App developer Christian Selig announced the news on Twitter.
Selig made the decision after Reddit began to charge developers of access to its API.
Reddit’s proposed API fee would have cost Selig $20 million per year before even making a profit on the app itself.
In Selig’s detailed announcement, he describes exactly what an API request is:
Some people are confused about this situation and don’t understand what an API is. An API (Application Programming Interface) is just a way for an app to talk to a website. As an analogy, pretend Reddit is a bouncer. Historically, you can ask Reddit “Could I have the comments for this post?” or “Can you list the posts in AskReddit?”. Those would be one API request each, and Reddit would respond with the corresponding data.
Everything you do on Reddit is an API request. Upvoting, downvoting, commenting, loading posts, loading subreddits, checking for new messages, blocking users, filtering subreddits, etc.
The situation is changing so that for each API request you make, there’s a portion of a penny charged to the developer of that app. I think that is very reasonable, provided, well, that the price they charge is reasonable.
Reddit gave Selig and developers of other third-party client just 30 days between the pricing for API usage and when they would begin to be charged.
The situation is similar to Twitter’s decision earlier in 2023 to cut off access to all third-party apps. Instead of making a unilateral decision, Reddit is simply making it’s API to expensive for third-party developers like Selig to continue.
It’s sad to see yet another social media company sacrifice third-party clients for the possibility of more profit. Apollo was always my favorite way to browse Reddit, and now that it’s sitting down, I doubt I will use Reddit as often.
