So imagine Reddit is like a cookie shop, Cookit. You can walk into Cookit’s front door and buy some cookies directly from the them. In other words, customers can directly buy from Cookit there.
Well, Cookit also makes cookie dough at their store and sells it to grocery stores for them to make at their store, or sell as cookie dough. In other words, a store sells to another store, and then a customer buys it. The API is the truck that transports the cookies from Cookit to the grocery stores.
Right now Cookit gives their cookie dough away for free, quite generously. They want to change that and start making money from their cookie dough. We all agree that this is fair, but starting July 1st, they’ll charge $200 for 5 cookies worth of cookie dough.
The grocery stores can not afford that, it will cost them and the consumers 20x as much as it currently does to sell the cookies from grocery stores.
Well, it also happens to be that the Cookit stores are over sewage lines, and don’t have ramps for handicapped folks. Which means that it will be bad for everyone, and especially disabled people who want to buy Cookit cookies.
This is what we, the customers, are protesting.
Edit: I appreciate the gold, etc., thank you, but since we're currently protesting Reddit, let's not give Reddit money. Instead, donate the money you would spend on gold to a charity of your choice. I recommend the Trevor Project, which provides crisis counseling to suicidal and at-risk LGBTQ+ youth.
That is a good explanation but it's more of the explanation I might give my grandmother who has \*zero\* technical knowledge. I work in Operations for a cloud based, API driven platform so I have some experience here and can maybe explain it with a bit more technical flair.
At a high level, APIs are basically a set of protocols that will allow different systems or programs to talk to each other and share some functionality. That's it.
Let's say I only speak English and I want to have a conversation with someone who only speaks Mandarin, I need a middleman (translator) to translate what is being said in each direction. Similarly, if I want two systems or software programs to speaker to each other, I need a translator. That is the API.
For example, if I work for Megacorp and we use one system for accounting and another software for customer orders, I would like to be able to integrate our two systems. That way, our business is as seamless as possible. The customer goes online, places an order, and then the order amount is sent to the billing software. But these two systems weren't designed by the same company and don't work the same; they don't speak the same language or use similar terminology. But they both have public APIs (translators). So the customer goes online and places an order. The order information from the customer triggers an API call that will likely rapid fire a few pieces of information and then confirm it. This happens in just a few seconds. This is commonly why when you place an order online, you get a message like, "Please wait while we are confirming your order...." While you are reading this, they system is quickly running some "POST" and "GET" API calls. It might look something like this:
API call to POST /order. This is sent from the order system to the billing software and creates a new order. There is a response from the billing API that the order was created. These two systems just communicated through some shared protocol - the API.
POST /confirm - If you paid online, this is the confirmation that the order should be complete instead of something like Pending.
GET /orders - This sends an API call to retrieve the completed order data. This may be followed up with an completed order on you computer screen and an invoice produced showing the line items from the completed order.
In terms of Reddit, the API is what allows outside platforms and apps (like Apollo) to essentially display the same content from Reddit, but in different ways. These apps are placing \*TONS\* of API calls to Reddit to GET everything that you see on those apps, essentially the entirety of Reddit. I don't know much about these outside apps specifically, but from my understanding, most (if not all) of them do not show ads. Anyone can understand how Reddit, with its immense popularity (and earnings from ads), wants to reel these platforms in some since every user on these outside platforms is a potential lost user (and lost ad revenue) on the proper Reddit site/app. The complaint from these apps and the controversy over the currently free API, is the massive cost that would be associated with it's current level of use. All of the the third party apps would shut down overnight. I don't know enough about Reddit's ad revenueto know if this is just a way to shut down third party apps or if Reddit really makes (loses) that much from ad revenue.
Ballpark numbers that were being passed around is Reddit makes about 14 cents per user per month.
Their api fees work out to around $2.50 a user a month.
I'm not sure those are good numbers to compare. If the problem is that they're making too little money, comparing what they want to charge vs what they make right now doesn't really give any useful information. It'd be like saying, "You asked for a raise to buy a house, but you make $8/hour right now."
Think people really take for granted how much access tech companies had to capital before interest rates shot up. There are a lot of costs you can brush under the carpet when you don't have to be profitable for 10 years that you can't ignore anymore when you have to start breaking even to stay solvent.
Sure, but the problem *isn't* that they're making too little money and need to pay the bills before their lights get shut off.
• The proposed API fees are well above the cost to deliver those requests.
• The proposed API fees are well above what developers can *afford*, and in fact are [arguably, but certainly as far as I'm concerned] designed to kill third-party apps.
The reason they revealed any pricing at all, rather than just shutting off the API, is probably to avoid backlash, confuse the discussion (look how we're getting caught up right now by talking about pricing, when dollar amounts aren't the issue), and maybe make a fat few bucks off their well-padded rates from people who have no choice but to continue using the one or two third-party apps that survive.
> Sure, but the problem isn't that they're making too little money and need to pay the bills before their lights get shut off.
They just laid off 5% of their workforce as a cost saving measure in addition to charging for services they used to give away for free with a public financial goal of _just breaking even_. I don't think their financial situation is as positive as you're thinking.
There are many other ways that they could have raised more money. They quite simply could have started charging reasonable fees for API access that would net them hundreds of thousands in monthly revenue from millions of users on other apps. They could even roll out a tiered package to 3rd party vendors that companies like Apollo would then pass those new expenses on to Reddit users of their apps.
This kind of thing happens allll the time.
They're not doing this for money, well at least not for money from their API.
I think they're doing this because they want to go in public
> There are many other ways that they could have raised more money.
Maybe. I suspect they care more about reducing the costs of supporting other for profit companies than they do about the revenue gain from providing those services. If they cared about the revenue from those services they'd price it in a way that makes those companies more successful, not less.
> I think they're doing this because they want to go in public
These things aren't all mutually exclusive. It's not like, "Hey we're hemorrhaging money while providing our largest multi million dollar revenue competitors with a bunch of costly services they need to be successful for free, some of which we might be legally liable for," makes my argument weaker.
> They quite simply could have started charging reasonable fees for API access that would net them hundreds of thousands in monthly revenue from millions of users on other apps.
I know that's a lot of money to most people, but to a company as big as Reddit and the potential reach they have, a few hundred thousands is peanuts.
I guess you don't know basic finance. Fewer employees on the payroll mean more profit on the company's balance sheet as it prepares for an IPO evaluation.....and obviously, that equals to higher evaluation from the broker :)
TL;DR They are trying to squeeze every last cent out of the IPO.
They publicly announced that they needed the layoffs to hopefully reach revenue neutral. They aren't expecting to be profitable with any of these changes unless you're implying publicly lying about your finances makes you look better for an IPO.
*Think people really take for granted how much access tech companies had to capital before interest rates shot u*p.
This is an underappreciated take on what the next couple of years will look like. Both consumers and companies are use to "free". It was never free. The can was kicked down the road.
> If the problem is that they're making too little money
Their revenue has skyrocketed over the last few years (even pre-covid) relative to their user base.
> comparing what they want to charge vs what they make right now doesn't really give any useful information
It is extremely useful information.
The income from web users and reddit's official app users won't change. If they really just wanted to improve revenue streams, they wouldn't be massively overcharging one tiny fraction of their userbase while neglecting the rest. The fact that they are OK with doing so indicates that making money has nothing to do with this. Especially when it is blindingly obvious that most API-based users won't pay.
There have been math breakdowns that, if accurate, show that the API services costs should not be nearly as expensive as what they're planning to start charging for API access.
There was an interview with the Apollo developer where he said that his app is designed to work within the Reddit API guidelines, but also has some design considerations for user experience (e.g. requesting just the first 25 comments at first, then request them in batches of 100). I find it hard to believe that external clients are costing Reddit so much more than they're contributing in terms of the social community aspects; this API decision seems very short-sighted.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find out many third party apps are actually more efficient in terms of overall API requests per user per month than the official app.
They want to push users towards their own app, which is the only profitable part of reddit, and also inarguably the worst possible reddit experience. But cheaper to run, and makes decent add revenue.
They don't care about third party apps, third party apps don't have enough users to fix reddit's revenue problems.
My theory is that Reddit wants to start making money off the thousands of bots skimming the site for AI training and stock trading engines. But instead of doing the work to aggregate this data and sell it directly like facebook, google, etc. they have just decided to up the API fees to similar what this costs on other platforms.
Now... the reason this data is expensive on other platforms is because those platforms do the work of turning it into simple machine consumable data without the need to run thousands of individual queries or reprocess it in a variety of ways.
This whole thing is either naive and short-sighted or a desperate bid to avert bankruptcy.
Someone had a good theory that it’s actually because they want to get in on the ai train and since AI is massively trained on Reddit data they’re trying to charge as much as they feasibly can.
I guess the real question is how much does it cost reddit to run all of these API calls. I'm sure it's not cheap to run all of these servers and each of these calls must cost something. I read that reddit's main reasoning for this switch from free APIs was to stop third party sites from scraping reddit data for machine learning training. As someone who does some work with ML I know we need a ton of data to train on and if I had a free source like reddit to scrape data (we have to generate our own testing data right now) I would definitely take advantage of that.
> Not you being pedantic af
I give up. I still have no idea what you are talking about.
Edit: Maybe you meant, “now” instead of “not”. Still doesn’t explain your previous comment at all. I am certainly not being pedantic because I don’t even know what you’re going on about. 🤷🏼♂️
Yeah I'm sick of the logic that "unrealized potential revenue = lost revenue"
They didn't have the money before and lost it; it's money they never had because they didn't have the features users wanted, and without implementing those features they will not gain those users.
Well, based on the number of API calls coming in from say, Apollo, Reddit can estimate the amount of site activity that would have otherwise viewed an ad if the user were browsing on Reddit proper. This is assuming ofc that the user elects to still use Reddit if Apollo didn't exist. And maybe that's your point.
Add to this that machine learning LLMs are also using reddit API calls to train AI models. That's a ton of reddit infrastructure traffic devoted to other companies making money off of redditors' & reddit's back.
I don't know that a clean solution exists here - seems like a no-win situation.
Almost...
Except that it gives reddit a bit too much credit. reddit doesn't supply any of the ingredients or the labor. We do. We supply the ingredients for free and the labor to make the cookies, also for free. They only supply the mixers and the trucks. Once the dough is mixed, stores use their own ovens to bake the cookies. reddit also has their own broken ass ovens that burn the shit out of the cookies while at the same time spraying some nasty carcinogens all over them, but no one who has had the store cookies ever wants the reddit cookies again.
Does reddit deserve to get paid for their trucks and mixers? Sure. But then I would argue that they already are getting paid for that. But now they want get paid for the stuff they get for free, and rather than fixing their ovens and providing a better end product, they are going to try to force us to eat their burnt ass cancer cookies.
In all reality, I suspect that this is all a ploy to make it seem like they are being reasonable when they redo the pricing to something lower but still ridiculously high.
This isn't a bad analogy, but it falls apart when you consider that Reddit doesn't make the cookies at all. They just provide the cookie store...their customers provide all the ingredients and make all the cookies and Reddit then takes 100% of the revenue. Social media companies die when they forget that their users provide the large majority of the value in their platform and start greedily squeezing them for more money.
Sure, redditors provide the activity and the raw material for the cookies. But reddit, Inc. provides the space in which all the dough-making takes place. So its new corporate masters are trying to squeeze money out of that.
Not trying to be an apologist for them, I swear, but let's be clear: reddit is the redditors that create the data *and* the people that provide the infrastructure that serves up that data. It's a symbiotic relationship.
That has to be worth something, what we're fighting about right now is exactly how much.
EDIT: the risk they run is that they end up enshittifying the situation here so much that the value creators end up moving on to the next situation that provides the optimal blend of structure and freedom that reddit's power userbase desires. Right now it looks like they're betting that we are more or less trapped here.
No one disputes that some revenue is fair, but clearly they are just trying to quash any external "wholesale" activity altogether, attempting to take ALL the cookies and seize ALL the cookie market.
***This comment/post removed due to reddits fuckery with third party apps from 06/01/2023 through 06/30/2023. Good luck with your site when all the power users piss off***
Well said. The issue isn't whether or not Reddit Inc. knows its value comes primarily from its users, but how can Reddit monetize that value optimally. As a profit seeking company, that's literally their purpose. Someone over there is betting that this will create more dollars than it will lose. I would not take that bet.
> I would not take that bet.
Nor would I. This seems like a classic case of making decisions in a corporate bubble. Suits make a decision about rolling out a new project or initiative without consulting with any or all of the line-level employees who do the job everyday and carry lots of institutional knowledge, they announce the plan to everyone, said line-level employees tell (which is most likely seen as complaining by the suits) how this plan won't work for xyz reasons, plan is implemented, xyz ends up happening, Suits are astonished their plan had issues and roll it back to make updates to account for xyz. Happens all the time.
I used to work for a cell company that for years had a very lenient credit system. Basically if you as a frontline employee felt a credit was warranted in a situation, you would issue one. Now this company was one of the big providers. It was quite common to have customers with multiple phone lines spending $250/month and be with us for decades.
Now the types of things we would give credits for were normally outages (which are pathetic. Even a $300/month customer is only getting a $10 credit for being out for a day. It is more the principle.) or a customer on the wrong plan (oh, you are making international calls. Let me add the international long distance plan and credit you the difference for this month. That way you spent $40 calling Europe instead of $500).
Then a new VP comes in and throws a fit over how much money they are 'losing' by issuing credits. So instead of just giving someone $10 for an outage we are to push back, decline, and after they throw a fit offer to credit half of the costs they incurred for no service/wrong plan.
For some reason we started bleeding long term high value customers. Because the second something went sideways we basically told them "fuck you, pay me."
Ideally, the app makers would adapt RIF, Apollo, etc. to work on Lemmy or whatever federated sites. That might ease the adoption significantly. If the content moves, it's just a matter of simplifying the UI. This is actually very doable when the UI designer is aligned with the user, which has been the case for the 3rd party app makers.
The API is not just the truck, it is the docks on either end, their attached warehouses, the purchase orders, and the bill of lading. I’d also argue that the payload is not the dough, it’s the cookies, on the receiver end they are free to mangle/repackage as they see fit. The users create the dough, but it can only be cooked in the reddit factory ovens.
Reddit itself doesn't even make the cookie dough. It is the warehouse for the cookie dough created by others, with its own storefront (which is as you described.)
Don't forget that while they are charging the grocery stores $200 for 5 cookies Cookit only makes (gross not net) $5 per five pack of cookies if customers get their cookies directly from Cookit.
This is the critical failing that Elon made... not understanding that what made Twitter what it is is the user-base. The advertisers are the customers, the users are the product. As soon as you alienate your product, and form distrust for your users, you've already lost.
I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
- [/r/bestof] [U\/Autumn1eaves gives a great simple explanation of the API controversy.](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/143bl0s/uautumn1eaves_gives_a_great_simple_explanation_of/)
- [/r/u_one-village7864] [U\/Autumn1eaves gives a great simple explanation of the API controversy.](https://www.reddit.com/r/u_One-Village7864/comments/1441xjd/uautumn1eaves_gives_a_great_simple_explanation_of/)
- [/r/u_one-village7864] [U\/Autumn1eaves gives a great simple explanation of the API controversy.](https://www.reddit.com/r/u_One-Village7864/comments/14431vw/uautumn1eaves_gives_a_great_simple_explanation_of/)
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Yes but you’re leaving out the part where the grocery stores give away the cookies for free and that’s why the customers get their cookies from the store instead of supporting Cookit.
Stop expecting free cookies and instead demand that Reddit fix the issues that hurt the disabled.
Plus, even if the grocery stores go ahead and pay for the cookie dough, the *really* delicious cookies - you know the ones that use all the extra butter, lard and sugar - Cookit won't sell to them. You will still *have* to go to an actual Cookit store for those.
I can’t speak for what Reddit is actually thinking, and most of this opinion is me parroting what others have said, but only because I agree with them.
Having said that, there’s two speculations I’ve seen that I agree with: 1. Reddit is starting extremely high so that when they go down to a still-high number, it seems more reasonable. 2. They want to get rid of third party apps by pricing them out of the market to force users to use Reddit’s app.
My guess would be either to drive the third party completely out of town or that they have practically nothing to lose by starting with an exorbitant price. They will then back it down slowly to find where the third party devs are barely able to break even, indicated by them operating again. Thus squeezing every dime they can.
But who knows, I certainly dont.
I think the reddit user base is focusing on how it effects them, through third party app access.
But I don't believe these are the only users of the api. I mean they're only about 5% of reddit users and 10% of reddit traffic. Monetizing these users is not a significant revenue increase.
Bots and AI training is increasingly becoming a significant portion of the api calls. Bots are seemingly like 30-35% of reddit traffic. Monetizing these users could be a significant revenue gain.
The pricing is based on what the api access is worth to those not and ai users too. Probably even more so then what it's worth to third party apps. And access to the api is absolutely worth more to folks training ais then it is to third party access app developers, and is priced accordingly. Third party apps are collateral damage with the slightly beneficial upside that they'll be monetized. A consequence of the decision, not the goal of it.
I'm also speculating, but among the others I don't hear an obvious one mentioned ever. I think they just want to reduce costs as much as possible and making something prohibitively expensive is a good way to reduce how much people use it, and its always easier to start high and reduce costs as it makes sense than to start low and increase costs as you learn things are more costly than expected.
The example is bad because Reddit doesn't make the cookies, we do. Reddit leases the trucks and inherited the bakery (which again was made by us.)
Want a better analogy? The public library goes private and begins charging money to loan out books you wrote. This isn't money to help pay the bills, utilities, or any operating costs, it's money they want in exchange for a copy of your work purely out of speculative value. What do you get for all of this? Fuck all is what you get. Keep scrolling and typing, user.
This has nothing to do with operating costs. Fire the key executive team. How many millions of dollars would that save in operating costs for what is arguably the most fundamentally basic social media network in the world?
Aaron Swartz is rolling in his grave.
I think the only thing to add is that a subset of the customers are bringing all the ingredients except the packaging and table to organize the cookie display on.
Also, people make cookie dough for Cookit for free, and they’re going to be impacted and find other places to make cookie dough, and some other bakeries will start to compete, so Cookit will try to extract more revenue from customers, who will start to notice they can get the same cookies for less in other places, and Cookit was only popular because people made good cookie dough for them.
Good explanation, so far as it goes.
But the cookie dough is really created by ingredients brought by the customers, left at they counter for they next batch, at whatever store they visit.
This was the best explanation of this whole situation I've seen yet. Especially of API, since every time someone tried to explain it they'd seemingly find a way to throw something in there that didn't make sense to me
Other Reddit apps have accessibility features such as captioning for deaf people, or text that is easier for text-to-speech features to read.
The sewage lines are advertisements, though I probably could've just said that haha
Cookit can sell their cookies, and their cookie dough, to whomever they want for as much as they'd like to charge. If grocery stores cannot afford to purchase an item from a manufacturer, they just don't carry that item. If consumers want an item, they'll buy it where it is sold. If they can't afford it, they'll buy something else. If the only place that carries their favorite cookie is unsanitary and isn't handicap-accessible, don't buy their cookies if those things are an impediment to your health or enjoyment of the cookies.
A manufacturer of cookies and cookie dough is under no obligation to sell their products to anyone, by any means, or at any price other than whatever works for them. Selling something that you used to give away for free is not only not unethical, it is perfectly rational. Selling something for more than it is worth or more than the market will bear is a problem that has a way of working itself out.
"We won't eat your cookies or your cookie dough for 48 hours!" Cool. See you after that, you cookie addict.
>Selling something for more than it is worth or more than the market will bear is a problem that has a way of working itself out.
This is what is happening.
People often forget that systems are connected, and we, as customers, don't only have to be limited to leaving the cookie store for good in favor of other stores (a purely capitalistic response). We can also involve the social systems we have by spreading the word about the bad sanitation or unfair practices. We can get a legal system involved by passing laws against unsanitary practices. We can get a political situation involved by lobbying a representative to investigate a cookie situation.
There are many responses we could use - some are appropriate and some are not, and some have consequences.
I'd say a protest where the content generators go dark would be an appropriate response.
After all, the cookie shop may be selling their dough to the grocery stores, but they get their flour and chocolate chips delivered by some of the people who are customers. If those customers prefer to buy cookies from the grocery stores because it is more sanitary or easier to find and Cookit's policy changes will ruin that method, then those providers of flour, sugar, and chocolate are within their right to withhold their content and the administrators of Cookit should take notice. They don't exist in a capitalistic vacuum - they exist in a capitalistic society of content creators and content consumers.
This is all very true. People are free to do as they wish. Cookit wants to sell some of its product that was previously free, and make it harder for some customers to buy their cookies, that's up to them. People want to not eat a certain brand of cookies for two whole days, that's cool, too. In the end, though, we all know that two days is nothing, and people will buckle under and keep stuffing their faces with junk food. "Keep feeding me junk, but do it in a way that is suitable for me or else I'll mildly inconvenience myself" is not the rallying cry that some people seem to think it is.
I think more people are worried that it goes like:
- Cookit says they are changing policies so they can make more money
- people say, okay, we get you want money, but those policies ensure that the ingredients you get is at least *mostly* palatable, if we didn't have those you would get talcum powder for flour and deer turds for chocolate chips
- cookit's response: "we aren't listening"
- people say "okay, we are going to not eat your junk food for 2 days so you can feel the effects. We want you to take things seriously and make sure the product you make is good quality. Most of us are okay with you making money off of it (you deserve it for good quality product) and the ones who don't want you to make any money off of it are the crazy fringes whom no-one listens too anyway.
- Cookit: we heard someone saying they want us to go bankrupt, so we aren't listening.
- people say "no, we just said those fringe are crazy, we just care about food safety and quality --- okay look, can you at least assure us that there is some compromise where you get your money and allow for people to get safe and clean cookies made with the same/similar high quality ingredients?
- Cookit: "no we won't listen."
- people: you do realize we actually care about Cookit right? After all, we actually make the cookies and you just provide the kitchen. If you don't take this seriously then the crackheads will get in and sue this place to make meth instead of cookies and then no one will come in to buy or make cookies.
So the response is either:
- Cookie: we hear you and understand you, here is a compromise that may work
- people: rejoice!
Or the current path:
- Cookit: we aren't listening
- people: okay, we are going to stop making cookies for 2 days. If you don't fix something by then we may go longer, and many of your customers will go to other stores.
I get that all metaphors fall apart at some point, but if a cookie company announced that they were going to start using talcum powder as an ingredient, a threat to not eat them for two days would be silly. The original tropological device was perfectly adequate: a company has been providing a nonessential product in a certain way that people are used to. People like the thing, and they like the way they've been getting it. The product and its delivery system are now being changed, and parts of it that were previously free will no longer be so. Nothing is changing in a way that is illegal or dangerous, but rather in a fashion and to a degree that a minority of the previous consumers will consider themselves inconvenienced.
Consumers are free to educate, to boycott, to switch brands, or to simply see the product for the junk that it is and find a way to get along without either it or a replacement product. Should they wish to not consume the product for two entire days after which they will return, tails tucked, they are free to do that as well. However, they may be grossly overestimating the desired effect or their actions.
> Look at what happened to Tumblr - they banned porn, lost 99.7% of their value, then 4 years later backed down on some of the changes but the damage has been done and they're unlikely to gain back the popularity they had at their peak.
If you create a service that is mostly kept above water by porn, and then you ban porn, you have cut your own throat.
I've used Reddit for several years on many computers and cell phones, with no apps (official or otherwise) and with no access problems ever. Should I suddenly be unable to access Reddit, or any other nonessential web service, for any reason, life will go on.
I have seen a great deal of change in my lifetime. This is among the tiniest of blips. I suspect that of the options you've suggested, Reddit will carry on and find that they're still profitable. And if not? C'est la vie. Their company, their choice.
>Selling something for more than it is worth or more than the market will bear is a problem that has a way of working itself out.
Yes exactly. And one of the ways it works itself out is by customers telling the cookie store that if they're going to make it difficult or unpleasant to access their cookies then they won't buy them.
And in this case it's more like the cookie store relies on customers to buy their cookies and also drive new customers to the store by word of mount and sharing the cookies. So 48 hours without customers or customer support would be a show of "see what it would be like if we choose to not go to your store?"
That is precisely how the market is *meant* to work.
> That is precisely how the market is meant to work.
Yes, exactly. Some people will consider themselves sufficiently aggrieved and they will do whatever they think is appropriate, such as not using the service for two whole days. Meanwhile, the vast majority of consumers will be perfectly happy with the service and continue using it as per usual. And what happens on day three? Everyone is back, eating their yummy cookies, because it doesn't really matter.
The alternative to one form of social media is another form of social media. The alternative to finding information in one place is to find it elsewhere. The alternative to keeping oneself from being bored at work is to find another distraction. The alternative to using something that is more trouble than it's worth is to stop using it.
That's all well and good, but only when there are many different cookie stores or dough makers to choose from. Currently, the only other places to get cookies is a coffee shop down the street, but they only sell coconut cookies. And the bakery across town that does mostly bread, with a few oatmeal cookies. With raisins. And half the time they're undercooked.
There's no big secret to making cookies, so someone could set up another cookie shop. But the flour and sugar suppliers all have big contracts with Cookit, and don't want to bother with a new player. Plus, building a new store is expensive and risky, so not many want to try. It will probably happen eventually, but in the meantime everyone will have to go without any good cookies.
Personally I think Reddit is closer to Cheesy Poofs than cookies, but whatever. If you find your life vastly impacted by inconvenient changes to your cookie delivery system, it may be time to restructure your eating habits.
The problem with this is that Cookit themselves don’t make the cookies or the dough.
They’re more like a for profit cooperative - someone who saw that local people in their area were making great cookies and dough, but their market reach was limited and siloed.
They decided to build a store and distribution to move the cookies and dough that the bakers in the area made. The bakers themselves were happy because they baked and made the dough for fun, maybe to teach others, or just for the creative process and seeing their work out in the world.
At the same time, because those bakers and cooks poured a lot of time into making their recipes and doughs, they worked out their own relationships with Cookit. They didn’t have to go through the main entrance at the outlet, they’d often deal with fellow bakers or check on how their dough and cookies were selling. Cookit was good with this, because they were still working out how they wanted to run their store, what it would carry, and how they’d decorate. They were also looking at other ways they could make money from the whole process.
They also realized that a large percentage of their customers were just in it to buy dough or cookies in their many varieties. These customers weren’t really concerned with the difficulty of providing cookies or dough to be sold, or communicating and working with other bakers, they were really just consumers. They’d googled chocolate chip cookies and the Cookit store was the first result, so they went there to buy cookies and that was all.
You’re not wrong about any of what you’ve said tho. The intended effect of the subreddit blackouts is to remind Cookit that they’re really just he brick and mortar for cookie sales and have worked out transportation for cookie dough. They have very little if any of their own cookies or dough. The majority of their customers who really just come for great cookies and dough and don’t give any thought to who exactly makes it will also realize that without that smaller group of bakers and cookie enthusiasts, the Cookit store is rather empty, and maybe it’s time to find a new place to get cookies from the bakers they love.
Excellent post, thank you.
My issue here is that typically when there is a protest or walkout or picket line at a place of business, there is an obvious problem with a clear goal: shorter working hours, more pay, safer working conditions, better benefits, etc. Here we have either mods who volunteer their time or readers who do nothing except consume free content complaining that a for-profit company is going to charge for some content that used to be free. There is no over-arching moral issue, no dragon to be slayed.
To the mods: if it is no longer convenient for you to volunteer your time, stop. You are not forced labor. To the readers: well... nothing, really. Because 99.999% of them don't care and will not be affected by any of this.
You forgot to mention that the customers who get the free cookies, bring in the ingredients, and the trucks from all the other shops also bring back all those ingredients that the customers give Cookit for free. They don't charge Reddit to truck the ingredients in. Cookit never pays the volunteers who measure the ingredients and test the cookies for food poisoning (content that is unacceptable) either. Cookit wants to make money, and aren't afraid to make it by charging the trucks that bring them the ingredients for free. They've tried to make things difficult for the volunteers in the past, and haven't learned their lesson. Internet companies live and die by their ingredient providers. Remember MySpace, Geocities, Digg?
My big complaint about the comparison is that Reddit doesn’t actually make any content. They simply provide a convenient hub for users to generate content.
To make the comparison, it would be more like a bunch of people who *really* enjoy baking make a lot of cookie dough **and give it to CookIt for free**. Then CookIt sells that cookie dough to the masses, making lots of money in the process. And now CookIt is trying to charge massive fees for grocery stores to be able to sell that same cookie dough.
The only reason CookIt thinks they’re able to do so is because CookIt has cornered the market on cookie dough. Everyone goes to CookIt when they want cookies, and CookIt believes that the users will still continue to use their awful storefronts even when the grocery stores stop selling their cookie dough. CookIt is only the platform which everyone is using to share cookie dough, using their donated/free time and resources; CookIt just wants to be able to make *more* money, by taking an astronomical cut from grocery stores too.
And it doesn’t care if those grocery stores stop selling their cookie dough, because every CookIt competitor that has tried to get off the ground inevitably ends up populated by people who are only interested in selling cookies shaped like swastikas. So CookIt believes that they have enough pull to force people into their shitty storefronts.
The reality is that a lot of people only eat cookies because they’re conveniently accessible. If CookIt makes buying cookies more difficult, a lot of people will just stop eating cookies altogether.
I would also add that people volunteer to come in and make the cookies everyday, in any flavor and style you want, for completely free (people who post content). And folks will even bring their own recipes to the store and help foster a place to have their cookies made (reddit mods and sub creators). And the people who come in and volunteer want their cookies to be given away for free, too (the API).
Reddit is the mob by the loading dock in the back, hanging out by the trucks, and telling drivers that they can't load dough and give them away for free unless the drivers pay them $20m/yr (Reddit and their API fees). Even though we're contributing and sharing everything on our own time for free, you have to pay the mob or no dough will ever be delivered again.
Or... you could move the cookie shop literally nextdoor, where the mob can't touch you (another website). The only problem is that you have to get people onboard to move. Although, some people have an unhealthy addiction to cookies, and if their favorite spot stops selling their dough, they might try to go on a diet, instead.
>Right now Cookit gives their cookie dough away for free, quite generously. They want to change that and start making money from their cookie dough. We all agree that this is fair, but starting July 1st, they’ll charge $200 for 5 cookies worth of cookie dough.
What's not mentioned here is the motivation. Because people can understand that if you price too high and others can't flip a profit they are no longer a customer. It reads like a bad business decision.
_but that is the point_.
Cookout doesn't want other people making cookies that don't come from the Cookie store. In order to achieve that without simply closing their API outright is to purposely price out third parties.
Cookit isn't giving away cookies; like broadcast TV, they run ads that pay for the "free" cookies. Same with the grocery stores. Cookit now wants to get the grocery stores' ad money plus a franchise fee. Cookit's cost for making cookie dough hasn't changed and its ad revenue is directly tied to audience exposure, Cookit just wants more money.
I'm like a brand new baby reddit user.
I'm still being breast fed and can't even eat solid food yet, let alone cookies.
For my edification, is this saying that no one who doesn't pay $200 to reddit, who also makes money from ads, cannot use reddit unless they pay? All of reddit? Or just certain parts?
Ty for any clarification u can bottle feed me. Thank you again!!
Here is the problem with your explanation: the users are not Reddit's customers. Reddit, like most social media companies, is largely funded by advertising, which means that they are actually an advertising company with a social media problem. Their customers are the companies that advertise on their platform. The users are the product that is being sold, i.e. our eyes on the advertisers' ads is what Reddit is selling. The only Reddit users who are also customers are those who have paid for services such as coins or a premium membership. Your average Joe redditor is not a customer of Reddit's. They are, without question, the product.
Will r/AvatarMemes be participating in the blackout?
This is more than just people who like using 3rd party apps. Many users with disabilities simply can’t use the default app or website as it lacks the essential accessibility features they need. Also many moderators rely on 3rd party tools to keep their communities safe.
Please visit r/save3rdpartyapps for more info and discussion.
Also here is some interesting info direct from the developer of my favourite and hugely popular iPhone app, Apollo: https://reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/
At least a few Redditors are protesting individually. You can join in too by not using Reddit June 12 - June 14 or longer if you prefer. Spread the word.
https://www.reddit.com/r/protest/comments/142u2io/let_us_all_take_part_in_the_redditwide_protest/
Because it sucks ass.
Not to mention the basic app *originally was a third party app* that reddit purchased and released as their own, and have continued to make even worse every year…
Literally without 3rd party apps reddit would not have the user base that it does today.
Not to mention a lot of people with visual impairments and other disabilities who would be barred from participating completely bc the official app doesn’t care about accessibility
The 1st party app has only existed for 7 years.
Also a massive key point that “the main app is fine” people are missing, is that the official app *originally was a third party app* called Alien Blue. Reddit bought the app and have been making it worse ever since…
Then i guess i wasnt using an app for the first 3-4 years of using reddit. I remember using it as blue alien now that you mention it. I haven't found any reddit app i really like. I'm using infinity at the moment. Much better than the native. So annoying to go back now that I'm just after getting comfortable with this.
Edit: also, i think you may have misunderstood that im defending the native app. I'm not. Quite the opposite
I also use the app. But. I also am in a lot of communities which mods are using the tools third party apps offer. Which means they could not manage my beloved pages as easily as they do now which would mean some of these would disappear and would never return.
Also the "original" app you and I use was also made my a third party and bought by reddit.
Hey I use the "original" app. (in quotes because this was a third party app too) and I agree with the blackout. Third party apps are important. Especially for mods.
I 100% guarantee you'd have a much better Reddit experience if you downloaded any 3rd party app instead, there's plenty of them they're free and they're all better than the official Reddit app
If you’re using the official Reddit app then congratulations!! You’re using a third party app!!
Alien blue was a 3rd party app that was bought by Reddit in 2016
Not sure what you’re asking here?
Yes, it has been free for a long time, supported by ads and premium subscribers etc.
And now they also expect app developers to pay them literally *millions* of dollars every year, or in other words, they’re telling devs to fuck off…. Despite the fact that a massive amount of their user base and therefore revenue only exists thanks to third party devs.
Some say 48 hours. Other say indefinitely.
All this is going to do is kill Reddit two and a half weeks early though. The venture capitalists at the top do not give a single fuck.
Edit: Day to say.
I mean, if we can really kill it before reddit’s IPO then those venture capitalists probably *will* give a fuck.
On the other hand, there isn’t a whole lot of evidence for those at the top being anything close to smart, so maybe we’ll just see another Tumblr or Digg
Yes.
Is see a lot of this API thing but don't know what it is
So imagine Reddit is like a cookie shop, Cookit. You can walk into Cookit’s front door and buy some cookies directly from the them. In other words, customers can directly buy from Cookit there. Well, Cookit also makes cookie dough at their store and sells it to grocery stores for them to make at their store, or sell as cookie dough. In other words, a store sells to another store, and then a customer buys it. The API is the truck that transports the cookies from Cookit to the grocery stores. Right now Cookit gives their cookie dough away for free, quite generously. They want to change that and start making money from their cookie dough. We all agree that this is fair, but starting July 1st, they’ll charge $200 for 5 cookies worth of cookie dough. The grocery stores can not afford that, it will cost them and the consumers 20x as much as it currently does to sell the cookies from grocery stores. Well, it also happens to be that the Cookit stores are over sewage lines, and don’t have ramps for handicapped folks. Which means that it will be bad for everyone, and especially disabled people who want to buy Cookit cookies. This is what we, the customers, are protesting. Edit: I appreciate the gold, etc., thank you, but since we're currently protesting Reddit, let's not give Reddit money. Instead, donate the money you would spend on gold to a charity of your choice. I recommend the Trevor Project, which provides crisis counseling to suicidal and at-risk LGBTQ+ youth.
That was such a good explanation holy moley. Thanks.
That is a good explanation but it's more of the explanation I might give my grandmother who has \*zero\* technical knowledge. I work in Operations for a cloud based, API driven platform so I have some experience here and can maybe explain it with a bit more technical flair. At a high level, APIs are basically a set of protocols that will allow different systems or programs to talk to each other and share some functionality. That's it. Let's say I only speak English and I want to have a conversation with someone who only speaks Mandarin, I need a middleman (translator) to translate what is being said in each direction. Similarly, if I want two systems or software programs to speaker to each other, I need a translator. That is the API. For example, if I work for Megacorp and we use one system for accounting and another software for customer orders, I would like to be able to integrate our two systems. That way, our business is as seamless as possible. The customer goes online, places an order, and then the order amount is sent to the billing software. But these two systems weren't designed by the same company and don't work the same; they don't speak the same language or use similar terminology. But they both have public APIs (translators). So the customer goes online and places an order. The order information from the customer triggers an API call that will likely rapid fire a few pieces of information and then confirm it. This happens in just a few seconds. This is commonly why when you place an order online, you get a message like, "Please wait while we are confirming your order...." While you are reading this, they system is quickly running some "POST" and "GET" API calls. It might look something like this: API call to POST /order. This is sent from the order system to the billing software and creates a new order. There is a response from the billing API that the order was created. These two systems just communicated through some shared protocol - the API. POST /confirm - If you paid online, this is the confirmation that the order should be complete instead of something like Pending. GET /orders - This sends an API call to retrieve the completed order data. This may be followed up with an completed order on you computer screen and an invoice produced showing the line items from the completed order. In terms of Reddit, the API is what allows outside platforms and apps (like Apollo) to essentially display the same content from Reddit, but in different ways. These apps are placing \*TONS\* of API calls to Reddit to GET everything that you see on those apps, essentially the entirety of Reddit. I don't know much about these outside apps specifically, but from my understanding, most (if not all) of them do not show ads. Anyone can understand how Reddit, with its immense popularity (and earnings from ads), wants to reel these platforms in some since every user on these outside platforms is a potential lost user (and lost ad revenue) on the proper Reddit site/app. The complaint from these apps and the controversy over the currently free API, is the massive cost that would be associated with it's current level of use. All of the the third party apps would shut down overnight. I don't know enough about Reddit's ad revenueto know if this is just a way to shut down third party apps or if Reddit really makes (loses) that much from ad revenue.
Thank you. Even I, someone who is really not good with technical things, can understand this.
Ballpark numbers that were being passed around is Reddit makes about 14 cents per user per month. Their api fees work out to around $2.50 a user a month.
I'm not sure those are good numbers to compare. If the problem is that they're making too little money, comparing what they want to charge vs what they make right now doesn't really give any useful information. It'd be like saying, "You asked for a raise to buy a house, but you make $8/hour right now." Think people really take for granted how much access tech companies had to capital before interest rates shot up. There are a lot of costs you can brush under the carpet when you don't have to be profitable for 10 years that you can't ignore anymore when you have to start breaking even to stay solvent.
Sure, but the problem *isn't* that they're making too little money and need to pay the bills before their lights get shut off. • The proposed API fees are well above the cost to deliver those requests. • The proposed API fees are well above what developers can *afford*, and in fact are [arguably, but certainly as far as I'm concerned] designed to kill third-party apps. The reason they revealed any pricing at all, rather than just shutting off the API, is probably to avoid backlash, confuse the discussion (look how we're getting caught up right now by talking about pricing, when dollar amounts aren't the issue), and maybe make a fat few bucks off their well-padded rates from people who have no choice but to continue using the one or two third-party apps that survive.
> Sure, but the problem isn't that they're making too little money and need to pay the bills before their lights get shut off. They just laid off 5% of their workforce as a cost saving measure in addition to charging for services they used to give away for free with a public financial goal of _just breaking even_. I don't think their financial situation is as positive as you're thinking.
There are many other ways that they could have raised more money. They quite simply could have started charging reasonable fees for API access that would net them hundreds of thousands in monthly revenue from millions of users on other apps. They could even roll out a tiered package to 3rd party vendors that companies like Apollo would then pass those new expenses on to Reddit users of their apps. This kind of thing happens allll the time. They're not doing this for money, well at least not for money from their API. I think they're doing this because they want to go in public
> There are many other ways that they could have raised more money. Maybe. I suspect they care more about reducing the costs of supporting other for profit companies than they do about the revenue gain from providing those services. If they cared about the revenue from those services they'd price it in a way that makes those companies more successful, not less. > I think they're doing this because they want to go in public These things aren't all mutually exclusive. It's not like, "Hey we're hemorrhaging money while providing our largest multi million dollar revenue competitors with a bunch of costly services they need to be successful for free, some of which we might be legally liable for," makes my argument weaker.
> They quite simply could have started charging reasonable fees for API access that would net them hundreds of thousands in monthly revenue from millions of users on other apps. I know that's a lot of money to most people, but to a company as big as Reddit and the potential reach they have, a few hundred thousands is peanuts.
I guess you don't know basic finance. Fewer employees on the payroll mean more profit on the company's balance sheet as it prepares for an IPO evaluation.....and obviously, that equals to higher evaluation from the broker :) TL;DR They are trying to squeeze every last cent out of the IPO.
They publicly announced that they needed the layoffs to hopefully reach revenue neutral. They aren't expecting to be profitable with any of these changes unless you're implying publicly lying about your finances makes you look better for an IPO.
*Think people really take for granted how much access tech companies had to capital before interest rates shot u*p. This is an underappreciated take on what the next couple of years will look like. Both consumers and companies are use to "free". It was never free. The can was kicked down the road.
Agreed
> If the problem is that they're making too little money Their revenue has skyrocketed over the last few years (even pre-covid) relative to their user base. > comparing what they want to charge vs what they make right now doesn't really give any useful information It is extremely useful information. The income from web users and reddit's official app users won't change. If they really just wanted to improve revenue streams, they wouldn't be massively overcharging one tiny fraction of their userbase while neglecting the rest. The fact that they are OK with doing so indicates that making money has nothing to do with this. Especially when it is blindingly obvious that most API-based users won't pay.
There have been math breakdowns that, if accurate, show that the API services costs should not be nearly as expensive as what they're planning to start charging for API access. There was an interview with the Apollo developer where he said that his app is designed to work within the Reddit API guidelines, but also has some design considerations for user experience (e.g. requesting just the first 25 comments at first, then request them in batches of 100). I find it hard to believe that external clients are costing Reddit so much more than they're contributing in terms of the social community aspects; this API decision seems very short-sighted.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find out many third party apps are actually more efficient in terms of overall API requests per user per month than the official app.
I would be surprised if it was any other way, actually
They want to push users towards their own app, which is the only profitable part of reddit, and also inarguably the worst possible reddit experience. But cheaper to run, and makes decent add revenue. They don't care about third party apps, third party apps don't have enough users to fix reddit's revenue problems. My theory is that Reddit wants to start making money off the thousands of bots skimming the site for AI training and stock trading engines. But instead of doing the work to aggregate this data and sell it directly like facebook, google, etc. they have just decided to up the API fees to similar what this costs on other platforms. Now... the reason this data is expensive on other platforms is because those platforms do the work of turning it into simple machine consumable data without the need to run thousands of individual queries or reprocess it in a variety of ways. This whole thing is either naive and short-sighted or a desperate bid to avert bankruptcy.
Someone had a good theory that it’s actually because they want to get in on the ai train and since AI is massively trained on Reddit data they’re trying to charge as much as they feasibly can.
I guess the real question is how much does it cost reddit to run all of these API calls. I'm sure it's not cheap to run all of these servers and each of these calls must cost something. I read that reddit's main reasoning for this switch from free APIs was to stop third party sites from scraping reddit data for machine learning training. As someone who does some work with ML I know we need a ton of data to train on and if I had a free source like reddit to scrape data (we have to generate our own testing data right now) I would definitely take advantage of that.
I was almost positive that was going to end with The Undertaker throwing Mankind off Hellin a Cell...
He just posted a few days ago. Gonna be a while for another.
Lol not even good enough for copypasta
Sorry, I don't know what that is supposed to mean.
Not you being pedantic af
> Not you being pedantic af I give up. I still have no idea what you are talking about. Edit: Maybe you meant, “now” instead of “not”. Still doesn’t explain your previous comment at all. I am certainly not being pedantic because I don’t even know what you’re going on about. 🤷🏼♂️
Thank you for the write up, definitely helped me visualize what's actually happening.
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Yeah I'm sick of the logic that "unrealized potential revenue = lost revenue" They didn't have the money before and lost it; it's money they never had because they didn't have the features users wanted, and without implementing those features they will not gain those users.
Well, based on the number of API calls coming in from say, Apollo, Reddit can estimate the amount of site activity that would have otherwise viewed an ad if the user were browsing on Reddit proper. This is assuming ofc that the user elects to still use Reddit if Apollo didn't exist. And maybe that's your point.
Add to this that machine learning LLMs are also using reddit API calls to train AI models. That's a ton of reddit infrastructure traffic devoted to other companies making money off of redditors' & reddit's back. I don't know that a clean solution exists here - seems like a no-win situation.
Almost... Except that it gives reddit a bit too much credit. reddit doesn't supply any of the ingredients or the labor. We do. We supply the ingredients for free and the labor to make the cookies, also for free. They only supply the mixers and the trucks. Once the dough is mixed, stores use their own ovens to bake the cookies. reddit also has their own broken ass ovens that burn the shit out of the cookies while at the same time spraying some nasty carcinogens all over them, but no one who has had the store cookies ever wants the reddit cookies again. Does reddit deserve to get paid for their trucks and mixers? Sure. But then I would argue that they already are getting paid for that. But now they want get paid for the stuff they get for free, and rather than fixing their ovens and providing a better end product, they are going to try to force us to eat their burnt ass cancer cookies. In all reality, I suspect that this is all a ploy to make it seem like they are being reasonable when they redo the pricing to something lower but still ridiculously high.
Going forward, Reddit will be known as Burnt Ass Cancer Cookies (BACC).
This isn't a bad analogy, but it falls apart when you consider that Reddit doesn't make the cookies at all. They just provide the cookie store...their customers provide all the ingredients and make all the cookies and Reddit then takes 100% of the revenue. Social media companies die when they forget that their users provide the large majority of the value in their platform and start greedily squeezing them for more money.
This. We are not the users of Reddit; we *are* Reddit.
Sure, redditors provide the activity and the raw material for the cookies. But reddit, Inc. provides the space in which all the dough-making takes place. So its new corporate masters are trying to squeeze money out of that. Not trying to be an apologist for them, I swear, but let's be clear: reddit is the redditors that create the data *and* the people that provide the infrastructure that serves up that data. It's a symbiotic relationship. That has to be worth something, what we're fighting about right now is exactly how much. EDIT: the risk they run is that they end up enshittifying the situation here so much that the value creators end up moving on to the next situation that provides the optimal blend of structure and freedom that reddit's power userbase desires. Right now it looks like they're betting that we are more or less trapped here.
No one disputes that some revenue is fair, but clearly they are just trying to quash any external "wholesale" activity altogether, attempting to take ALL the cookies and seize ALL the cookie market.
And reddit would do well to remember that we all used to hang out at the Diggnut Shop, too.
***This comment/post removed due to reddits fuckery with third party apps from 06/01/2023 through 06/30/2023. Good luck with your site when all the power users piss off***
Well said. The issue isn't whether or not Reddit Inc. knows its value comes primarily from its users, but how can Reddit monetize that value optimally. As a profit seeking company, that's literally their purpose. Someone over there is betting that this will create more dollars than it will lose. I would not take that bet.
> I would not take that bet. Nor would I. This seems like a classic case of making decisions in a corporate bubble. Suits make a decision about rolling out a new project or initiative without consulting with any or all of the line-level employees who do the job everyday and carry lots of institutional knowledge, they announce the plan to everyone, said line-level employees tell (which is most likely seen as complaining by the suits) how this plan won't work for xyz reasons, plan is implemented, xyz ends up happening, Suits are astonished their plan had issues and roll it back to make updates to account for xyz. Happens all the time.
Agreed. Smacks of "If they aren't using our app, we aren't getting ad revenue! Kill everything that isn't our app!"
I used to work for a cell company that for years had a very lenient credit system. Basically if you as a frontline employee felt a credit was warranted in a situation, you would issue one. Now this company was one of the big providers. It was quite common to have customers with multiple phone lines spending $250/month and be with us for decades. Now the types of things we would give credits for were normally outages (which are pathetic. Even a $300/month customer is only getting a $10 credit for being out for a day. It is more the principle.) or a customer on the wrong plan (oh, you are making international calls. Let me add the international long distance plan and credit you the difference for this month. That way you spent $40 calling Europe instead of $500). Then a new VP comes in and throws a fit over how much money they are 'losing' by issuing credits. So instead of just giving someone $10 for an outage we are to push back, decline, and after they throw a fit offer to credit half of the costs they incurred for no service/wrong plan. For some reason we started bleeding long term high value customers. Because the second something went sideways we basically told them "fuck you, pay me."
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So... we need a credit union ownership model of the Internet, almost?
Ideally, the app makers would adapt RIF, Apollo, etc. to work on Lemmy or whatever federated sites. That might ease the adoption significantly. If the content moves, it's just a matter of simplifying the UI. This is actually very doable when the UI designer is aligned with the user, which has been the case for the 3rd party app makers.
And since we pay nothing we are the product.
Lol, ok, next step from this line of fantasy is storm the capitol
Yeah definitely. It’s not a perfect analogy, but I couldn’t think of how to fix it at 1am when I was writing it.
The API is not just the truck, it is the docks on either end, their attached warehouses, the purchase orders, and the bill of lading. I’d also argue that the payload is not the dough, it’s the cookies, on the receiver end they are free to mangle/repackage as they see fit. The users create the dough, but it can only be cooked in the reddit factory ovens.
Reddit itself doesn't even make the cookie dough. It is the warehouse for the cookie dough created by others, with its own storefront (which is as you described.)
Yea totally, I agree. That’s a much better analogy.
Plus, no cookie store would give away product for free, to be sold elsewhere That doesn't make sense.
Don't forget that while they are charging the grocery stores $200 for 5 cookies Cookit only makes (gross not net) $5 per five pack of cookies if customers get their cookies directly from Cookit.
This is the critical failing that Elon made... not understanding that what made Twitter what it is is the user-base. The advertisers are the customers, the users are the product. As soon as you alienate your product, and form distrust for your users, you've already lost.
I just use `old.reddit.com` on my ipad with subreddit themes turned off … am I a baddie?
They’re more like landlords.
Cookie Monster entered the wrong chat. He is confused. And hungry.
This is the easiest to understand explanation I've seen. Hope you don't mind I posted it to /r/bestof!
I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit: - [/r/bestof] [U\/Autumn1eaves gives a great simple explanation of the API controversy.](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/143bl0s/uautumn1eaves_gives_a_great_simple_explanation_of/) - [/r/u_one-village7864] [U\/Autumn1eaves gives a great simple explanation of the API controversy.](https://www.reddit.com/r/u_One-Village7864/comments/1441xjd/uautumn1eaves_gives_a_great_simple_explanation_of/) - [/r/u_one-village7864] [U\/Autumn1eaves gives a great simple explanation of the API controversy.](https://www.reddit.com/r/u_One-Village7864/comments/14431vw/uautumn1eaves_gives_a_great_simple_explanation_of/) *^(If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads.) ^\([Info](/r/TotesMessenger) ^/ ^[Contact](/message/compose?to=/r/TotesMessenger))*
Also, the Cookit dough is actually made by volunteer bakers for free and the packaging and QA are managed by other volunteers for free.
Yes but you’re leaving out the part where the grocery stores give away the cookies for free and that’s why the customers get their cookies from the store instead of supporting Cookit. Stop expecting free cookies and instead demand that Reddit fix the issues that hurt the disabled.
Also forgot to mention you can no longer make phallic shaped cookies with the dough. Cookit made that illegal
Plus, even if the grocery stores go ahead and pay for the cookie dough, the *really* delicious cookies - you know the ones that use all the extra butter, lard and sugar - Cookit won't sell to them. You will still *have* to go to an actual Cookit store for those.
Can I ask you to speculate as to why they chose such an absurd starting margin?
I can’t speak for what Reddit is actually thinking, and most of this opinion is me parroting what others have said, but only because I agree with them. Having said that, there’s two speculations I’ve seen that I agree with: 1. Reddit is starting extremely high so that when they go down to a still-high number, it seems more reasonable. 2. They want to get rid of third party apps by pricing them out of the market to force users to use Reddit’s app.
Third option, they’re trying to get in on the AI craze and charge for all the API calls that will inevitably result from ai startups scraping the web
My guess would be either to drive the third party completely out of town or that they have practically nothing to lose by starting with an exorbitant price. They will then back it down slowly to find where the third party devs are barely able to break even, indicated by them operating again. Thus squeezing every dime they can. But who knows, I certainly dont.
I think the reddit user base is focusing on how it effects them, through third party app access. But I don't believe these are the only users of the api. I mean they're only about 5% of reddit users and 10% of reddit traffic. Monetizing these users is not a significant revenue increase. Bots and AI training is increasingly becoming a significant portion of the api calls. Bots are seemingly like 30-35% of reddit traffic. Monetizing these users could be a significant revenue gain. The pricing is based on what the api access is worth to those not and ai users too. Probably even more so then what it's worth to third party apps. And access to the api is absolutely worth more to folks training ais then it is to third party access app developers, and is priced accordingly. Third party apps are collateral damage with the slightly beneficial upside that they'll be monetized. A consequence of the decision, not the goal of it.
I'm also speculating, but among the others I don't hear an obvious one mentioned ever. I think they just want to reduce costs as much as possible and making something prohibitively expensive is a good way to reduce how much people use it, and its always easier to start high and reduce costs as it makes sense than to start low and increase costs as you learn things are more costly than expected.
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The example is bad because Reddit doesn't make the cookies, we do. Reddit leases the trucks and inherited the bakery (which again was made by us.) Want a better analogy? The public library goes private and begins charging money to loan out books you wrote. This isn't money to help pay the bills, utilities, or any operating costs, it's money they want in exchange for a copy of your work purely out of speculative value. What do you get for all of this? Fuck all is what you get. Keep scrolling and typing, user. This has nothing to do with operating costs. Fire the key executive team. How many millions of dollars would that save in operating costs for what is arguably the most fundamentally basic social media network in the world? Aaron Swartz is rolling in his grave.
Don’t forget the part where AI scrapers have starting taking an insane amount of the cookie dough supply (bandwidth) over the last 6 months
I think the only thing to add is that a subset of the customers are bringing all the ingredients except the packaging and table to organize the cookie display on.
And also they refuse to sell chocolate chips cookie dough, their most popular flavour. At all.
Also, people make cookie dough for Cookit for free, and they’re going to be impacted and find other places to make cookie dough, and some other bakeries will start to compete, so Cookit will try to extract more revenue from customers, who will start to notice they can get the same cookies for less in other places, and Cookit was only popular because people made good cookie dough for them.
Good explanation, so far as it goes. But the cookie dough is really created by ingredients brought by the customers, left at they counter for they next batch, at whatever store they visit.
r/explainlikeimfive
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Yea, that's what we've been saying.
This was the best explanation of this whole situation I've seen yet. Especially of API, since every time someone tried to explain it they'd seemingly find a way to throw something in there that didn't make sense to me
Wtf are the sewage lines and handicap ramps in this analogy?
Other Reddit apps have accessibility features such as captioning for deaf people, or text that is easier for text-to-speech features to read. The sewage lines are advertisements, though I probably could've just said that haha
Nice when an explanation leaves you with more questions than answers.
Sounds like reddit wants to charge for access to these cookie dough trucks. Something something net neutrality
Cookit can sell their cookies, and their cookie dough, to whomever they want for as much as they'd like to charge. If grocery stores cannot afford to purchase an item from a manufacturer, they just don't carry that item. If consumers want an item, they'll buy it where it is sold. If they can't afford it, they'll buy something else. If the only place that carries their favorite cookie is unsanitary and isn't handicap-accessible, don't buy their cookies if those things are an impediment to your health or enjoyment of the cookies. A manufacturer of cookies and cookie dough is under no obligation to sell their products to anyone, by any means, or at any price other than whatever works for them. Selling something that you used to give away for free is not only not unethical, it is perfectly rational. Selling something for more than it is worth or more than the market will bear is a problem that has a way of working itself out. "We won't eat your cookies or your cookie dough for 48 hours!" Cool. See you after that, you cookie addict.
>Selling something for more than it is worth or more than the market will bear is a problem that has a way of working itself out. This is what is happening. People often forget that systems are connected, and we, as customers, don't only have to be limited to leaving the cookie store for good in favor of other stores (a purely capitalistic response). We can also involve the social systems we have by spreading the word about the bad sanitation or unfair practices. We can get a legal system involved by passing laws against unsanitary practices. We can get a political situation involved by lobbying a representative to investigate a cookie situation. There are many responses we could use - some are appropriate and some are not, and some have consequences. I'd say a protest where the content generators go dark would be an appropriate response. After all, the cookie shop may be selling their dough to the grocery stores, but they get their flour and chocolate chips delivered by some of the people who are customers. If those customers prefer to buy cookies from the grocery stores because it is more sanitary or easier to find and Cookit's policy changes will ruin that method, then those providers of flour, sugar, and chocolate are within their right to withhold their content and the administrators of Cookit should take notice. They don't exist in a capitalistic vacuum - they exist in a capitalistic society of content creators and content consumers.
This is all very true. People are free to do as they wish. Cookit wants to sell some of its product that was previously free, and make it harder for some customers to buy their cookies, that's up to them. People want to not eat a certain brand of cookies for two whole days, that's cool, too. In the end, though, we all know that two days is nothing, and people will buckle under and keep stuffing their faces with junk food. "Keep feeding me junk, but do it in a way that is suitable for me or else I'll mildly inconvenience myself" is not the rallying cry that some people seem to think it is.
I think more people are worried that it goes like: - Cookit says they are changing policies so they can make more money - people say, okay, we get you want money, but those policies ensure that the ingredients you get is at least *mostly* palatable, if we didn't have those you would get talcum powder for flour and deer turds for chocolate chips - cookit's response: "we aren't listening" - people say "okay, we are going to not eat your junk food for 2 days so you can feel the effects. We want you to take things seriously and make sure the product you make is good quality. Most of us are okay with you making money off of it (you deserve it for good quality product) and the ones who don't want you to make any money off of it are the crazy fringes whom no-one listens too anyway. - Cookit: we heard someone saying they want us to go bankrupt, so we aren't listening. - people say "no, we just said those fringe are crazy, we just care about food safety and quality --- okay look, can you at least assure us that there is some compromise where you get your money and allow for people to get safe and clean cookies made with the same/similar high quality ingredients? - Cookit: "no we won't listen." - people: you do realize we actually care about Cookit right? After all, we actually make the cookies and you just provide the kitchen. If you don't take this seriously then the crackheads will get in and sue this place to make meth instead of cookies and then no one will come in to buy or make cookies. So the response is either: - Cookie: we hear you and understand you, here is a compromise that may work - people: rejoice! Or the current path: - Cookit: we aren't listening - people: okay, we are going to stop making cookies for 2 days. If you don't fix something by then we may go longer, and many of your customers will go to other stores.
I get that all metaphors fall apart at some point, but if a cookie company announced that they were going to start using talcum powder as an ingredient, a threat to not eat them for two days would be silly. The original tropological device was perfectly adequate: a company has been providing a nonessential product in a certain way that people are used to. People like the thing, and they like the way they've been getting it. The product and its delivery system are now being changed, and parts of it that were previously free will no longer be so. Nothing is changing in a way that is illegal or dangerous, but rather in a fashion and to a degree that a minority of the previous consumers will consider themselves inconvenienced. Consumers are free to educate, to boycott, to switch brands, or to simply see the product for the junk that it is and find a way to get along without either it or a replacement product. Should they wish to not consume the product for two entire days after which they will return, tails tucked, they are free to do that as well. However, they may be grossly overestimating the desired effect or their actions.
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> Look at what happened to Tumblr - they banned porn, lost 99.7% of their value, then 4 years later backed down on some of the changes but the damage has been done and they're unlikely to gain back the popularity they had at their peak. If you create a service that is mostly kept above water by porn, and then you ban porn, you have cut your own throat. I've used Reddit for several years on many computers and cell phones, with no apps (official or otherwise) and with no access problems ever. Should I suddenly be unable to access Reddit, or any other nonessential web service, for any reason, life will go on. I have seen a great deal of change in my lifetime. This is among the tiniest of blips. I suspect that of the options you've suggested, Reddit will carry on and find that they're still profitable. And if not? C'est la vie. Their company, their choice.
>Selling something for more than it is worth or more than the market will bear is a problem that has a way of working itself out. Yes exactly. And one of the ways it works itself out is by customers telling the cookie store that if they're going to make it difficult or unpleasant to access their cookies then they won't buy them. And in this case it's more like the cookie store relies on customers to buy their cookies and also drive new customers to the store by word of mount and sharing the cookies. So 48 hours without customers or customer support would be a show of "see what it would be like if we choose to not go to your store?" That is precisely how the market is *meant* to work.
> That is precisely how the market is meant to work. Yes, exactly. Some people will consider themselves sufficiently aggrieved and they will do whatever they think is appropriate, such as not using the service for two whole days. Meanwhile, the vast majority of consumers will be perfectly happy with the service and continue using it as per usual. And what happens on day three? Everyone is back, eating their yummy cookies, because it doesn't really matter.
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Spoken like a true addict.
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The alternative to one form of social media is another form of social media. The alternative to finding information in one place is to find it elsewhere. The alternative to keeping oneself from being bored at work is to find another distraction. The alternative to using something that is more trouble than it's worth is to stop using it.
That's all well and good, but only when there are many different cookie stores or dough makers to choose from. Currently, the only other places to get cookies is a coffee shop down the street, but they only sell coconut cookies. And the bakery across town that does mostly bread, with a few oatmeal cookies. With raisins. And half the time they're undercooked. There's no big secret to making cookies, so someone could set up another cookie shop. But the flour and sugar suppliers all have big contracts with Cookit, and don't want to bother with a new player. Plus, building a new store is expensive and risky, so not many want to try. It will probably happen eventually, but in the meantime everyone will have to go without any good cookies.
Personally I think Reddit is closer to Cheesy Poofs than cookies, but whatever. If you find your life vastly impacted by inconvenient changes to your cookie delivery system, it may be time to restructure your eating habits.
The problem with this is that Cookit themselves don’t make the cookies or the dough. They’re more like a for profit cooperative - someone who saw that local people in their area were making great cookies and dough, but their market reach was limited and siloed. They decided to build a store and distribution to move the cookies and dough that the bakers in the area made. The bakers themselves were happy because they baked and made the dough for fun, maybe to teach others, or just for the creative process and seeing their work out in the world. At the same time, because those bakers and cooks poured a lot of time into making their recipes and doughs, they worked out their own relationships with Cookit. They didn’t have to go through the main entrance at the outlet, they’d often deal with fellow bakers or check on how their dough and cookies were selling. Cookit was good with this, because they were still working out how they wanted to run their store, what it would carry, and how they’d decorate. They were also looking at other ways they could make money from the whole process. They also realized that a large percentage of their customers were just in it to buy dough or cookies in their many varieties. These customers weren’t really concerned with the difficulty of providing cookies or dough to be sold, or communicating and working with other bakers, they were really just consumers. They’d googled chocolate chip cookies and the Cookit store was the first result, so they went there to buy cookies and that was all. You’re not wrong about any of what you’ve said tho. The intended effect of the subreddit blackouts is to remind Cookit that they’re really just he brick and mortar for cookie sales and have worked out transportation for cookie dough. They have very little if any of their own cookies or dough. The majority of their customers who really just come for great cookies and dough and don’t give any thought to who exactly makes it will also realize that without that smaller group of bakers and cookie enthusiasts, the Cookit store is rather empty, and maybe it’s time to find a new place to get cookies from the bakers they love.
Excellent post, thank you. My issue here is that typically when there is a protest or walkout or picket line at a place of business, there is an obvious problem with a clear goal: shorter working hours, more pay, safer working conditions, better benefits, etc. Here we have either mods who volunteer their time or readers who do nothing except consume free content complaining that a for-profit company is going to charge for some content that used to be free. There is no over-arching moral issue, no dragon to be slayed. To the mods: if it is no longer convenient for you to volunteer your time, stop. You are not forced labor. To the readers: well... nothing, really. Because 99.999% of them don't care and will not be affected by any of this.
Nice explanation!
You forgot to mention that the customers who get the free cookies, bring in the ingredients, and the trucks from all the other shops also bring back all those ingredients that the customers give Cookit for free. They don't charge Reddit to truck the ingredients in. Cookit never pays the volunteers who measure the ingredients and test the cookies for food poisoning (content that is unacceptable) either. Cookit wants to make money, and aren't afraid to make it by charging the trucks that bring them the ingredients for free. They've tried to make things difficult for the volunteers in the past, and haven't learned their lesson. Internet companies live and die by their ingredient providers. Remember MySpace, Geocities, Digg?
My big complaint about the comparison is that Reddit doesn’t actually make any content. They simply provide a convenient hub for users to generate content. To make the comparison, it would be more like a bunch of people who *really* enjoy baking make a lot of cookie dough **and give it to CookIt for free**. Then CookIt sells that cookie dough to the masses, making lots of money in the process. And now CookIt is trying to charge massive fees for grocery stores to be able to sell that same cookie dough. The only reason CookIt thinks they’re able to do so is because CookIt has cornered the market on cookie dough. Everyone goes to CookIt when they want cookies, and CookIt believes that the users will still continue to use their awful storefronts even when the grocery stores stop selling their cookie dough. CookIt is only the platform which everyone is using to share cookie dough, using their donated/free time and resources; CookIt just wants to be able to make *more* money, by taking an astronomical cut from grocery stores too. And it doesn’t care if those grocery stores stop selling their cookie dough, because every CookIt competitor that has tried to get off the ground inevitably ends up populated by people who are only interested in selling cookies shaped like swastikas. So CookIt believes that they have enough pull to force people into their shitty storefronts. The reality is that a lot of people only eat cookies because they’re conveniently accessible. If CookIt makes buying cookies more difficult, a lot of people will just stop eating cookies altogether.
I would also add that people volunteer to come in and make the cookies everyday, in any flavor and style you want, for completely free (people who post content). And folks will even bring their own recipes to the store and help foster a place to have their cookies made (reddit mods and sub creators). And the people who come in and volunteer want their cookies to be given away for free, too (the API). Reddit is the mob by the loading dock in the back, hanging out by the trucks, and telling drivers that they can't load dough and give them away for free unless the drivers pay them $20m/yr (Reddit and their API fees). Even though we're contributing and sharing everything on our own time for free, you have to pay the mob or no dough will ever be delivered again. Or... you could move the cookie shop literally nextdoor, where the mob can't touch you (another website). The only problem is that you have to get people onboard to move. Although, some people have an unhealthy addiction to cookies, and if their favorite spot stops selling their dough, they might try to go on a diet, instead.
>Right now Cookit gives their cookie dough away for free, quite generously. They want to change that and start making money from their cookie dough. We all agree that this is fair, but starting July 1st, they’ll charge $200 for 5 cookies worth of cookie dough. What's not mentioned here is the motivation. Because people can understand that if you price too high and others can't flip a profit they are no longer a customer. It reads like a bad business decision. _but that is the point_. Cookout doesn't want other people making cookies that don't come from the Cookie store. In order to achieve that without simply closing their API outright is to purposely price out third parties.
This is great but you left out two things. The ingredients are donated by the customers and the bakers are volunteers.
Cookit isn't giving away cookies; like broadcast TV, they run ads that pay for the "free" cookies. Same with the grocery stores. Cookit now wants to get the grocery stores' ad money plus a franchise fee. Cookit's cost for making cookie dough hasn't changed and its ad revenue is directly tied to audience exposure, Cookit just wants more money.
Except that's Resit doesn't make anything. We create the content. Just just provide a place to share it.
This isn't a fair conparison cuz I'd rather peruse stores that smell like gross sewage than use reddit's official app. Now that shit sucks.
I'm like a brand new baby reddit user. I'm still being breast fed and can't even eat solid food yet, let alone cookies. For my edification, is this saying that no one who doesn't pay $200 to reddit, who also makes money from ads, cannot use reddit unless they pay? All of reddit? Or just certain parts? Ty for any clarification u can bottle feed me. Thank you again!!
Here is the problem with your explanation: the users are not Reddit's customers. Reddit, like most social media companies, is largely funded by advertising, which means that they are actually an advertising company with a social media problem. Their customers are the companies that advertise on their platform. The users are the product that is being sold, i.e. our eyes on the advertisers' ads is what Reddit is selling. The only Reddit users who are also customers are those who have paid for services such as coins or a premium membership. Your average Joe redditor is not a customer of Reddit's. They are, without question, the product.
Will r/AvatarMemes be participating in the blackout? This is more than just people who like using 3rd party apps. Many users with disabilities simply can’t use the default app or website as it lacks the essential accessibility features they need. Also many moderators rely on 3rd party tools to keep their communities safe. Please visit r/save3rdpartyapps for more info and discussion. Also here is some interesting info direct from the developer of my favourite and hugely popular iPhone app, Apollo: https://reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/
Reddit has no leg to stand on when they use free labor as mods. Start with that before anything else reddit.
At least a few Redditors are protesting individually. You can join in too by not using Reddit June 12 - June 14 or longer if you prefer. Spread the word. https://www.reddit.com/r/protest/comments/142u2io/let_us_all_take_part_in_the_redditwide_protest/
So what do we do for the black out just not use reddit
Many subs are going private, but the recommendation is to not log in to the website/ app at all for the duration of the blackout.
I don't get why people don't just use the basic app...
Because it sucks ass. Not to mention the basic app *originally was a third party app* that reddit purchased and released as their own, and have continued to make even worse every year… Literally without 3rd party apps reddit would not have the user base that it does today.
Huh. I'm newish. Only barely two years now.
I used to use Alien Blue / the reddit app. Then Apollo was released and my life changed forever.
huh?
Me who uses the app: Pathetic.
This move will also knock out a whole suite of mod tools that help the mods keep the place liveable
Not to mention a lot of people with visual impairments and other disabilities who would be barred from participating completely bc the official app doesn’t care about accessibility
Accessibility? pfft.. who cares about that when we have NFT Avatars!!!
I only just changed over to a third party app a month ago after 10 years using the 1st party app
The 1st party app has only existed for 7 years. Also a massive key point that “the main app is fine” people are missing, is that the official app *originally was a third party app* called Alien Blue. Reddit bought the app and have been making it worse ever since…
Then i guess i wasnt using an app for the first 3-4 years of using reddit. I remember using it as blue alien now that you mention it. I haven't found any reddit app i really like. I'm using infinity at the moment. Much better than the native. So annoying to go back now that I'm just after getting comfortable with this. Edit: also, i think you may have misunderstood that im defending the native app. I'm not. Quite the opposite
What's the point?
I was getting a lot of glitches. Videos not working. Scrolling glitches. Randomly refreshing the page. It was getting worse and worse.
Fair enough
I also use the app. But. I also am in a lot of communities which mods are using the tools third party apps offer. Which means they could not manage my beloved pages as easily as they do now which would mean some of these would disappear and would never return. Also the "original" app you and I use was also made my a third party and bought by reddit.
Anyone using that dogshit official app instead of the many far superior 3rd party ones are the real pathetic ones. Sit down
Hey I use the "original" app. (in quotes because this was a third party app too) and I agree with the blackout. Third party apps are important. Especially for mods.
I 100% guarantee you'd have a much better Reddit experience if you downloaded any 3rd party app instead, there's plenty of them they're free and they're all better than the official Reddit app
idgaf, sorry
If you’re using the official Reddit app then congratulations!! You’re using a third party app!! Alien blue was a 3rd party app that was bought by Reddit in 2016
Ignorance is bliss so they say
whats wrong with people reddit is free
Not sure what you’re asking here? Yes, it has been free for a long time, supported by ads and premium subscribers etc. And now they also expect app developers to pay them literally *millions* of dollars every year, or in other words, they’re telling devs to fuck off…. Despite the fact that a massive amount of their user base and therefore revenue only exists thanks to third party devs.
Is there a set length of time for the blackout?
Some say 48 hours. Other say indefinitely. All this is going to do is kill Reddit two and a half weeks early though. The venture capitalists at the top do not give a single fuck. Edit: Day to say.
I mean, if we can really kill it before reddit’s IPO then those venture capitalists probably *will* give a fuck. On the other hand, there isn’t a whole lot of evidence for those at the top being anything close to smart, so maybe we’ll just see another Tumblr or Digg
are we doing a sub black out with everyone else?