Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has just launched his promised AMA on the platform’s controversial API changes, but based on the tone of his initial message and a few replies, it doesn’t look like Reddit will budge on potentially expensive API updates that caused several developers to give way to announce that they will shut down their apps.
“On 18.4. shared that we would be updating access to the API, including premium access for third parties who need additional features and higher usage limits,” wrote Huffman, who goes by u/spez on Reddit, in the first post for his AMA. “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and in order to achieve that, we can no longer subsidize commercial businesses that require large-scale data usage.”
Huffman also responded to a Redditor’s question about Christian Selig’s claim that Huffman told Reddit moderators that the Apollo developer “threatened us” to get Reddit to give him $10 million without doing so entirely to deny or to confirm. “His ‘joke’ is the least of our problems,” Huffman said. “His behavior and communication with us was all-encompassing – he was telling us one thing while on the outside he was saying something completely different; I recorded and leaked a private phone call — to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him.” In a response, Selig urged Huffman to “give examples where I’ve been public said something different than what I told you.”
For the past two weeks, Reddit users have been outraged by the changes after Selig said Reddit might end up charging him $20 million a year. A few days later, major Reddit communities — including some of the most-visited on the platform — announced they would be going in the dark June 12-14 in protest at the third-party app threat.
But otherwise, the API changes have remained in place for the vast majority of developers, with Selig and others, including the makers of Reddit’s rif is fun and Reddit’s ReddPlanet, announcing that they will be shutting down their apps on June 30 would.
In his AMA, Huffman seemed to lock the door when it comes to making amends with the apps closing their doors. “Some apps like Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync have decided this pricing doesn’t work for their businesses and will be shutting down before pricing goes into effect,” Huffman said. “We will continue to talk about the other apps. We recognize that the schedule we provided was tight. We look forward to connecting with people who would like to work with us.”
Based on what I’ve heard, that last sentence doesn’t sound entirely true; Tony Lupeski, the developer of ReddPlanet, tells me that he’s tried to contact Reddit three times since the changes were first announced, but was “ignored” each time. And a Redditor asked if it was possible for the company to delay API pricing by 90 days, to which Huffman replied, “We continue to work with people who want to work with us. This includes many of the apps that weren’t in the spotlight this week.”
A Reddit user asked why Reddit no longer allows explicit/NSFW content to appear in third-party apps – a limitation Reddit jokes about and cited as one of the reasons for the shutdown. “It’s an ongoing struggle to even keep this content,” Huffman wrote. “We’ll keep it. But the regulatory environment has become a lot stricter when it comes to adult content and so we have to be strict/conservative about where it shows up.”
Reddit has made some small concessions: subreddit r/Blind protested the changes because they could mean that accessible apps needed to browse the site would have to be shut down, and on June 7, Reddit said those apps from excluding pricing would update. During the AMA, Huffman also committed to making the official Reddit apps “more accessible.”
But in a message to The Verge, r/Blind moderator MostlyBlindGamer wrote: “We are still concerned about the choice and limitations placed on the exempted third-party apps, and the financial pressure on the developers who – according to our to the best of our knowledge – must effectively maintain them for free.” The developer of RedReader, one of the apps granted an exemption, said in a post, “I think it’s very reasonable to be concerned about Reddit’s current development to do, and no one can know for sure how long the exemption will last.”
The maker of Dystopia, another app that has an exemption, claims that Reddit called Reddit to clarify that the impact of the changes on accessibility apps was unintended. “Although you must simply take my word for it, I really got the impression that it was meant in earnest.”
In the AMA, a Reddit user asked how Huffman would respond to concerns that Reddit was becoming increasingly for-profit. “We will continue to be for-profit until the profits arrive,” Huffman wrote. “Unlike some others [third-party] Apps, we are not profitable.”
The AMA is currently ongoing and we plan to update this post over time.
Update June 9th 3:32pm ET: Added context from a moderator from r/Blind and the developers of two accessibility-focused apps.