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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2344 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 9, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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This is probably the best place to discuss the latest in the ongoing drama of the Reddit API changes. Short version is that Reddit's APIs used to be free, but they are rolling out a new scheme where they charge pretty substantially for them. The prices are high enough to make pretty much all of the third-party Reddit phone apps non-viable. This has made a lot of people quite upset, as the "official" app is reportedly significantly worse and is lacking a lot of moderator tools that many mods use to run their subreddits. There's a big "blackout" planned for June 12-14th in protest, where the mods of a bunch of subs will turn them private and users are encouraged to not use Reddit at all.

So lots of users are mad and claim that they're going to delete their accounts and/or stop using Reddit at all. It's not clear how many people overall are actually prepared to follow through on this long term. Personally I'm doubtful that it's enough to significantly hurt Reddit.

The developers of all the major independent mobile apps (Apollo, RedditIsFun, Sync, Relay, etc) say they're going to delete their API keys the day before charges start accruing, which will disable all of their installed apps at once. Apparently if they don't, they'll get a pretty hefty bill at the end of next month for everything all of the current users have been doing. Ouch. The Apollo link has a pretty long writeup of the dev's experience where he makes a good case that Reddit doesn't seem to have much interest in working with third-party app developers.

Probably the most significant part is the mod objections. Apparently a lot of mods of big subs do most of their modding on mobile using one of the third-party apps, and they say the mod tooling on the official app is so much worse that they won't be able to do their work. Every reddit sub relies on volunteer mods to keep them free of spam and abuse, and none of them are paid anything, so making their work more difficult will be very noticeable. If many mods follow through on this, it could be very significant indeed.

21 days ago I got this message from Reddit when it auto-renewed my annual subscription:

Hi VecGS,

Thanks for being a Reddit Premium member!

Your yearly Reddit Premium subscription has been successfully renewed and you’ve been charged $29.99 (USD).*

You should expect a fresh delivery of 700 Reddit Coins every month.

If you have any questions about your subscription, feel free to contact us or check out the Reddit Premium FAQs.

Don’t forget, your subscription automatically renews each year. That means you can cancel your subscription at any time from your Subscription Settings. Just make sure you cancel at least 24 hours before your subscription period ends to avoid getting charged for the next year. You won’t be refunded for any remaining time on your subscription.

That $30 per year cost eliminates ads for me. That's around $2.50 a month. That's far smaller than the bill that the Apollo creator would be getting for my usage when I'm on mobile. I'm pretty sure that sets up a very convenient upper bound for what Reddit's costs are. Even with that, I would expect they make a profit on me.

This is nothing but a clear attempt to kill 3rd party apps in my opinion.

The provable lying that the CEO is doing is leaving a very bad taste in my mouth.

I guess it was a good run while it lasted.

I'm confused. I must be missing something. They're charging for the use of the API and you say that Christian Selig gets more than that. So how is it a problem for him? Why can't he just pay the fee?

It's the other way around. Reddit was getting that much directly from me. I paid for Apollo years ago, which was far less than the new charges that Reddit would be charging Christian on an ongoing basis. Overall, his bill would wind up being around $20MM a year based on historical usage. That's far less than the money he's ever made on it.

I was establishing an upper bound for Reddit's average annual customer value.

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