Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing • Hacker News Board

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#571

Post by loktarogar » Wed, May 31, 2023, 10:43 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #564

xavdid wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every user using Apollo instead of their own first party apps is lost revenue That's maybe true as a first-order effect. But, for the ads that everyone else sees to be worth anything, the site has to be worth visiting at all. If your most dedicated/prolific users mainly post/comment using third party apps, then making their experience worse will reduce the quality of the site overall (even if you start getting reve…

If your most dedicated/prolific users mainly post/comment using third party apps... Thats really easy for Reddit to measure. Why are you assuming they haven't? It strikes me as a very shortsighted move. If you stop assuming that Reddit is run by idiots, and you consider the likely probability that they've modelled this stuff in some depth, it's easy to believe that your initial assumption is wrong, and that the users…

There's another possibility - they have measured it, and have assumed the draw to Reddit will be stronger than their ties to the third-party apps.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#572

Post by marcod » Wed, May 31, 2023, 10:43 PM UTC

api_or_ipa wrote: post #346

The reality is that Apollo doesn't serve intrusive ads, and thus, every user using Apollo instead of their own first party apps is lost revenue. Unfortunately, reddit is in that late stage monetization step where they need to prove they are capable of big revenue to justify a high IPO share price. One can only hope there'll be a watershed moment like the one that killed Digg. So far, reddit has been very careful rais…

I was just thinking of how when Digg died, Reddit was there for us. Onto the next best thing!

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#573

Post by Euphorbium » Wed, May 31, 2023, 10:45 PM UTC

superfrank wrote: post #393

api_or_ipa wrote: post #346

The reality is that Apollo doesn't serve intrusive ads, and thus, every user using Apollo instead of their own first party apps is lost revenue. Unfortunately, reddit is in that late stage monetization step where they need to prove they are capable of big revenue to justify a high IPO share price. One can only hope there'll be a watershed moment like the one that killed Digg. So far, reddit has been very careful rais…

> One can only hope there'll be a watershed moment like the one that killed Digg. I think a critical part of the Digg exodus was that most people already saw Reddit as a clear #2 in the space. When Digg fucked up, there was an obvious place for everyone to migrate to. I don't see that right now. Facebook isn't cool anymore, Twitter has a large number of people who won't use it because of Elon, Mastodon isn't mature e…

Reddit is just a backend to apolo, if they make their own backend, a lot of people would switch.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#574

Post by Nextgrid » Wed, May 31, 2023, 10:46 PM UTC

58x14 wrote: post #99

I think it's very clear that the recent LLM boom is directly responsible for Twitter, Reddit, and others quickly moving to restricted APIs with exorbitant pricing structures. I don't think these orgs really care much about third-party clients other than a nuisance consuming some fraction of their userbase. Enterprise deals between these user generated content platforms and LLM platforms may well involve many billions…

LLMs have nothing to do with it. Someone skilled enough and rich enough to develop and train an LLM is absolutely capable of reverse-engineering your private API or scraping your web UI and defeating whatever protections you have.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#575

Post by i_am_a_peasant » Wed, May 31, 2023, 10:46 PM UTC

flutas wrote: post #104

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #34

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've gotten permabanned for calling mods idiots. shrugs

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#576

Post by witchesindublin » Wed, May 31, 2023, 10:46 PM UTC

rybosworld wrote: post #328

I definitely see Reddit going the way of Yahoo! A slow spiral into irrelevance because of lots of small bad decisions. At one point, Reddit felt like a lone champion of free speech and conversation in a sea of buzzfeeds. I think they've moderated the website into ruin. They've put a lot of energy into silencing certain kinds of voices/opinions while promoting others. What's left is a very liberal echo chamber. All of…

There's also a much more noticeable problem of Reddit being too US-centric. The moderation is the cause, but I think it's also symbolic of US political culture that fails to take into account that politics can work differently across cultural lines. In a way the website has become more racist than the pre-Trump-election moderation Reddit.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#577

Post by SllX » Wed, May 31, 2023, 10:47 PM UTC

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #502

superfrank wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One can only hope there'll be a watershed moment like the one that killed Digg. I think a critical part of the Digg exodus was that most people already saw Reddit as a clear #2 in the space. When Digg fucked up, there was an obvious place for everyone to migrate to. I don't see that right now. Facebook isn't cool anymore, Twitter has a large number of people who won't use it because of Elon, Mastodon isn't mature e…

Discord seems the most likely, it matches the subreddit model and a lot of Reddit communities already have a discord. Obviously Discord is chat focused so not a one-to-one replacement but I am not sure that the younger generations will care. Plus there is the possibility of discord adding a Reddit/forum like feature, since they already have the mindshare.

Discord ties together Reddit, YouTube, Twitch and other web communities too: podcasts, webcomics, Patreon.

Only issue I’m having with it is discoverability of new communities.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#578

Post by tomviner » Wed, May 31, 2023, 10:47 PM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #448

rozab wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a tragedy, because reddit is the last source of publicly available truth on the internet. I can search for anything with site:reddit.com and see actual human beings' opinions on the matter. All other truth is locked down in unindexed chats, and all other search results are SEO'd AI written articles shilling referral links.

truth Hah. Reddit "truth" is sold and bought at every level for anything popular enough. It's just the illusion of truth. Your site:reddit.com strategy stopped making sense 2-3 years ago. I will not be sad when reddit essentially dies in a few years from now. Good riddance.

What's your alternative?

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#579

Post by lldb » Wed, May 31, 2023, 10:48 PM UTC

kypro wrote: post #569

api_or_ipa wrote: post #346

The reality is that Apollo doesn't serve intrusive ads, and thus, every user using Apollo instead of their own first party apps is lost revenue. Unfortunately, reddit is in that late stage monetization step where they need to prove they are capable of big revenue to justify a high IPO share price. One can only hope there'll be a watershed moment like the one that killed Digg. So far, reddit has been very careful rais…

> every user using Apollo instead of their own first party apps is lost revenue. This isn't true if they're charging for API access. At best it's a question of whether the lost ad revenue is being compensated for by API revenue. If you want to attribute an ulterior motive here I'm guessing it's more about control. They want their users to use Reddit as they want them to use Reddit, or at least they'd like to reserve…

I think I saw somewhere the average user generates $0.12/month in ad revenue for Reddit. The proposed API rate is over 10x that.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#580

Post by philistine » Wed, May 31, 2023, 10:50 PM UTC

Eji1700 wrote: post #418

Everyone saying their pricing is absurd had better get ready for the new wave of API pricing. Like every other industry, there's a growth period where things are new and prices are reasonable, and then there's the "squeeze" where bean counters come in, make charts that are likely bs, and explain how much easier it'd be if we charged 4x as much for half the customer base. Twitter was one of the first to give access to…

I don't disagree that it's one point of view, but I hardly believe both examples do not have a simpler explanation: both companies no longer want APIs for third-party clients.

Elon wanted to turn it completely off and was probably convinced to ban the accounts of all the third-party clients and to try and harass the world's many weather services to pay 42,000$ a month.

Reddit has one credible third-party client: Apollo. He's always been fairly transparent about his money flow, so it's exceedingly easy for Reddit to price him out and put the fear of god into any developer interested in a Reddit client.