{"id":23431,"date":"2023-06-10T07:31:46","date_gmt":"2023-06-10T07:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/9499e64f-79d7-46d8-889c-c20c285d77a812"},"modified":"2023-06-10T07:31:46","modified_gmt":"2023-06-10T07:31:46","slug":"reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-defends-api-changes-in-ama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-defends-api-changes-in-ama\/","title":{"rendered":"Reddit CEO Steve Huffman defends API changes in AMA"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has finally spoken publicly<\/ins><\/span> about the company\u2019s deeply unpopular API changes that have resulted in some of the most-used third-party reddit apps saying they will be forced to shut down. In an AMA (Ask Me Anything) discussion, Huffman promised improvements to Reddit\u2019s own app, but seemed unwilling to make concessions on pricing and other issues that have rankled the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cReddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use,\u201d he wrote in his AMA post. \u201cSome apps such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync have decided this pricing doesn\u2019t work for their businesses and will close before pricing goes into effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

In a series of mostly 1-2 sentence responses to detailed, multi-part questions, Huffman acknowledged some missteps in the company\u2019s API rollout, but largely declined to tackle thornier questions about the company\u2019s handling of its relationship with third-party developers. In one response<\/ins><\/span>, he conceded that the 30-day window given to developers for the new API was a \u201ctight timeline\u201d and said the company was \u201ccontinuing to chat with many of the developers who still want to work with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

But other developers soon weighed in, noting that they had never heard back from the company, despite reaching out through the channels promoted by Reddit. \u201cI have been trying to contact Reddit over the last 3 months and have been completely ignored,\u201d one developer wrote<\/ins><\/span>. \u201cI feel completely powerless to do anything right now and I want to try and save the app I’ve been working on for the last 10 years.\u201d Huffman apologized and said the company would respond.<\/p>\n

When asked about why the company accused Christian Selig, the developer of Apollo, of threatening the company \u2014 a claim Selig denied and promptly debunked with an audio clip of a phone call with a Reddit rep \u2014 Huffman doubled down<\/ins><\/span> on the criticism. \u201cHis \u2018joke\u2019 is the least of our issues,\u201d he said. \u201cHis behavior and communications with us has been all over the place\u2014saying one thing to us while saying something completely different. I don\u2019t know how we could do business with him.\u201d (Huffman didn\u2019t respond to a followup question from Selig asking for examples of such behavior.)<\/p>\n

Huffman, who goes by spez on the platform, also promised that Reddit was working on improvements<\/ins><\/span> to its own app, including its moderation<\/ins><\/span> tools and accessibility<\/ins><\/span> features. Both areas are often cited by Redditors who prefer third-party apps to the company\u2019s native app. He also said that the reason why third-party apps would no longer be able to show sexually explicit content was due to a changing \u201cregulatory environment\u201d and legal concerns. \u201cIt\u2019s a constant fight to keep this content at all,\u201d he said<\/ins><\/span>. \u201cWe have to be strict \/ conservative about where it shows up.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of his most telling answers came in response<\/ins><\/span> to a question about the perception that \u201cReddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement\u201d than it has in the past. \u201cWe\u2019ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive,\u201d Huffman responded. \u201cUnlike some of the 3P [third-party] apps, we are not profitable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notably, there were a number of topics Huffman didn’t address, including why the company priced its API at a rate that developers say is prohibitively expensive. Huffman also didn\u2019t address the upcoming blackout from thousands of subreddits protesting the API changes. More than 3,000 subreddits<\/ins><\/span> have pledged to \u201cgo dark\u201d<\/ins><\/span> for two days beginning June 12th to protest the changes.<\/p>\n

By the end of the AMA, Huffman had responded to 14 questions, while a few other executives answered a handful of their own. In perhaps the most telling sign that their answers were not well-received, every answer from the reddit team was downvoted so heavily they were almost impossible to view within the AMA thread itself. A moderator later linked all of their answers at the top of the thread. \u201cWe know answers are tough to find,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has finally spoken publicly about the company\u2019s deeply unpopular API changes that have resulted in some of the most-used third-party reddit apps saying they will be forced to shut down. In an AMA (Ask Me Anything) discussion, Huffman promised improvements to Reddit\u2019s own app, but seemed unwilling to make concessions on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23432,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23431"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.worldtechguide.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=23431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}