| One again, it looks like Steve Huffman is ignoring his own company’s history and trying to pretend third-party apps weren’t a major part of Reddit’s initial success. Reddit did not have an official, first-party app until 2016. Prior to that, it depended on third-parties to create apps, with the most notable example being Alien Blue, an iOS app that Reddit themselves acquired in 2014 and then discontinued at the same time they launched their official app.[1] It’s also bizarre that he’s now saying that the Reddit API was never supposed to allow third-party apps, when he’s supposedly trying to convince app developers to pay Reddit to continue operating. In fact, in previous announcements, Reddit specifically said that this was not supposed to kill third-patty apps, and that if they wanted to do so, they would just turn off the API entirely. Honestly, this is what’s making me dislike Reddit the most in this entire situation. If they just came out and said “we’re killing third-party apps to make more money”, I’d at least respect the honesty. But this constant barrage of excuses, starting with “it’s too much of a load on our servers” then “the regulatory environment has changed too much” then “the Apollo dev threatened us” then “third-party developers aren’t contributing to the community” and now finally “the API was never intended for third-party apps.” The good news is that we’re starting to see signs of a financial impact to Reddit. Apparently, they redirected all of the ad impressions targeted at subreddits that were closed to the home page, resulting in substantially fewer click-throughs due to the lack of targeting.[2] Indications are that if the blackout continues for longer than a week or two, there’s going to be a mass withdrawal of ad dollars. The mods participating in the blackout are also discussing reaching out to advertisers directly to discuss the likely impact to content quality and (implicitly) encourage them to pull their ads unless Reddit changes their minds.[3] I’m hoping that the board at Reddit sees the impact this is having to overall site trust and thus advertising quality, and forces Steve Huffman to walk things back. Remember, most third-party apps have stated that they’re perfectly willing to start paying Reddit, it’s just that none of them can afford to do so at Elon Musk prices and with only 30 days notice to get payment infrastructure in place. Most have also stated that they would be open to adding Reddit’s own ads to their apps, or requiring users to have Reddit Premium subscriptions. Reddit has yet to respond to any of those options and/or explain why a compromise plan like those listed isn’t feasible. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit#Mobile_apps [2]: https://www.adweek.com/social-marketing/ripples-through-redd... [3]: https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14aafs0/indefinit... |