Reddit is ready to sell, shutting down third-party clients
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Reddit is the last place on the web where relevant information can be reliably found on any topic: usually you’ll find it by googling the term “reddit” or “site:reddit.com” in your search. This UI, bizarre and wacky as it obviously is, condemns what Google has otherwise become and praises what Reddit remains: single-indexed and searchable human content largely free of ads, sponsorships, Amazon referral lists, SEO-optimized blather and the rest of the. For the people who own Reddit, but they are worst thing about it. The bird must be fattened, because it is to be sold, and that means beating it into the mold of the rest of the modern web and app ecosystem.
Reddit, the 18-year-old social media and news aggregation site, requires developers to pay thousands of dollars to gain direct access to the company’s data and content, a move that could help draw in a more diversified source of revenue.
The company, which first revealed plans for an IPO in late 2021, is asking developers to pay $12,000 for every 50 million requests, according to a post by the creator of a popular third-party app called Apollo. The developer said the number was “deeply” disappointing.
“Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at around $1.7 million per month, or $20 million US per year,” the developer said in a Reddit post about the change.
I honestly don’t know how to handle it when Reddit (or Google, honestly) kills the third party reddit search tricks. It’s about the latest on the web where 1) UX works for my late-millennium internet brain and 2) it harvests information at scale rather than boutique/bespoke web craft.
