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It’s not that third party apps want to freeload and therefore have triggered this boycott. A big part of the reason people are upset is the handling of the monetization of the API. The pricing is absurd compared to what similar services charge and the timeline for third parties to switch over is extremely limited. There are many other ways they could have monetized their API without triggering this backlash. For example, they could restrict API usage to people who pay for Reddit Premium. Then, given sufficient time, third parties could rearchitect their workflow to support this.

Also, people are upset at how Reddit management, especially their CEO (Steve Huffman), has handled this transition. The potentially libelous comments regarding Christian Selig (Apollo developer) are just one of the many things people are upset about. The bungled communication and lack of transparency just continues to show that Reddit just wants to squeeze value out of the community without any genuine effort to make it better.

I can’t say for sure whether the boycott will work or not. But I definitely can say that there will be lasting consequences. This is a negative inflection point for Reddit as a community and as a community, especially if they forcibly remod communities that go dark.

The silver lining is that if Reddit does manage to squeeze an IPO out of this, we all have a new stock to short ;)

Why do you think Reddit wants to monetize via the API and not simply kill third party apps? They'd make a lot more money from ads à la Facebook than via subscriptions.

> But I definitely can say that there will be lasting consequences. This is a negative inflection point for Reddit as a community and as a community, especially if they forcibly remod communities that go dark.

No, there won't be lasting (negative) consequences. I've been a reddit user for a long time, almost since they started. There have been any number of controversies, from jailbait, to fatpeoplehate, to watchpeopledie, to incels, to the fappening, to thedonald, to finding the Boston bomber, to Ellen Pao, to the firing of Victoria, to gamergate, to wallstreetbets, and so on.

They had all been covered in the media but to the average user, they simply don't know nor care about these incidents. So many power users don't understand that the average user simply does not care about any of this. They just want to browse Reddit on their phone for the next 5 minutes.

Even for power users, I could see it being a pretty minor thing. Just speaking for myself - I don't really care about any of this as long as they keep "old" Reddit alive. I've been on Reddit over a decade at this point, and I'm there for a handful of text-based communities. I've never even posted images with Reddit's image uploader.

Some people have argued, in the abstract, that if they're willing to make changes to the API they'll probably kill "old" Reddit too, but idk. Some subreddit mods have posted traffic stats showing half of uniques are still coming through "old" Reddit. I don't see them killing it soon... but if they'll do I'll move on.

I have and will continue to use old reddit on my phone's browser as well, I really have no need or using mobile apps, official or otherwise; I use Joey for Reddit now on Android but that's just for convenience, I don't have to use it.

> People who use third party apps are outliers. They do not make Reddit any money

I'd wager that > 90% of moderators use third party apps, and they indirectly do make Reddit a lot of money. Without the moderators the entire site goes to shit.

Yes, however once they demod everyone, they will find other mods willing to do the work. There are a lot of people on reddit, something like 500 million monthly active users, at least some of them would be able to mod subreddits.

People end up leaving or not participating subreddits with low-quality moderation. They also tend to get overrun with spam and abuse, and have to be shut down. Finding a bunch of crappy replacement moderators isn't going to work long-term.

A small number of mods moderate the overwhelming amount of subreddits and posts on the platform (some moderate hundreds of subs), and those are doing just fine. At least for the most popular subreddits, nothing will materially change.

You just said those power moderators will be removed and need to be replaced, right? Isn't that contradictory?

What part is contradictory? Those moderators will be replaced by a similar number, ie less than 10, that can moderate the top 100 or so subs. My comment was on the scale of moderation required, at least for subs on /r/all which is what the vast majority of users use, not whether those exact moderators will still stick around. And you never know, mods might say they're going to quit but many mods might still stay. I don't expect to see power mods like GallowBoob going anywhere.

I see what you meant now. Fair enough.

The other part of my prediction is that some of the (real, non-bot) engagement that the giant generic subreddits get are from users that are anchored to Reddit by more specialized subreddits, like those for specific games, hobbies, that sort of thing. If those special interest subreddits die out, I think the large generic subreddits will become more hollowed out than they are already, and not worth much.

They're already not worth much, that's why I never go on /r/all in the first place.

Exactly. It's not about the absolute percentage of people using third-party services, it's about the users that matter: power users, moderators, and especially content posters/creators.

In this case, I agree. This is just people being noisy and flapping their arms about for the sake of being noisy and flapping their arms about.

If users really cared, they'd delete their accounts and quit using Reddit.

Anecdotally, a lot of people are deleting their accounts and quitting Reddit. I myself am archiving all my data, editing all my comments to something useless, and deleting my account.

Good for you. Reddit will not cease to exist.

People are comparing this to Digg, but Reddit is not changing at all, so the vast majority of users will stay and will continue to comment share and moderate subreddits for free/points.

People think they have any power whatsoever over “their” subreddits, I don’t know how they can think that Reddit won’t just lock their accounts and reopen the subreddits.

Don’t forget that Reddit can and already did close a bunch of subreddits that they didn’t like, so it’s their community, not yours.

> Reddit is not changing at all, so the vast majority of users will stay

Cutting off and/or driving up the cost of third-party apps through which users access Reddit is changing Reddit. The impression I get is that third-party apps are disproportionately used by the kinds of users that supply content more than average, so even if they are less efficiently monetized as eyeballs, they are large indirect contributors to Reddit’s revenue. Making their experience worse will, it seems near certain, cost content that brings the users that are purer eyeballs to monetize with ads, and thereby cost ad revenue. How much is, of course, unclear.

> Don’t forget that Reddit can and already did close a bunch of subreddits that they didn’t like, so it’s their community, not yours.

Sure, and they can take over the moderations, and the content creation, and the viewing for ads from the users that they chase off. Not sure how that will work out for them as a business plan, though.

> The impression I get is that third-party apps are disproportionately used by the kinds of users that supply content more than average

Are you saying that most users who post content also use third-party apps, or that most third-party app users post content? There’s a big difference here.

Back of the napkin math: You have to pay to post with some third-party apps like Apollo which has 50k subscribers. Reddit has ~500M monthly users, so we’re looking at… 0.01% if every person subscribed to Apollo posts. Even with a 10x safety factor, there’s no way shutting down third-party apps has a meaningful effect on the volume of content posted to Reddit.

This.

Add the addictive nature of Reddit and you’ll see the same people back on the site and native app. I hate Reddit but I still open it at least once a week.

It's the same hemming and hawwing about Twitter several months ago. Everyone vocally says they'll leave for Mastodon, but most simply don't. Listening to the vocal minority as a company executive is simply a recipe for disaster.

> People who use third party apps are outliers. They do not make Reddit any money

I do agree with you. Bu the outliers usually feed the site with good content. There is a quote by Paul G (or someone)

> whatever the hackers do on the weekends, normal people will be doing regularly in 10 years.

This is a recital from memory, prone to be watered down. But the idea is that the outliers are the ones that makes it worthwhile to be in the community. If they are gone because for any reason, landed somewhere else, the normal users will eventually move away. It is not going to be visible immediately, but will have negative effects in the long run.

Like gamblers and drug addicts, power users are the ones most likely to return to the site after leaving. There really are no true alternatives like in the Digg days, so I assume most power users will begrudgingly use the official app. Hell, I use a third party app and I just downloaded the official app as well.

Probably so, but the theverge article and others like it will not go anywhere. This is ammo for future journalists to character assassinate the current Reddit leadership. Bad press is always available for later reuse.

The vast majority of people who use Reddit do not read articles on The Verge or similar. In fact, they simply do not care about company news whose product they're using. How many articles on Facebook and Instagram came out about privacy concerns, and how many people actually stopped using them due to that? It's simply not a concern to most consumers.

I meant to say that leadership still likes to avoid bad press for the sake of self preservation. Bad press focused on individualals has consequences even when consumers aren't the primary audience. Think stockholders, potential business partners, boards, etc.

Large subreddit protests are bad press.

Not sure about that, "any press is good press" isn't a saying for nothing. In this case, investors can clearly see why the protests are happening and would in fact side with the company, not the individuals, because their protests are getting in the way of becoming profitable.

I'm pretty sure nothing will happen either. People will use this as a moment to grieve and vent, management doesn't budge and things return to business as usual.

I bet somebody will port one of the third party clients to use web scraping instead of the API.

That's why people should consider hacktivism (at least DDoS)