[58x14]

I think it's very clear that the recent LLM boom is directly responsible for Twitter, Reddit, and others quickly moving to restricted APIs with exorbitant pricing structures. I don't think these orgs really care much about third-party clients other than a nuisance consuming some fraction of their userbase.

Enterprise deals between these user generated content platforms and LLM platforms may well involve many billions of API requests, and the pricing is likely an order of magnitude less expensive per call due to the volume. The result is a cost-per-call that is cost-prohibitive at smaller scales, and undoubtedly the UGC platform operators are aware that they're pricing out third-party applications like Apollo and Pushshift. These operators need high baseline pricing so they can discount in negotiation with LLM clients.

Or, perhaps, it's the opposite: for instance, Reddit could be developing its own first-party language model, and any other model with access to semi-realtime data is a potentially existential competitor. The best strategic route is to make it economically infeasible for some hypothetical competitor to arise, while still generating revenue from clients willing to pay these much higher rates.

Ultimately, this seems to be playing out as the endgame of the open internet v. corporate consolidation, and while it's unclear who's winning, I think it's pretty obvious that most of us are losing.

(my comment on this topic from another thread)

[Workaccount2]

I can see reddit resolving this by giving certain apps heavily discounted API access. Right now at least all the backlash is coming from 3rd party app users, while ML guys are sitting quietly in the back with their fingers crossed.

[nameless912]

Doesn't this give reddit an easy way to censor specific apps? It would be better to have a batch API and an "app access" API that rate limits based on user accounts rather than based on API keys. I could see having tiered costs for different usage patterns, but it's hard to design correctly.

[fluoridation]

If that was the case, it would just be a matter of properly segmenting the users into the right price brackets. When I looked into Twitter's pricing I could either pay $100/month for fewer tweets than I can get using the free API, or $42000/month (hilarious number by the way, Elon).

[taurath]

> I don't think these orgs really care much about third-party clients other than a nuisance consuming some fraction of their userbase.

Is it not the fraction that uses and posts on reddit the most though? The first party mobile apps are well known as garbage ad-ridden messes of UI. Aren't they killing the golden goose here?