Reddit doubles down on criticism of 3rd party apps

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762501/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview-protests-blackout

by chimerasaurus • 3 years ago

35 5 3 years ago

Are these new statements or rehashed from earlier in the week? If they're new, this guy seriously needs to hire some PR firm to review what he says, because he's putting on a master class of how to dig yourself into a deeper hole:

“I didn’t know — and this is my fault — the extent that they were profiting off of our API. That these were not charities"

Only non-profits can use our API. So now we're charging for it (but we're not offering any exemptions for non-profits). And if it's too expensive for anyone who had the gall to generate revenue in exchange for spending years of their life improving our platform, then it's best they shut down! If our arbitrary prices are too high for them, then we don't want their money anyway!

What a ridiculous implication. I mean, this is one step away from announcing that you're suing Apollo for the money they made in App Store purchases.

Nathan20552• 3 years ago

It’s also a 180 from last week’s position, because Reddit has continually stated throughout this whole thing that they’re happy to continue supporting third-party apps as long as they pay, and that if they wanted third-party apps gone, they would have just killed the API outright.

But now Steve Huffman is saying here that the API was never supposed to support third-party apps, and they only allowed them out of the kindness of their heart. Which is also wrong, since the API was literally created in part to allow third-parties to make apps, because Reddit didn’t ship a first-party app until 2016 (as I mentioned in my top-level comment on this post).

I honestly can’t see him staying in his position much longer. As I noted in my thread, Reddit’s already starting to lose advertisers because of how they handled redirecting campaigns throughout all of this, and the continued instability is concerning the ones who remained. This isn’t an Elon Musk situation where he owns the company and can do whatever he wants, he has investors to answer to, and eventually they’re going to want answers as to why he’s pushing advertisers away, threatening developer partners, and refusing to listen to his site’s power users who both produce much of the content that drives traffic and provide them with millions of dollars a year in free moderation.

Nathan20552• 3 years ago

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...

faeriechangling• 3 years ago

The constant lying is making the PR disaster so much worse than it has to be.

mbmjertan• 3 years ago

I think a deadline forces people, us included, to negotiate that.

They didn't seem willing to do so, though. Multiple devs have commented on the lack of communication from Reddit, and they didn't seem to budge when discussing with Apollo/Selig.

It was never designed to support third-party apps

First-party apps didn't exist until they bought out Alien Blue, a third party client?

These statements seem like pretty obvious lies to anyone who's used Reddit for long enough. It makes me sad to see how their management dissolved into this, whatever this is. Sure, they've never been great, but these truly are new lows.

(I have deleted my 13-year-old account because of this, although I believe it won't impact metrics enough to have an effect. I just don't want to use a community-building site that doesn't care about its community.)

Reddit doubles down on criticism of 3rd party apps

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