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.
Reddit could have avoided protests if they had said something like: “We’re going to roll out a plan to start charging third party app developers to cover the cost of API access and/or lost ad revenue, as it is unsustainable for us to keep foregoing these funds. We’re going to be super transparent about the process. We’re going to apply a small mark-up (say, 10%) but we will allow devs ample time (>=1 year) to plan for this. And we will provide public support to help these developers work through this with us.”
Of course, they would have to actually back up that talk with actions. A big part of the reason for the protests is how many blatant lies Reddit has made around this situation, including baseless accusations against the Apollo app, clearly false statements about their pricing plans and their plans to charge for API access during 2023, etc. So tbh at this point I don’t trust anything Reddit says anyway. Show, don’t tell.
The fact that this approach was the sensible, default logical one any rational person would attempt first and they didn’t do it highly suggests ad revenue wasn’t the motive at all. Otherwise, Spez is so out of touch with the community he’s orbiting a planet in a distant galaxy.
Facta non verba, deeds not words
Our ancestors thousands of years ago understood this and spez still doesn’t