[user249]

Reddit has never made a lot of money. AI companies scrapped all their data for free which wasn't fair. So they start charging to support the site. I don't see how reddit owners are in the wrong here. But mods are behaving as expected, like petulant children.

[anaganisk]

Dude the top AI company, "Open"AI, founded by Sam Altman is a board member of reddit, I'm all for conspiracy but at least get the basics right. I myself have a conspiracy theory that he is pressuring Reddit to build a moat. Also disallowing API access does shit, to stop API companies from scraping anyway, because they can still scrape off the site like how search engines do it, so even my conspiracy may only be true to certain extent. Also mods are volunteers, they keep the community conformant to the sub rules, mods who don't watch their content will lead to comments like "Why is this on this sub", "sub has gone to shit", there are people who genuinely take care of their subreddit. They're kind of unpaid janitors.

[user249]

> Sam Altman is a board member of reddit

Well then, he's acting responsibly by not letting every other AI company have the data for free. I'm not impugning all mods. I appreciate their work. But some let the power go to their heads

[anaganisk]

The data which he acquired for free in the first place? Hypocrisy much?

[batiudrami]

If it was just about AI scraping they could have given the third party reader apps a free pass on API fees.

The recorded phone calls from the Apollo developer have reddit agreeing with the dev’s suggestion that it is about the opportunity cost of having users using apps which are not easily monetised by reddit. Which is obvious to everyone so I don’t see why you’re pretending otherwise.

[user249]

> apps which are not easily monetised by reddit

I don't see a lot of difference between reddit apps and AI companies.

Why do you pretend that apps should make money off reddit data without paying for it? Just because they did in the past doesn't mean they have to keep doing it now that everyone has realized it's a valuable commodity.

[piva00]

You are probably very aware that the main issue the app developers have is not about paying for access or not, it's how heavy handed and in short notice the demand for payment from Reddit came.

The 3rd party developers were very clear they were willing to figure out a way to pay for API access, it's just impossible to do it when you have 30 days notice to start being liable for a US$ 20m/year bill...

[labrador]

That's capitalism for you. I also don't like the brutality of it, but it seems to the most efficient system at creating wealth

[piva00]

Could you expand on what's capitalistic about being a dick to 3rd party apps?

As a platform you can monetise that, turning it into wealth, the value is already there. These users prefer the experience of the platform provided by someone else than Reddit. In my mind, if principles of capitalism were in play here, and Reddit is well managed, they would find an efficient way to make money out of value that's already being delivered. Forcing apps to shutdown won't be doing that.

The current move is just a dick move with the potential to make Reddit less valuable than before, I do not understand what principle of capitalism states that this specific brutality is efficient at creating wealth.

[labrador]

> being a dick to 3rd party apps

You're making it personal, when it's business, not personal.

> users prefer the experience of the platform provided by someone else

Maybe reddit will buy the app that people like so they can monetize it

> Forcing apps to shutdown won't be doing that

Reddit is not forcing apps to shutdown. They are asking them to pay market value for the data

> I do not understand what principle of capitalism states that this specific brutality is efficient at creating wealth.

Reddit data is a commodity whose price is set by buyers and sellers. If your business depends on the price of a commodity being under a certain price and that price goes up and your business fails, that sounds like capitalism to me. Reddit has discovered that the value of their data has gone up with the arrival of AI and are asking people to pay accordingly. If you go out of business then you are among the first casualties of AI, , with many to follow. It's time to rethink your business model.