Reddit was never designed to support 3rd-party apps, says CEO Huffman

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has said that the social discussion platform was never designed to support third-party applications.

In protest to the application programming interface (API) changes, thousands of Reddit communities are still dark that are forcing some third-party developers to shut down their apps, reports The Verge.

According to Huffman, those third-party apps aren't adding much value to the platform.

"So the vast majority of the uses of the API -- not (third-party apps like Apollo for Reddit) -- the other 98 per cent of them, make tools, bots, enhancements to Reddit. That's what the API is for," Reddit CEO said in a statement.

"It was never designed to support third-party apps."

Huffman further objected to the third-party apps that are competing with his company.

"I didn't know -- and this is my fault -- the extent that they were profiting off of our API. That these were not charities."

When questioned about if he genuinely believes that the blackouts haven't impacted his decision-making around the API pricing changes at all.

"That's our business decision, and we're not undoing that business decision," Huffman replied.

According to a fact sheet shared by the company on Thursday, there are now more than 1,00,000 "active communities", 57 million "daily active uniques" and over 50,000 "daily active moderators" on the platform.

In an internal memo sent on Monday to employees, Reddit CEO had said that like any other blowups on the platform, "this one will pass as well".

Last week, Huffman had hosted an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session to discuss the platform's controversial API changes, confirming that the company is not planning to revive its coming API pricing changes that have caused multiple developers to announce they will be shutting down their apps.

--IANS

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