Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, has decided to just keep on talking. After his disastrous AMA helped inspire more subreddits to join a 48 hour blackout, and his dismissal of the protesting subred…
Yes, Reddit is a big dataset and yes, Reddit deserves to make some money off that if other organisations are going to scrape that data, for AI or anything else.
That’s what they should be blocking and monetizing. Not those few users using 3rd party apps. Those folks (posters, mods) are amongst the ones creating that data set for Reddit, free of charge.
They are right about needing to make money to continue as a successful business. But they are doing it the wrong way and alienating their key assets.
Yeah they could have left current large 3rd party apps alone and said any new API connections from AI companies and etc will be charged 20 million dollars a year…
That wouldn’t work either. They’d just scrape the HTML, feed that to the AI, and not pay Reddit one rusty cent. Even I could implement that, let alone a billion-dollar AI company with an army of top-notch programmers.
Why does reddit deserve to make profit from content made by others? They are service provider - they are not entitled to the work of people who used their service.
Ok. I’m about to abandon an account that’s 17.5 years old. I despise what reddit is proposing.
But, honestly, how do you propose they turn (some) profit so it could last forever? Losing money isn’t a long-term recipe for success. I’ve got no problem with reddit seeking to profit. I’ve got a problem with their short notice and their refusal to let third party clients be part of the ecosystem they wish to create.
First I don’t see why reddit has to be a for profit organisation in the first place, since that’s kind of the rout of the problem. Users becoming a product that reddit is trying to sell to advertisers. At the same time if reddit would be respectful to users, creators and mods it would be a different story. But they are clearly not, they don’t respect the people who are making reddit work - but feel entitled to the fruits of their labor. That just irks me on a deeply personal level.
My main problem is not even with the API decision but with the way the CEO communicated with the community.
COMPLETELY agree that reddit shouldn’t have developed in a commercial direction, but rather as a non-profit. That would avoided so many problems. That said, even as a non-profit losing money is not tenable.
I also agree that how the CEO communicated is a big part of the problem.
Like I said, I would not have problem wit a mythical commercial reddit making money but respecting the user base. Even less with no profit reddit - making money to be able to function.
It was never truly about them not making money though was it?
The whole thing would not have escalated, if they’d actually reacted to the problems raised, e.g. the astronomical API fees and the situation of mod tools and accessability tools.
Only when shit was already hitting the fan they responded to 3rd party devs, who tried to reach out to them for a month already.
Even if they’d postpone the changes and start listening to the raised problems now, they scorched a lot of earth and very well knew that would happen.
Yes, Reddit is a big dataset and yes, Reddit deserves to make some money off that if other organisations are going to scrape that data, for AI or anything else.
That’s what they should be blocking and monetizing. Not those few users using 3rd party apps. Those folks (posters, mods) are amongst the ones creating that data set for Reddit, free of charge.
They are right about needing to make money to continue as a successful business. But they are doing it the wrong way and alienating their key assets.
Which is why I’m here :)
If they want organizations not to scrape their content, tough toenails; stopping them is impossible.
It’s especially impossible to stop Google and Microsoft from doing it, because they already have a search index full of said content.
Spez is alienating his loyal user base for nothing.
Yeah they could have left current large 3rd party apps alone and said any new API connections from AI companies and etc will be charged 20 million dollars a year…
That wouldn’t work either. They’d just scrape the HTML, feed that to the AI, and not pay Reddit one rusty cent. Even I could implement that, let alone a billion-dollar AI company with an army of top-notch programmers.
Why does reddit deserve to make profit from content made by others? They are service provider - they are not entitled to the work of people who used their service.
Ok. I’m about to abandon an account that’s 17.5 years old. I despise what reddit is proposing.
But, honestly, how do you propose they turn (some) profit so it could last forever? Losing money isn’t a long-term recipe for success. I’ve got no problem with reddit seeking to profit. I’ve got a problem with their short notice and their refusal to let third party clients be part of the ecosystem they wish to create.
First I don’t see why reddit has to be a for profit organisation in the first place, since that’s kind of the rout of the problem. Users becoming a product that reddit is trying to sell to advertisers. At the same time if reddit would be respectful to users, creators and mods it would be a different story. But they are clearly not, they don’t respect the people who are making reddit work - but feel entitled to the fruits of their labor. That just irks me on a deeply personal level.
My main problem is not even with the API decision but with the way the CEO communicated with the community.
COMPLETELY agree that reddit shouldn’t have developed in a commercial direction, but rather as a non-profit. That would avoided so many problems. That said, even as a non-profit losing money is not tenable.
I also agree that how the CEO communicated is a big part of the problem.
Like I said, I would not have problem wit a mythical commercial reddit making money but respecting the user base. Even less with no profit reddit - making money to be able to function.
Well stated.
It was never truly about them not making money though was it?
The whole thing would not have escalated, if they’d actually reacted to the problems raised, e.g. the astronomical API fees and the situation of mod tools and accessability tools.
Only when shit was already hitting the fan they responded to 3rd party devs, who tried to reach out to them for a month already.
Even if they’d postpone the changes and start listening to the raised problems now, they scorched a lot of earth and very well knew that would happen.