And the goal of this is to attempt to further monetize the platform on the backs of other people's content by forcing them to see as many ads and upsell opportunities as possible.

And the goal of this is to appear more appealing to current and future investors in order to drive up the IPO price and build demand.

And the goal of this is to make those with significant equity stake filthy rich.

The issue is that the changes they're trying to make are inherently hostile to the community whose free content and moderation has made the platform what it is today. And if the community decides to leave the platform and not come back, then regardless of potential for extra ad revenue, the inherent value of the platform will disappear because ads will be shown to less and less users. This is assuming people leave and actually don't come back, which remains to be seen.

The whole "front page of the internet" idea was pretty neat, and is a stark contrast to the days where each internet community had their own niche forum somewhere. Maybe we'll see some other platform overtake Reddit as the new front page of the internet, or maybe an old platform like Digg will make a resurgence. But that's a tall ask when Reddit is now so entrenched in that space.

Edit: technology -> platform, in the last paragraph above.

One way to look at it is that Apollo, the app you're referencing that was able to charge $10 a year, would have to charge 2.5 times as much just to cover the access fees, and not any of their own overhead, much less allow for profit.

The issue here is that the ARPU calculation and assumptions are wrong. Is reddit losing out on that entirely if someone comes to them from a separate interface but still is served through them? Also, it's just too optimistic. Reddit has revenue of less than a dollar per site user (or maybe slightly more than a dollar now?). Most references I'm seeing showed reddit with an ARPU of well under $1 in 2021, closer to half a dollar. Are we expected to believe there's been a 40x increase in a year, or that after all the years reddit has functioned they'll be able to achieve that in the near future?

Lmao. Do you even realize what all these are about...? Reddit's pricing API policy is making ALL the apps unsustaniable. It's not "the app".

> Facebook is $200 ARPU in the US.

Yeah so? Only users and mods in the US matter and fuck the rest of the world?

Plus Reddit is, surprisingly, not Facebook. I don't even understand why you're comparing them. Actually I believe many people use Reddit because it's not like Facebook.

Tech people ought to think long and hard about whose content it actually is.

Plus $2.5 to Reddit, means that apps need to charge $3.60 before 30% App-Store fees. But the app developer also needs new infrastructure to handle the billing, payment, and tracking, between end-users & Reddit along with their existing overhead. So the current $1/month aka $0.70/month after fees they're operating on likely isn't sustainable.

So now we're looking at $3.60 to Reddit + the existing $1/month = $4.6, but also all this new payment/billing infrastructure. Could easily exceed $5/month which frankly nobody is going to pay, and then get all this done in just 30-days even though that date is completely arbitrary from Reddit's end.

If Reddit thinks it's theirs, they will soon notice that nothing is left of their business when those communities have moved elsewhere. To even create this war against your own users is complete folly.

I think the pricing model is per API call, and Reddit was claiming that a typical user, with the app using the data the way Reddit envisions, would use that quantity of API calls.

This, of course, assumes that every app is designed similar to the way Reddit expects, i.e., Reddit is assuming that nobody will do anything to add any value on top of Reddit's own design. But isn't that value-add part of the reason these apps exist in the first place?

He wasn't literally offering to sell out for $10 million. What he was saying was that if Reddit was being honest with the claim that Apollo was costing them $20 million per year in server costs, the obvious business decision would be to offer to buy him out first, thus bringing in those users with much less friction.

The fact that they're instead choosing to be manipulative (unrealistically short period for apps to adapt, API prices far above what other services charge) indicates that the $20 million number is a lie made to make themselves seem less scummy.

As it stands, Reddit hasn't even tried even simpler solutions like returning ads in the API requests and requiring that the 3rd parties include those for free usage.

Wouldn't have got nearly as much backlash.

And they couldn't figure out how to transition to it without causing a shitstorm.