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Comment by SheinhardtWigCo | Hacker News Reader

When your landlord raises your rent from $2000 to $8000, they're not really hoping to raise your rent. They're evicting you.

I think the new API pricing model was developed with a single purpose: extinguishing third-party apps to improve the official app's install/usage metrics before their upcoming IPO.

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This is certain. Can you imagine how embarrassing it must be? A solo dev did what you couldn't all because you were too busy force feeding everyone ads. I would love to know what these executives tell themselves to convince each other they are not the bad guys.

When they go to IPO, there should be a public announcement of all the reprehensible content they allowed for decades, such as spacedicks, violentacruz, picsofdeadkids, cannabilism, etc

(and dont forget that cannabilism was the sub ran by CEO /u/spez where he was openly talking about how much he wanted to eat a baby.)

I am not slandering him -- I am QUOTING him.

I don't know what's a reasonable rate per API call. But it costs reddit to provide this API for free, not only are these apps not serving reddit's ads but they are actively taking up server resources.

I’m the guy who built the server end of Apollo. I can tell you that there would be no problem paying for API usage. In fact, it would have been welcomed, as this is a sure fire way to support the service you depend on.

Was the asking price really so unreasonable? Facebook makes $70 per user/year, how much would the reddit API have to cost to hit that number? All the comments about it just point to "server cost break even point", but reddit has tons of other costs, plus it's a business that exists to make a profit. I haven't done the math here, but the analysis I've seen seems flawed.

The API pricing is what Reddit claims to be "server cost break even point". https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_upda...

Christian's (Apollo developer) math of $20 million a year in API cost is based off of Reddit's entire revenue for the year and not just breakeven costs. https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...

> Was the asking price really so unreasonable?

Most third-party apps have announced shutdown plans. they would not do this if the pricing was reasonable.

Was the asking price really so unreasonable?

Maybe so, maybe not. The way it was handled was absolutely unreasonable.

Of the affected reader apps, the only ones with subscription models were Sync (on Android) and Apollo (on iOS). Basically everything else was one time purchases for some combination of an ad-free version and/or improved functionality.

For those apps not using subscriptions, they were basically told "you must now set up to handle subscriptions and detailed tracking of API usage" and given either ~75 days (from the 4/18 announcement) or ~30 days (from the pricing availability) to design, code, submit, get reviewed, resubmit, etc their apps, along with any business changes needed to handle substantial cash flow through the app, with only fixed upfront charges available to receive money and only postpaid usage-based charges for disbursing that money. Oh, and any app displaying third party ads (basically all of them) must stop doing so.

Personally I think that the third party apps weren't even considered in the decision making process because they're such a trivial percentage of API usage (credible reason to expect that all of them combined were ~5% or less of API usage, slightly more reliable numbers to believe that Apollo was < ~1.4% of API usage). Whether not factoring those in was incompetence or not is probably a matter of opinion. Or maybe there was actual malice and someone did want them all gone if someone on the official app side regarded them as competition to eliminate.

If the apps were considered and it was (quite fairly) decided that they needed to be a source of income, that's trivial to accomplish with reduced impact on the apps and more income flowing directly to Reddit. Boom! New policy! API usage requires a paid account and has enforced limits based on the account type! Introduce account tiers other than just Premium, change some features between them, collect all the money instead of filtering it through developers paying 30% to the app stores, and it's all very easy to implement for the developers.

I believe facebook has a much lower average revenue per user of around $10.

From the calculations I've seen reddit's average revenue per user is much lower at around $2-3. However, the price on the API for Apollo in specific is of $30 per user per year.

It's not charity. These apps are providing traffic, engagement and valuable content. Reddit should be paying them for bringing users to their platform.

I think they were also considering the crawlers that were using Reddit data to train AI models.

Couldn’t crawlers just scrape w/o using the api?

Agreed. All those 3rd party apps were blocking ads and trackers.

Hell you can't even browse Reddit without an account anymore!

They were not "blocking" ads and trackers, those features are not exposed by the API. They couldn't do it even if they wanted to, which was discussed at some point.

Not sure what you mean by "trackers". Reddit knows exactly what you did in the 3rd party app via the API. The app tells the API who you are.

>Hell you can't even browse Reddit without an account anymore!

Yes, you can, via old.reddit.com.

Which is exactly why i'm leaving Reddit. I don't imagine old.reddit will be around much longer either.

same here. once old.reddit is gone, im gone as well

…that’s going to be the next thing they get rid of

They tried to a while ago - and the old.redditors (like me, 17 year account) complained - and they keep it around. I exclusively use old.

-- Replying to below:

???

I use OLD+RES for MY consumption and data density - if you dont know how to configure these together to create a much faster, and more aesthetically pleasing (to me) UX - then that sucks.

https://i.imgur.com/gdDawWz.png

https://i.imgur.com/jlTJGaT.png

So much more pleasant and quicker - especially with hover - I dont even need to click links

https://i.imgur.com/jDvjQwM.jpg

Which of the following do you find pleasing, its personal opinion, so choose what you like - I prefer old.

These are the same page, the only diff is old. vs www.

https://i.imgur.com/mnl5pCb.png <-- www

https://i.imgur.com/JfFZMQX.png <-- old

---

https://i.imgur.com/WxsmDkc.png <-- www

https://i.imgur.com/cKs3uVA.png <-- old

Hate to break it to you, but nobody uses old anymore. As a subreddit mod you can see traffic breakdown stats, and old makes up around 5% of traffic. Up to 10% on some subs. I'm a moderator of a highly technical niche sub and it's about 5-10% for me. Other mods of various subs have commented with their stats and it's always in that 5-10 range.

Old users may create more content than normal users, I don't know about that. The niche subs might take a hit, but the main website and big subs will continue on without disruption if they kill old. (Assuming mods continue to mod - and Reddit can replace/hire mods as needed)

I use old. I’m sure it’s a minority, but either volume or quality of those users is, for now, enough value for Reddit to support it. As much as I’d like them to keep old indefinitely, I’m sure they’re just waiting for the value equation to tip negative before they kill old.

Can you see traffic through apps/API?

For my sub it's about:

5% old.reddit.com

>10% "iOS"

>10% "mobile web"

20% "Android"

50% new.reddit.com (non-mobile, presumably)

Most subs should have a pretty similar distribution, the numbers don't vary much.

Reddit doesn't specify how it tracks 3rd party apps and APIs in these stats.

Yeah, if they kill old.reddit I’ll use it significantly less. Not only is it more annoying with more friction, even if I was still willing to use it for a rough avg(minutes per day) pushing through the annoyance, I wouldn’t be able to consume as much in the same period of time

Precisely - information density on old is what users want - sparseness of information with plenty of space for ads and shiny-objects is what the suits want.

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