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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 (1 children)

I was upset to lose Apollo but hearing that they where going to exclude some apps for accessibility I thought to just move there. My main issue is ads. Just any alternative to avoid the ads on their app was gonna be good for me…. Then they started completely mishandeling the protest exercising their technical authority over the subs and content and i got to lemmy real quick.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That is just a trap. Any app that gets exceptions will either be heavily restricted or instantly get too many users and reddit can then claim it's not just an accessibility app. They have not spent any time thinking about how that would work and they just said it because it was an argument against them. If they cared even for a second about accessibility the app would already have it but they they chose to add NFTs to the app instead.

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

Yup, ive read the post from r/blind they are just stabbing in the dark to calm ppl down at this point.