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Dealing with a dozen app developers is way, way easier than trying to deal with millions of users. You could have one person work a couple days per month servicing app developers and totally help them with whatever they need. You would need a huge support staff if all app users actually subscribed to help them figure out what's going and signed up and talk about billing, and you'd lose 10% of what you charge to credit card fees.
Plus, very, very few people will ever pay for social media. Charging users wouldn't really do anything. It's conceivable an app developer doing well would pay some amount to keep getting paid from his app, although obviously reddit's fees are ridiculous.
It would be some increased effort to manage users over app developers but not a significant amount in my opinion.
They already charge users for Premium so it would only be a new “plan”. Also, they don’t need to manage individual users as much as they manage app developers. If I’m an app developer and you’re expecting me to pay a few million dollars a year or more you better be sure that I’m going to contact you every time I have a slight problem!
With regards to the 10% fees, by charging the app developers those fees go up significantly due to the large fees that Apple and Google charge. So Reddit could charge the users less than the app developers ever could which would increase the chances of people paying.
I think that the argument that people won’t pay for social media isn’t really relevant. They’re forcing people to pay for it if they want to use third party apps whichever method of charging they use.
For me, the big issue (besides the cost) is that they’re charging based upon app usage instead of per active account. How is the app developer supposed to manage that? Would they charge the same amount to everyone where the people who use it less subsidise those that use it more? Would they use tiered charges that are more confusing for users?
I think that they should charge a fee per active user and allow X calls per hour or day per Reddit account per app. That way, app developers can manage their costs more effectively.
Edit: this is all assuming that they genuinely wanted to keep third party apps which I’m sure that they didn’t