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I would sell the app even if they reversed course. I wouldn’t trust they wouldn’t do it again. I wouldn’t trust they’d ruin me some other way.
If they had said “we’re doing this in 6 months” and then listened to the community, that’s different. But Spez burnt the bridge to the ground and poured toxic waste on it.
A Virginia law was signed into effect on May 12th that required commercial entities that distributed "material harmful to minors" to verify the age of the users or be exposed to civil penalties. That law goes into effect in 3 hours.
Additionally one of the API changes which also goes is into effect is that they won't serve NSFW content on the paid API. So even if you pay you only get half of Reddit.
Any NSFW stuff (due to laws, investments, advertisers, anything) had nothing to do with the API decision. They may have done them at the same time, but it wasn’t needed.
IANAL but I'll put down $100 that this law has nothing to do with reddit's API changes. First person to prove me wrong gets it. I'd like a quote from spez that says, paraphrased "If Virginia didn't pass the law we wouldn't have started charging for the API".
> Huffman has argued the changes are a business decision to force AI companies training on Reddit’s data to pony up, but they’re also wiping out some beloved Reddit apps, and thousands of subreddits have gone dark for days in protest.
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They want to charge for what they believe the data is worth.
Not for usage, but value.
Counter argument: it’s not their data to charge for. And if they want to claim it is their data then they should be held accountable for the content therein.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t recoup costs for access to said data. You do after all pay taxes and get access to local libraries and archives. But they shouldn’t be extorting third-party developers.
While "yes, that was April, the law wasn't signed until May", it passed 96-0 ( https://legiscan.com/VA/votes/SB1515/2023 ) in February and the recommendations from the Governor to change it was rejected on April 12th.
The timeline of when that switchover would happen was at the end of May when 3rd party developers said that they wouldn't be able to continue past June 30th.
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I don't believe that the change was "Virginia Law -> do all these things" but rather "these things are in motion... Virginia Law -> several of these things in motion must be done by July 1."
I do agree with you here - Virginia's mature content law probably had something to do with NSFW content in the API. The API pricing was just poor decision making occurring at the same time. (Apologies if my previous comment was a little unkind).
