I can’t wrap my head around this, it seems so bizarre. The only reason I’m here now is because I joined Apollo right after Reddit changed its app to remove the sort by rising feature. It completely changed my experience on the app for the worse and I sought out an alternative, and I know I’m not the only one that had this complaint. I was a faithful Reddit user/poster on the official app for 6 years until just a few months ago. Why would they make their app less user friendly a few months before announcing the crazy API changes. They drove me away from their app and then drove me away from the site altogether.
Anyone have any thoughts on this? It just makes no sense to me
To start, I don’t agree with what Reddit are doing. However, to play devil’s advocate, the company is losing money. They’re not profitable. What if Reddit had to declare bankruptcy due to it? How do you propose they make money? Asking for donations? Even with offering Reddit Gold, or whatever pay-for entitlements, they aren’t profitable.
ChatGPT is seemingly making a lot of money off of comments on Reddit, and Reddit are giving them that data for free. It makes sense, to me anyway, to charge OpenAI, Microsoft, et al., for access to that data. It seems third party app users were caught in the crossfire. Perhaps that was a lack of foresight, but perhaps it was a calculated (albeit incorrect) risk.
The issue was never charging for the API, it always started off as the insane price, the lack of communication, and the timetable for these changes.
Then it became all about u/spez’s behavior. Most of the subreddits were going to do just a two day blackout but his actions really made people realize what a piece of shit he is.
3rd party apps did not get caught in the crossfire… reddit very specifically targeted them and has crafted the chatgpt narrative as a scapegoat. Chatgpt got the info they needed already reddit won’t see a dime and knows this. What reddit wants is everyone on their app and thats their prerogative… I doubt they expected the backlash from longtime and even newer user, they probably anticipated some pushback from devs and maybe mods but this blew up in their face and rightly so… ugh I’m a bit sensitive over this sorry reddit was a home for me through 3rd party apps for a looooong time and I’m a tad upset over it.
Is there proof that they’re not profitable? I ask because the only place I’ve heard that is when spez has parroted it on interviews. But I question the reality of that because how else would they be in operation for 15 years if they weren’t able to make any profit or were operating at a loss? It just doesn’t make sense.
Granted - I’m not saying they shouldn’t charge for the API access, but I’m curious what their real numbers are.
IMO there is nearly no chance that they are profitable, given how hard they scaled up hiring after getting that fidelity funding in 2021. They were massively overvalued and I’m surprised Fidelity only cut their valuation by 40%.
I can’t imagine what they’ve done that would have actually brought in revenue. Ads and awards sure, but new reddit, the 1p app, etc are all garbage. Revenue per employee must be in the shitter.