Reddit is one of the largest and most important websites in the world. Especially since it’s one of the last places where people can answer questions from real people. So it’s a shame to see that the company is in the process of scrapping many of the best ways to actually experience it all.
For anyone using the site on a desktop computer, I think the Reddit experience is fine (Old Reddit is better), but on phones that all changes. Reddit’s official app Fuck
Or they did. These third-party apps only existed because Reddit allowed them access to their API (essentially their backend); Today, the website announced specific changes to this agreement (first publicly announced last month), introduction of fees for the data –similar to those introduced by another platform with popular third-party apps, Twitter– which are so astronomical that they will oust every third-party app from the market.
The creator of Apollo calculated and says:
To put it bluntly, 50 million requests costs $12,000, a number far more than I could have ever imagined.
Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would equate to about $1.7 million a month or $20 million a year. Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, more than double what the subscription currently costs, leaving me in the red every month would write.
Meanwhile, one of the developers of RIF, another popular Android app, say that Not only are they too expensive (if Apollo can’t afford it, nobody can), but Reddit is also implementing a change that would cause third-party apps to lose access to NSFW subreddits, while the official website wouldn’t do this:
Removal of sexually explicit material from third-party apps while said content remains in the official app. Some people have speculated that NSFW will leave Reddit entirely, but then why would Reddit Inc. have done so recently? expanded NSFW upload support on their desktop site?
It is obvious that the high prices, far in excess of what these developers expected or could ever afford, are not there to make money. Not when it was clear that no one would ever be able to pay for it. It is introduced to crush third-party alternatives and direct every mobile user to the official app where they must either watch ads or Pay for Reddit Premium.
Or, you know, stop going to Reddit.
