Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has finally announced that some of the most popular third-party Reddit apps will be forced to shut down over the company’s highly unpopular API changes. Told. In an AMA (Ask Me Anything) discussion, Huffman promised to improve Reddit’s own app, but seemed unwilling to compromise on pricing and other issues that unsettled the community.
“Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, so we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data usage,” he said in an AMA post. “Some apps, such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync, have determined that this pricing is not suitable for their business and plan to terminate it before the pricing takes effect.”
In a series of mostly one- or two-sentence answers to detailed, multi-part questions, Huffman acknowledged several mistakes in the company’s API deployment, but the company’s relationship with third-party developers Most refused to address thorny questions about handling. In , he acknowledged that his 30-day grace period given to developers of new APIs is a “tight timeline” and that the company has “a lot of developers wanting to work with us. We are continuing to talk with them,” he said.
However, other developers quickly echoed similar sentiments, pointing out that the company had not heard back from them despite reaching out through channels promoted by Reddit. “For the past three months, I have tried to contact Reddit and have been completely ignored,” said one developer. “I can’t do anything right now and feel completely helpless. I want to save an app I’ve been working on for 10 years.” Huffman apologized and said the company would respond.
When asked why Apollo developer Christian Selig accused the company of threatening the company, Selig denied the allegations, using an audio clip of a call with a Reddit representative to immediately Huffman spoke of the criticism. “His ‘joke’ is the least of our problems,” he said. “His actions and communication with us were all over the place, telling us one thing and completely another. I don’t know how you can do business with him. (Huffman did not respond to additional questions from Selig for examples of such conduct.)
Huffman, who works as an expert on the platform, also promised that Reddit is working on its own app, including tools and features. Both areas are often cited by his Redditors, who prefer third-party his apps over the company’s native his app. He also said third-party apps could no longer display sexually explicit content due to changes in the “regulatory environment” and legal concerns. “It’s a constant battle to keep this content,” he says. “You have to be strict/conservative about where it appears.”
One of his most compelling answers was a question about the perception that Reddit is becoming more profit-driven and less focused on community engagement than it used to be. Mr. Huffman replied, “We will keep chasing profits until we get profits.” “Unlike some threesomes, [third-party] The app does not make any profit. ”
Notably, there were a number of topics Huffman didn’t cover, such as why the company priced its APIs because developers said they were prohibitively expensive. Huffman also didn’t mention the upcoming blackout with thousands of subreddits protesting API changes. More than one person has promised to protest this change for two days starting June 12th.
By the end of the AMA, Huffman had answered 14 questions, and several other executives had answered some of their own. The most noticeable indication that their answers were not well received was that all answers from the reddit team were downvoted so heavily that it was almost impossible to browse within the AMA thread itself. That’s it. A moderator then linked all the answers to the top of the thread. “We know it’s hard to find answers,” they said.
