Thousands of Reddit communities reportedly remain in the dark over protests against the Application Programming Interface (API) Price change on social discussion platform. According to a report by Verge, some third party developers have had to shut down their apps due to these changes. Now, CEO of Reddit steve huffman The company’s stand regarding third party apps on the platform has been clarified. huffman has stated that Reddit was never designed to support third-party apps that are not adding much value to the platform.
What the CEO of Reddit said
In a statement, Huffman said: “So most uses of the API — no (by third-party apps like Apollo for Reddit) – the other 98 percent of them build tools, bots, enhancements for Reddit. That’s what the API is for. It was never designed to support third-party apps.”
He also objected to third party apps competing with Reddit. Huffman said, “I didn’t know — and that’s my fault — to what extent they were profiting from our APIs. These weren’t charities.”
“It’s our business decision, and we’re not undoing that business decision,” Huffman replied when asked about the blackout’s impact on his decision-making around API pricing changes.
What the CEO of Reddit said
In a statement, Huffman said: “So most uses of the API — no (by third-party apps like Apollo for Reddit) – the other 98 percent of them build tools, bots, enhancements for Reddit. That’s what the API is for. It was never designed to support third-party apps.”
He also objected to third party apps competing with Reddit. Huffman said, “I didn’t know — and that’s my fault — to what extent they were profiting from our APIs. These weren’t charities.”
“It’s our business decision, and we’re not undoing that business decision,” Huffman replied when asked about the blackout’s impact on his decision-making around API pricing changes.
The company has also shared a fact sheet which claims that Reddit now has over 100,000 “active communities”, 57 million “daily active uniques” and over 50,000 “daily active moderators”.
What Reddit’s CEO said to employees
In an internal memo sent to employees, Reddit’s CEO said that like any other outburst on the platform, “this too shall pass”.
Last week, Huffman hosted a Or (Ask i anything) session to discuss the platform’s controversial API changes. He also confirmed that the company is not planning to revive its upcoming API pricing changes. These changes have led to several developers announcing the closure of their apps on the platform.