Would you be willing to bet a token amount, say the current base cost of a Vision Pro ($3500), that in 48 months (giving you some buffer here) Apple has fully withdrawn support for the Vision line and does not release a new model? That’s the real test of confidence. I personally think you’re way off the mark and am willing to put money on the line. Are you?
I too would like to participate in this bet on your side.
I read their first paragraph and thought to myself that it was a reasonable stance, only to then be followed up with ridiculous stuff that straight up slides off the other end of the spectrum.
Gotta admire the confidence though, however misplaced it might be.
Using your own API key is hardly abusing it. Officially (not that it means much these days) they've said they're keeping it free for individuals with 'standard' usage, which is what one sole user in an app would be.
> all monetization of api calls has to be done through Reddit and the API itself
How does this work with IAP and ads? Or do you mean that only Reddit Premium users should have access to third party apps? Because that would be much more expensive than the $2.50/mo that people are riled up about with the new API pricing.
I would say that making money from sites content by putting it somewhere else with your own ads is simply not allowed. What I would allow is you to charge a subscription to use the api which goes to Reddit and you get some cut like 30%.
It’s impressive what a determined, vocal minority can achieve with just a bit of drama. I hope this ends quickly so everyone else can get back to aimlessly doomscrolling on Reddit.
I also left Twitter when Tweetbot died, but only because I can’t use Twitter without a chronological timeline and keyword filtering. My impression is that third party Reddit apps had some nice quality of life features, but their main purpose wasn’t to literally alter the underlying content. Happy to be proven wrong though.
I’d love to see a source for “people that generate the bulk of the content on Reddit do rely on third party apps” because that seems categorically impossible when you consider the number of users able to post (i.e. subscribed) using these third party apps.
The number of users on these platforms has increased considerably. Orchestrating a “movement” consisting of hundreds of millions of people takes a really significant forcing function that affects everyone, not just a vocal minority.
So third-party devs would have to manually cut them a check every month? How would Reddit validate that they’re getting the correct amount? Multiply this logistical nightmare by hundreds of third party developers.
...yes? It's just an invoice. Determining exact rates are why sales teams and account managers etc exist. Reddit can trivially check app traffic levels. Seems a bog-standard API usage agreement to me.
The problem here hasn't been "reddit charges for API access"; it's the totally unreasonable pricing and switchover timeline.
GP is saying Reddit could trivially skim 30% off of third party app revenue. How is checking app API traffic levels relevant? This is revenue that apps would get through IAP or ads, where Reddit has no visibility. Good luck enforcing any kind of revenue split contract with hundreds of hobbyist devs.
Reddit stated that non-commercial apps keep free API. Reddit leadership doesn’t like that itself isn’t profitable and that others get to profit without paying anything, unjust enrichment. Reddit won’t touch any dev that’s too small, only the ones with large traffic matter. So probably only a handful or two. They can easily determine if anyone’s lying. And if anyone is suspected of lying, they can ask for audited financial statements and tax returns to keep API access. Would be pretty dum by any of them to lie to pay a smaller bill to risk getting your entire business wiped out.
> 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.
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.
