Tag Archives: reddit

Reddit CEO Will Charge App Makers A High Price

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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has finally spoken publicly about the company’s deeply unpopular API changes that have resulted in some of the most-used third-party reddit apps saying they will be forced to shut down.

In an AMA (Ask Me Anything) discussion, Huffman promised improvements to Reddit’s own app, but seemed unwilling to make concessions on pricing and other issues that have rankled the community, Engadget reported.

“Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use,” he wrote in his AMA post. “Some apps such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync have decided this pricing doesn’t work for their business and will close before pricing goes into effect.”

Engadget also reported that there were a number of topics Huffman didn’t address, including why the company priced its API at a rate that developers say is prohibitively expensive. Huffman also didn’t address the upcoming blackout from thousands of subreddits protesting the API changes. More than 3,000 subreddits have pledged to “go dark” for two days beginning June 12th to protest the changes.

TechCrunch reported that CEO Steve Huffman, aka u/spez on the internet forum site, doubled down on accusations against the developer behind the well-liked third-party app Apollo, which the company had previously accused of operating inefficiently and not being a good “API” user.

According to TechCrunch, Huffman’s AMA confirmed the company has no plans to revise its upcoming API changes. What’s more, Huffman continued his accusations against Apollo, calling out the developer, Christian Selig’s “behavior and communications” as being “all over the place” and saying he couldn’t see Reddit working with the developer further.

Selig had been among the first to highlight Reddit’s new API pricing would effectively make it impossible to continue to operate the Apollo app. He explained that, under the new terms, it would cost him $20 million per year to do so – money the app doesn’t make. This week, Selig announced the app’s last day would be June 30, ahead of the July 1 implementation of the new API pricing.

ArsTechnica reported that Selig wrote, “June 30th will be Apollo’s last day. I’ve talked to a lot of people and come to terms over the last weeks as talks with Reddit have deteriorated to an ugly point.” Selig says that while charging some amount of money for Reddit’s API would be “understandable,” the developer says Reddit’s costs and timelines are just too much to overcome and that “it’s much cheaper for me to simply shut it down.”

This situation reminds me of Twitter, when Elon Musk decided to charge apps thousands of dollars for access to enough data to keep creator’s apps running. According to TIME, it has been speculated that the price was “part of the efforts to stop the company from hemorrhaging money.”

It seems Reddit’s CEO has decided to follow in Elon Musk’s footsteps by including new pricing tiers for third-party app makers, with prices that are likely impossible for the app makers to come up with each month. There is what appears to be a large group of Reddit users who are very much against these types of shenanigans, and I expect many will leave Reddit.

Reddit Files to Go Public

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Reddit Inc. announced on December 15, 2021, that it is confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) relating to the proposed initial public offering of its common stock.

The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. The initial public offering is expected to occur after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions.

We are in a quiet period, and for regulatory reasons, we cannot say anything further.

The Wall Street Journal reported: “Reddit has been looking to build on the attention it gained at the start of the year its WallStreetBets forum became a hot spot for the individual investors who rallied around GameStop Corp. and other stocks.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, Reddit was sold to Condé Nast in 2006, and the magazine publisher’s parent, Advance Publications Inc., spun Reddit off in 2011 and remains a shareholder. The New York Times reported that Reddit raised more than $1 billion in private capital from investors including Fidelity Management, Advance Publications, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has plenty of information about the reasons why a company might decide to go public. One reason, of course, is to raise capital and potentially broaden opportunities for future access to capital.

The SEC also pointed out that a company that goes public “will take on significant new obligations, such as filing SEC reports an keeping shareholders and the market informed about the company’s business operations, financial condition, and management, which will take a significant amount of time for your company’s management and result in additional costs”.

In my opinion, a company that goes public will be forever beholden to its shareholders. It is possible for shareholders to become angry if they aren’t making enough money with Reddit’s stock. Boards could push for changes that the current users of Reddit might not agree with.

Reddit Acquired Dubsmash

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Reddit announced that it has acquired short-form video social platform Dubsmash.

Dubsmash’s mission is to elevate under-represented creators. They have built a beautiful and fun product that enables their users to create unique, dynamic, interactive content. While Dubsmash will maintain its own platform and brand, we also look forward to bringing our teams together to combine the unique creator experience of Dubsmash with the community growth engine of Reddit.

Reddit pointed out that they will integrate Dubsmash’s innovative video creation tools into Reddit, which will empower Reddit’s own creators to express themselves in original and authentic ways that are endemic to Reddit’s communities. Reddit stated that Dubsmash’s entire team – including the three co-founders, Suchit Dash, Jonas Drüppel, and Tim Specht – are welcomed to Reddit, starting immediately.

Dubsmash announced “with great excitement” that they had been acquired by Reddit. Dubsmash reported:

Going forward, Dubsmash will be run as its own entity and brand within Reddit, continuing to focus on developing trusted creator tools, creating a safe and welcoming platform for underrepresented communities, and providing pathways for the next generation of cultural vanguards to grow and expand their livelihoods.

According to Reuters, Dubsmash is a short-video platform. Together, this makes Reddit the latest company to expand in a space dominated by TikTok. A spokesperson for Reddit told Reuters that the acquisition was based on a combination of cash and stock.

Reuters also reported that the success of ByteDance’s TikTok has prompted many social media companies to add short-video services to their platforms. Snapchat Inc. rolled out “Spotlight” in November, and Facebook Inc. launched “Instagram Reels” earlier this year.

Reddit Research Nearly Proves Godwin’s Law

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reddit-logo-01-674x501It’s a cliche that’s almost as old as the internet itself, and it’s summed up succinctly by Godwin’s Law:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches – that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism. The first utterance of such comparison is called the Godwin point of the discussion.

A blogger operating under the name GuriousGnu wasn’t necessarily attempting to prove Godwin’s Law. But CuriousGnu almost did, after analyzing publicly available data from Reddit. First, CuriousGnu made a list that shows the top subreddits that mention either Hitler or Naziism. This list might come as somewhat reassuring to anyone who’s spent more than a little time in online communities, as the top five subreddits for Hitler mentions are:

  • /history
  • /AskHistorians
  • /european
  • /italy
  • /de (Germany)

So it seems likely most of these Nazi-tinged threads might’ve at least been relevant to discussions on history.

CuriousGnu also made a graph that really starts to put Godwin’s Law into perspective:

Then I excluded history subreddits and looked at the probability that a Reddit thread mentions Nazis or Hitler at least once. Unsuprisigly, the probability of a Nazi refrence increases as the threads get bigger. Nevertheless, I didn’t expect that the probability would be over 70% for a thread with more than 1,000 comments.

CuriousGun goes on to state that the next logical step in the experiment would be to do advanced analyses using sophisticated text-mining techniques that would be difficult and time-consuming to complete. Still, this bit of analysis gives us some interesting (if not humorous) insight into what really happens when people congregate and communicate online.

Reddit Expanded its “Block User” Feature

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reddit-logo-01-674x501It appears that Reddit is working on making itself a nicer place to visit. The company has expanded its “block user” feature. This change was made at around the same time Reddit launched its new mobile app.

The Reddit announcement about the improved “block user” feature starts by pointing out that Reddit is a place “where virtually anyone can voice, ask about, or change their views on a wide range of topics, share personal, intimate feelings, or post cat pictures.” It goes on to acknowledge that this openness can lead to “less awesome stuff like spam, trolling, and worse, harassment.”

It turns out Reddit already had a “block user” feature. It was limited to apply only to private messages. The updated “block user” feature can be used to block users that reply to you in comment replies (in addition to private messages). All you need to do is click the “block user” button while viewing the reply from your inbox.

From that point on, the profile of the blocked user, along with all their comments, posts, and messages, will then be completely removed from your view. You will no longer be alerted if they message you further. As before, the block is completely silent to the blocked user.

In short, Reddit is making an effort to give users the ability to decide for themselves what kind of experience they want from Reddit. Or, as the Reddit post says: Our changes to user blocking are intended to let you decide what your boundaries are, and to give you the option to choose what you want – or don’t want – to be exposed to. The announcement encourages people to report harassment to Reddit’s community team.

Blocking a user means you won’t see anything else that user posts, but the blocked user will still be able to see everything you post publicly on Reddit. The expanded “block user” feature cannot be used to block entire subreddits and have them removed from your sight. It appears that that Reddit is planning on making more improvements. The announcement ends with: These are just our first steps toward improving the experience of Reddit, and we’re looking forward to announcing many more.

Reddit has Launched an Official Mobile App

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Reddit new mobile appReddit has launched the first mobile app that was built by the company. The Reddit mobile app is available for both iPhone and Android and is now available in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

Reddit VP of Consumer Product, Alex Le, posted information about the official Reddit app on Reddit. It explains that the company planned to deliver their first official Android Reddit app and to improve and stabilize Alien Blue (a very popular, but unofficial, third-party Reddit app).

Updating Alien Blue was more difficult a task than expected. In the post, Alex Le wrote:

Revamping Alien Blue is also a pretty obvious thing to do, but what started out as a simple improvement project turned into a much larger effort. We’ve decided to rebuild our iPhone app from the ground up to be faster, more modern, and more usable.

The official Reddit app features inline images, night theme, compact and card views, and simpler navigation. Users can customize their Reddit experience on the mobile app with themes. Just like the Reddit website, the app allows “top content” to rise based on the upvotes of users.

The website for the official Reddit app shows images of phones with photos of a cat and dog being cute together, sushi, a Go game, and a very red watermelon. To me, it feels like the app is being presented in a way that makes Reddit look like it is similar to Instagram or Pinterest – very photo heavy. Cats are mentioned more than once in the app’s description.

Personally, I don’t use Reddit very often. I go there to check out what’s new on /r/Diablo because that’s my favorite video game and people post interesting stuff about the game there. I never post anything myself, I simply read whatever is in there. As such, I’ve never had any problems with Reddit.

That being said, I think everyone is aware that Reddit has developed a bad reputation in the past due to some of the content and discussions that can be described as “unwelcoming” (to put it mildly). The presentation of the official Reddit app makes Reddit look friendly and inviting. Perhaps Reddit is hoping its new mobile app will attract users who have been previously avoiding Reddit.

Reddit to Launch News Site

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Reddit logoFor years, social sharing message board Reddit has carried the tagline “The Front Page of the Internet.” Thanks in part to Reddit’s “upvoting” system, which allows users to push items they like to its front page, Reddit has become a reliable source for bringing interesting things to a wider audience.

With this history in mind, Reddit will launch a dedicated news site. Cleverly called Upvoted, the new site will consist of a mixture of different topics, handpicked by a dedicated editorial team. Upvoted itself will actually work quite different from Reddit. Upvoted won’t have a user voting system of its own, nor will it allow for public comments.

The launch of Upvoted is being seen by many as an opportunity to make Reddit more “friendly.” Not just to users but also to advertisers. Reddit has had somewhat of a checkered past, having been embroiled in a number of controversies. Many of its users view Reddit as an “anything goes” zone, where they can post whatever they want. But this mentality can be problematic, as it may offend other users or drive potential sponsors away who don’t want to be associated with Reddit’s Internet drama.

Upvoted launches Tuesday, October 6th. The site is currently showing only a login screen on a protected WordPress page.