Protest against Reddit API fees fails

Jan

Jan

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The big Reddit protest has failed

A protest seeking to convince Reddit to cancel its exorbitant API fees has failed, Gizmodo reports.

The last big holdouts in the protest — the r/aww, r/pics, and r/videos subreddits — have dropped rules which only allowed users to make posts relating to television host John Oliver.
 
Corporate wins like usual... I nuked my reddit account the other day which was 12 years old. Been on Lemmy for the last few weeks and haven't looked back. It feels like the old internet days again which is nice. I can't stand the new Reddit online page and I think they will block old.reddit.com with RES in the near future. I was an avid user of Relay for Reddit, although the dev has gone to a subscription model to continue with the app I can't fathom the fact that majority of the money will land with Huffman. Their new API prices are ridiculous, API call costs are really not that expensive...
 
quax said:
API call costs are really not that expensive...
Click to expand...

I don't think it has anything to do directly with the infrastructure costs involved, rather they want control of the advertising revenue from the interactions with the content. It's much easier to control that when yours is the only app available.

They also have to employ fewer people to work on the API, they can probably just let it sit as-is and only just touch it when they really need to. I doubt they'll be making any improvements to it going forward and will likely get sunset at some point in the future (as "usage will be too low to justify the expense").
 
i basically only go onto /r/formula1 now.

abandonded the rest, including /r/southafrica, but thats just cause they are all *****
 
quax said:
Corporate wins like usual... I nuked my reddit account the other day which was 12 years old. Been on Lemmy for the last few weeks and haven't looked back. It feels like the old internet days again which is nice. I can't stand the new Reddit online page and I think they will block old.reddit.com with RES in the near future. I was an avid user of Relay for Reddit, although the dev has gone to a subscription model to continue with the app I can't fathom the fact that majority of the money will land with Huffman. Their new API prices are ridiculous, API call costs are really not that expensive...
Click to expand...
Same, at the very least the protest achieved getting people off Reddit permanently. I also moved over to Lemmy, and while still very sparse, some of the communities I subscribe to are starting to pick up. I do miss the "large niche" communities that had built up on Reddit over time but being forced to use their terrible app on mobile, along with knowing how the Reddit CEO thinks of his users, it has lost any sort of soul it had.
 
I think people got the message, so not a big fail in my books. Awareness is key.

The message:

La-toile-de-cette-annee-a-plutot-ete-le-synonyme-de-lynchage-du-patron-de-Reddit-1680399.jpg
 
I deleted the Apollo app when it stopped working and have not used Reddit since. Have no intention of going back to it.
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
I don't think it has anything to do directly with the infrastructure costs involved, rather they want control of the advertising revenue from the interactions with the content. It's much easier to control that when yours is the only app available.

They also have to employ fewer people to work on the API, they can probably just let it sit as-is and only just touch it when they really need to. I doubt they'll be making any improvements to it going forward and will likely get sunset at some point in the future (as "usage will be too low to justify the expense").
Click to expand...
You are right, it has nothing to do with direct infrastructure costs.

Aside from the advertising revenue, they want to make sure using their API is expensive for data farmers. It looks very bad to investors when you are racking up the losses, but other companies are becoming profitable off of the data you are giving away from free.

Make no mistake, reddit is broke, and they have gone back to investors with the begging bowl during an economic downturn. Investors have made their desires for profitability clear and how they want reddit to get there.
 
I'm also actively making the choice to use it only when it's the only source of info
No more trawling boards for hours randomly
 
Blackhand said:
You are right, it has nothing to do with direct infrastructure costs.

Aside from the advertising revenue, they want to make sure using their API is expensive for data farmers. It looks very bad to investors when you are racking up the losses, but other companies are becoming profitable off of the data you are giving away from free.

Make no mistake, reddit is broke, and they have gone back to investors with the begging bowl during an economic downturn. Investors have made their desires for profitability clear and how they want reddit to get there.
Click to expand...
The irony is they're killing it in the process. Nobody wants to use Reddit the way they're presenting it. Developers have said they don't want it for free like Reddit is claiming but for a reasonable fee like other platforms. They're unwilling to come to a compromise though.
 
Swa said:
The irony is they're killing it in the process. Nobody wants to use Reddit the way they're presenting it. Developers have said they don't want it for free like Reddit is claiming but for a reasonable fee like other platforms. They're unwilling to come to a compromise though.
Click to expand...
Yeah. I don’t know if this will kill it, but it’s definitely been damaging.

It’s reddit management’s fault they’re in this position either way. They set the expectation amongst their users with the free API. They ran the company in the red, putting them in the position where investors are effectively in control instead of them. If they ran the company sustainably (profitably), they would have much more room to maneuver.
 
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