🚨Reddit Introduces API Paywall: 3rd Party Apps shutting down!🚨

🤔Reddit is many times referred to as the "face of the internet". Reddit's business model relies on people willingly creating content, which it monetizes using ads. What makes Reddit more engaging is the 3rd party apps that bring their user base to the platform as well. The core of any distributed system is an API, providing a perfect abstraction and opening up possibilities to build applications faster without reinventing the wheel. So why do basic things like GET and POST requests need to be behind a paywall?🤷‍♂️

🌐Reddit is a social media platform that depends on people creating and consuming content. While I understand their argument about generative AI scraping information and training models with minimal friction, there are a plethora of 3rd party applications that make Reddit more engaging.📱

🚀Take Apollo, for example. It's a 3rd party Reddit app with a better UI and customer experience. On the surface, it looks like a different application, but it's essentially publishing to the same Reddit backend via an API. Apollo makes 7 billion user requests every month!💥

💸From July 1st, Reddit API costs will be $0.24 for 1,000 API calls. With Apollo's 7 billion API calls, its estimated bill would be $2 million per month or over $20 million per year. This isn't economical, so Apollo is closing down on June 30, and others like Reddit is Fun, Reddplanet, and Sync are following suit.😢

👨‍💼Reddit CEO Steve Huffman isn't budging, stating the company can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use as it needs to be a "self-sustaining business." What does the future hold for Reddit?🔮

#Reddit #API #3rdPartyApps #Apollo #SocialMedia #BusinessModel #RedditBlackout