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by sangnoir 1109 days ago
> 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.
2 comments
rekoil 1109 days ago
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.

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stevenwliao 1109 days ago
Reddit charges $7/mo for Reddit Premium. I assume it's worth at least that much to Reddit.
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rekoil 1109 days ago
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).
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yukinon 1109 days ago
Yes. I create content, which generates traffic, which generates ad-revenue.
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sangnoir 1109 days ago
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.
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Zak 1108 days ago
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.

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