r/redditisfun • u/talklittle RIF Dev • May 31 '23

RIF dev here - Reddit's API changes will likely kill RIF and other apps, on July 1, 2023

I need more time to get all my thoughts together, but posting this quick post since so many users have been asking, and it's been making rounds on news sites.

Summary of what Reddit Inc has announced so far, specifically the parts that will kill many third-party apps:

  1. The Reddit API will cost money, and the pricing announced today will cost apps like Apollo $20 million per year to run. RIF may differ but it would be in the same ballpark. And no, RIF does not earn anywhere remotely near this number.

  2. As part of this they are blocking ads in third-party apps, which make up the majority of RIF's revenue. So they want to force a paid subscription model onto RIF's users. Meanwhile Reddit's official app still continues to make the vast majority of its money from ads.

  3. Removal of sexually explicit material from third-party apps while keeping said content in the official app. Some people have speculated that NSFW is going to leave Reddit entirely, but then why would Reddit Inc have recently expanded NSFW upload support on their desktop site?

Their recent moves smell a lot like they want third-party apps gone, RIF included.

I know some users will chime in saying they are willing to pay a monthly subscription to keep RIF going, but trust me that you would be in the minority. There is very little value in paying a high subscription for less content (in this case, NSFW). Honestly if I were a user of RIF and not the dev, I'd have a hard time justifying paying the high prices being forced by Reddit Inc, despite how much RIF obviously means to me.

There is a lot more I want to say, and I kind of scrambled to write this since I didn't expect news reports today. I'll probably write more follow-up posts that are better thought out. But this is the gist of what's been going on with Reddit third-party apps in 2023.

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u/devils_advocaat Jun 01 '23

Posts like yours and mine now are almost zero direct revenue generation, but generate a large part of user retention.

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u/venn177 Jun 01 '23

I'm not sure about that, actually. I don't know how to get hard statistics, but anecdotally I know a lot of people who go on reddit just to look at images and videos ala tiktok and never even visit the comments section.

Certain subreddits like /r/AmItheAsshole and /r/relationship_advice require that interaction, but I imagine the venn diagram between people who post in subs like that and people who have been on reddit for 15 years is almost two separate circles.

So I guess what I'm saying is that not all comments are equal, and ones in subreddits that have an intrinsic level of interaction are much more valuable than us bitching here.

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u/devils_advocaat Jun 01 '23

First order of magnitude I agree.

I'm suggesting that the long tail of Reddit content creation (what we are doing now) isn't likely to be included in their business model calculations. When they chop of that tail they may bleed more than they expect

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u/venn177 Jun 01 '23

the long tail of Reddit content creation (what we are doing now) isn't likely to be included in their business model calculations.

100% agree

When they chop of that tail they may bleed more than they expect

Yeah, it's amount of people who leave vs amount of people who move over and start seeing ads. Which is way above my pay grade to figure out the magic number.