No one was saying reddit couldn’t implement API costs. In fact, every major 3rd party app developer, including Apollo, supported Reddit charging for API access and made suggestions on how such an arrangement could be made that was fair and reasonable to all parties. Reddit even invited these developers to discussions on the topic. However, Reddit’s CEO said fuck that and wanted to charge an insane amount of money for API usage that no 3rd party developers would be able to reasonably afford without asking for an exorbitant amount of money from their users.
This link is really the one that discussed how willing 3rd party devs were to pay for API access if it was a fair cost. Reddit wasn’t interested in being fair.
No one was saying reddit couldn’t implement API costs. In fact, every major 3rd party app developer, including Apollo, supported Reddit charging for API access and made suggestions on how such an arrangement could be made that was fair and reasonable to all parties. Reddit even invited these developers to discussions on the topic. However, Reddit’s CEO said fuck that and wanted to charge an insane amount of money for API usage that no 3rd party developers would be able to reasonably afford without asking for an exorbitant amount of money from their users.
Here: https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/
That was post made by the Apollo dev after their meeting with the Reddit team. With more info here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/
This link is really the one that discussed how willing 3rd party devs were to pay for API access if it was a fair cost. Reddit wasn’t interested in being fair.