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Comment by hackernewds | Hacker News Reader

Is what they are requesting not common and reasonable though? Responsible use of their API, which they sustain as an expense.

90% of third party apps are able to accommodate this. Apollo for ex caches thousands of posts per page load, which no app with self-hosting would ever incorporate. Reddit has also offered to work with the third party apps to improve efficiency.

I personally do not believe that reddit has egregiously demanded something unreasonable. However they have produced a masterclass case study of terrible PR and a CEO that has lost the rhyme.

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I think the myth that Apollo was using the API in an inefficient way had been debunked. I'm on mobile now so I cannot easily find the post, but the dev of Apollo explained clearly that how he is using the API is entirely within the limits and conditions that Reddit set.

And as I understood it, they weren't making unnecessary calls or anything.

It is my understanding that the entire cost of the Reddit API infrastructure was in the 10M/Year according to the CEO.

And yet they wanted 20M/Year just from the Apollo dev.

RIF dev said his numbers were in the same ballpark. So with those two alone they were looking at getting 4x the cost of running the API.

Asking for money is reasonable. The devs themselves stated that. What’s unreasonable is both the amount of money and the way the change has been rolled out.

This is clearly a move to remove some of the big 3rd party competitors from the scene without explicitly stating that they want to remove 3rd party apps.

Reddit's ask isn't unreasonable in principal however the inflated API pricing and the short lead-time are just ridiculous.

"It's for backpay over you making millions off us"

"... for making a client users actually want, instead of something so basic the average user will install out of necessity, annoyance of the mobile website nagging prompts, or ignorance of other options."

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