Reddit’s API rug pull
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- Опубликовано: 11 июн 2023
- Today over 7,000 subreddits have gone private in protest of the new controversial pricing of Reddit's API. Learn how big tech companies leverage their platforms in ways that can ruin 3rd party apps.
#tech #reddit #thecodereport
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even reddit itself participated in the protest, it went down. thank you reddit!
really?? you got proof?
@@monstajoedev The ddos attack lmao, rip reddit
Well if nobody's home guess I'll turn off the lights. - Reddit executive... probably...
@@Brixster Actually it wasn't a ddos, Reddit just had "A significant number of subreddits shifting to private [which] caused some expected stability issues"
@@Rotem_S it was actually anarchychess
Missing the best part, where reddit CEO claimed that Apollo creator tried to "blackmail" them, so he in exchange posted a recording of their talk, then reddit got offended "muh we trusted you and you actually dared to record our talk?!"
just spez things
full quote: "His 'joke' is the least of our issues. His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place-saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally; recording and leaking a private phone call-to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him."
Apollo's reply: "Please feel free to give examples where I said something differently in public versus what I said to you. I give you full permission."
This shuld be higher up ngl
? Scam users? Last I saw he refunded all subs and let everyone know his pixel pals app would keep him alive so people wouldn't spam him with money to make a reddit competitor with a better app
@@coocoo3336 Please, do enlighten us about how he's trying to scam users when he offers to refund those that have yearly subscriptions out of his own pocket. Costing him several hundreds of thousands.
This blackout has made me realize how many of my google searches actually take me to the answer on a reddit.
There are browser extensions that redirect links to the internet archive
Same, it's frustrating
@@waldolemmerOoh, thank you!
There was a whole video on this, Google has basically turned into obnoxious adware and SEO hell. Reddit is generally where people get the actual answer, so if you include Reddit in your Google search, you will actually get your answer instead of ads for companies that want to sell you an answer.
@@Content_Deletedyeah, I mean I don't even actively comment or engage much on reddit daily - but if I'm searching for some fellow input online, whether it's tips for a game or job, I usually type "reddit" as a search term, just because I'd rather look at real, crowdsourced answers rather than spammy blogs and sponsored articles.
I love how reddit request costs 120 times more than ChatGPT api requests
good boy
All of the content of Reddit is actually written by ChatGPT
@@henriquealmeida348 sure... as if reddit was launched after chapgpt
@@carlosbrilhante it's a joke, genius
@@carlosbrilhante there’s still time to delete this
Thank you reddit for finally curing my addiction. Forcing me to quit cold turkey is gonna hurt but I'm sure it's for the better.
Lurk hackernews since you like the code report. Like Reddit from 2009. I hope I didn't just ruin it lol.
Exactly, I can finally fully focus on my meth addiction now.
@@SmartK8 ketamine*
now addicted to youtube. youre welcome
Hacker news ain’t great
Its crazy that Reddit's first move in this scenario is to nuke their free API rather than improving their own app. I think anyone who has used their mobile app can attest to what a piece of garbage it is, regardless of the platform.
I personally switched to using Boost for the exact same reason.
Boost gang🍻🍻
But that's the point. They don't wanna bother with doing any work, they just want to boast about their app's popularity before they sell out.
I've been using Boost since before Reddit even had it's own native mobile app. When they released it I gave it a chance but it took all but 30 minutes for me to delete it and crawl back to Boost. The UX on mobile is a hot pile of garbage.
You can't be compared to your competition if it doesn't exist
absolutely. i hate most social media apps but for example. facebook works on ux/ui and thank of that mometized with facebook videos a lot. so maybe tjat kind of desicitions that makes people get more into reddit, like, a kind of rolling auto read ia voice reddit platform . like that tiktoks of "reddit histories" would be a better desition that make people harder to give you public to sell publicity spaces
Unfortunately a 2 day outage isn't really going to do much, these subreddits should just stay offline until their demands are met if they want the api back
This. 2 days is a water molecule in the bucket for Reddit.
Many of them are doing that.
@@6022 But not enough.
I thought this at first but it actually might be surprisingly quite effective.
I get the impression this is just a warning shot, as their intention is to not kill their own subreddits nor the platform that they’ve built their communities on.
However I also suspect these subs are fully prepared to commit sudoku if nothing happens. The real risk in doing this however is just a new sub fulfilling the role of the old one.
@@Discount-Stonksi think you meant seppuku
48 hours is a rookie number, some subreddits are going to blackout indefinitely
Some aren't even doing it at all.
@@tbird81 pity on them
that's very unaliving of them
Some people didn't use third party apps and just accepted that reddit mobile sucks so they just close it when it annoys them. Those don't care and will continue using reddit as usual. Unfortunately, if a boycott doesn't have a broad enough compliance, it won't be effective enough. We'll see how it goes.
reddit will be better off without the power mod controlled subreddits
Bad news for the memes: ProgrammerHumor is shut down until Reddit backs down from their plan. So... probably no programming memes ever again.
Nooo that can't be!!!
@@jotoho good luck trying to find people who'll still want to provide unpaid labor (moderating) if you treat the user base badly
@@jotoho they would have to find moderators, otherwise it would be anarchy. this is a moderator protest, so good luck with that
@@jotoho They can, but the issue comes down to moderation. Reddit can technically just open the subreddit if they want, but if the mods don't play along then it turns into an unmoderated mess. They can kick mods that don't play ball, but then they have to find people willing to do the very time consuming and poorly rewarded work of moderating a subreddit.
Most subreddits have a hell of a time trying to get and keep enough mods as it is, and reddit doesn't exactly have a plan for how to replace them.
Good. Majority of that was a lame and unoriginal stuff made by people who never even tried programming
It seems like 99% of the controversy could have been avoided by making their UI/UX for both mods & users decent
Unfortunately that means less space for nft grifts and pushy religious ads
Nah fam, that'd cost me money -The company (probably)
@@adissentingopinion848 *He Gets Us*
Instead they worked on money grab features like Avatars and Awards...
@@adissentingopinion848 lol facts
Wherever Aaron is, he must be very upset by this chain of events. The world didn't deserve a man as great as him, nor were we able to keep the legacy he left.
True I still use RSS
@Marcos Moutta What if God is spying on everybody there?
The average redditor of today would absolutely hate Aaron
great man? he killed himself like an idiot. stop praising bad people who make bad choices.
He's dead he isn't gonna feel anything
Any blackout that does not extend to well after Reddit’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) is just telling Reddit “hey, you made us extremely mad, and all we’re going to do is leave for 2-3 days. We promise we’ll be back shortly, though.”
Small correction: according to reddit themselves, there wasn't any ddos, they just suck so bad their site couldn't handle subreddits going private:
“A significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues, and we’ve been working on resolving the anticipated issue,”
I almost want to interpret this as "crap all the subreddits are going private quick pull the plug and come up with an excuse"
That's even better than a targeted ddos lmao
it was anarchychess
It hurts itself in its confusion!
מת על השם הזה
My only problem is that most of those things are 48 hours only.
Don't get me wrong, I'd be okay if it lasted only 48 hours, but TELLING it lasts 48 hours just means reddit has a hot potato that cools itself.
I closed all three of my and left one. Trying to figure out where to go now. But at least I'm away from the Reddit drama.
@@destinationcentauri What new platform, exactly? 😁 People are too addicted to their daily dopamine hits to just abandon Reddit until there will be a decent enough alternative, which at the moment, afaik, doesn't exist. And the giant subreddits staying private is just shooting oneself in the foot.
@@destinationcentauri so you're saying that we will have another Tumblr issue?
That’s a worst case scenario, but fortunately for us the consumer, it seems to be on the table!
@@miniatureben3558 Tumblr actually got sold to a more sensible company (Automattic) that immediately reversed the porn ban as much as the credit card companies allowed. I'm seriously considering going back there now that Reddit is enshittified.
I never really got into reddit. I just added it to my search results sometimes to get some actual people talking about what i am trying to find instead of lengthy 0 info articles. It did the trick occasionally, sad to see it go. I guess nothing lasts forever.
"sad to see it go" Most subreddits are only going dark for about 2 days
Reddit's awesome! At least some of it: if you avoid some of the mindless nonsense bizarre subreddits. But ya, in contrast to the weird subreddits, many of its other subreddits are actually filled with world leading experts in their field, from everything from astrophysics, to advanced computer networking, programming, medicine, culinary arts, etc... Maybe in your case you only went to the weird subreddits, and not the subreddits on topics of deeper interest to you?
i ran into an interesting problem this morning. because the subreddit went dark, one of the post about realistic/artistic QR code generation using AI is lost to me, at least for the near future. that information is still out there, i know there is a repo on github but it was in a foreign language. my only entry to that git was that post.
now thats on me, i could have logged in to my git when i was browsing reddit, or save the git instead of saving the post on reddit. i have learned my lesson.
but it made me think how many knowledge have we lost thanks partially to spez and reddit's decision.
@@destinationcentauri Agreed, one particular community I go on is Framework's subreddit, which is a vital customer communication channel for them. At least they also have the forums on their website and a Discord server but Reddit is kinda convenient for me.
@@andersenzhengtry viewing (and saving) the cached version?
You forgot to mention that the Reddit app doesn't provide accessibility features, so users that have difficulty using the native app need a third party app to even go use reddit comfortably.
(also video embeds aren't a thing in the native app)
imgur embeds are equally shit
last time I used the official app the video player in general was just broken beyond usability.
@@Aliosar22 lmao
r/desktopsite
The official app cant even go landscape. Its 2023. FR everyone who worked on the app should be ashamed of what they released.
For those who don't know, Reddit doesn't serve ads through their API. Meaning 3rd party apps are essentially a way to use reddit without ads and Reddit can't monetize those users. Reddit is also trying to go public/IPO soon so they're trying to jack up their own evaluation/have a more sustainable business model. All of that leading to the API price changes and killing 3rd party apps.
I wouldn't mind the ads, if their app and website weren't pretty much making that the main content. Reddit is unsuable without clients.
They were also blocking any NSFW calls over the API too. Not just XXX, anything remotely NSFW
This was actually very solid comment, i don’t understand why people are mad at reddit, as you said they can’t make money from third party apps and even worse they pay a ton for underlying computing power and servers, so why shouldn’t they kill it, they are not a charity, it is their company, they get to decide what to do with it, and if we are not happy, the only thing we could do, is to stop using it, instead of negging. 😑
@@nimabayat5820 Its not about them charging, it is more about the amount that they are going to charge for the API usage, because the amount is in no way reasonable.
@@nimabayat5820 That's basically what those people are doing. They stop working for a company that is stealing their work.
All the money reddit is making comes from the content & the moderation work people a freely giving away to support the model.
Plus, we would not need 3rd party app if the official reddit app was any good.
The redditor mods finally have to touch grass, good move.
That is if Reddit sinks so badly that they shut it down. Otherwise they aren’t stepping out of their mom’s basement
Probably why the air quality is so bad today
@@thelegendguyofficialtbh its just people themself being toxic
If in a platform every type of people exist
And platform is considered toxic you know people just suck overall
Discord mods remain unbeatable
@@adityakiran2956 Nah they're usually in their grandma's basement. Someone that messed up usually has some parental issues, at minimum they're fatherless
A lot of answers to questions I search on Google come from reddit posts. Going private means all that is also gone for the time being.
Hopefully stackexchange will pick up the slack
Happened right as I started to set up a new IDE, too. I didn't realize how dependent I was on whatever the currently relevant subreddit was until I had to start from scratch without it.
Reddit literally has all the good fixes
I took this as an opportunity to just stop. I was using it as a means of doom scrolling and I could certainly try to fill that time with better activities.
That's good hope it's beneficial for you now
@@KhaledIron Yes, now he spends his time on only fans, tiktok and facebook. Huge improvement.
Same. I uninstalled Reddit yesterday as a personal protest. It's weird, finding things to not doomscroll about.
@@headcrab4 welcome to youtube
i feel like this is why open source social platforms might become the future; since they’re entirely community run, problems with the platform could be fixed by forking the repo for the app, and easily making it a better platform, even if the app goes closed-source, a fork could most likely still be made and fix it
EDIT: just to clarify i meant that if there was an issue with the frontend of the app than somebody could fix and either submit a pull request or make their own version of the app to connect to the backend(like apollo). the backend could be open source too though and i think thats what would really make a difference
I'd argue that's not a silver bullet: the source of the app might be free and open, but that doesn't make the user data and content freely available with it; so forking does not magically move your posts and community elsewhere, which is what all users ultimately care about. Moving still takes some more effort.
not just open source , but non profits
This but it might become like Linux where everyone and their mother wants to make their own distro and fractures development time on the same features for each distro instead of just perfrecting the one.
@@c10z that's what's going to happen, and I'd argue it's already happening with Lemmy and Kbin.
Do you know what a backend is ? An open source app is fine, but you still need the backend to be hosted somewhere to do most of the work. Mostly that’s done by one entity, but decentralised apps try to change that.
I'm starting to see problems with the "run a loss leader for years to gain an audience and try to monetise it later" model
Successful businesses simply don't work that way long term.
People will point to Amazon but Amazon rakes in the profits first and then has them amortized In an optimal manner in a way that is beneficial to its tax planning.
@tansteel Also Walmart they would move into a town price all the smaller stores out of business by selling at a loss because they could take the hit and then raise prices once all the competition was put out of business I've seen it happen firsthand
@@shadow_realm47 Literally every major monolith has operated this way, you're clueless. Software companies profit by scale
0:37 Correction - if they had announced the pricing back in April, this wouldn’t have been nearly the mess it turned out to be. They gave the 3rd party app developers a vague heads up in April that changes were coming, but only revealed the price at the beginning of the June. The developers don’t have nearly enough time to accommodate this massive change.
Yes
Because they don't want them to accommodate, they want them gone
@@usbgamers123Yup. Classic capitalist greed. All roads lead to monopoly/near monopoly. And the foundation is anti-consumer behavior.
r/ProgrammerHumor has gone dark indefinitely, you're going to have to wait more than 48 hours.
Can confirm, read that post too, where they said, they will be going beyond 48 hours
I hope Reddit never comes back. I almost died recently because a whore kept trying to fuck me and I kept ignoring her. I tried to explain that the incel epidemic is real and it made redditors super mad because they're never around women and don't understand their dark side.
in the meantime their member probably make their own platform greendibs online
(
joke)
Hopefully they go dark long enough to make a claim on the sub. Lining up a few good ones!
@@JacksonOfTheJerry the performance gain/ dips from lack of r/programmerhumor would be an interesting data.
I'm sure they would get their money if they worked together with the 3rd party devs instead against them. Extending the API to serve their ads might be a possibility but ofc it's a lot harder than just start charging in a very small time frame.
"If they worked together" you're absolutely right about that! But of course Reddit CEO Steve Huffman isn't that sophisticated. He's a P O S malignant narcissist, and TERRIBLE business leader, who's going to end up tanking Reddit if he's not careful.
😂 you really think that 3rd party apps who have “no adds” as a part of their business model are gonna let go of the main selling point of their app?
@@edwardhoffenheim3249he devs of most third party apps have openly stated (included in recorded calls with Reddit directly) they’d be more than happy to pay for API access. $20m a year is not paying for API access, though. There is absolutely 0 chance Reddit is losing anywhere close to that much ad revenue off any or all of the apps. If this was about getting money off ads, they’d simply require either the app show ads or pay a reasonable portion of membership income as a fee to Reddit. The fact that they jumped to overpricing means it’s not about ad money, it’s about killing the apps for that sweet sweet investor money when they go public. No competition on mobile means larger market share which means more investment. It’s not at all a difficult situation to sus out.
Idk how anyone has thought of the possibility that Reddit might be making 20mil a year serving ads to these 3rd party customers. That’s where the discrepancy, the third party apps just can’t make up the difference with api costs. It’s literally just business.
that's basically impossible to do in a bulletproof way
I literally never use reddit but google’d something for the first time in like a year and navigated to reddit for it. I thought I was seeing a weird authentication error, not expecting this LOL
Fortunately you can view the cached version of that page in the meantime.
I suspect this is one of the reasons why the blackout is only two days.
I’m surprised they didn’t try a different pricing model like “to be able to use 3rd party apps, you have to sign in with a premium account”.
Reddit would get their revenue and the app developer doesn’t have to be a dealer for access to the api access.
Because the potential value of API access is higher than a simple premium account. So it doesn’t make sense to price them as the same thing
@@edwardhoffenheim3249
I can see if Reddit wants you to use their first party app so they can push ads so they can make some money. But once you pay for premium and get rid of ads, then it shouldn’t matter if your api access is through their app or a third party apps since you’ll typically make the same kind and volume of requests to their servers.
I think this would support a healthier 3rd party ecosystem while generating more revenue source from users who don’t want the ad supported experience.
@@snppla Wait I think I misunderstood you. Are you saying that premium users would have access to the content without ads but third-party apps would have to show them for non-premium users?
@@edwardhoffenheim3249 To clarify my idea is that in order for a user to be able to use a third party app, their reddit account would have to be premium. Otherwise they would use the ad supported first party app from Reddit. Users with free Reddit accounts, or browsing anonymously, would not have the privilege of using third party app.
@@snppla and it would still generate the same wave of protest from the same people. Third party apps would lose a huge chunk of their user base, users will see it as an attempt to con them for a subscription, etc.
In IT, 95% of the maintenance costs come from electricity consumption of the datacenters.
Even a 2016 Intel Atom on the Rock Pi can serve like 500 requests a second with the application being written slower runtimes like those of JS or Python...
$0.24 per 1000 requests is burglery. 24 cents for 50/100k requests - that's fine.
Never the less $0.24 per 1000 requests is crazy yes, that would be less than 1 request per second for a 16 vCPU instance.
Communities that are big enough should look into starting up their own forums
They won’t cause the mods are pathetic and incapable of any real work.
Which cost money……
But then SexyFatTroon who is a power janitor from /r/transwomen cannot ban people from other forums for telling him that he will never be a woman.
They are, largely on Lemmy
Saidit.
I can't believe there was no add before or during this vid. Otherwise I would have watched it elsewhere :)
Great video!! Cheers!
I just realized the moment StackOverflow switches to subscription model entire IT industry stops....
Oh god no, stackoverflow our overlord must stay alive forever, along with duplicated and unnecessary questions
@@fitmotheyap we will donate but ... Please Stack overflow should be free for all
Christian made one of the best apps it’s sad to see it cease to exist because of hungry corporates
I hope reddit die and take these mods and content creator with them.
for real, apollo was the only reason i was using reddit, and now its gone and i will not use official app because its absolutely dogcrap
now somebody has to rebuild the backend as foss for people to switch to it
If the 900k daily active users of Apollo paid 20 bucks a year, they could pay the measly $20 million a year
@@cjhoward82 Lmao, you want to convert 100% of the free users to paid ? lol what are you smoking.
The Apollo developer themselves calculated the amount of people they would need to convert into paid subscribers for them to be feasable and none of the numbers came close to being worth it.
I cut out reddit completely about a month ago, and I literally felt my mental health improve in a week.
What I didn't realize was how bitter vanilla reddit was making me. Like any corner of the internet that gets too popular, it becomes an echo chamber.
Reddit is useful only by the content it provides, but honestly? I'm not sad to see it go.
agreed!
From my experience most of reddit is straight up toxic ☠
The ONLY subreddits I cared about were r/iosprogramming and r/django
I get you. I cut out Facebook and Twitter long ago for this very reason. It just sucks that so much knowledge would die with reddit. As a Linux programmer who loves emulation, I need my subreddits to keep me from pulling my hair out when I inevitably hit one of my 45 brick walls each day.
Most subreddits are going dark only for like 2 days and then will come back. Barely any subreddits are going dark indefinitely. And if they really do intend to go dark indefinitely, Reddit has the power to replace those mods or just unprivate the subreddit.
Yes it is an echo chamber, but if you're someone who thinks for yourself you get banned within a year at maximum. Think for yourself, don't be a sheep, rise above.
I would look for male fashion advice or fits and I'd get sent to ftm using men's clothes or mtf taking about feminine clothing that fits them. I'm just a man looking for a fit not a sex change. They're pushing it.
There have been so many times over the past few days where i have tried looking something up, clicked on a reddit link, and the subreddit has been private. Didnt realize how much i relied on random reddit posts for answers to my questions.
Same, but google's cache saved the day.
Other explanations fall so flat, I'm so glad you cleared this up for me.
The thing about Apollo many people simply don't realize is that it actually cost Reddit money. First of all, it doesn't display any reddit ads to freeloaders who don't pay for Reddit Premium, secondly it makes several features too accessible. Features that cause strain on the servers when accessed, and are therefore hidden behind several menus both on the website and in the app to make people think "wait, do I REALLY have to use it?".
That explains why when I was searching for TES reddit I saw it was deleted or gone private and the saddest part is that a lot of useful and interesting knowledge shared from people from year and years ago is going to disappear :(
This is called selfish mods. Nuking themselves in a childish charade is pretty funny to me because it won't do anything in the long run. Another one just like it will be made to replace it. It's already happening. They think removing such things will affect reddit in the long run but it doesn't. It only affects the users which in turns makes them not like the protest. Most people do not use third party apps and, frankly, we shouldn't even have mods with the ability to moderate hundreds of subreddits by a single person. People say it'd be hard for reddit to find new mobs but no, it won't be. Most people don't care about this and it's a protest that's not working. Going dark just drops you off the face of the earth and everyone not terminally online moves onto other subreddits. Life goes on so to speak.
Great video explaining & provide samples. Short & to the point
Thank you for covering this!
I can't belief Jeff said 12th but displayed 11th. This is to show the time and energy put to the content created by Jeff. Thanks for sharing with us
Thank you Jeff 🙏
I also spot that. Immediately!
someone gotta put food in family
Honestly I'd prefer 4 with New Vegas mechanics
I switched to lemmy. People might say it's an inferior product, but I'm a Linux user so I'm used to using an inferior product for ideological reasons. Vive la résistance!
Thanks for the clarification.
Omg, this video used a meme with Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido. I haven't seen that picture in quite some time. That is awesome!
If you increased the number of "developers" and then created a proxy server and/or app that used one's own API key ... hmm, but you'd need to register a payment method for each developer user even if they're just trying to use it normally.
Inb4 we're back in the days of phone charges per minute. Now it'll be app charges per view/post/action
I like how you think. but in this case, Chris needs to create potentially thousands or even millions of alt accounts. I dont think you can automate the API key creation process.
I implore fellow subreddit mods to extend the protest indefinitely, beyond 48 hours. As long as it takes. 48 hours is *nothing*.
Jannies simply can’t go more than two days without leddit
Just go ahead and kneel down before the Spez 😂😂😂 you Redditers need him more than he needs you don't worry he is a merciful god 🤣
The way I see it, the CEO won't give a damn until his pockets start hurting. As far as I know, Reddit doesn't advertise on NSFW pages. So just label every subreddit and post NSFW if possible.
Thanks for the nws!
Thank you for this. I was wondering why I couldn’t get on some of my favorite subreddits
This is what happens when everyone decides to use a single centrilsed platform for everything, back in my day every community had their own forum and the internet was much more decentralized.
It was also harder to find a place where you can easily discuss various topics. That's what people like about reddit the most compared to forums.
That explains it. I was trying to find something on a subreddit I've been on for a long time and it's just Private.
I like both of your channels. Good work m8!
I think charging for the API is fair, but it has to be contextualised. For example, the API could be free up to a certain point, say a few thousand connections. Then, it could be as simple as 1 cent per 10,000 connections, which would be more reasonable. Either that, or they find a way to put ads through the API which seems like an obvious solution, especially when said apps using the API could simply implement a toggle for ads instead of them just never appearing.
now here your first fault is that you think people can have good intentions
@@helper_bot Honestly if reddit just added ads to api and asked 3rd party apps to implement them or get shut down. that seems like a fine and much more reasonable solution to me
@@ceticx They don't even need implementation, serve the ads intertwined with post results.
Everything about this just screams incompetence. They are trying to become a publicly traded company, so that makes a ton more sense. Capitalist greed is going to destroy reddit; we can't have nice things. It'll be going the way of twitter thanks to that dumbfuck Elon, yet somehow rich assholes keep failing upwards. That's a system designed to protect capital and crush labor and consumers for ya.
The irony of Reddit charging developers to consume data through its APIs while it itself gets FREE data from its users!
Fire vid Fireship, I could feel the rage, on point!
Being filthy rich is starting to look like a drug addiction.
No matter how much they have, other people eating from their tiniest of bread crumbs STILL bothers them, enough to have them try dumb things like this. Even at the risk of LOSING money.
Very weird.
Money, greed what you expect ?. Can't stand Humans
Starting to look? It always was, since the dawn of times, greed has always been the core motivation of all atrocities humanity has committed.
I literally just deleted the reddit app, and my first instinct after was to open reddit... I think I needed this blackout.
1:00 Can't they just force 3rd developers to implement ads that generate for them money?
It would win-win for both sides.
Company gets money, Users gets an usable mobile app
sure if it was about the ad money, but it isn't (sorta). It is about killing competing apps because they think that will drive everybody into their own app thus increasing downloads/users thus increasing what the perceived value is when they try to go public since "look muh app has so many users you can advertise here" which resonates more with tech illiterate boomer investors.
That wouldn't be a reliable or feasible solution. Instead they could make the pricing bearable instead of making it at least a thousand times more expensive than the average social media apis.
Also, free apis exist for a reason. if you cancel free api, spammers, bots and web scrappers will need to target your website directly and your server costs will skyrocket.
@@Jack-oi8gn It is actually possible. Any company using above a certain threshold on the API has to talk to reddit, negotiate a contract to use more of the API.
Obviously it's easier if reddit just charges a sensible price for their API... Or they could serve ads in their API results. It seems they took the dumbest possible action. But they're trying to lure in potential shareholders, so that tracks.
Well this explains why r/HVAC was down when I needed to look into some repairs
This is the best video on this topic I've seen. Subscribed
The centralization of "good content" is a major problem. Huge social media sites need to die.
everytime there's a new topic like these and I see a Fireship video I already know I'm gonna get the best take imaginable
There's a migration to open alternatives like KBin or Lemmy that are interoperable to other social networks with the protocol ActivityPub (the Fediverse)
Hmm that's kinda interesting topic and ur thoughts about how network business works... Keep going buddy
I appreciate it so much that you ACTUALLY call out the nacensorism of these oligarchopoles instagram etc.
The real problem here is AWS. Reddit switched to AWS long ago and has public record of making 350+ million last year in revenue. The CEO has also gone on record saying they are not profitable. Theres seems to be only two main possible reasons for this: 1) money mismanagement due to grossly high salaries or something like that or 2) the expenses of running a large part of the informational internet is expensive, so expensive that the precious Ad money that we always think is making these people so rich, cause in our modern minds "our data is so important and theres just enough marketing budget in the business economy to make anything we want accessible without us having to pay for it" - it not enough anymore.
So are we the problem then? well not exactly. A few things happened. Big tech lost alot of its funding and specifically the internet and platforms that rely on last decade web tech. This is because alot of money is moving out of tech and into other markets such as real estate, but also because giants like AWS, Google, Microsoft and even Digital Ocean basically completed the accessible modular cloud as a service project that was set out in the early 2010s.
Now with these platforms running so much of the internet, when big tech investors stop giving out grants and not worrying about large companies with millions in revenue not turning a profit year after year - its time to look at AWS and other platforms and wonder if the prices charged and services provided are reasonable. Because if they are, and this is what it takes to run the internet, and the investors - who have run all of this out of profits from other industries like a charity case - are leaving; where does that leave us? It makes more sense to me that Amazon's most profitable sector is AWS. Its often been talked about that they bleed money elsewhere.
I do also understand the Reddit is charging way more for their API specifically to kill third party apps - but i think the statement that they arent profitable also has to be taken into account here. Assuming the issue isnt #1 from above (for every company this comes up for) this isnt so much greed - its a straight up numbers problem. I know thats how it was for my company - i personally work for free, I still work a day job and write software at night for years and its not enough for even me to live off of (while trying to support a open userbase with a free tier)
Reddit isnt the only one whos been feeling the burn lately - its going to get worse. I'm not saying reddit is okay for making this decision, but as a business owner who also runs a platform on AWS, I at least feel in part that i understand some of the situation and motives here. I tried to make a free plan for my platform but just couldnt make it work with the costs associated. I feel like the internet, even for us little folk didnt used to feel like that. Now it feels like you have to charge anyone to use what you made.
Somethings amiss here...
If money is the problem, what is wrong with revealing out to the public.
'Hello redditors, our funding gone cut, salaries for employees and hosting prices increased, due to this we are planning to mitigate some costs with API fees. inconvenience is deeply regretted.' something like that would be understandable.
@@kvbk It shouldnt be wrong, or at least it shouldnt be punishing to say you are having a problem with your cash flow. but in the reality we live in right now, if you say you are having financial problems, the investors will punish you.
im not making excuses for reddit, certainly not saying what spez did and said were right. just somebody who is salty at my old investors when i was trying to be forthcoming when my business was having a bad year. Maybe somebody who is more diplomatic and wiser with words could achieve a better outcome. Just my 2 cents on this.
Ummm tech stocks are doing pretty well considering the current economy, just compare the NASDAQ to S&P500
@@zimboiii9025 I get what you are saying and thats true however those stocks represent the very biggest tech companies and their market traction - traction which can reflect their profits, but doesnt always have to.
In many ways the biggest companies arent twitter, but rather google and microsoft and others who have deep lines of products. The reason those bigger companies are so profitable is due to the many other products they run - for instance Microsoft does the same thing Amazon does with AWS, and they make a good bit of revenue off of Azure from business to business clients. Good money.
If we are to compare how twitter and reddit are run to google we would have to just talk about youtube alone and what it does for the tech giant. And then realize google has their own cloud infastructure like AWS and doesnt pay anyone a premium for hosting, so ofcourse they are better off - and even they failed with G+ and really countless other social platforms/tools. You tube has been the exception for sure and im not even sure in comparison to their gross profit, how much its responsible for.
A lot of the VC money that funds projects to get off the ground to eventually get bought by these bigger public companies.
The meta used to be - users expected great access for cheap prices, and the only way to eventually make that profitable was to get a ton of users, so a VC would come in and fund a project for years at a complete loss, in hopes that they could scale to enough users to sell it, even while its still losing moeny, so that Google or someone else can try to take it across the finish line as a profitable public service. Millions of dollars spent on something for years that wasnt making any profit but was making alot of people happy and made alot of people talk. It was worth it to some of these tech VC guys - but a lot of that has dried up - moved on to other sectors.
And one of those sectors is AI. AI is still tech - but AI research and funding doesnt give us the platforms we are talking about in this discussion. That is old tech we already have and its been expensive for a long time, and now the money is moving on.
Microsoft is doing great right now in tech - but besides buggy teams they dont really have large platforms for the average person to communicate, especially not for free. That would be my answer to the NASDAQ comment. Your right about what you mention - but im talking about something just a bit tangental. More related to reddit and platforms/companies like it.
If anything we are saying that Amazon/Microsoft/Google as NASDAQ companies are doing great because their investment in the last decade has led them to running a majority of the internet for any business who wants to make money online. But what we are seeing are companies like Reddit who have been public services now have to focus on generating profit to keep their private investors (they arent public yet) who are moving their money to the next big thing and expect a return for the last 10 years of funding a public service at a loss. All while the big nasdaq guys continue to charge and even raise prices throughout this whole time, boosting their bottom line while the applications we actually use struggle to get anywhere.
How u running a platform ?
There are a lot of companies, with a lot of assets, that have business models depending on the willingness and charity of another company. Usually because they think they're not big enough (yet) to worry about. The wake up call is usually pretty brutal. On the plus side, it is usually when the true innovation pops up. The Damus app, for example, which uses the nostr protocol.
all of these platforms are making aggressive monetizing moves that are degrading user experience and shuttering the "open" ethos. For example, Instagram just removed recent posts for hashtags and replaced it with a version of top posts (dubbed "Recent Top Posts") that enables them to mix in posts from users paying to have their content promoted, pushing down or omitting recent posts that don't pay and that don't already have huge followings.
Content will now be siloed and monetized to a degree no one was expecting to happen so suddenly.
Also the reddit ceo is harassing apollo dev
what?! really?
@@Rudxain Yep
@@jondoe6608 That's kinda fu'd up
While I don't use reddit as much anymore, I like the idea of the platform because you can find subreddits for more niche hobbies or topics and you can gain some knowledge from more experienced users that you wouldn't get from a simple google search. I always thought reddit needed a competitor especially when mods had to silence/ban certain types of discussion because it started being against TOS. I hope this API controversy ends up being a blessing in disguise and make people migrate to other alternative platforms.
So basically I had to use Reddit as if it were a search engine cause Google is terrible. But now I can't even do that.
Nice take. Love to see more attention.
I don't think Reddit is concerned so much with their data being scraped by OpenAI or some of the other big name LLMs. But HuggingFace is hosting several hundred datasets & models that utilize Reddit API calls. The ELI dataset which pulls from some "explanation" subreddits was downloaded almost 15k times in the last month and is just a python script that utilizes live API calls to build the dataset. So each of those 15k downloads would be making tens or even hundreds of thousands of API calls to build the individual datasets. That dataset alone is responsible for 60+ trained models. And that is just one of hundreds of Reddit sourced datasets...
But they didn't need to charge so much for the API.
@@me-myself-i787 It's a clear money grab, and probably a good excuse to force everyone onto their shitty mobile app. This has literally been written on the wall for like 6 years, and a big reason why I don't browse reddit.
I hope you feel better and are able to resolve your medical issue soon.
The way you produce content that is succinct and has plenty of meta content, especially memes, is top notch. So many people on RUclips waste my time by not being ready when the camera comes on, or by otherwise lollygagging around during their videos, or by showing me their entire IDE so that I have to squint to even begin to be able to read the screen. Also, your enunciation is great. People could learn big lessons in video production just by watching yours.
To my knowledge as a software engineer, one of the most effective ways to fight bots is to increase their price. The cost of Reddit API dependent bot will skyrocket with this change. Lately, I have had quite a few bots suddenly following me on a regular basis (and I have been using Reddit for years), which this might help combat.
Thanks to this, I can't figure out why completing the square on a quadratic equation yields us the turning point. Can someone please help?
Ever since I've taken a break from Reddit I've been watching more educational youtube videos and been more active in developing some of my technical skills. I still find myself accidentally opening up Reddit here and there for a split second, but it's been a blessing in disguise ngl.
Never go back, serious. It's worse than twitter for causing mental health issues.
Well, programmer humor is closing indefinitely, so maybe we will need to find a new meme source.
ifunny lul
@@BooleanDev Was it positioned before or after reddit in meme stealing pipeline?
@@ra2enjoyer708 reddit users stole from ifunny, and ifunny users stole from reddit. it went both ways and both would say the other steals from them
but i havent been on ifunny for years so it couldve changed
@@BooleanDev it hasn't changed
@@sheepcommander_ lol thought so
Hey Jeff, I'm thinking about to create a blog with blogger. What is the problem with blogs? And blogger?
For those curious, with a quick google search i found out that Google charges 1.5$ per Million API calls (if your site has 1B+ API calls per month, which reddit probably has)...
There are probably even cheaper alternatives. Reddit is literally marking up the price by more than 1000x. Even if Reddit API is 10, or 100 times as expensive, it's still an insane markup.
it's actually crazy to me that the default Reddit app is so abysmol compared to the 3rd party apps like they could've softened the blow and implemented all the good features from the 3rd part apps before pulling this BS, but nope, they're forcing everybody to use their crappy one.
Sounds like a good time to look for an open source alternative?
Sure, it will remain open like 'Open'AI.
What are some reddit open source alternatives?
except you can't drive people from established capitalist media to your open source app. We are at the stage that if you want to create something good, you have to use APIs and provide some unique feature on top of existing content on these huge platforms.
@@svperuzer kbin
Look up Lemmy or Kbin
Hey boss, you said June 12th in the intro...but the Code Report opening frame reads June 11th
My worst nightmare is that my web app falls apart if OpenAi raises their cost for API requests like Reddit
That will definitely happen. Learn to produce content, don't rely on companies or computer programmes to do it for you. If you do, make sure you wrote the programme. They have you by the balls, and whenever there is a captive audience who need a product the lawyers and money men will swarm in like flies.
When I was a kid in the 1980s I was writing BASIC programs. I was making games as a teenager in the 90s. I saw what direction the industry was heading in when I started Uni, I dropped out and served an apprenticeship under an old gardener. I learned to build herbaceous borders and work with stone instead. Now I earn very good money and only work when I want, for nice people making things that last. So many people thought that computers were the future they ignored everything else, now there are massive skills gaps in all sorts of industries begging to be filled. Nobody works for free in my industry, interns are unheard of, I pay the lad that sweeps up £15/hr and nobody works extra hours without extra pay.
0:02 bro you got the date wrong... 😢
oof
this is truly devastating
That because r/DateToday gone private
Sorry to hear of illness Fireship
This is the time to make a tutorial "reddit page creation with T3 stack" or similiar :D xD
moral of the story: Create your own platform
And take away the APIs without warning
it's THAT easy
blogs will come back!
Blogs were ahead of their time.
Create your own platform, then create your own cloud host when the big ones drop you, then make your own payment processor when Paypal and Square refuse to do business with you, then make your own bank when VISA and Mastercard refuse to support your payment processor, then make your own country when the Fed won't certify your bank. 🙃
i don't understand cs much but i love watching your'e videos keep it up man
Small correction: they announced in April that they would begin to charge for API access but didnt say the price. The only gave 30 days' notice about the price.
It's not realistic for the third party apps to create a new business model in 30 days
Whelp Reddit won the war and it didn’t take long. They threatened the mods that they would lose their make believe power and they pretty much all caved, but still gave themselves a pat on the back.
I hope this makes reddit do something about the moderator oligarchy thats been going on there lmao. So few people moderate such large spaces its crazy and endup making an toxic echo chamber.
naive to think that it would change anything lol. replace one group of bozos for another
They'll virtue signal but it's so that they can go back to banning wrongthink with their API tools. I hope reddit doesn't back down. :)
I hope this kills Reddit instead. This should give chances for those alternative sites to rise.
@@firewoodloki What a great solution 🙄
@@Gigusx Corporate will be corporate. Asking for a community built be the community actually makes much more sense than asking corporate to be kind.
Great video, as always ;)
tf!
i thought only 1-2 subreddit was private but nope there are more. hoow can i access this subreddit? i have subbed them even though i am not able to access it :(
2:18 never thought I would hear "providing high quality content" about Reddit
Fireship, r/programmerhumor is not only protesting but also one of those who are closed indefinetly until reddit does something, I fear you may have to wait longer than 48 hours
This is the very big questionmark on the all "serverless" type of the products. All start-ups, who totally relies on cloud for their back-end. If private website can monetise their APIs, then cloud providers can certainly Hike their prices over night.
So, mind set like, "Oh, there is an API for that". Will be over. Developers must have to know databases query skills, and , database management, basic server installation, and have learn to implement their own APIs....
What do you mean programminghumor is down for 48 hours. I remember that they were gonna go indefinitely (and it also said so in the mod message)
because it is indefinitely
Actually programmerhumor shut off indefinitely, so no more sweet programming memes for you Jeff.
wait what?
@@digitalidoit some subreddits are continuing dark indefinitely unless api changes are reversed
Doesn't reddit have a policy on parking popular subreddits and assigning new mods?
@K M I'll take your word for it, not an expert on the matter just read some stickied post by the mods.
No one cares
Elon Musk also outlawed 3rd party apps, not just made it too expensive for them. Reddit didn't do this, but they might as well have.
elon is not a staple of how to do business and treat a community
He also cut the value of twitter in half with that 1 simple trick!
Seems like musk doesn't know how to run a good business... Oh wait!
@@Ownage4lif31 exactly