For someone kind of out of the loop, can someone explain what they think reddit should do instead of charging for their API access? After all Reddit is a business right? What alternatives do users want reddit to do instead?
Heres a post by the developer of Apollo explaining his experience in detail https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...
The challenge for this is that targeting on reddit is harder than other sites which have lengthy profiles and interaction statistics they can use to do targeting.
An elegant solution to this problem would likely involve some product tweaks to incentivize users to tell reddit more about themselves, and a refocus on ad sales. Neither of these seem impossible to me.
How much more information do they need? They already take all that info [1]. I'm pretty sure 99% of the official app users did not turn these settings off.
Make 3P API access require a reddit gold sub. $6/mo and it lets you use whatever client you want and reddit gets that $4, not a dev who has to pay it forward.
Under the proposed API rules I would have had to pay twice for accessing both Apollo on iOS and Sync on Android, which makes no sense.
To me, the most logical thing to do is make third-party app access a Reddit Premium feature.
Reddit wins as they would make far more money from me as a paid user than a free user, third-party devs win as they no longer have the burden of coming up with the money to pay a potential $1.7 million bill a month [1], and I win as I get to use the app I want on whichever platforms I want.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...