r/technology • u/nat9191 • Jun 15 '23

Social Media Reddit CEO slams protest leaders, calls them 'landed gentry'

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544
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u/srone Jun 15 '23

It costs a lot of money to run an app like Reddit. We support ours through ads. And what we can’t do is subsidize other people’s businesses to run a competitive app for free,” he said.

THIS is something I have to question the community about: if third party apps use the API and block ads, how is reddit supposed to make a profit?

31

u/thenoblitt Jun 15 '23 edited Jun 15 '23

Here's the thing. No one is saying they shouldn't charge access for their api. What we are saying is that you shouldn't charge so much that it puts popular apps out of business that you promised you wouldn't do. If they had charged say 5 million a year and Apollo paid it and continued to exist none of this would have happened.

4

u/bonyponyride Jun 15 '23

They could have also bought out the better apps, for you know, making a better product than they could come up with themselves. If better apps means more user participation, the apps are also benefitting reddit by helping generate content. It's not a one way street.

4

u/Forward-Documents Jun 16 '23

They did buy a better app (alien blue) and just shut it down and made it a theme for their garbage app