zlacker

>>stanis+(OP)
I don't really understand why it had to be this way. It's so easy to think of other ways this could have been handled. Even just announcing the same change with 6 months of lead time rather than 1 month would have gone over better. Or boil the frog and gradually introduce API restrictions. It's as if the CEO is purposefully being as belligerent as possible to rile people up.

>>extr+k4
Or they're broke and reddit is soon to be bankrupt.

But even so, if they had just said that, the outcome would be so much different. Because as of now it seems like they're fucking people over for the sake of fucking them over.

>>Commit+R4
How is charging for an API which costs them money "fucking people over"?

>>perroh+bi
To me, there's a way that business relationships are carried out; you can deliver bad news to industry partners in a professional manner.

If Huffman had called up guys like Christian Selig a while back and been like "Listen, it's been great, I love the apps you guys make, but business is business and I want to see more revenue, and to do that I'm going to charge more for the API and probably eventually shut it down, let's work on a timetable to sunset things.", he's not nearly the jerk he is today. No one's under the illusion that Reddit or Conde Nast are charities; they have revenue targets to make.

What makes this fucking people over is the negotiating over API price and implementation timetable that was clearly in bad faith and meant to shut down these applications within the timespan of a quarter. Imagine being told that your way of making a living (which these apps are for their developers) is going away in a month. Sure, these devs are the cream of the crop, but that's still a major life disruption, and you don't do that to the people who helped make your website what it is today.