[patrickmay]

I'm an Apollo user and I'll be dramatically reducing my use of Reddit if and when the third party apps are killed. The official Reddit app is nearly unusable, with a remarkably poor UI and too many ads. It also doesn't offer the tools for subreddit moderators that third party apps do.

The hope is that, despite being a small percentage of total users, third party app users represent a large volume moderators and high value contributors. If that's the case, this change will hurt Reddit enough to potentially roll it back.

What will probably happen is Reddit will tell us all to pound sand and we'll find alternatives.

[sangnoir]

> I'm an Apollo user and I'll be dramatically reducing my use of Reddit if and when the third party apps are killed.

Devil's advocate: are your current usage patterns making money for Reddit? If not, then your reduced usage will be considered a win by Reddit, all things being equal.

[rekoil]

I think the people this change will hurt are in large part fine with paying a reasonable sum for API access. I have no idea what reddit would consider a reasonable number (if they actually tried), but for me it's probably in the $1-5/month range.

That's full API access of course, not the limited API they've had which doesn't allow e.g. vote interaction, nor an API without NSFW content like they are proposing now with the ridiculous $12,000/50M requests.

Of course they aren't interested in being reasonable here, they obviously just want to kill off 3rd party apps. I actually don't get why they don't just go out and say it, what they're communicating now is just death with extra steps.

[stevenwliao]

Reddit charges $7/mo for Reddit Premium. I assume it's worth at least that much to Reddit.

[rekoil]

I have no interest in 5 of the 6 perks listed as part of reddit premium, and $7 is more than I think is reasonable, but if that were the only option I think I'd pay it, assuming that the service remains about the same that it has been (which I doubt very much would be the case unfortunately).

[yukinon]

Yes. I create content, which generates traffic, which generates ad-revenue.

[sangnoir]

There's not going to be a lot of ad-revenue if a sufficient number of users are like you that use 3rd party clients. Content creation/consumption on Reddit follows power laws, therefore the vast majority of Apollo users are consumers who do not generate any ad-revenue while costing Reddit compute and bandwidth.

[Zak]

The percentage of views from third-party clients is single-digit, but it's likely a significantly above-average percentage of those are power users who generate content, moderate subreddits, or both.

This suggests to me that management is not interested in making it a long-term sustainable business after the IPO, but in a short-term cash grab.