[slashtom]

I'm not sure how Christian couldn't have seen this coming. Corporations want control over their brand, image, and experience. How Reddit is accessed and viewed is 1:1 to the experience.

It's unfortunate, but when you hitch your wagon to a corporation's API, you are taking the risk that one day they wake up and say ok we're ready to control our narrative and turn off the API (or set exorbitant prices to access)

Writing was on the wall when facebook/instagram did this years ago.

[ink_13]

People have been using third-party clients to access Reddit for more than 13 years. When you have that kind of history, a change like this is difficult to seem like anything but a rug-pull.

[wldcordeiro]

The third-party apps predate the first-party even. Reddit had been a website only for years then bought the most popular iOS third-party client as a starting point so like you said it's very much a rug-pull.

[csallen]

This is why you don't build a business on top of someone else's rug.

[matwood]

Businesses are almost always built on top of someone else. What you need to make sure of is that your financial interests are aligned.

[User23]

Which is to say have a contract that your counterparty can’t redefine freely.

[rs999gti]

Was there a contract or SLA for the free Reddit API?

If not, then there isn't much to complain about

[satvikpendem]

Indeed, Courtland, and even on IndieHackers you see a lot of stories about platform risk, platforms which indie hackers often use to build a good product but always seem surprised that they got rugged, as if the previous X stories didn't show that it inevitably happens.

[toomuchtodo]

Build your own rug before the rug pull comes.

[djbusby]

Its rugs all the way down!

[majormajor]

> then bought the most popular iOS third-party client as a starting point

If you're ever in a situation where this happens, consider it you're big flashing warning sign about trying to run a competing offering!

(Mac users of a certain age will remember Apple buying SoundJam MP.)

[plorkyeran]

Alien Blue was bought out nearly 9 years ago, so that wasn't actually a sign that bad things were coming soon for other third-party clients.

[alasarmas]

I remember SoundJam MP very well, I still have the box somewhere. The box that I bought from some store in a strip mall on Route 1, maybe CompUSA? Circuit City? The Wiz?

It came with a stereo RCA to 1/8th inch adapter cable, for digitizing audio files straight from your record player / cassette player.

I also remember being bummed that iTunes never properly supported aliases [0] when running under Mac OS 9. And I remember Audion [1]. Heady days indeed!

0. https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/La...

1. https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/

[garbagecoder]

Mac users of a certain age will remember this happening several times and it almost always ended up being better when it was just built in. Reddit's app is garbo.

[crazygringo]

No, because it's still a for-profit corporation, and one that's taken lots of VC funding and has also been looking to IPO. Owners change, management changes, priorities change, that's what happens in the business world.

If you don't think you're taking a major risk, then you're just being naive.

(I'm not defending Reddit here, but I am saying anyone should have been planning for this highly probable outcome.)

[hakfoo]

It's weird how we see the business people making this same sort of mistake on community after community. It's like there's a blind spot surgically implanted in them during the MBA programme.

It's well known that most online communities are 1% super-contributors, 9% modest contributors, and 90% lurkers/occasional contributors.

"Third party app users" are far more likely to be 1% and 9% users. They're committed to the platform enough that they're willing to seek out or even make software to improve their experience on it. The lurkers will just download the official app if it's the top match in the App Store and deal with the inconveniences.

So if you take that away, you disproportionately punish your most valuable users. Note I say "valuable" not in terms of "they click a lot of ads", but rather "they bring the content that makes the other 90% of users stick around and click ads."

It feels like a bar cancelling "Free Drinks Ladies' Night" because they figure that the 10 female patrons will buy 20 bottles of beer, then acting surprised when the 50 men who would come in to hit on them (and buy four beers each) don't show.

[janoc]

Keep in mind that those MBAs making these decisions are not going to be there to go down with the ship when that happens. They will collect their bonuses they got for increasing the short term profits, sell their vested equity and move on, leaving the wreck for someone else to deal with.

It is a perfectly reasonable and rational thing to do. They are not thinking in the same terms and caring about the same priorities.

We can discuss how reprehensible or short sighted that is but business is ultimately about making as much money in as short time as possible. And that is exactly what they are doing (and what they have been trained for in those MBA courses).

[gretch]

> Third party app users are far more likely to be 1% and 9% users. They're committed to the platform enough that they're willing to seek out or even make software to improve their experience on it.

You’re speculating at this while the Reddit team just has all of the data and knows exactly where traffic comes from.

Also maybe the 3p app user, while being the most prolific poster, is simultaneously a high % of toxicity.

[chongli]

Reddit has a long track record of incompetence. The site has historically been very unstable and their attempts to replace the front-end UX for both the browser and mobile apps have been widely panned. Therefore, it's reasonable to suspect that they be making a mistake with this decision as well, despite having access to all of the relevant data.

[garbagecoder]

Put another way, Reddit began enshitiffication no later than the "new" style and since it's intentional, it's only a mistake in the medium and long term, as has been noted they're trying to squeeze a few bucks out of its hulk before it dies.

[phpisthebest]

MBA programs almost exclusively teach short term gains over long term stability.

The business world has been forever changed by the creation of the institutional investor, which was largely created by pensions, 401k's and other such funds where by the actual people putting in the money is several steps removed from the people investing that money.

So now the business world, for public companies, lives and dies on the quartely report.

[K0balt]

It’s insane though. Just about any company can show higher quarterlies by doing shortsighted things that deeply undermine their long term value proposition.

Apple could license off a bunch of crap. Boeing could sell assets and designs. Toyota could just rebadge cheaper vehicles and sell all of their factories.. all of those could make record “profits”.

Are we doomed to everything just being a pump and dump scheme from here on out because why shouldn’t everything just be speculation?

[phpisthebest]

Dont worry, BlackRock is trying their best to ensure profitability plays no role at all in investment choices. Not sure their plan is better, but it a change

[garbagecoder]

Not every company runs like this. It's pretty common among tech companies that needed a lot of bootstrapping, but there are plenty of stodgy old producers who do not and who do plan more long term. Value investing is a long-standing philosophy and it has a dedicated "cult" but you don't hear a lot about those companies because they don't need a reality distortion field to make money, because they've basically already got a good concept.

Reddit is none of those things. It's a VC Frankenstein at this point and it's probably never going to make real money, so it makes sense that they're trying to change the recipe to at least get something back.

[mattkevan]

It’s because no-one who runs a social network site actually understands how or why it works.

I worked at one of the larger UK social networks and people there were terrified to make changes in case it suddenly stopped working.

From what I’ve heard the old Twitter management didn’t understand why it worked and were therefore very conservative with making changes. Mind you, the new management also doesn’t understand why it worked but are quick to make changes, and we’ve all seen how well that’s going.

[grantmcc]

He probably didn't see it coming because they told him to his face they wouldn't "ruin the API" as recently as January. That was in a call he had with folks at Reddit.

Fast forward only a few months and they are now:

1. Charging exorbitant prices for the API. 2. Removing the ability for apps to display ads to free users. 3. Removing NSFW subreddits and content from the API.

Said in another way, they are:

1. Decreasing app revenue (no ads). 2. Increasing app expenses (paid API). 3. Making third party apps worse (removing NSFW from the API).

That's...about as close to "ruining the API" as you can get.

[haswell]

To me, this is the biggest thing that makes the Facebook/Instagram comparison problematic. Reddit's history is built on the backs of 3rd party apps, and they've long been part of the core ethos of the community.

The same can't be said for the Meta properties, and so I'd argue we're seeing something different/worse here.

[User23]

There’s a reason nobody has any sympathy for Charlie Brown. How many times does the football have to get pulled away for the lesson to sink in I wonder?

Edit: As many metaphors do, it works on multiple levels, but the fundamental message is don’t be a chump.

[exodontist]

I've always felt incredibly sympathetic toward Charlie Brown and often pondered what message Charles Schultz was trying to convey with that trope.

What made Lucy like that?! I often think of the trope in the context of US politics, and specifically progressive capitulation to capital. I find it one of the darkest and yet prescient parts of Schultzes lore.. (Snoopy being an adult with a long, colorful history yet still treated as a dog, being another)

[satvikpendem]

Platform risk always exists, no matter the timeframe.

[AndrewKemendo]

This is always the response

Some form of “tough break kid welcome to the real world”

There’s a pervasive “if you can’t beat them join them“ attitude about these antisocial financial and social structures.

We need more people to say “Here’s an alternative to that model” instead of just throwing their hands up.

Stop excusing it. Start pushing for alternative ways to organize.

[sledgehammers]

So refreshing to hear a voice of reason.

You are totally right.

This shit attitude needs to change.

[AndrewKemendo]

Thank you.

It's increasingly hard not to be cynical but I've been through the cynicism phase a few times and I know how useless it is.

[latency-guy2]

> This is always the response

Because it's the right one.

> Some form of “tough break kid welcome to the real world”

Yes.

> There’s a pervasive “if you can’t beat them join them“ attitude about these antisocial financial and social structures.

The argument would be sound, if and only if others weren't making a business off the free to one side of the equation.

> We need more people to say “Here’s an alternative to that model” instead of just throwing their hands up.

You have no alternative until you offer free compute, storage, hosting, for reddit, Twitter, Google, etc., as far as I can tell, you do none of these things, nor will you be able to fundamentally break physics to do so.

> Stop excusing it. Start pushing for alternative ways to organize.

Pay me.

[AndrewKemendo]

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the furthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness: a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say 'no.' But saying 'yes' begins things. Saying 'yes' is how things grow.

[latency-guy2]

I think I've said yes in that comment once or twice. I don't know how well you think you are performing as you're trying to force this lame literary device you've invented, but I don't think insulting me is going to get you very far.

[ASalazarMX]

> I'm not sure how Christian couldn't have seen this coming

He did. Apollo has a freemium model, and if the API pricing was reasonable, he coult take the hit using the subscribers to subsidize the free users. The problem is the exhorbitant pricing, meaning all his users should be paying four times what the usual suscription costs, just to pay Reddit. It's bonkers.

[that_guy_iain]

Realistically, the price he would need to increase to isn't even that high. $5 a month. Paying $5 a month for an app you use daily, repeatedly to the point it makes 300 API requests - isn't asking that much. Would all his users pay? No. But they can use the free Reddit app with ads and what not or the website. But realistically, it's easy to think 5-10% would pay. And he would make a healthy profit and Reddit would get paid.

The problem, everyone seems to think Reddit doesn't provide enough value to be worth $5 a month to enjoy without ads and a nice UI.

Reddit wants about $0,00024 an API request. To think that isn't reasonable, seems odd. Sendgrid wants $0.0399 per email. ScrapingBee wants $0.098 an API request. Docraptor wants $0.4 an API request/pdf. I'm sure I could carry on and find more and more sites that cost more per API request, I didn't find one that was cheaper.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Reddit could just charge its users $5 a month, offer a $10 a month tier for some extra features and co-offers, and keep the API free.

It's a spectacularly stupid move, almost on a par with Musk >50% of Twitter's value and Waves trying to force their customers onto a subscription model by making old versions obsolete.

Reddit will lose a huge number of users, its brand will be trashed, and the app companies will be forced out of business.

There is no way this can't end up as a net loss.

[that_guy_iain]

This doesn't make sense. Make me, a user of their app and website who sees ads and other stuff pay money so that the API users can avoid them?

Reddit will lose a bunch of deadbeat users, who generate little to no income for the company but cost money to serve. In business, these are the sort of people you don't want.

Who do you think will spend hundreds of millions a year to replace Reddit so that deadbeat users can use it? There would be no money in serving those users and any attempt to serve them and monetize later will result in the same thing that is happening at Reddit. The days of VCs burning money for social networks seems to be over.

[zipperhead]

It's not so simple These "deadbeat users" are the ones generating the content.

[linker3000]

And some of the deadbeats are us moderators who invest our time voluntarily to keep the subs tidy, handle the mod queues and answer questions etc. I dive into queue management using the Boost app on my phone durimg breaks away from my corporate laptop, which I won't use for such personal stuff. The official Reddit app is not as good as Boost for moderation.

[that_guy_iain]

Do they? Most content is reposts, news, or content from other sites.

I would suspect Reddit has done the maths. And saw that most content generators use their app or the website to post.

[ink_13]

I had Reddit Gold for over a decade for exactly this reason.

I've cancelled my subscription.

[sli]

Much more than $5, closer to $10. He still has to afford to live, as he currently does with Apollo's current subscriptions, plus pay reddit's API costs. This is according to his comments on reddit about this situation.

$10/month to use a free website on your phone is just not a very attractive deal at the end of the day.

[that_guy_iain]

Your numbers are wildly outthere.

$2.50 would be the API costs per user. So $5 would cover, take in some money and pay appstore feeds. And if you're looking at 10% of his userbase, that would be about 4 million a month income with 2 million being for Reddit. Based off his claims of 20 million a month with a $2.50 cost per user.

I'm sure he'll be able to survive off $1,000,000 a month profit.

Edit corrected the numbers:

$2.50 a user for API costs.

$5.00 a month subscription would cover that cost.

$1.50 going to AppleTax.

$1.00 a user to the indie hacker

If 5% of users that would cost $20MM sign up for $5 a month it would be $2,000,000 a month overall revenue.

$1,000,000 to Reddit.

$600,000 to AppleTax

$400,000 a month to the indie hacker.

[ta_6104828]

Towards the end of the video (around the last 7min iirc), he explains the business problem in better detail.

He says that he can charge more and still make a living. However, the price change goes into effect July 1st of this year. That’s less than 30 days from now.

The issue is all the current premium users who have 2-12mo left on their subscription suddenly become a huge liability. He cannot suddenly ask for more (against apple rules), and he must not remove features they paid for (apple will issue a refund to them).

[bee_rider]

I don’t know about the specifics of the business to intelligently critique your calculation, but it couldn’t possibly be the case that somebody turned down an easy million dollars a month, right?

[that_guy_iain]

If I was to guess, the standard indie hacker thought is happening "I can't raise prices" and "lots of people don't want to pay". When they're seeing 90% of their user base say I'm not paying that, it's easy to forget the 10% that would. The 10% that would probably haven't even spoken up.

And there is also probably a part of him that doesn't want to be greedy. But is it greedy to sell your software for $5 a month? I don't think so.

[relix]

It’s 0,00024 per request

[that_guy_iain]

Thanks for correcting me.

[wldcordeiro]

Yeah all the way back when Reddit sent out takedown threats on most 3rd party apps for their names (I use Relay which used to be called Reddit Relay, can't recall the Apollo app name before) and launched their own apps it was pretty clear.

[wslh]

I wonder why nobody is talking more loudly about LinkedIn:

1) if you export your data (yes, your data!) they don't include contact's email.

2) The can refuse to give you API access to your own data.

[postalrat]

LinkedIn's entire business model is based on LinkedIn getting paid for searching and contacting. And the recruiters paying then are often the scummiest ones who look for quantity over quality.

[wslh]

I am sure if you have the resources to sue them you will win.

[mdasen]

Reddit's always been a bit of a weird site in this regard. Most sites closed off a long time ago and put so many ads everywhere. Old Reddit is still alive 5 years after the redesign and it's been so easy to avoid ads on Reddit in general. While most places have aggressively pursued monetization, Reddit has been a place where you could avoid most of that.

Even the way that Old Reddit showed ads was so quaint. If you look at Old Reddit without an ad blocker, you'll see an ad in the list of 25 items, but it has a different background color so you can easily visually differentiate it from the real content along with two high-contrast things noting that it's an ad. Sites like Twitter and Facebook have been minimizing your ability to differentiate ads from content by making them look nearly identical with a tiny, low-contrast marking that they're ads. Of course, New Reddit shows ads with the same tiny, low-contrast marking that other companies use. But unlike others, Reddit still allows you to choose the Old Reddit experience.

Yes, in some ways the writing has always been on the wall. In other ways, Reddit has been a bit different. They've largely ignored the kinds of things that other sites have gone after. Yes, when you've hitched your wagon to a company's site, you're at a certain amount of risk. That's also true of users who might find the site infested with ads or changing how they're allowed to do things. At the same time, Reddit has resisted that direction for so long that most people assumed it would continue. Why now? Why not 5 years ago?

It seems like the thing people are reacting to is the culture shock. Instagram was never open. They wouldn't even let companies schedule posts for a long time. Facebook was barely open, but never had the kind of ecosystem that Reddit had (and often fought against third party access). Reddit's policies felt really different and they aren't changing in a gradual fashion. It's not like Reddit told Apollo, "we're going to start charging 20 cents per month per user" and Apollo only works for those paying $1.50/mo for Apollo Ultra (and then a year later Reddit wants 50 cents and then a dollar and slowly Apollo Ultra goes up in price and more people move away from it). It's not like Reddit put in limits like "you only get 100 API calls per day per user" which would be 30% of an average Apollo users' usage. That would start bleeding users from Apollo over time, but not feel like slamming the door shut - and maybe Reddit charges $1/mo for unlimited API calls for the user and only those paying a subscription fee can get the unlimited calls. That would offer a way forward that users might grumble about, but could work with. Free users could still get a decent amount of usage and people who really cared could subscribe to a new Apollo Ultra at $2/mo. In fact, it could drive sales of Apollo Ultra - maybe 5-10x more people start paying for Apollo Ultra.

I think the big shock is that Reddit went from so open to so closed in one step while Reddit had historically accommodated the community's resistance to monetization. Old Reddit has stuck around for half a decade now. Despite being one of the most visited websites, a lot of monetization opportunities seemed to be ignored. Condé Nast/Advanced Publications seemed to mostly ignore the site. It was spun-out with Advanced Publications remaining owner and just kinda went along. Even after raising $200M in 2017, Advanced Publications was still the majority owner (and I think they're still today even after Reddit raised another billion dollars).

Lots of younger sites/networks have gone public with a lot less traffic and aggressively moved to monetize. I'm not saying this was the case, but it always seemed to users that Reddit's owners were a bit disinterested in its potential monetization and were mostly fine ignoring it - allowing users to easily block ads, keeping Old Reddit around, allowing free access for ad-less third-party apps, etc. In that environment, it does come as a shock. Reddit felt like this hidden place (that also everyone knew about). It just felt different.

You're not wrong that building on someone else's site is risky. At the same time, I can see the shock from such a sudden change to a site whose reputation was quite different.

[lost_tourist]

He said it, because reddit was always friendly and now they're doing a 180 on them with very short notice; no time to phase customers out or spread some of the cost out, just BAM "you get 1 month to switch to the new scheme or adios losers". Public companies have to basically become fascist to do what wallstreet expects of them, which is to let beancounters rule all decisions rather than listening to engineers and other employees.

[redbell]

> I'm not sure how Christian couldn't have seen this coming

It's not ONLY Christian but creators of apps like RiF, Relay and others face a similar destiny..

I haven't read any reactions from those creators regarding this Reddit Vs. Apollo saga since they're also "saga-ed".