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Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

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Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#101

Post by fluidcruft »

robbiet480 wrote: post #17

Reddit has posted their own announcements now https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_upda... and https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/13wshdp/api_update...

> As of July 1, 2023, we will enforce two different rate limits for the free access tier:

> If you are using OAuth for authentication: 100 queries per minute per OAuth client id

> If you are not using OAuth for authentication: 10 queries per minute

So... doesn't this mean that each logged in Apollo/3rd party client user can make 100 requests per minute for free?

The Apollo developer says his average user makes less than 400 requests per day and it's somehow going to average $2.50 per user per month. I must be missing something.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#102

Post by minimaxir »

paddw wrote: post #100

From a business perspective, it never made sense for Reddit to support free API access for third party apps for as long as they did. Now, they are effectively killing those apps. The thing "not based in reality" was expecting it to go on as long as it did.

Social networks are a two-sided marketplace.

In the case of Twitter, power users who posted the best content almost exclusively use third-party apps for the extra features and usability they provide, and the ban on those amplified Twitter's quality issues.

You have many people in this very submission saying they will quit Reddit if Apollo becomes defunct.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#103

Post by [deleted] »

minimaxir wrote: post #42
berkle4455 wrote: post #20

The data is all fully public and easily scraped from APIs (both reddit and twitter). Who is the audience for these paid plans? Is this for oauth enabled access on behalf of users?

In Reddit's case data scraping is soon to be against the Terms of Service (which is already the case for Twitter), which will earn you a Cease and Desist if you try to make a business off the data.

[deleted]

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#104

Post by flutas »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #34
Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 wrote: post #13

Their pricing is just absurd. Reddit's official app and webpage is garbage, and instead of working with amazing developers like Christian to add whatever functionality they need to increase their revenue, they're doubling down on bad decisions and alienating their users. Pure hubris... they've forgotten their own history and why the Digg exodus happened. Seriously, _what_ are they gaining by eliminating access to thi…

Reddit has seemed rudderless for a long time. Their ads platform is damned near useless compared to their competitors. It's a wonder they have any revenue at all. Their moderation is wildly broken, frequently leading to blanket account bans of anyone participating in a thread close to content deemed inappropriate.

> Their moderation is wildly broken, frequently leading to blanket account bans of anyone participating in a thread close to content deemed inappropriate.

I reported someone in the news sub. Paraphrasing but apparently reporting someone for saying "they should all burn to death" (talking about govt officials) 1: isn't ban worthy, and 2: is "abuse of the report button" and led to me getting a 3 day ban.

I'm out.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#105

Post by paulddraper »

infofarmer wrote: post #61
jdminhbg wrote: post #31

> Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I'd be in the red every month. I just don't understand why developers underprice their apps so much. You're talking about an app that people are constantly raving about, and that people use for multiple hours per day. Charge $5/mo…

You also don't understand how 95% of the world or 80% of HN lives. $5/month is a very significant expense.

Again, compare to the price for streaming services. Hulu charges $8/month an still makes you watch ads.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#106

Post by jdminhbg »

sorenjan wrote: post #84
jdminhbg wrote: post #31

> Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I'd be in the red every month. I just don't understand why developers underprice their apps so much. You're talking about an app that people are constantly raving about, and that people use for multiple hours per day. Charge $5/mo…

I'm guessing that you work in the tech industry in the US and makes $100k+ per year? $5 is not an insignificant amount to a lot of people all over the world, including Europe and maybe the US. Especially when every single app and service wants you to subscribe to them now, I've heard plenty of people saying they're going to cancel their Netflix subscription when password sharing stops working. 344 requests per day is…

There’s no reason for $5/month to be what the average user pays. It’s for power users who spend way more time on the app.

Netflix has introduced ad-supported tiers where you pay less. That’s the same here, those users can use the website or first-party app.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#107

Post by londons_explore »

I think reddit is being naive by charging per API request. Do that, and application developers will try to reduce them - for example, caching popular subreddits or posts (ie. "this is /r/technology as it looked when we last crawled 15 minutes ago").

If Christian added a cache layer on his own server he could easily make the finances work.

But... Thats in nobodies interest - Users end up with stale content, Reddit looses users due to stale content and loses revenue due to Christian extending caching times to save money. Also, Christian will make uncachable requests, like for example voting, hard to do, which again hurts reddit as a platform.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#108

Post by RandallBrown »

rootusrootus wrote: post #68
ccooffee wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Finally, to ensure that all regulatory requirements are met in the handling of mature content, we will be limiting access to sexually explicit content for third-party apps starting on July 5, 2023, except for moderation needs. Reddit really buried "no nsfw outside official reddit apps" (from the end of your first link). Didn't Tumblr do something similar and lose a significant fraction of its userbase and revenues?

I can only assume Reddit wants to kill NSFW altogether. They require you to authenticate now if you want to see any of it (though of course they promise that somehow this will still be "anonymous"). Once they turn off old.reddit.com, I think that'll be the end of NSFW content on Reddit altogether. I assume they hope to attract more advertising money this way.

They no longer require you to authenticate to see NSFW content. There's a big "I'm over 18" button below the login button.

There was a few months where it was required, but it isn't anymore.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#109

Post by chrisan »

Aaronstotle wrote: post #51
debacle wrote: post #41

I don't disagree with either party here. $12k for 50 million requests is not egregious, but $2.50 per user for something that is probably cheap/free to users is a non starter. Reddit has failed to adequately monetize their userbase, they've run into the same "politics and porn" issue that every social media platform has, and they've raised way, way too much money. The worst part? I couldn't tell you the last legitima…

Personally, Facebook/Instagram show me really good ads, while Reddit-ads are always a complete miss.

I might have too much privacy stuff enabled but Facebook could not be further from what I am interested in.

I'm pretty sure FB thinks I'm a republican country hunter with a big beard who loves driving his huge truck to crossfit. Because of where I live possibly?

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#110

Post by fluidcruft »

ccooffee wrote: post #44
robbiet480 wrote: post #17

Reddit has posted their own announcements now https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_upda... and https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/13wshdp/api_update...

> Finally, to ensure that all regulatory requirements are met in the handling of mature content, we will be limiting access to sexually explicit content for third-party apps starting on July 5, 2023, except for moderation needs. Reddit really buried "no nsfw outside official reddit apps" (from the end of your first link). Didn't Tumblr do something similar and lose a significant fraction of its userbase and revenues?

Is that only for not-logged-in users? I don't see how limiting access to the official app does anything special from a regulatory standpoint. If an account is approved/authorized for nsfw content who cares which app the account is using?
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