Reddit Ramps Up Its Threats To Protesting Mods, As Ad Buyers Leave

www.techdirt.com Reddit Ramps Up Its Threats To Protesting Mods, As Ad Buyers Leave

The landed gentry are only in charge until the king comes to town and chops off a few heads. At least that seems to be the case at Reddit, where CEO Steve Huffman pretended his complaints about current moderators — who were protesting his decision to effectively cut off API access to tons of useful…

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It isn’t even about the API drive out anymore of why I’m not going back to Reddit. It’s the CEO though and though
- Because the goal was never to get some kind of fair price for using the API. That's why they priced it at "Fuck You."
  
  Ultimately what they want is for people to stop using 3rd party apps entirely because 3rd party apps either don't show advertisements, or they show advertisements that give ad revenue to the developer.
  
  They want everyone using their app because the valuation of tech companies directly correlates to the number of eyeballs they can serve ads to. Old.reddit will be next, and I bet they'll try to start blocking ad blockers after that.
  
  There was never any chance at a "fair price" as far as the vast majority of users were concerned. Basically any API cost is going to end up on the user side and the vast majority of users will immediately lose their shit... and then the app makers will redirect all of that to reddit. So the API costs are almost entirely for research and data scraping. This is why the app developers almost IMMEDIATELY turned this into a holy war and are just noping out the moment the bills come in.
  
  But yeah. There is the "Oh, we'll try to meet you in the middle and still make all apps unsustainable. Because we care" response that maybe involves some token contract work for one of the top app developers to improve the official app. And then there is the "Fuck all y'all addicts. Don't like it? Not like you'll do anything about it" response. And THAT is what has made me decide I don't want to engage with reddit anymore.
  
  Imgur has fair API prices and they serve images and video. Reddit serves goddamn text (or at least that's their core business and if they can't afford picture and video they shouldn't do it).
  
  Sure users would have had to pay some money and/or the 3rd party devs would have had to funnel some of their ad revenue to reddit. But if it was a reasonable amount, I doubt many people would have complained about it (there are always some). Everybody knows Reddit has to make money somehow.
  
  This wasn't designed to make money though. This was designed to kill all third party apps. I don't even see the upside from a business perspective. This seems like a petulent manchild move by Spez, just like his idol Elon would make it...
  
  The only thing stopping 3rd party apps from showing reddits adds though was reddit never including them into the api. They actually HAD an agreememt with the rif author to take a cut of rif's ad revenue but as soon as spez took over as ceo he quietly axed that.
  
  Investors wanted to see "app growth" for multiple quarters not underatanding that the app isn't what maked reddit, and so ~~spez~~ spaz is doing what he is in a desperate and stupid attempt to claw up some numbers so he can cash out when the ipo hits.
  
  Reddit app use DID see some grown during the pandemic, but can't sustain that because its app is shit. They haven't improved it ever. It began as a 3rd party app and they purchased it from the original dev. The only changes were to add that pathic coin shop and some sticker/avatar crap to sell you.
- Yeah I was trying to convey this feeling to my wife the other night. It's not just that I won't be able to use my favorite app (rif) anymore, it's that the CEO has been lying and gaslighting about what they've said. In that AMA thread where he said they want to work with devs who want to work with them and like three devs were like "hey we're fine with paying but you haven't answered our attempts to contact you" (not to even mention Apollo's Dev's bombshell recordings lol) really shows they don't give a shit.
  
  I feel like they want that AI money and are furious all these models scraped their content. I get it but it's not even their content. Regardless of how you feel about artists being mad about their art being used to train models I think we can all agree that a site that merely hosts content being mad that the content was used is laughable.
  
  And the NY Times article that among other silly things just forgot to mention Aaron Swartz as a primary founder of the site, who would be right there at the gates telling us all to fight this bullshit. Guarantee spez specifically told them not to mention him as the optics here would be completely terrible.
  
  Reddit used to have values, but it's been turned on its head.
- thoroughly agree that the api stuff is just one symptom of a broader underlying issue
- Absolutely. I was waiting it out to see how it would pan out, but after spez's AMA I dropped Reddit immediately. That was before I even found Lemmy as a replacement. Now that I'm here I'm not missing Reddit in the slightest.

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