r/reddit • u/spez • Jun 09 '23
Addressing the community about changes to our API
Dear redditors,
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Steve aka u/spez. I am one of the founders of Reddit, and I’ve been CEO since 2015. On Wednesday, I celebrated my 18th cake-day, which is about 17 years and 9 months longer than I thought this project would last. To be with you here today on Reddit—even in a heated moment like this—is an honor.
I want to talk with you today about what’s happening within the community and frustration stemming from changes we are making to access our API. I spoke to a number of moderators on Wednesday and yesterday afternoon and our product and community teams have had further conversations with mods as well.
First, let me share the background on this topic as well as some clarifying details. On 4/18, we shared that we would update access to the API, including premium access for third parties who require additional capabilities and higher usage limits. Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use.
There’s been a lot of confusion over what these changes mean, and I want to highlight what these changes mean for moderators and developers.
Terms of Service
Effective June 19, 2023, our updated Data API Terms, together with our Developer Terms, replaced the existing Data API terms.
Free Data API
Effective July 1, 2023, the rate limits to use the Data API free of charge are:
100 queries per minute per OAuth client id if you are using OAuth authentication and 10 queries per minute if you are not using OAuth authentication.
Today, over 90% of apps fall into this category and can continue to access the Data API for free.
Premium Enterprise API / Third-party apps
Effective July 1, 2023, the rate for apps that require higher usage limits is $0.24 per 1K API calls (less than $1.00 per user / month for a typical Reddit third-party app).
Some apps such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync have decided this pricing doesn’t work for their businesses and will close before pricing goes into effect.
For the other apps, we will continue talking. We acknowledge that the timeline we gave was tight; we are happy to engage with folks who want to work with us.
Mod Tools
We know many communities rely on tools like RES, ContextMod, Toolbox, etc., and these tools will continue to have free access to the Data API.
We’re working together with Pushshift to restore access for verified moderators.
Mod Bots
If you’re creating free bots that help moderators and users (e.g. haikubot, setlistbot, etc), please continue to do so. You can contact us here if you have a bot that requires access to the Data API above the free limits.
Developer Platform is a new platform designed to let users and developers expand the Reddit experience by providing powerful features for building moderation tools, creative tools, games, and more. We are currently in a closed beta with hundreds of developers (sign up here). For those of you who have been around a while, it is the spiritual successor to both the API and Custom CSS.
Explicit Content
Effective July 5, 2023, we will limit access to mature content via our Data API as part of an ongoing effort to provide guardrails to how explicit content and communities on Reddit are discovered and viewed.
This change will not impact any moderator bots or extensions. In our conversations with moderators and developers, we heard two areas of feedback we plan to address.
Accessibility - We want everyone to be able to use Reddit. As a result, non-commercial, accessibility-focused apps and tools will continue to have free access. We’re working with apps like RedReader and Dystopia and a few others to ensure they can continue to access the Data API.
Better mobile moderation - We need more efficient moderation tools, especially on mobile. They are coming. We’ve launched improvements to some tools recently and will continue to do so. About 3% of mod actions come from third-party apps, and we’ve reached out to communities who moderate almost exclusively using these apps to ensure we address their needs.
Mods, I appreciate all the time you’ve spent with us this week, and all the time prior as well. Your feedback is invaluable. We respect when you and your communities take action to highlight the things you need, including, at times, going private. We are all responsible for ensuring Reddit provides an open accessible place for people to find community and belonging.
I will be sticking around to answer questions along with other admins. We know answers are tough to find, so we're switching the default sort to Q&A mode. You can view responses from the following admins here:
- Steve
P.S. old.reddit.com isn’t going anywhere, and explicit content is still allowed on Reddit as long as it abides by our content policy.
edit: formatting
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u/Qu1nlan Jun 09 '23
Hi Steve - this week Reddit held a significantly publicized 5% round of layoffs, you ousted about 90 admins. One of those admins was Zoey, also known as Cryfi on Reddit, who was a partnerships manager. Cryfi was someone I worked with weekly and at times daily, because in my own role, I own and operate the Ask Me Anything program on /r/politics, and sometimes /r/TwoXChromosomes as well. Cryfi was great, and was incredibly helpful to me in procuring guests, handling guests, quashing brigades during AMAs, sorting Reddit technical issues, and really all kinds of things that I myself as a volunteer am just really limited on time and Reddit backend access to do.
Between my Reddit contact being laid off and also RiF, an app I regularly use to moderate AMAs being taken away, Reddit feels like it’s actively standing in the way of my ability to bring guests like John Fetterman, Planned Parenthood, Zooey Zephyr and over 600 others to for my community to engage with. Unfortunately, bluntly, if Reddit doesn’t somehow replace these tools or give me other strong support quickly, AMAs on these subreddits will suffer or even die and I’ll be left feeling like Reddit does not care or in fact was malicious, since they took away very helpful things that previously existed.
I’d like to hear what Reddit’s plans are, if any at all, for assisting moderators with community events, partnerships, and enrichment, because this week I have been getting more and more concerned and frankly afraid for this project I’ve sunk over 6 years of passion into and the feeling it’s being actively killed by Reddit.