r/subredditdrama
Almost every week, a social media platform seems entangled in chaos. This week it’s the turn of Reddit.
First, a quick recap. In April, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman announced that the platform would start charging for API access. To avoid going into too many boring details, Reddit wanted to start charging third-party applications for access to Reddit’s functionality and data, which they had previously accessed for free. According to Apollo - the biggest alternative interface to the official platform - they were asked to pay $12,000 per every 50 million requests. The developers behind the app estimated it would now cost around $20 million a year to run. They immediately announced Apollo would shut down on June 30, the day before the charges took effect.
That opened the floodgates. Moderators responded in solidarity with the developers - and out of concern that the other third-party tools they use could soon be gone. Thousands of subreddits suddenly went dark (that’s private in laymen’s terms). The moderators behind these subreddits use third-party tools to block spam accounts, flag unsafe posts, find patterns of harassment and abuse and communicate with their members on the go. Without them, their interactions with the platform, and the free value they provide, would become a lot more challenging.
A few days later, The Verge bagged an interview with Huffman. This seemed to be his chance to calm the waters and likely backtrack on some of the proposed changes to appease the user base. Instead, he doubled down, saying, “Like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass.” He pointed to several things, arguing that Reddit was an 18-year-old company that had to grow up and start making money. You can’t argue with that. There are other reasons behind the changes, too; there’s been a rumored IPO on the cards since 2021, and of course, a company showing itself as somewhat profitable - and with revenue streams that can grow - is going to perform better than one that gives everything away for free. Huffman recently told NBC News that Reddit is still-unprofitable, and its annual revenue is less than $1 billion. That figure must be much splashier if the IPO is ever to occur, especially in the current venture capital climate.
Secondly is the rise of A.I. and chatbots like ChatGPT. Huffman is pissed off that these companies have trained their bots on the treasure trove of valuable data on Reddit, paid nothing for it, and made millions in return. By pay-gating API access, the company could, in theory, force the company’s creating these LLMs to pay for future access.
The drama has rumbled on. Some subreddits are still dark, though around 80% of the top 5,000 have returned to normal. The CEO is standing firm. It looks like the changes will push through, and either the third-party apps will find a way to monetize and pay the fees, or they’ll close.
And it’s that point that has interested me most. I've been wondering what this saga reveals about the future of the internet.
If putting everything behind paywalls is the only way to combat the A.I. bots scraping all our data or guarantee media is created by humans, or make these platforms financially viable, then we are just going to have to start paying for these apps and services. Yes, even the ones we’ve become accustomed to being free. I mean, what is the alternative? Why should we let A.I. language models run wild, suck up every data point and metric and regurgitate it back to us while making all the money? It's down to us, the users, to support the fight against this.
Take Apollo. They immediately said $20 million a year was untenable. Yet, the app has some 900,000 daily users and has been downloaded over 5 million times. The app has two paid tiers, $4.99 and $12.99. We can assume some users pay, but not enough. But when the app's life is on the line, why couldn’t Apollo have added another tier, say $20 a year, and told its loyal users that this is the only way this service survives? My guess is most would have baulked. And that’s why it’s going to close. The problem isn’t the API access, a move that makes business sense to Reddit; it’s the fact users won’t pay.
It strikes similar tones to Twitter. Musk assumed that pay-gating features would encourage the majority to sign up because a) people want those features and b) people would support the app through subscriptions to reduce ads. It hasn’t been the case. The current number of signups is around 640,000. For context, the site has over 350 million users. While the animosity towards Musk has distorted this comparison, it’s clear that when it comes to paying for something we’ve become accustomed to using for free the majority won’t open their wallets.
The Reddit drama could be the first sign that this will have to change. It could be the very beginnings of a new evolution in the internet, in which we will have to pay for every app and service we want. I don’t think Reddit or Twitter have handled it perfectly. Though, I’m not sure there is a way to implement charges without causing an uproar. But in this A.I.-driven future, paying for the services you use could be the only way to keep these platforms alive.
It would be overdramatic to say it’s the death of the “open internet,” but we’re already witnessing the social media era dying. And with that, the ad model that sustained the platforms is starting to waiver. Could the very concept of the internet - its openness - be the next thing that needs to evolve?
*r/update (20/07): Reddit is now being held ransom by a group of hackers, who want $4.5 million and changes to the controversial API charges. The hackers took responsibility for a breach into the platform’s systems earlier this year, and claimed to have stolen 80gb of data. They’re threatening to release this data if demands aren’t met.