I feel like the “real reason” behind this stems from the pricing for AI training. Reddit wants to capitalize on its user-generated content for AI training. the safest way to do this, and ensure that no AI company can do this, and those large AI companies can’t argue that they’re getting unfair pricing compared to app developers.
That’s reddit’s big plan: sell user-generated content to large AI companies. That’s how you make a platform like reddit profitable. You resell content you got for free to massive companies willing to pay high prices for that content.
I understand that Reddit needs to monetise. It’s not a link aggregate site anymore, hosting video/image files is expensive, Reddit operates at a loss and the 3p users cost them even more. They have reason to be dismayed that they operate at a loss while 3p apps using their API do not.
And I understand their concern with adult content. They can’t control if 3p apps will display it with or without checks, but Reddit hosts it; limiting it on 3p apps is probably the better choice to them than removing it from their site entirely. After all, they’re operating at a loss; they can’t afford the fines and fees. Sexual content is heavily legislated.
But goddamn. Limited negotiation with devs, adversarial communication (to the point of outright animosity), frankly absurd timeframe, the use of accessibility as negotiation for the blackout… there’s no good faith anymore.
Reddit is user-generated. The users are the content, their engagement is Reddit’s product. Users that don’t want to engage with their platform give them less sellable product. The users that engage the most (commenting, contributing, moderating) are the minority, and also the ones most likely to use 3p tools.
Reddit has good grounds for wanting to monetise. There are good reasons for bringing devs to the plate about how to do that. Devs were readily agreeing to covering their costs in calls, and expecting to negotiate what the revenue margin should be. Mutually equitable arrangement.
But this was handled so fucking badly, communicated so fucking badly (by one of the devs too tbh), that an equitable arrangement cannot possibly be reached anymore. Nobody wants to bargain in good faith anymore.
Now all the users want Reddit to cancel all the changes, publicly apologise, and remain operating a loss. Now Reddit wants devs to shut up and pay up, and blame them for the situation they’re in.
Now everybody loses, because devs close apps, high-activity users contribute less or outright leave, and Reddit decays down into a pit of low-interaction lurkers picking over ad-bleached bones, until it’s considered so unprofitable and unrecoverable that it is shut down entirely.
The bar was on the ground but you didn’t suspect he had descended into the underworld. For all the questions he dodged, one of the only ones he actually answered was trying to commit to the lies he’s been telling about the appollo dev, even after the leaked phone call audio proves it is a lie
Basically there was a miscommunication on a phone call between Reddit and the Apollo dev where they briefly misconstrued something the Apollo dev said as “threatening” Reddit. The miscommunication was cleared up instantly and amicably in the moment, but then spez went out and started claiming that the Apollo dev had been threatening Reddit and acting in bad faith. The Apollo dev responded by releasing an audio recording of the entire phone conversation (lol) which made it abundantly clear that Reddit were trying to attack his character.
Effective July 1, 2023, the rate for apps that require higher usage limits is $0.24 per 1K API calls (less than $1.00 per user / month for a typical Reddit third-party app).
Effectively forcing app devs to become middle-men collecting on reddit’s behalf. Mob boss behavior. ’
I guess it “looks better”, to cut someone off at the knees before murdering them outright.
Based on the answers I’m seeing, I’m positive that this change is a result of changing for their IPO. Lots of none answers, but they also aren’t backing down on the absurd pricing.
Having been a manager at a Fortune 500 and getting announcements from Executive level leadership / giving announcements to my reports, this is surprisingly the level of competence I would expect.
Unfortunate, but also a symptom of Reddit being too big for the team to handle. The outflux of users caused by this might actually -help- Reddit in terms of figuring out their revenue stream and getting better leadership.
I made a funny comment about not hearing feedback with the top down on your lambo and it got downvoted into oblivion, full damage and narrative control
To me it sounds like this AMA is more to appease the mod community. The relationship with 3rd party app developers is already in the mud and they are fine with that but they can’t lose their mods if they want Reddit to continue to function.
In saying that, he’s doing an awful job and is making things worse. :popcorn:
They definitely know that if enough Mod’s jump ship then their communities will suffer heavily. I’m going to guess that we’ll see quite a few quit. There will be some that stick around holding on by their fingertips to for communities based around helping others.
But most mods aren’t going to be willing to put in extra free labor especially for a company that keep signalling with actions that helping them isn’t a priority.
Especially when losing 3rd party apps loses them a lot of mod and bot tools/support. The power hungry mods will stay but those that were just doing it to be helpful are gonna feel burned.
Exactly. Probably going to be some rot in the communities. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few months from now we see Reddit offering more incentives to be a mod in order to entice others to take up the reigns.
So the Now for Reddit creator says he’s been flat-out ignored for 3 months and he’s panicking, he doesn’t want to lose 10 years of work. Spez replies "Apologies for the delay. We are responding now.
If others have apps they would like to be considered for the paid API tier, please reach out here and select “This is a partnership request.”
The sheer incompetence of this man, holy shit. Now for Reddit is the app I have used for years, no way will I use the awful official app over that, ever.
That one rubbed me the wrong way too. On one hand they’re trying to convince everyone that their announcements gave devs plenty of time to adapt, but on the other they’re ignoring the devs that want to cooperate. There’s no way that response backlog is 3 months long.
Just like Twitter banning any mention of mastodon. They can’t rely on keeping the product, users, on the site with a good website. So they just prolong the inevitable and do whatever they can to stop people from leaving. Enshittification, my beloathed.
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I feel like the “real reason” behind this stems from the pricing for AI training. Reddit wants to capitalize on its user-generated content for AI training. the safest way to do this, and ensure that no AI company can do this, and those large AI companies can’t argue that they’re getting unfair pricing compared to app developers.
That’s reddit’s big plan: sell user-generated content to large AI companies. That’s how you make a platform like reddit profitable. You resell content you got for free to massive companies willing to pay high prices for that content.
What a shit show
I understand that Reddit needs to monetise. It’s not a link aggregate site anymore, hosting video/image files is expensive, Reddit operates at a loss and the 3p users cost them even more. They have reason to be dismayed that they operate at a loss while 3p apps using their API do not.
And I understand their concern with adult content. They can’t control if 3p apps will display it with or without checks, but Reddit hosts it; limiting it on 3p apps is probably the better choice to them than removing it from their site entirely. After all, they’re operating at a loss; they can’t afford the fines and fees. Sexual content is heavily legislated.
But goddamn. Limited negotiation with devs, adversarial communication (to the point of outright animosity), frankly absurd timeframe, the use of accessibility as negotiation for the blackout… there’s no good faith anymore.
Reddit is user-generated. The users are the content, their engagement is Reddit’s product. Users that don’t want to engage with their platform give them less sellable product. The users that engage the most (commenting, contributing, moderating) are the minority, and also the ones most likely to use 3p tools.
Reddit has good grounds for wanting to monetise. There are good reasons for bringing devs to the plate about how to do that. Devs were readily agreeing to covering their costs in calls, and expecting to negotiate what the revenue margin should be. Mutually equitable arrangement.
But this was handled so fucking badly, communicated so fucking badly (by one of the devs too tbh), that an equitable arrangement cannot possibly be reached anymore. Nobody wants to bargain in good faith anymore.
Now all the users want Reddit to cancel all the changes, publicly apologise, and remain operating a loss. Now Reddit wants devs to shut up and pay up, and blame them for the situation they’re in.
Now everybody loses, because devs close apps, high-activity users contribute less or outright leave, and Reddit decays down into a pit of low-interaction lurkers picking over ad-bleached bones, until it’s considered so unprofitable and unrecoverable that it is shut down entirely.
Went about how I expected it. Awful attempt at PR.
And here I thought they actually had a plan to try or atleast make an attempt to sort things out lol
Tbh
HOW THE FUCK DID I OVERESTIMATE SPEZ
The fucking bar was on the ground and he didn’t pass it what the hell
You didn’t expect him to have a shovel.
The bar was on the ground but you didn’t suspect he had descended into the underworld. For all the questions he dodged, one of the only ones he actually answered was trying to commit to the lies he’s been telling about the appollo dev, even after the leaked phone call audio proves it is a lie
what lies were he trying to tell? Sorry, I’m out of the loop
Basically there was a miscommunication on a phone call between Reddit and the Apollo dev where they briefly misconstrued something the Apollo dev said as “threatening” Reddit. The miscommunication was cleared up instantly and amicably in the moment, but then spez went out and started claiming that the Apollo dev had been threatening Reddit and acting in bad faith. The Apollo dev responded by releasing an audio recording of the entire phone conversation (lol) which made it abundantly clear that Reddit were trying to attack his character.
Looks like spez is done with the AMA. His responses constitute 0.07% of comments in the thread.
that’s a moment
I only saw one sarcastic answer. Did he actually say anything of substance?
Few political not answers, some f-you answers, personal attack to Christian.
I would say that PR was disastrous, people rage that he wasn’t prepared for obvious questions and 0 informational value of this AMA.
Effectively forcing app devs to become middle-men collecting on reddit’s behalf. Mob boss behavior. ’
I guess it “looks better”, to cut someone off at the knees before murdering them outright.
It’s not murder if food is suddenly eleventy bazillion dollars and you starve to death, unless you’re irish.
They really love pulling the “stop hitting yourself!” thing that bullies do don’t they.
Based on the answers I’m seeing, I’m positive that this change is a result of changing for their IPO. Lots of none answers, but they also aren’t backing down on the absurd pricing.
Having been a manager at a Fortune 500 and getting announcements from Executive level leadership / giving announcements to my reports, this is surprisingly the level of competence I would expect.
Unfortunate, but also a symptom of Reddit being too big for the team to handle. The outflux of users caused by this might actually -help- Reddit in terms of figuring out their revenue stream and getting better leadership.
Sad to see this happening in real time though.
I made a funny comment about not hearing feedback with the top down on your lambo and it got downvoted into oblivion, full damage and narrative control
To me it sounds like this AMA is more to appease the mod community. The relationship with 3rd party app developers is already in the mud and they are fine with that but they can’t lose their mods if they want Reddit to continue to function.
In saying that, he’s doing an awful job and is making things worse. :popcorn:
They definitely know that if enough Mod’s jump ship then their communities will suffer heavily. I’m going to guess that we’ll see quite a few quit. There will be some that stick around holding on by their fingertips to for communities based around helping others.
But most mods aren’t going to be willing to put in extra free labor especially for a company that keep signalling with actions that helping them isn’t a priority.
Especially when losing 3rd party apps loses them a lot of mod and bot tools/support. The power hungry mods will stay but those that were just doing it to be helpful are gonna feel burned.
Exactly. Probably going to be some rot in the communities. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few months from now we see Reddit offering more incentives to be a mod in order to entice others to take up the reigns.
Calling it now, free coin drops for moderators to show how “valued” they are to reddit.
Practically every answer is him not actually answering the question
So business as usual for reddit
He’s answering as a CEO, not as a community member. What did you expect lol
So the Now for Reddit creator says he’s been flat-out ignored for 3 months and he’s panicking, he doesn’t want to lose 10 years of work. Spez replies "Apologies for the delay. We are responding now.
If others have apps they would like to be considered for the paid API tier, please reach out here and select “This is a partnership request.”
The sheer incompetence of this man, holy shit. Now for Reddit is the app I have used for years, no way will I use the awful official app over that, ever.
deleted by creator
That one rubbed me the wrong way too. On one hand they’re trying to convince everyone that their announcements gave devs plenty of time to adapt, but on the other they’re ignoring the devs that want to cooperate. There’s no way that response backlog is 3 months long.
Really funny how searching for “Lemmy” in the thread just turns up… Nothing. I wonder why.
Someone in another thread here said something mentioning Lemmy got them a shadowban
Almost as though they’re scared that Lemmy could actually be a threat… I kinda love it…
Just like Twitter banning any mention of mastodon. They can’t rely on keeping the product, users, on the site with a good website. So they just prolong the inevitable and do whatever they can to stop people from leaving. Enshittification, my beloathed.
I’m sure the most popular questions will go unanswered.
He will likely only answer cherry picked questions, vaguely at that.
spez confirmed Reddit isn’t profitable
I call bs tbh, but I guess we’ll see when the IPO happens
They’ve been trying to IPO since 2021 lol, it’s not gonna happen
Unlike some 3P apps, we have been extremely wasteful with the excessive amount of funding we’ve raised. 🙄