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Do You Think There Would Have Been a Large Protest if Steve Huffman Just Said We're Charging to Use the API to Increase Revenue? (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've been a long time Redditor and an Apollo user for about a year. I even paid for it. The main draw for me was the lack of advertising. In the back of my head I kept thinking that it couldn't last. Reddit is losing revenue from the lack of advertising views. It didn't

To me, Reddit's sky high pricing for the use of the API is intended to kill off apps like Apollo and for its users to move to the advertising filled web site or its own app, which I've never used.

If Huffman came out and said this was a revenue move right off would everyone be as upset as they are? Are people upset because Huffman completely mishandled the move or because they got their ad free experience turned off? If Reddit had an app the same quality as Apollo only with ads, would they be OK with it. I've only used Apollo so I can't speak to the other apps.

I can't blame Reddit for wanting to make money. It doesn't make a profit. Investors have to keep pouring in money to keep it going. They're going to want to see a return on their investment at some point. Usually they cash in on an IPO, but IPO's are generally only successful if the corporation looks like it will be profitable or at least the stock price continues to go up. That's how capitalism works.

In my case, I probably would have left regardless. I can't stand adds in my feed. I probably wouldn't have heard of lemmy or kbin if there hadn't been such an uproar. So I'm glad it went the way it did.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

If he'd announced that they were going to force the app developers to share ad revenue or charge users a reasonable monthly fee for ad-free access and share that with Reddit, I think the backlash would have been far less.

But that's not what Steve wants. He wants to get all the ad revenue AND be able to track user activity to sell to the data brokers/advertisers. This was never going to be a situation that we users found reasonable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I pay YT premium, I can listen to hours and hours of music, or watch hours of videos, plus I can download them and go to a poor connection area.
I don't mind they hooked me with a free service and then offered me the option of ad free.

The move from reddit is if you start to use more the service, if you want to see more posts, if you have more subs, if you upvote/downvote more, if you send more messages, if you comment more, if you post more, if you have more moderation actions to help a sub stay on focus and remove spam then you have to pay more.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Personally I used to pay for YouTube Red (back when it was called that). I stopped in protest against YouTube's changes to their partnership programme screwing over smaller users (when they introduced the recurring viewership hours to qualify for partnership). That was the final straw after their abhorrent attitude towards copyright over a long period of time.

On Android, formerly Vanced, now ReVanced, get me everything I could want out of the official app with YouTube Premium, but for free.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I HATE ads with a passion. Even taught my kid from a very young age to put his hands over his ears, look away, and say "la la la!!" until an ad ends.

Once Vanced shut down, I was devastated. ReVanced really saved my experience, though, and I'm so thankful it exists.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Steve, in fact, was part of the BoD when Reddit stopped the revenue sharing scheme that some apps had up until... 2021? Something like that, don't quote me on it.