I'm a moderator and poweruser on reddit and I have very mixed feelings about this.

I think the truth is somewhere between the middle--reddit does genuinely not want to support 3rd party apps (shucks, but that's fine), but powerusers/mods want to use third party apps because the official one sucks ass and 3rd party apps want to, well, survive.

I think a compromise must be reached.

Also spez is a horrible CEO and should probably step down. I care more about reddit as a resource to me as an individual than what his feelings are.

The part I’m outraged about is that the CEO of Reddit was caught in a lie about how 3P app developer tried to “blackmail” them and when said developer released the audio it’s clear that never happened and now Reddit is doubling down on dragging this developers name through the mud still.

I just don't understand why the big app devs are so against making their apps subscription based. The Apollo dev even said they'd have to charge like $2.50pm for each user. Do it then? If you lose users, you pay less for the API anyway. Maybe less users means less income and less time to spend on the app, but I'm pretty sure most Apollo users would be willing to subscribe to it.

It seems like all the 3rd party apps took this stance and are now just giving up at the first hurdle instead of adapting their business plan. Reddit's own site and app is so bad that people are boycotting them over losing third party apps, and third party app devs don't think they have any way of charging for their apps? Like, are they even listening.

Reddit announced the pricing with 30 days for app developers to start being charged. That’s not a realistic timeline.

App developers can just close off their apps until they implement the subscription. I literally can't understand why the 30 days is an issue. Instead of inconveniencing users for a few weeks while the changes are made, they're inconveniencing users for a lifetime by discontinuing the app.

> I literally can't understand why the 30 days is an issue.

Fortunately, this is covered extensively:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...

It's not covered extensively because it makes no sense.

>Why not just increase the price of Apollo?

>One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That's $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days.

>So you see, even if I increase the price for new subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000, second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users.

Ok, so there's existing subscribers. They will have get new subscribers at a higher rate, and then wait for existing subscribers to renew at the higher rate before it will cover the API charges. Makes sense.

But they suggest they're just going to refund users. So why not just refund users and make a new subscription? This is what I don't understand. It's not a binary option here of closing the app or trying to cover existing user's API fees out of pocket. The middle ground of just refunding those subscribers and starting a new subscription exists.

The whole argument is that they will be out of pocket. But that is going to be the case regardless because they're going to refund users anyway.

If a platform forced you to refund $250,000 worth of subscriptions because they made a sudden chance to their API costs and treat you like you're some kind of criminal, would you be inclined to support that platform?

> It's not a binary option here of closing the app or trying to cover existing user's API fees out of pocket.

You're totally right, it's not a binary option.

It's a calculated assessment of future prospects.

You mean the same platform that earned him millions of dollars already? Yeah I’m sure he would love to support it

But clearly it’s not going to keep earning him millions, since they jacked the price up far beyond where he even stands to make a profit.

Well pretty much all the successful apps have decided to shut down but perhaps you know something they don’t and you can profit from their ignorance.

Here’s Apollos developers thoughts:

> Why not just increase the price of Apollo?

> One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That’s $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days.

> So you see, even if I increase the price for new subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000, second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users.

> I hope you can recognize how that’s an enormous amount of money to suddenly start incurring with 30 days notice. Even if I added 12,000 new subscribers at $5/month (an enormous feat given the short notice), after Apple’s fees that would just be enough to break even.

> Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work with only 30 days. That’s a lot of users to migrate, plans to create, things to test, and to get through app review, and it’s just not economically feasible. It’s much cheaper for me to simply shut down.

> So what is the REAL issue you’re having?

> Hopefully that illustrates why, even more than the large price associated with the API, the 30 day timeline between when the pricing was announced and developers will be charged is a far, far, far bigger issue and not one I can overcome. Much more time would be needed to overhaul the payment model in my app, transition existing users from existing plans, test the changes, and have users update to the new version.

> As a comparison, when Apple bought Dark Sky and announced a shut down of their API, knowing that this API was at the core of many businesses, they provided 18 months before the API would be turned off. When the 18 months came, they ultimately extended it another 12 months, resulting in a total transition period of 30 months. While I’m not asking for that much, Reddit’s in comparison is 30 days.

> Reddit says you won’t get your first bill until August 1st, though!

> The issue is the size of the bill, not when it will arrive. Significant, significant charges for the API will start building up with 30 days notice on July 1st, the fact that the bill for those charges being 30 days from then is not important. If you hear that your electricity bill is going up 1,000x and the company tells you, “Don’t worry, the bill only comes at the end of the month”, I hope you understand how that isn’t comforting.

> What would be a good price/timeline?

> I hope I explained above why the 30 day time limit is the true issue. However in a perfect world I think lowering the price by half and providing a three month transition period to the paid API would make the transition feasible for more developers, myself included. These concessions seem minor and reasonable in the face of the changes.

>Well pretty much all the successful apps have decided to shut down but perhaps you know something they don’t and you can profit from their ignorance.

I won't profit because I don't have an app. But all the other third party apps that won't shut down will just start charging and power users will pay for them, because they are better than the official website and app.

>Here’s Apollos developers thoughts:

The thoughts are fundamentally flawed. They're saying their owe existing users a service and can't charge them more for using the app. But... they're suggesting they will just refund them anyway. So, why can't they refund all users that are paying for Apollo and then reintroduce a subscription model. Those 50,000 that paid for Apollo beforehand will most likely renew their subscription that covers the Reddit API charges and nothing changes.

I don’t think any app store or payment provider would look fondly on a process that refunds that many transactions just because you want to turn around and double/triple the price. Credit card companies/payment gateways hate mass refunds and normally it could be cause to terminate your contract. To refund people because the app was forced to go out of business is one thing, but if you want to implement a price increase the supported way is what the developer said: to announce it in advance for next renewal.

Probably what you’d have to do is close the current app and publish a new app with the new business model (subscriber-only at a higher price). The amount of people who would move to such app would only be a tiny fraction of the previous userbase (as most app users were free before), and now you keep having to deal with this chaotic company who could just change the rules again at any time with little/no notice. Plus you’ll never get the kind of reach you had before without the freemium model. I think most indie devs would likely choose to just quit and move on with their lives. If someone wants to buy his code from him and publish their own subscriber-only app, probably it’s an option.

The App Store doesn’t allow for mass refunds like this, you have to ask Apple and they only grant it in special circumstances such as the third party Twitter clients.

I do not see them approving a mass refund just for a price increase.

Why not make Reddit itself a paid service by that logic? This whole 'Oh we need to make strides toward profitability blah blah' corporate spiel is such bullshit when they could snap their fingers and become profitable overnight by switching from an ad model to a subscription model. Further, by doing so they wouldn't be forced to gradually ruin the site with more dilution into sponsored content.

This is the arc of American business, though. A steady money printer isn't enough. That money has to grow, and it grows by reducing the surplus utility held by the users.

I think for a lot of people, they _want_ to see Reddit not as a "company trying to be profitable" but more as "the de-facto community message board on the internet" where everything is free, open, and equitable. Shutting down third-party APIs makes the site less open in a lot of ways, which is rubbing people the wrong way.

That being said, I do agree that they own the API and have every right to charge for it. I am going to be very disappointed that my preferred way of browsing Reddit is going to stop working, since the official app is not a great experience.

Sure, Reddit can do what they want with Reddit. That’s their right. And Reddit users (or a subset of Reddit users) can complain when Reddit makes product changes that they don’t like. That’s also their right. In this case, people find it frustrating that a) products that they like will stop being usable b) devs that they like will go out of business abruptly c) that communications from Reddit about this have been not great.

Even if this is just a subset of users being mad, it appears to be the subset of users that also run many of the larger subreddits. If Reddit doesn’t want users like that to have the power to make highly visible demonstrations they should stop relying on them to do volunteer moderation.