads.”
Reminder: Apollo developer Christian Selig told Reddit in January that no API changes are planned for them.
It’s not the decision that upsets the developers, it’s the prices. However, this does not change:
“What they don’t like is the price, but that’s the price. Running an app like Reddit is expensive.”
Third-party apps beat Reddit, while Reddit doesn’t:
Ask: It seems most of these developers are smaller – maybe one person – and just forced to quit. Do these people make millions?
‘You talk to them, go ask them! millions. How many subscribers does he have, the price list is shared publicly.
I have an estimate of how much. It gave a low number of subscribers, I have a higher estimate. But it costs us real money. Pure infrastructure costs to support these applications cost us about $10 million. But this isn’t labor, this isn’t R&D, this isn’t security, this isn’t machine learning, and it doesn’t include the loss of money caused by users who aren’t on our platform. Just pure cloud spending. This is real money.”
The API was never developed to support third-party applications…
“The API was never designed to support third-party apps. We allowed it to exist, and I have to take the blame for it, because I was the one who discussed it for a long time. But I didn’t know how much they were abusing our API – and that’s my fault. I didn’t know these weren’t charities.
Do those who do really good things for our users, like RedReader, Dystopia, Luna, want to add real value for their own account? We were exempt. We will bear those costs.”
The bottom line is that Reddit was tired of supporting free third-party apps and took action to untie these apps with a snapshot. As the CEO said at the beginning of this interview, Reddit’s “a platform created by its users” are.
Jeffery Powell is a tech-savvy writer and author at Div Bracket. He covers the latest and greatest in internet-related news and trends, offering readers a comprehensive overview of the ever-evolving online world.
