Some may argue thatmodern social media platformsonly exist to make money off the time you spend on them, but that’s not always the case.Third-party clientsfor these platforms make the experience somewhat bearable while adding new features to the mix, and they often do it without all the personalized ads. Twitter recentlydrew flak for paywalling its APIfor such clients. Now, Reddit is also at the cusp of making the same decision in its pursuit of profits.
Reddit calls itself the front page of the internet, and has allowed unhindered access to its content through several popular third-party clients like Sync, Relay, and Boost. The platformrecently announcedit will change the data API these apps use, its terms, developer terms, embed terms, and the ads API terms, and this could have massive repercussions throughout the third-party Reddit scene.
Reddit founder and head honcho Steve Huffman toldThe New York Timesthese changes would help monetize Reddit data which big tech companies like Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft often used to train artificial intelligence models. Reddit has established itself as a hub for authentic conversation about every topic under the sun, and Huffman believes AI chatbots should pay the platform for their usage of its data.
The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable. But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.
That sentiment dominated the news cycle when Reddit first made this announcement, but along the sidelines, Android expertMishaal Rahman notedthat turning a free data API into a paid one is far more detrimental to developers of third-party Reddit clients with thousands of users each.
In aninteractionwith the developer of award-winning Reddit client Apollo, Reddit executives explained that by paywalling API access, the company isn’t trying to wipe out third-party clients completely. Instead, the platform plans to charge a fee to access an ad-free data stream. With API access coming at a price, it would be unreasonable to expect smaller developers of apps like Apollo to continue without passing some of the cost to end users.
Reddit has its own app bringing traffic to its servers, and the API for third parties which also does the same. Reddit wants us to believe a fee for unofficial clients would be a fair arrangement, so developers can foot a part of the bill for running these servers. Huffman told NYT the API would be free for developers building bots on Reddit, and people studying the platform for academic and non-commercial purposes.
However, the information shared with the Apollo developer suggests third-party clients would have to use either an affordably priced ad-supplemented data stream or a costlier one with all Reddit features for their client apps.
This sounds like bad news for great feature-rich apps like Sync and Relay we have used for years, all for free. Reddit’s changes could force smaller affected businesses to impose a subscription fee even for the free versions of their apps because the social media company will charge for access based on API usage instead of a flat fee.
On the bright side, this is only an announcement, and Reddit hasn’t locked in pricing yet. The platform told Apollo’s team that plans should solidify in the next two to four weeks. Hopefully we hear more, and it doesn’t become adark saga for long-time userswho weathered the transition to Reddit’s new interface, making their disinterest finally boil over.
