Hackers Threaten to Release Reddit Data Unless API Changes Are Rolled Back

[WarmWinterHat]

The issue is not that they’re charging for API access. It’s that they’re charging 20X the industry rate, that they only gave developers 30 days to implement the change, and that just a few months earlier, Huffman had told them there would not be any changes to the API or its pricing structure for the next few years. Then, to add insult to injury, Huffman crapped on developers and users in every interview he’s done since, while also slandering Christian Selig, who fortunately had audio recordings of their conversations to prove who was the one lying.

There is no "industry rate" for API access on social media, because almost no social media allows user-facing 3rd party access. Steve Huffman has been fairly clear in subsequent interviews that he thinks 3rd party apps are a bad idea, regardless of how much is charged, and he is making it happen. He is the mouthpiece, but Reddit has a board of directors that have to approve of such direction changes. Why is no one talking about or going after Bob Sauerberg, Porter Gale, Michael Seibel, Paula Price, Patricia Fili-Krushel, or Dave Habiger?

He, and Reddit's board, are free to shut-down 3rd party apps, and have decided to do that. You're free to leave. I think everyone upset should choose to leave.....and I think whoever is behind "BlackCat" should be in prison for blackmail, regardless of their reasons.

Reddit: A garbage site for garbage people.

 

[ninethirty]

No, if you listen, he said just buy out Apollo for 10 Mil and be done with it. He wasn't blackmailing, Hoffman didn't understand at first but when clarified Hoffman apologized. After the call Hoff. went on to tell everyone he was trying to blackmail Reddit anyways.

Sorry, extort was the word I should have used.

 

[Spooner83]

Dont give in to blackmailing low life scum!

Don't be greedy and the low life scum won't have to release data.

You're aware that reddit has never made a profit, right? How greedy of them to want to!

Not being greedy to want to make a profit, but charging people that much is greedy. These are inflation times, people can't afford higher prices when they're not being paid higher wages.

 

[FlyingTexan]

Mod tools and modbots are still free. People need to stop complaining. This is a move against corporations that were basically data mining Reddit

 

[ninethirty]

Never paid a penny for Apollo, so what are you talking about? Reddit should just integrate it and make a deal with the developer because that would ultimately make the experience better for everyone and promote top tier users that care about the community. Because the community is the ultimate real value here.

That's great that you've never paid a penny for Apollo, but others have, and Selig has admitted that his net worth is well over a million dollars. Selig has profited from what reddit built, while reddit has never profited at all.

What part of that seems right to you?

 

[ninethirty]

Don't be greedy and the low life scum won't have to release data.

Not being greedy to want to make a profit, but charging people that much is greedy. These are inflation times, people can't afford higher prices when they're not being paid higher wages.

Show me one other major social media site that charges less for its API data. I'll wait.

 

[FlyingTexan]

I’m willing to pay these hackers to watch them do it. 🤐

Reddit CEO deserves this. He started this fire now he’s going to be facing the consequences.

I’m a fan and supportive of it. Reddit didn’t lose any functionality it’s still free for all. This is a move to combat AI datamining. Why should anyone care about who many API hits a minute they get? 100/min isn’t enough for you?

 

[JippaLippa]

Should reddit fail...
What would a viable competitor be?

 

[Shirasaki]

Regardless if this is leaked or not Reddit will suffer.
Once plattforms or suppliers abandon their core values and/or core community they are going to pay a high price as there is usually a snowball effect.
A good example is ebay... they messed it up when they started to put the commission to ~20%. The private sellers who made ebay the "place where you find everything" left and only the commercial sellers that probably got a discount, remained. So ebay became a marketplace like every other and lost the "flea market" benefit it had. Ultimately, they lost their USP because some genius manager thought it was a great idea to apply a 20% tax to private sales, which probably accounted for a minority of the revenue at that time.
Now ebay doesn't charge a commission anymore (since a few months ago) on private sales. Congratulations on realizing the obvious mistake. It should have been corrected years ago. The ship sailed.
(Even Apple made that mistake when they abandoned the creative industry... no proper mac pros and macbook pros with no ports beside USB-C... that was addressed only last minute...)
Reddit is repeating that exact mistake. Reddit is in fact worthless without its community as it is at the end of the day just another board/forum and that community is also there because of the ease of access. Now that access is overly monetized by Reddit. To provide what exactly? Database Hosting? Content or moderation certainly not.
Unless they revert that stupidity, the down-spiral will likely continue with a few more stupid ideas... "Premium-Reddits" or something like that, limited views, eventually a paid point system, i.e. going crazy on the awards or so, all free for the contributors so they remain unaffected longest, but the influx of new users will slowly dry out and thus starve the community. For few years this will work "well", and Reddit will make good money on it, but the core community is slowly migrating elsewhere as. Then it's too late. Youtube is doing the same with their double 20s+ advertisements for even a 2 minute video. Effectively kills the community. I don't know anyone who likes youtube anymore.

Well said.

The good and bad thing is, these sort of effects don’t happen overnight, so it is good to give CEO and whatnot a couple years of nice money, then, before they realise, things will go downhill. Human is extremely susceptible to poor or no long term planning. Those do live their life very well, generally. Reddit will be fine, but the question is: for how long.

Now, we also have to acknowledge the fact that things do change, and environments do change. IPO or not, if reddit somehow manages to evolve to adapt to the new change, Reddit can last longer than we want to admit. By then, the community is certainly not the one laughing when they look back after a couple years.

Only time will tell.

 

[ifrit05]

Sorry, extort was the word I should have used.

Sure thing buddy.

 

[Spooner83]

There is no "industry rate" for API access on social media, because almost no social media allows user-facing 3rd party access. Steve Huffman has been fairly clear in subsequent interviews that he thinks 3rd party apps are a bad idea, regardless of how much is charged, and he is making it happen. He is the mouthpiece, but Reddit has a board of directors that have to approve of such direction changes. Why is no one talking about or going after Bob Sauerberg, Porter Gale, Michael Seibel, Paula Price, Patricia Fili-Krushel, or Dave Habiger?

He, and Reddit's board, are free to shut-down 3rd party apps, and have decided to do that. You're free to leave. I think everyone upset should choose to leave.....and I think whoever is behind "BlackCat" should be in prison for blackmail, regardless of their reasons.

Reddit: A garbage site for garbage people.

I've already left. Too many trolls and hate speech on Reddit. Deleted my account weeks ago.

 

[I7guy]

That's great that you've never paid a penny for Apollo, but others have, and Selig has admitted that his net worth is well over a million dollars. Selig has profited from what reddit built, while reddit has never profited at all.

What part of that seems right to you?

Win win. Dev made bank and Reddit got brand recognition. Now Reddit wants to change the rules. Dev will pack up and go home and Reddit will be blasted online.

Going to be like Netflix. People will stamp their feet and shout online, but that will be it.

 

[bigjnyc]

Should reddit fail...
What would a viable competitor be?

There is none right now.. That's why it won't fail.

 

[ninethirty]

Want a balanced take on the situation? Imagine you're Christian Selig, creator of Apollo. This whole scandal sinks reddit, and in a month, the website goes offline. Well, Apollo is gone now regardless, and that cash cow has stopped. What's next? Hell, built a reddit competitor, right? Would Christian Selig choose to open up the API completely, not charge anyone for access, and start to watch his net worth dwindle away as he runs an unprofitable site paying for employees, server costs, etc, all on his own? Should he just keep the lights on at his own expense so others can build 3rd party apps and make money?

 

[TheRealTVGuy]

Reddit hasn't done anything wrong. They're the ONLY social media company that hasn't been charging for API access. Just because people got used to something doesn't mean they have a right to that thing.

Careful! You’re going to upset the MacRumors hive mind with your logic and common sense!

 

[212rikanmofo]

Reddit like all other social media platforms are toxic and useless. Good riddance. I hope they all die.

 

[NagasakiGG]

If Reddit will win this - other companies might follow it reducing API by f u prices and just 30 days to adapt (when App Store or Google Play have protection for sudden changing app price if someone paid for I.e yearly subscription). So in this case Apollo would pay lots of money to refund changes and ask for new subscriptions or would pay difference by themselves = dead app

Edit: Some other companies have given 60-90 days to adapt instead and were open to negotiation

Still, it is in fact "their" product and blackmailing someone is never okay, regardless on what they did. Everyone with a bit of knowledge can be free to create a same/similar platform. Again, I do not want to defend reddit in this case. I just think that are two different things.

 

[cocky jeremy]

How dare they want to become profitable!

Trying to rip off the 3rd party apps that made Reddit so popular isn't just trying to "become profitable".

 

[saintstryfe]

Mod tools and modbots are still free. People need to stop complaining. This is a move against corporations that were basically data mining Reddit

The tools provided are rudimentary and not enough for many. The people here are focused on Apollo and other reader apps. But that's not what's causing the uproar. The problem is many subreddits, especially those with vulnerable readerships, can't keep mod teams who are known good actors, so they rely on the tools that use the API to handle moderation. This change forces them to either hand moderate, which for many can be overwhelming for a free, often tiny labor force, or use newly expensive software that doesn't exist yet. As a result, some well-regarded subreddits have had to close.

One close to me is /r/rtraaaa - a meme-themed subreddit for the Transgender community. Trans people have to be very careful of people trying to get in and wreck their work, and due to that finding moderators is tough. So the person behind r/traaa had to use extensive scripting and mod tools that reddit doesn't provide. With these rules, that person's tools were gonna be shut down, had to choose to not continue, and the subreddit got locked. This was a well-regarded community that won reddit's subreddit of the day, and was a place of comfort and support for hundreds of thousands of trans people.

The site is hurt by this. And while others may not be in such precarious positions as /r/traaa, how many others will eventually just fade off because hand moderating becomes too much?

This is a massive, self-inflicted wound. They don't need to do this and they're doing it for an artificial stock price inflation. It didn't provide value to the company, it just restricted other people from sharing, and will ultimately cause the site to be hurt.

 

[gaximus]

If a water company had a good standing with a local community and provided a pipeline of free, clean water for over a decade and then suddenly changed it's mind and started charging ungodly amounts of money for that same water overnight, without negotiating with the community or discussing the situation...I'd expect to see pitchforks too. And since there were no rules put in place BEFORE that pipeline was provided, why should the users expect anything but a right to that water, especially when it's been used to grow the community even more?

As a company, they should have realized that by offering their API for free from the start, the community was going to expect that to remain in place. But without any negotiating in good faith or meeting in the middle on a compromise, they decided to shoot themselves in the foot, blame the community for pulling the trigger and then give these 3rd party devs the hospital bill. If they had charged a fee for the API right from the beginning, then all of this would be completely different.

Your analogy is flawed in the sense that the pipe line is still going to be free to the users. The only difference is the the other companies that have come in and connected to the pipe lines and provide "cold" water to the user at a fee, are now being charges a huge fee. Users still have access to the free water. The companies profiting off the free water now won't be able to.

I personally think that how the sub Reddits were handling this was fair and making a point, and the users boycotting was a show. The CEO could have increased the API prices a little bit and then everyone could have made some money. CEO made some bad decisions here. Cold water is good, people like the cold water.

 

[H00513R]

Web browsers are going to be removed? What 3rd party apps access macrumors?

I guess I'm the odd one that I never use my phone to access social media, but then I don't really use social media. No reddit, facebook, tiktok or twitter.

Tapatalk is one, but I wouldn’t say it is a good choice…

 

[BigMcGuire]

Can you provide a source on 20x the industry rate? My understanding is that what they'd charge is the same as other major social media companies, which is why you don't see as many 3rd party apps as you do with reddit.

Also, the audio that Selig has, literally has him trying to extort money from reddit, which he conveniently said was a joke afterwards.

Nearly every major news outlet covered this and answered this question when it happened. IMGUR charges $166 for 50 million api calls. Reddit wants to charge $12,000 for the same 50 million api calls. ...

As to your second claim, the posts by Selig I've read seem to indicate the opposite of what you said, but you are entitled to your opinion.

 

[koil]

Reddit hasn't done anything wrong. They're the ONLY social media company that hasn't been charging for API access. Just because people got used to something doesn't mean they have a right to that thing.

The problem isn't that they're doing it, the problem is how they're doing it.

 

[wanha]

I don't want algorithmic feeds. I want to see what I follow, absolutely nothing else, and in chronological order

I agree, but if only we were the actual customers then what we want might actually matter more to social media companies.

As it stands, we - or more specifically, our attention - is the product and it's been shown over and over again that algorithmic feeds get more attention and engagement.

The algorithm's ultimate purpose is simply to mirror what you engage with and give you more of that, so that you can be the best possible product for the real customer, the advertisers.

I realize that's messed up, but that's what happening.

Now, you can quit social media completely, but then you miss out on its many benefits.

The other option is to be mindful of what you click and share and who you follow, which translates into a more positive, informative, and useful feed.

 

[Sevendaymelee]

The entitlement is strong with this one.