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Comment by pugworthy | Hacker News Reader

Do you see the problem as being the third party apps are superior? Or is it the pay-walling off of an API by a private company?

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These and more.

By releasing an API, and letting third party developers pick up the slack, the community grows and the main company doesn't have to invest as much themselves into this annoying UI stuff. And even if their own efforts are misguided, there are other options, so people stick around. Once they've decided they got all they need from the third parties, and users are too attached to leave, they cut off access. It's a rug-pull from under the people that helped build the community up so I can see why it feels like a betrayal.

While they have technically not 'cut off' access, they chose their pricing for a reason, and it will have this effect. As to whether third party apps are superior, to me that's a side issue - if main-Reddit makes a user-hostile decision, their site and app won't support ameliorating that since it goes against their plans. Third Party apps can and do, which is beneficial to users.

Do any other large social media companies allow third party clients in the same unfettered capacity that people seem to be expecting from Reddit?

No, and for many that's one of the selling points of Reddit. It's one of the few social media services that lets you use the client that suits you best instead of having no choice but to be force-fed whatever the marketing department and C-suites have had the engineers shoddily build into the first-party app.

I see the argument that this openness makes the service harder to monetize, but it's not as if Reddit (or Twitter) ever gave it any actual effort. For example they could mandate that API usage past some threshold requires the app using it to present ads delivered by the API, and if users want to get rid of them they could subscribe to Reddit Premium. I don't think there'd be much resistance to this from heavier Reddit users — most realize that the free ride wasn't going to last forever, but the prices being asked for now are outrageous and many times greater than what Reddit is losing to users not seeing ads.

I don't know if they do. But the fact is Reddit did offer it (presumably because they saw a benefit from doing so), so that is why people now expect it. Changing the rules on people like this is always going to upset them because they get used to it. But I think unlike past situations, there's no good target for a mass exodus so it probably won't impact them much.

How would you charge for the API?

How would you make a better app?

Only allow people who pay for ad free Reddit use a third party client.

Haven't used the app recently so can't compare them. But there is the question of user vs developer incentives that even if not applicable today, will always be there. As another example, I hate how I cannot mute Stories in Instagram, and videos don't show a progress bar. But I have no legitimate third party app to help with this and as a consequence I limit my use of it.

For the API I think only someone with access to Reddit data can answer that. They likely have internal reports about why they chose this price point - that would be the starting point for any conversation I think. One example - if app users are highly motivated and produce a lot of content and engagement for the remaining (ad-viewing) users to interact with, then free might be the sensible price. But I have no idea if this is the case. Being able to design a pricing scheme is not really a prerequisite for being unhappy with things changing anyway, feedback is important.

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