Jay Peters Interviews Reddit CEO Steve Huffman for The Verge

Huffman: We offer the API so the vast majority of our use of the uses of the API — so not these, the other 98 percent of them that make tools, bots, enhancements for Reddit — that’s what the API is for.

It was never designed to support third-party apps. We let it exist. And I should take the blame for that, because I was the guy arguing for that for a long time. But I didn’t know — and this is my fault — the extent that they were profiting off of our API. That these were not charities.

The ones that actually are doing good for our users — RedReader, Dystopia, Luna — like actually adding real value at their own cost? We’ve exempted. We’ll carry that cost.

Peters: I want to stop you for a second there. So you’re saying that Apollo, RIF, Sync, they don’t add value to Reddit?

Huffman: Not as much as they take. No way.

Either you see the value of a great user experience or you don’t. No surprise that the CEO of a company whose website is so bad that they’ve had to keep the old one around as an alternative doesn’t see the value Apollo adds to the Reddit experience.

★ Friday, 16 June 2023