Reddit's CEO: Third-Party Apps Add 'No Value.' How He Lost the Thread | Hacker News Reader

Reddit's CEO: Third-Party Apps Add 'No Value.' How He Lost the Thread

inc.com

78 pointsthunderbong19 comments

A lot of people who contribute content -- original or reposted, or comments and "engagement" -- that Reddit derives its value from also do so through third-party apps.

Were any stats publicly shared about what fraction of such content and engagement happens through the 3P / API route?

If 20% of users drive 80% of overall engagement, what fraction of that 20% rely on third party apps to engage?

It is not clear if Reddit has factored this into their analysis when deciding to force these API charges in a hurry -- and effectively cutting off these channels of engagement.

The question is... "Value" in terms of content or "value" in terms of contributions that will directly influence revenue and generate profits?

I think the CEO is about the latter. It is important to think about what could actually make money for reddit and of maybe more engagement is not even part of that. I'm not a reddit user and I don't have the answer here, I also don't have any skin in this game.

However I think when the CEO of a company like reddit makes a statement like that, there's usually a reason for that. I don't think the CEO of reddit genuinely thinks those third party apps add no value in terms of content and user engagement because that would be irrational.

>I don't think the CEO of reddit genuinely thinks those third party apps add no value in terms of content and user engagement because that would be irrational.

He doesn't mean that, the title is clickbait.

"I want to stop you for a second there," Peters interjected. "So you're saying that Apollo, RIF, Sync, they don't add value to Reddit?"

"Not as much as they take," said Huffman. "No way."

I think they have, and they just don’t give a shit. The TikTok/Twitter/political hot take repost sewer of /r/all can practically be automated. The value they see is advertisements to those who consume that drivel, and the high value of enterprise (firehose access), not (say) modifying the API to serve ads to users of /r/AskHistorians.

If Spez had an honest bone in his body, he’d have just said they don’t want the API for third party clients anymore, for the plebs or the “Landed gentry”, and that they want to shift towards the enterprise focus of reselling that firehose of garbage because apparently you can make an LLM out of it! The money has stopped, and we're not profitable, so the time and capital required to add advertisements and targeting to the public API versus whatever crap they’ve built out over the last few years doesn’t make any financial sense.

When they can just sell the firehose of garbage instead. Of course.

Is what they are requesting not common and reasonable though? Responsible use of their API, which they sustain as an expense.

90% of third party apps are able to accommodate this. Apollo for ex caches thousands of posts per page load, which no app with self-hosting would ever incorporate. Reddit has also offered to work with the third party apps to improve efficiency.

I personally do not believe that reddit has egregiously demanded something unreasonable. However they have produced a masterclass case study of terrible PR and a CEO that has lost the rhyme.

Reddit's ask isn't unreasonable in principal however the inflated API pricing and the short lead-time are just ridiculous.

"It's for backpay over you making millions off us"

"... for making a client users actually want, instead of something so basic the average user will install out of necessity, annoyance of the mobile website nagging prompts, or ignorance of other options."

I think the myth that Apollo was using the API in an inefficient way had been debunked. I'm on mobile now so I cannot easily find the post, but the dev of Apollo explained clearly that how he is using the API is entirely within the limits and conditions that Reddit set.

And as I understood it, they weren't making unnecessary calls or anything.

It is my understanding that the entire cost of the Reddit API infrastructure was in the 10M/Year according to the CEO.

And yet they wanted 20M/Year just from the Apollo dev.

RIF dev said his numbers were in the same ballpark. So with those two alone they were looking at getting 4x the cost of running the API.

Asking for money is reasonable. The devs themselves stated that. What’s unreasonable is both the amount of money and the way the change has been rolled out.

This is clearly a move to remove some of the big 3rd party competitors from the scene without explicitly stating that they want to remove 3rd party apps.

>If 20% of users drive 80% of overall engagement, what fraction of that 20% rely on third party apps to engage?

Probably not nearly as much as y'all make it out to be. Mods, sure...but they've all mostly bent the knee to spez at this point.

We're not living in 2014 anymore. Reddit is a completely mainstream platform, 80% of the content comes from politics at this point. None of the usual political shilling subreddits even shut down, so the main """content creators""" didn't even care.

This line jumped out at me from the article.

"Basically, what Huffman is saying is that the apps that are popular with the users who make Reddit valuable should go away because they aren't paying for access to the content the users are making while using those apps."

Huffman talks about "growing up" as a company, but he's acting like a kid in these interviews shifting the blame for the current problems on the 3rd party apps which he says "add no value". Huh?

I subscribed to Reddit Premium as my way to repay the lack of ads I was seeing on 3PA, but now I've cancelled my subscription and I'll turn uBO back on.

An easy solution, if they genuinely wanted to allow 3PA at a fair price (which I now doubt, from their stubbornness and contempt) for everyone, they'd have kept the API free for 3PA and add Reddit Premium as a requirement to use them, that way the developers don't have to foot a huge bill, and the end-user provide an alternative income source while not seeing ads. Congrats Reddit, you played yourself.

If he argued for APIs to exist, he knew exactly what they are for. He's trying to change there narrative for an audience, potentially imagined, that isn't familiar with APIs.

Good article it does highlight the irony of trying to protect its "data"and missing out on the fact that it's user generated and in many cases rehosted from other platforms.

He should have passed the cost onto the users and given the apps 90-days to implement it. Then only premium users can use 3rd party apps.

Meanwhile, he’s done nothing whatsoever to prevent companies from gathering training data for their LLMs from harvesting the data. They’re just scraping it. They don’t need logged-in user accounts to do that.

One point the third party apps brought up is they are paid via annual in-app purchases. So 90 days isn't enough lead time because the apps stores aren't going to retroactively raise those prices

Exactly — Spotify has used this approach for years (third party apps are a perk for subscribers), and it seems like a perfectly reasonable compromise. Reddit refusing to do this is truly a testament to their idiocy.

There is little doubt in my mind I would have paid for Reddit and for my 3rd party app had they gone this route. Now? I’m working on breaking a heavily ingrained habit of over a decade. Heck I had also set my personal max at around $10 if I had to pay my 3rd party app for API costs. Reddit really shit the bed here.

His leadership provides negative value.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com