What started as a planned two-day event for Reddit’s popular communities to protest planned changes that will end popular Reddit apps has turned into an indefinite standoff between Reddit moderators and executives.
Hundreds of subreddits maintained private status beyond the end of the boycott on Reddit and planned to do so indefinitely. A leaked memo from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman confirmed that the platform intends to continue with plans to limit API access to paying customers.
The options discussed with Reddit’s app developers have left them no choice but to shut down tools that thousands of Redditors have benefited from for decades.
Meanwhile, Reddit as reported could go public this year, at an estimated $15 billion, as Huffman keeps focused on the profitability of the comments from a recent AMA.
Screenshot from Reddit, June 2023
The following are messages from the people behind some of Reddit’s top apps offering insight into why they’re being forced to shut them down.
Monthly cost for access to the Reddit API: $2 million
According to publication by Christian Selig, creator of Apollo for Reddit for iOS, with over 170,000 ratings on App storeaccess to Reddit’s API would cost $2 million per month.
The price they gave was $0.24 per 1000 API calls. I quickly put this into my app and saw that it wasn’t far off from Twitter’s exceptionally high API pricing of $12,000, and with my current usage it would cost almost $2 million a month, or over 20 million dollars annually. That’s not an exaggeration, that’s just multiplying the 7 billion requests Apollo made last month by the price per request.
While Selig appreciate Supported by subreddits boycotting the API changes, Apollo plans to shut down on June 30th.
Rumored discussions between the popular app developer and Reddit led to one of the top votes for Huffman. comments on Reddit about the API changes.
Screenshot from Reddit, June 2023
API changes prevent app developers from earning advertising revenue
In addition to paying for access to Reddit’s API, app developers would lose the opportunity to generate ad revenue for their apps.
A publication of the Reddit is Fun (RIF) app about its impending demise, with over 445,000 ratings as of Play Storeexplains it
As part of this, they are blocking ads in third-party apps, which account for the majority of RIF’s revenue. So they want to force a paid subscription model on RIF users. Meanwhile, the official Reddit app still continues to make the vast majority of its money from ads.
Huffman acknowledged RIF and Apollo as popular apps being shut down in the memo leaked by Virgin.
While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we’re still in conversations with some of the others.
RIF too grateful Redditors for their support during the Reddit boycott. Long term users expressed his gratitude and sadness.
I have been using this app for 10 years. I can’t believe it’s coming to an end. Back then, there was no official reddit app (I actually thought this was the official one at first), but even when reddit released their app, I never thought about changing it, because this app is literally perfect .
Thanks to everyone involved in creating this wonderful app.
No more free Reddit apps
Apps like Relay for Reddit for Android, with over 72,000 ratings on the Play Storewill no longer be able to offer a free version for users.
TLDR: There is no way to continue with the free version of Relay; a monthly subscription price of $3 (or less) could be achieved.
The future of Reddit is unclear
Unlike other social networks, Reddit is known for its strong community. Reddit app developers are supported by their users and the moderators of thousands of subreddits.
How long will hundreds of popular Reddit communities stay private? And how will a prolonged Reddit boycott affect Reddit’s organic search traffic and ad revenue? We will follow the data and keep you updated.
Screenshot from Semrush, June 2023
Featured Image: Ira Lichi/Shutterstock
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