Social media platform Reddit is following in Twitter’s footsteps by charging developers significant fees for accessing the platform’s API that is necessary for creating third-party tools. This decision comes after Twitter banned third-party apps and began aggressively monetizing API access. Developers are being forced to pay steep fees to access the data they need to make their apps work, causing them to potentially shut down their apps entirely. Popular third-party Reddit app Apollo, which has made seven billion API requests, is facing a $20 million annual fee, which could financially jeopardize the app. The move to paid APIs is viewed as anti-consumer and anti-innovation, and it is also causing users to lose the apps they rely on.
Reddit is a social media platform that allows users to submit content and vote on its relevance and worth. The platform has around 430 million monthly active users and receives over 30 billion screen views per month.
Christian Selig is the developer of Apollo, a third-party Reddit app that is being deeply affected by the new API policy. The steep fees for accessing critical data are putting Apollo’s financial stability at risk. Selig has communicated with Reddit representatives to no avail and is now facing a large bill that he may not be able to pay.
