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Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

old.reddit.com

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Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

No. That's the limit of how many queries can be made per minute on the free tier, but it doesn't state what the free tier entails or what it can be used for. My guess, based on Christian's post, is that third-party clients would not be eligible for the free tier and that the free tier is for uses like bots.

They would be eligible but they can't be useful if their allocation is just 100 requests per minute. That would be like 10 concurrent users tops. Probably even less.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#242

Please Reddit, just let us use a web browser to access your web site. Users shouldn’t be forced so aggressively into using an ‘app’ - whether the official one or a 3rd-party app - when mobile web browsers are so very capable.

Ever since learning the phrase "enshittification" [1] from Cory Doctorow it becomes more apparent when it happens around you. I wonder if there is a "fediverse" for something like forums? I can never get into mastodon because it's not like forums and conversations between people are quite hard if you don't follow them. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

> I wonder if there is a "fediverse" for something like forums? I can never get into mastodon because it's not like forums and conversations between people are quite hard if you don't follow them.

Usenet. But it fell out of fashion around the turn of the millenium.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#243
That API pricing, for what is mostly static content, is just insane. I've created pricing models for write heavy APIs that come out at a fraction of that, while still maintaining a margin. If that's a genuinely "fair" price then Reddit have some serious technical debt. It feels like this is intentionally overpriced to discourage any serious use.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#244

Reddit Permabanned me (13 year old 450k karma account) after I went after crypto scammers, calling out the scam with details etc. I got tons of coins or whatever gifted to me and even more thanks and way to go from users. Evidently reddit considered it harassment (of the plain as day scammers) and won't budge after an appeal. So, f reddit.

I’ve had an old account which I deleted since there was no easy way to clean up the post history. Created a new one and couldn’t do shit. Can’t post. No Karma. Account got closed due to “suspicious activity” a week later.

Combine that with the obviously hostile user interface. It’s a terrible terrible website and nowadays I don’t really miss it that much.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#245
post #206

An average Apollo user is causing 344 API requests per day? That's a lot! I wonder if Apollo should prioritise reducing that number. I'd bet anything there is a lot of low hanging fruit to be had with aggressive caching and general tidying up.

Selig isn't exactly new to this rodeo, I would honestly wager there's no low-hanging fruit in this regard.

Edit: and certainly nowhere near enough to offset that kind of price increase.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#246
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but what they've left Reddit with as a differentiator are the communities. Yeah, I pretty much only use reddit for a few game communities, unfortunately with this change I suspect more and more people will move to discord. It's pretty annoying, but I suspect I'll have to eventually cave and join them when they finally kill old.reddit.com.

ugh, discord is basically IRC. There's a reason we don't use IRC for everything. I hate that it's replacing everything.

No? It's more like a BB with inbuild live voicechat, streaming etc.

IRC itself doesn't provide a shared history, threading etc.

You could get there with alternative clients and bots (at least if all participants use the same), but calling that IRC is a stretch

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#248

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…

Facebook's average revenue per user (ARPU) is ~$10/quarter[0], and 6x that in the US. Which is honestly kind of stunning. Reddit is presumably much less than that, but they might be reasonably gunning for a number better than Pinterest, with an ARPU of ~$1.50[1].

To put the pricing post into the same context, we're talking $7.50 per Apollo user/quarter, which is closer to what Facebook makes per user than Pinterest.

That said, presumably 3rd party client users are especially active and would skew higher ARPU than the average Redditor, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were more likely to live in developed countries.

I dunno. I started running the numbers expecting to be outraged, but the cost doesn't seem crazy far from what Reddit could conceivably hope to earn off these users. I doubt Reddit is monetizing anywhere near that well right now, but if they're pricing the API in a forward-looking way, rather than planning to ratchet it up every quarter inline with monetization efforts, it could make sense.

0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...

1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/995251/pinterest-quarter...

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#250
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I got permabanned for having an alt account with auto generated name...that contained 88 in it because "hate group symbolsim".

Literally a name reddit generated for me and I paid no mind to it.

Fun fact, reddit uses browser fingerprinting to ban all your accounts afterwards. Also fun fact, there is a way to get innocent users banned as a result too.

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