The content of the reddit post:
Hey everyone, I just had another call with Reddit and wanted to share what I’ve heard, even though I haven’t made any concrete decisions yet on how to proceed. (Previous update
They confirmed to me the new cost of 3rd party apps accessing the site, which is exactly what the Apollo dev revealed – for every 50 million requests they want $12,000.
They won’t be making exceptions for free apps.
The Apollo dev (/u/iamthatis) estimated that the new pricing would cost him $20m per year. I raised this with Reddit – they said that his calculations were “totally wrong”, but they were unable to discuss why. Given that the Apollo dev literally just multiplied the cost by the number of requests, I have trouble seeing how this could be wrong.
I did some back-of-envelope calculations, and the equivalent cost for RedReader could be something like $1 million per year. Since I don’t track users it’s hard to get an exact figure.
Most of the conversation focused on the ridiculously high cost. They said that they didn’t think the costs were high, but were in fact “on parity” with the rest of the non-third-party-app userbase. This contadicts the public calculations by the Apollo dev, who estimates that they are charging more than 20x an optimistic estimate of their typical per-user revenue.
I raised the question of why paid API users will be unable to access NSFW content, whereas other users will have access to all content, meaning that those paying the most for access will be treated as second class citizens. They said that they were unable to discuss the reasons for this.
They reiterated that their goal “isn’t to kill 3rd party apps” – in fact, they said they were “confused” by claims that they want to do that, and that if they wanted to kill off those apps, there would be “literally nothing stopping them” just doing it directly. I pointed out that regardless of what their motives are, the end result is the same – the apps will be killed off.
Also, I have previously pointed out their dependence on the community doing free work for them (creating and moderating content), and how the users who contribute in that way are the ones most likely to be using 3rd party apps. I don’t get the impression that this bothers them – it all seems to come down to revenue.
I’ve raised the point of accessibility with them, as I’ve heard from many blind users that use RedReader due to how it’s optimised for screen readers (thanks in part to the excellent work by /u/codeofdusk and other contributors). I’m waiting to hear back from them about this.
It’s difficult to imagine any sustainable, official path forward with Reddit as a result of these changes, and personally I’m not at all inclined to invest any more of my time in their platform, or drive any more traffic to it.
Right now I’m considering the possibility of modifying the app to connect to a Reddit alternative such as Lemmy or Mastodon. There would be something very satisfying about some of the bigger Reddit apps driving their userbase to alternative sites too, and if this helped one of those platforms gain traction then that would be a step in the right direction.
Just a quick note on some of the other possibilities:
Charge a subscription to use RedReader: I have been considering this as a possibility, however due to the incredibly high pricing, and the fact that only the most dedicated (and costly) users with the highest usage would sign up, I think this would quickly become unsustainable.
Everyone uses their own personal developer key: It’s too early to know whether this will be a realistic option. From what I’ve seen, Reddit may be turning developer signups into a manual process where each user would need to message them and get approval. Also it’s likely they’d crack down on this if they knew it was happening.
Scrape the website rather than use the API: This is possible and there’s plenty of legal precedent that it would be fine, however it’s an extremely high-maintenance approach that means we’ll forever be playing a cat-and-mouse game with Reddit. I suspect that even if I don’t go down this route, someone else will eventually fork the app and do it anyway!
I haven’t made any concrete decisions yet, but I’ll keep you all updated. I read every message on the previous thread, and really appreciate all the support and feedback.
We’re trying to organize a hackathon, and one of the users has a proof of concept gateway running allowing Red Reader (and other 3rd party apps) to switch to Lemmy with no changes (except for the API url). It’s basically providing a reddit-compatible api for lemmy.
See https://imgur.com/a/IF5HYGz
And also https://www.reddit.com/r/apihackathon/comments/13yvzg2/rapihackathon_lounge/jmxcq0u/
That’s awesome. With a barrier of entry that low, it seems likely that even if RedReader doesn’t get ported someone would fork it and port it.
They reiterated that their goal “isn’t to kill 3rd party apps” – in fact, they said they were “confused” by claims that they want to do that
Who the hell do they think they’re fooling?
The investors
Seriously, they actually think free app developers have the money to pay for their ludicrous pricing? They’re either complete and total idiots or they’re lying about the intent.
@argv_minus_one @uthredii Technically their goal is to make a metric fuckton of money. Killing 3rd-party apps is just a prerequisite
Make a metric fuckton of money from people who are using a third-party client specifically to protect themselves from Reddit’s increasingly-toxic attempts at monetizing their participation? The only thing I’d expect that to accomplish is to convince them all that it’s time to flee to the Fediverse.
And why do it this way? They could have limited API access (and therefore usage of third-party apps) to premium Reddit accounts. I can only assume that what they really want is to get people to install the official Reddit app, presumably to collect more data than is possible through a browser or third-party app. Exactly what they plan to do with those data, I can only speculate, but it can’t be good…
Make a metric fuckton of money from people who are using a third-party client specifically to protect themselves from Reddit’s increasingly-toxic attempts at monetizing their participation?
I think they are looking at all of the AI companies who will need massive amounts of data to train AI. Those companies are just getting buckets of money being dumped on them so they don’t care how much the API will cost.
The thing is I don’t even use Relay for Reddit to avoid the monitization. I use it because it’s the best Reddit experience out of all the apps I’ve tried, especially compared to the official offering.
If they wanted to make money off of me, they could just add a charge to use the API at the user level. I would pay $5/month to Reddit in order to use the API, including through third-party apps. Like, I get it, go have to keep the lights on and I get a lot of value out of the site.
They’re just going about it all wrong, and users like me are going to end up not using the site anymore.
@zalack @argv_minus_one Agreed. Even if reddit backtracked now I wouldn’t go back. They’ve shown their hand. Also the fediverse rocks I should’ve come here a long time ago
The problem though is they don’t want you or I to use the API as a third party client - they want everyone using their first party app which is chock full of ads and I assume tracking as well. To them, that data is more valuable.
Otherwise they could charge a reasonable price for the API, like you mentioned whether at the user level or the developer level.
Great news! Have them get in touch with us if they’d like to get started creating their own app, or contributing to the existing ones.
Mastodon has plenty of app support. Hopefully they pick a different Fediverse api, and users of those servers support them.
I’m going to stop using reddit on mobile altogether when redreader goes.
This is amazing. It could be a huge opportunity for the growth of decentralized platforms.
I’m seriously thinking that they haven’t heard of this site called Digg … :D
@uthredii Hopefully they consider kbin. Mastodon has already enough client support.
True, Mlem is getting better for Lemmy on iOS but Android versions for Kbin/Lemmy need some love too
Yeah, using jerboa, it works, but the ui is kinda hard to use
Yeah would love to see an Infinity port
yeah, me too!
do kbin & lemmy have the same / similar apis?
Actually, no. kbin currently has its API turned off, and the documentation can be found here at https://docs.kbin.pub/. However, I’m still contemplating what to do about it. A lot has been happening lately, and I’m considering integrating with one of the existing APIs.
FYI we planning to rewrite some parts of the api soon. You can check the api issues to get an idea. So this is a good time for suggestions.
Mastodon has enough clients already.
The watershed moment!
Even just a slightly better mobile browser experience would be fairly decent – navigating back and forth out of threads is really the only issue I’ve noticed on that
excited to see reddt alts get hype like titter mastodon/pleroma/akkoma :)
Working link: https://old.reddit.com/r/RedReader/comments/13ylk42/update_3_reddit_effectively_kills_off_third_party/ Also,
The Apollo dev (/u/iamthatis) estimated that the new pricing would cost him $20m per year. I raised this with Reddit – they said that his calculations were “totally wrong”, but they were unable to discuss why. Given that the Apollo dev literally just multiplied the cost by the number of requests, I have trouble seeing how this could be wrong.
lol
The only possible explanation I can see for why the Apollo dev’s number could be “wrong” is if reddit plans to charge on a sliding scale, i.e. the more requests, the more the price is reduced per request. Or the other possibility would be that they “negotiate” a rate with the app developer, i.e. “determine how popular your app will be based on the cost barrier to entry”.
My guess is that Reddit is alluding to the stupid suggestion of “just make your app more efficient with requests bro” (paraphrasing) that I saw an admin make. Reddit’s already said they’re not open to negotiations.
And then the Apollo dev proceeded to packet sniff the official app and found their API call usage to be something like 50% higher than his own lol. The gaslighting by Reddit is another layer of insult on top of the already insulting price for API requests.
Yeah the gaslighting is really off-putting, especially after seeing the Snazzy Labs interview with the Apollo dev (Christian) where he said they used to have a great working relationship. I don’t understand how this went to shit so fast.
Money!
It’s pretty clear Reddit wants to kill 3rd party apps while claiming to love third party apps and trying to extort money from third party apps
That’s hilarious. What a cluster. If they want more performant API calls than maybe they should expose something like a graphql endpoint. Otherwise there’s only so much you can optimise through a REST interface.
Christian would not make this mistake, he has been careful with this and have been tracking it for a while. It’s a make or break thing for Apollo, and all 3rd party apps and I am pretty sure an intentional move from Reddit. They will try to gaslight everyone until the make it to the ipo.
Lemmy or Mastodon
Those are quite different pieces of software with quite different ways to communicate. However, Mastodon has enough clients now.
If they go the lemmy route I hope they setup a new instance. It would be great to have another big lemmy instance to make it more distributed. Also i think the influx of users would not be good for lemmy.ml
the servers are already having a hard time before the dust has even began to settle, so I agree with this. if any bigger third-party reddit app officially redirects to lemmy.ml it’s going to be really rough for awhile
Maybe the play is to use the top servers from the “recommended” instances on join-lemmy.org
As I understand it, it’s more about the sudden traffic than the level. When servers used to a few hundred users visiting a few times a day suddenly gotthousands of views from thousands of impressions, the servers weren’t set up for it.
Beehaw has talked about this, and have upgraded levels pretty much every day, from their initial $12 a month server up to their $48 a month one they use currently. You can still get much more powerful servers (some of the bigger mastodon ones pay hundreds a month), but paying for more than you need wastes money.
With a bit of planning, you could probably prepare a server for the traffic so long as you had the donations in advance.