Reddit Announces New API Pricing, New Moderator Tools

Reddit has introduced a change to its API access, which is able to see the platform now cost large companies for his or her use of Reddit information, underneath a brand new ‘Premium’ utilization tier.

Reddit has offered API entry since 2016, with numerous platforms and suppliers utilizing this an entry level to collect information from Reddit conversations. Extra just lately, that information has additionally been used to energy the generative AI fashions behind Google’s Bard and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which Reddit is now trying to tackle.

As per Reddit:

“When we first launched our Reddit Data API over seven years ago, the goal was to enable developers to build great products for users and mods, powered by Reddit, and that hasn’t changed. Since then, we’ve seen thousands of applications over the years, such as tools to make moderation easier, and utilities that help users stay up to date on their favorite topics. Our Data API also provides third parties (like academics, researchers, and social listening tools) with access to data, and as a platform with one of the largest corpus of human-to-human conversations online, spanning the past 18 years, we have an obligation to our communities to be stewards of this content.”

Basically, with generative AI instruments set to make large bucks, Reddit needs its justifiable share, which is why it’s now trying to cost these higher-end builders for expanded entry to Reddit dialog information.

That’s additionally the rationale why Twitter just lately updated its pricing for its own API access, as OpenAI, and different platforms, have been utilizing tweet data to energy their fashions. Generative AI fashions have to develop an understanding of human language, and what individuals imply once they talk, and social platform information is a key ingredient on this respect.

And with Reddit and Twitter offering that perception, it is sensible that they now additionally need their justifiable share.

For context, OpenAI is now valued at around $29 billion, a greater than 100% improve on its 2021 value.

Twitter chief Elon Musk has his personal grievances on this entrance, with Musk being an preliminary investor in OpenAI when it was working as a research-based non-profit. Musk invested $100 million in OpenAI back in 2017, and took up a administration function on the firm, earlier than leaving in 2018 on account of conflicts over Tesla staff and the longer term route of its improvement.

However now, Musk is indignant that OpenAI basically took his ‘donation’, and has since switched to a for-profit enterprise – which is a part of the rationale why Twitter’s trying to limit OpenAI’s entry, whereas Musk has additionally hinted at possible legal action in opposition to the corporate to recoup his funding.

For Reddit, it’s one other potential income pathway. And with the corporate additionally planning its IPO, it may very well be a worthwhile supplementary revenue stream, relying on what number of take it up.

Along with this, Reddit’s additionally rolling out some new instruments for moderators to help in managing their subreddit communities.

“Within the coming months, you will notice updates and enhancements to:

• Mod log – to offer context right into a neighborhood member’s historical past inside a subreddit, and show mod actions taken on a member, in addition to on their posts and feedback.
• Rule administration – to set expectations for his or her neighborhood members and visiting redditors. With updates, moderators will be capable to replace neighborhood guidelines by way of native apps and rearrange the order by which they seem.
• Further mod queues – to offer moderators a view of filtered variations of their mod queue content material, together with a view that reveals all eliminated content material in addition to reported and edited content material. At the moment moderators can solely view one important queue and might’t see elimination causes.”

Reddit must maintain its military of principally volunteer moderators completely satisfied, particularly on condition that they too might elevate questions in regards to the firm bringing in more cash, and never passing that onto them.

As such, offering extra mod instruments looks as if a logical compromise, and these new instruments will present extra methods for mods to handle their in-app communities.

You’ll be able to learn extra about Reddit’s API pricing replace here.