Reddit isn’t profitable, despite having more than 50 million daily active users. In preparation for an IPO, CEO Steve Huffman put the platform’s API
The blatant astroturfing is what really icked me out. From day one of the API changes, it was clear that Reddit had spun up the spin machine and had begun to misrepresent the issues.
The main one was how they tried to push the “they just want the API for free”, “we’re entitled to charge for our services” narrative.
There was one comment that really gave me the ‘holy shit, ick corporation’ reaction… in an article about reddit’s traffic going down, a reddit spokesperson said “we do not comment on incorrect statistics from third parties”. Like please, calm down, you’re not a lawyer for a politician on trial here.
Yes, I loved it when Christian Selig let Hoffman (fuck spez) know his lies were exposed because he (Christian) had recorded their conversation… and provided proof. Would love a video of Hoffman’s reaction.
Hoffman’s reaction
Care to share a link if you have it readily available? Otherwise I can hunt around for it :)
I legitimately would’ve paid for the reddit subscription if it meant keeping Reddit Sync. It’s nonsense. They just wanted the apps out of the picture.
My Reddit use has declined 70% because I only access it from my computer or through Firefox for Android (which is damn near unusable).
I would have happily paid $5 a month for baconreader, probably as high as $10.
In both time and quality, I used it far more a month than netflix, hbo, or hulu.
I don’t know what it would have cost to keep baconreader active with the API changes, but from what I read the price was intentionally design to be unsustainable.
It wasn’t about making 3rd party access to the api profitable, it was about making 3rd party apps go away to push ads and harvest user data.
In the final weeks, myself and many others said we’d be happy to pitch in to keep baconreader alive, and the feeling I got was that just wasn’t an option.
Oh well, I’m here now, and can watch the whole mess from the sidelines while getting to be part of a new and growing community, instead of a bloated dying one.
$10/mo is probably in the ballpark.
I honestly don’t think the pricing was unreasonable. The main issue was the execution.
You just reminded me to cancel my Reddit Premium subscription. It was $30/year. Not sure what to do with my 75K coins.
My reddit use has declined 100% because I refuse to go to that website. And I was spending hours on it a day.
My usage has declined to “surveying the situation” because !TIHI@reddit.com is now forced back unprivate and is made to look like all is ok
That was super disingenuous and turned me off, too. Like you’re saying, Selig noted that by reddit’s stats, each user cost .12 cents a month and reddit was asking for $2.40. The 3rd party developers provide a service to reddit that reddit could have monetized through various arrangements, such as requiring their ads to be displayed, requiring premium as you said, or a profit sharing arrangement. 3rd party developers were not taking advantage of reddit or demanding free access… they objected to reddit pulling out the rug suddenly and then lying and misrepresenting everything about it.
This has been like going to a restaurant or working somewhere for 8 years and then you finally meet the owner and are WHAT? Fuck that.
It was the setup as well.
Conversations in January saying API and API T&C were not changing anytime soon (clarified to mean multiple years).
The change announced shortly after with 0 concrete details.
Then 6 weeks notice of the details to then implement the changes before costs incurred.
6 weeks notice is fine for consumer stuff, but not business-to-business, and not at the scale of $20m.
I gladly would have paid $2.50 per month to access reddit as it was. But I guess they didn’t want my money or because they couldn’t have all of my money they weren’t interested.
I was paying $2.50 since Reddit Premium is $30/yr and they still block your API access.
I cancelled it and won’t be going back. I no longer believe in the platform.
The narratives you mention in your last para are completely true, that’s what annoys me, IF they had engaged in good faith with users. As it is, it’s like a shopping centre that’s been free to enter saying “right, it’s now €100 to enter and any underwear shops are closed to you unless you wear our uniform.”
Just completely crazy prices for a poor service. No shit that’s unworkable. Just be honest and say you want to bring those users in-house, just fucking say that rather than trying to gaslight everyone into believing that all these competent developers are all unreasonable arseholes who are screwing you, a multi-billion-dollar corporation over.
There are probably multiple factors going on. First, there is the belief that you can’t take away functionality people already expect. Second, while there would be a number of people willing to shell out money, they probably believed a majority of folks would not. Look at what people are willing to put up with at Facebook. I hate it, but most of my friends and family are on it so I’m there. Third, their backers would never approve because of point two.
