Reddit isn’t profitable, despite having more than 50 million daily active users. In preparation for an IPO, CEO Steve Huffman put the platform’s API

  • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This precisely. It wasn’t about charging for the API. It was about charging an exorbitant amount for the API, giving devs a tiny amount of time to come up with a solution, and then belittling the user and moderator communities.

    I don’t want to be a part of a website that treats its own community with so much disdain and spite.

    • HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      It oozed bad faith. I’m surprised they didn’t just say “API is dead, here’s a new different product” if they were really eager to charge LLM scrapers the moon for training data, or kill apps.

      I suspect someone in legal told them that would be a risk-- if they can’t farm out accessibility issues on third party apps anymore, I could see them having ADA compliance issues.

      It looks like they took the “constructive dismissal” model-- make it hostile enough that the “voluntarily” abandon the platform. Then it’s not Reddit’s fault all the apps left, and why they seemed to scramble to find a poster child “accessibility” app and give it a sweetheart deal, so they aren’t completely exposed.