5 ms·

And it worked flawlessly too. Apollo was really a cut above anything I’ve seen out there. Was holding out hope that Reddit would reverse course, but I suppose n

And it worked flawlessly too. Apollo was really a cut above anything I’ve seen out there. Was holding out hope that Reddit would reverse course, but I suppose not.

MBCook 3y ago
I don’t blame Christian. Spez, on a whim, decided to basically destroy his livelihood, with basically no notice. Then Spez kept doubling down and accused Christian of extortion, repeating the accusations after it was proven they were false. I would sell the app even if they reversed course. I wouldn’t trust they wouldn’t do it again. I wouldn’t trust they’d ruin me some other way. If they had said “we’re doing this in 6 months” and then listened to the community, that’s different. But Spez burnt the bridge to the ground and poured toxic waste on it.
- shagie 3y ago
  I'm not sure how much of a whim Reddit had. A Virginia law was signed into effect on May 12th that required commercial entities that distributed "material harmful to minors" to verify the age of the users or be exposed to civil penalties. That law goes into effect in 3 hours.
  - kemayo 3y ago
    I don't see how that could be related to reddit charging for their API.
  - aeyes 3y ago
    NSFW content didn't show without an account for years. What's the difference between using the same account in the official app or on the website or third party apps? Additionally one of the API changes which also goes is into effect is that they won't serve NSFW content on the paid API. So even if you pay you only get half of Reddit.
    - MBCook 3y ago
      Hell, they could have banned all real NSFW content. Would have been a big deal, but wouldn’t have interfered with 3rd party apps or anything I use Reddit for. Any NSFW stuff (due to laws, investments, advertisers, anything) had nothing to do with the API decision. They may have done them at the same time, but it wasn’t needed.
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        That or old.reddit is probably the next big schism in the making. The NSFW fiasco may cause some significant change if it ever does happen.
    - happytiger 3y ago
      Classic correlation not being causation.
  - CJefferson 3y ago
    How is that solved by charging for the API?
    - shagie 3y ago
      It makes it much easier to pass liability around and argue that the 3rd party app, with access to location services can verify if the person is in Virginia or not. If they aren't upholding the age verification law, you've got a credit card account tied with an individual or company that the person suing can be pointed to.
  - bentcorner 3y ago
    There's no possible way this is the cause. Like, at all. The simple sniff test is that blast radius of the passing of this law would be way way way larger than "reddit charges for API". We'd see many other sites follow suit with reddit. IANAL but I'll put down $100 that this law has nothing to do with reddit's API changes. First person to prove me wrong gets it. I'd like a quote from spez that says, paraphrased "If Virginia didn't pass the law we wouldn't have started charging for the API".
    - rovr138 3y ago
      https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762868/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762868/reddit-ceo-steve... > Huffman has argued the changes are a business decision to force AI companies training on Reddit’s data to pony up, but they’re also wiping out some beloved Reddit apps, and thousands of subreddits have gone dark for days in protest. … They want to charge for what they believe the data is worth. Not for usage, but value.
      - halfbrite 3y ago
        > They want to charge for what they believe the data is worth. Counter argument: it’s not their data to charge for. And if they want to claim it is their data then they should be held accountable for the content therein. I’m not saying they shouldn’t recoup costs for access to said data. You do after all pay taxes and get access to local libraries and archives. But they shouldn’t be extorting third-party developers.
        rovr138 3y ago
        I agree. They built a platform so that we could create communities and manage them how we want to. We posted information. We created content. We exchanged ideas, had discussions, and we all helped each other. I’m fine with them recouping their costs. I’m fine with them even making a bit off of it. However, > I'll cut to the chase: 50 million requests costs $12,000, a figure far more than I ever could have imagined. … > For reference, I pay Imgur (a site similar to Reddit in user base and media) $166 for the same 50 million API calls. My understanding is that Christian is grandfathered into an older plan on Imgur. Having said that, the Mega plan is $10,000 per month for 150,000,000 requests. If we use this pricing, 50,000,000 api calls is $3,333.34 (vs Reddit’s $12,000) https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca... https://rapidapi.com/imgur/api/imgur-9/pricing https://rapidapi.com/imgur/api/imgur-9/pricing
dcormier 3y ago
They didn’t even have to reverse course for this to work out. Just give a reasonable runway before beginning to charge for the API (to give third party clients enough time to adjust their subscription customers who may have just paid for a year), and charge a reasonable price. Two months before starting to charge $0.24 per 1,000 requests is nothing but unreasonable. I wish Reddit had just plainly said, “We don’t want third party clients anymore.” This whole thing would’ve been cleaner. Still bad, but I don’t think it would’ve been nearly as ugly.
- basch 3y ago
  Why are the apps being charged for api access and not the people using them?
  - georgemcbay 3y ago
    Reddit never intended for anyone to pay for API access, that's why the costs were so high. The intent all along was to kill all third party apps through unreasonable pricing of API access so they could funnel users to the official app and inundate them with extremely intrusive ads. If they had presented the ridiculously high cost of API access to users it would have been more overtly user hostile. By targeting the app developers the surface area of who they were directly screwing was smaller (though they are of course actually screwing all the users of those apps anyway). This also explains why reddit made all sorts of illogical arguments to make the app developers seem like the bad guys, to try to deflect blame away from them and to the app developers. They were just super incompetent at doing that effectively, so it was incredibly transparent.
    - gardnr 3y ago
      The premium account holders don't see ads in reddit. All Reddit had to do was require premium accounts for users that wanted to use 3rd party apps. If you want to keep using yoru 3rd party app, then sign up and pay or shut up and go home. It would have been a much more logical change for everyone involved.

And it worked flawlessly too. Apollo was really a cut above anything I’ve seen out there. Was holding out hope that Reddit would reverse course, but I suppose not.

MBCook 3y ago

I don’t blame Christian. Spez, on a whim, decided to basically destroy his livelihood, with basically no notice. Then Spez kept doubling down and accused Christian of extortion, repeating the accusations after it was proven they were false. I would sell the app even if they reversed course. I wouldn’t trust they wouldn’t do it again. I wouldn’t trust they’d ruin me some other way. If they had said “we’re doing this in 6 months” and then listened to the community, that’s different. But Spez burnt the bridge to the ground and poured toxic waste on it.

shagie 3y ago
I'm not sure how much of a whim Reddit had. A Virginia law was signed into effect on May 12th that required commercial entities that distributed "material harmful to minors" to verify the age of the users or be exposed to civil penalties. That law goes into effect in 3 hours.
- kemayo 3y ago
  I don't see how that could be related to reddit charging for their API.
- aeyes 3y ago
  NSFW content didn't show without an account for years. What's the difference between using the same account in the official app or on the website or third party apps? Additionally one of the API changes which also goes is into effect is that they won't serve NSFW content on the paid API. So even if you pay you only get half of Reddit.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    Hell, they could have banned all real NSFW content. Would have been a big deal, but wouldn’t have interfered with 3rd party apps or anything I use Reddit for. Any NSFW stuff (due to laws, investments, advertisers, anything) had nothing to do with the API decision. They may have done them at the same time, but it wasn’t needed.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      That or old.reddit is probably the next big schism in the making. The NSFW fiasco may cause some significant change if it ever does happen.
  - happytiger 3y ago
    Classic correlation not being causation.
- CJefferson 3y ago
  How is that solved by charging for the API?
  - shagie 3y ago
    It makes it much easier to pass liability around and argue that the 3rd party app, with access to location services can verify if the person is in Virginia or not. If they aren't upholding the age verification law, you've got a credit card account tied with an individual or company that the person suing can be pointed to.
- bentcorner 3y ago
  There's no possible way this is the cause. Like, at all. The simple sniff test is that blast radius of the passing of this law would be way way way larger than "reddit charges for API". We'd see many other sites follow suit with reddit. IANAL but I'll put down $100 that this law has nothing to do with reddit's API changes. First person to prove me wrong gets it. I'd like a quote from spez that says, paraphrased "If Virginia didn't pass the law we wouldn't have started charging for the API".
  - rovr138 3y ago
    https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762868/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762868/reddit-ceo-steve... > Huffman has argued the changes are a business decision to force AI companies training on Reddit’s data to pony up, but they’re also wiping out some beloved Reddit apps, and thousands of subreddits have gone dark for days in protest. … They want to charge for what they believe the data is worth. Not for usage, but value.
    - halfbrite 3y ago
      > They want to charge for what they believe the data is worth. Counter argument: it’s not their data to charge for. And if they want to claim it is their data then they should be held accountable for the content therein. I’m not saying they shouldn’t recoup costs for access to said data. You do after all pay taxes and get access to local libraries and archives. But they shouldn’t be extorting third-party developers.
      - rovr138 3y ago
        I agree. They built a platform so that we could create communities and manage them how we want to. We posted information. We created content. We exchanged ideas, had discussions, and we all helped each other. I’m fine with them recouping their costs. I’m fine with them even making a bit off of it. However, > I'll cut to the chase: 50 million requests costs $12,000, a figure far more than I ever could have imagined. … > For reference, I pay Imgur (a site similar to Reddit in user base and media) $166 for the same 50 million API calls. My understanding is that Christian is grandfathered into an older plan on Imgur. Having said that, the Mega plan is $10,000 per month for 150,000,000 requests. If we use this pricing, 50,000,000 api calls is $3,333.34 (vs Reddit’s $12,000) https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca... https://rapidapi.com/imgur/api/imgur-9/pricing https://rapidapi.com/imgur/api/imgur-9/pricing

dcormier 3y ago

They didn’t even have to reverse course for this to work out. Just give a reasonable runway before beginning to charge for the API (to give third party clients enough time to adjust their subscription customers who may have just paid for a year), and charge a reasonable price. Two months before starting to charge $0.24 per 1,000 requests is nothing but unreasonable. I wish Reddit had just plainly said, “We don’t want third party clients anymore.” This whole thing would’ve been cleaner. Still bad, but I don’t think it would’ve been nearly as ugly.

basch 3y ago
Why are the apps being charged for api access and not the people using them?
- georgemcbay 3y ago
  Reddit never intended for anyone to pay for API access, that's why the costs were so high. The intent all along was to kill all third party apps through unreasonable pricing of API access so they could funnel users to the official app and inundate them with extremely intrusive ads. If they had presented the ridiculously high cost of API access to users it would have been more overtly user hostile. By targeting the app developers the surface area of who they were directly screwing was smaller (though they are of course actually screwing all the users of those apps anyway). This also explains why reddit made all sorts of illogical arguments to make the app developers seem like the bad guys, to try to deflect blame away from them and to the app developers. They were just super incompetent at doing that effectively, so it was incredibly transparent.
  - gardnr 3y ago
    The premium account holders don't see ads in reddit. All Reddit had to do was require premium accounts for users that wanted to use 3rd party apps. If you want to keep using yoru 3rd party app, then sign up and pay or shut up and go home. It would have been a much more logical change for everyone involved.