[HN Gopher] Apollo will close down on June 30th
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Apollo will close down on June 30th
Author : timf
Score : 2471 points
Date : 2023-06-08 17:22 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (old.reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com)
| [deleted]
| spullara wrote:
| The price is reasonable. Reddit's own apps generate
| $1.19/user/month for Reddit. Charging a 2x premium to that to
| make up for the fact they are also losing data that will allow
| them to improve their ads over time makes sense.
| km3r wrote:
| Where did you get that number from? Apollo dev's calc put it
| more in the range of $1.40/ YEAR not month. That makes it a 20x
| premium, not 2x.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...
| e40 wrote:
| I just deleted Apollo from my phone. Rip the bandaid off now,
| rather than wait until the 30th. In place of the icon on my home
| screen I put Kindle. Seems fitting.
|
| I deleted twitter a couple of months ago.
|
| This feels like a positive move for me.
| cheald wrote:
| This is gonna kill reddit. I have no desire to use their horrific
| official clients. I'd rather just be done with it.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| It's a small thing, but if anyone would like to support
| accessibility, please try setting the official Reddit app's font
| size to as large as it can go.
|
| Then leave the app a review based on how well it compares to the
| system's accessibility font sizes which should go up to 310%.
| bluecalm wrote:
| One thing which is unclear to me and I would really appreciate
| some perspective: do you think they designed the new API pricing
| with intention to have developers actually using/paying it or was
| it just a PR way to say "we are closing the API for 3rd party
| devs"?
| George83728 wrote:
| He needs to sue Steve Huffman personally for defamation. Steve
| has been a known lying snake for years and it's long past due
| that somebody make him pay for it.
| goolz wrote:
| I am waiting with great anticipation to see how they spin this in
| the AMA tomorrow. Anything short of Steve editing the posts
| himself and I will be disappointed /s. To the Reddit and Steve
| apologists, you will be on the wrong side of history.
| data-ottawa wrote:
| Are they doing an AMA tomorrow, and is it just for the mods?
|
| I don't see what they have to gain by doing an AMA, no matter
| what they say the comments are going to be scathing and people
| will be sharply looking for anything misspoken to jump on.
| goolz wrote:
| It would seem so, but it is hard right now to parse what is
| fact and what is fiction so definitely look into it yourself.
| But I totally agree, pretty dim to think they can somehow
| talk their way out of this. People were upset before, the
| blackouts, etc. but now this has taken on another tone and I
| doubt it will cool off by tomorrow. Honestly, I am loving
| this schadenfreude!
| [deleted]
| 1000100_1000101 wrote:
| I don't even use Apollo, so this shouldn't affect me in the
| slightest... but slandering folks? That's not cool.
|
| Account deleted, noted the slander as the reason.
| jdlyga wrote:
| You don't see platforms being this user hostile and staying
| relevant for very long. Look at what happened with Facebook, for
| example. People are moving away from Reddit these days anyway,
| with Discord being the most common place to start a new
| community.
| duckfruit wrote:
| This makes me indescribably sad.
|
| Apart from mourning the loss of a fantastic app by an awesome
| developer, to me it signals the end of a golden era of small
| indie client only apps. Since the APIs for the likes of reddit,
| twitter (RIP tweetbot) and others were available for free or a
| reasonable fee it spawned a whole cottage industry of developers
| who made a living selling alternate front ends for these
| services. These apps invented many of the conventions and designs
| that eventually percolated to the official clients. Sometimes
| these innovations even became platform wide conventions (pull to
| refresh anyone?). The writing was on the wall for a while, but
| now the door is firmly closed on that era - and we will all be
| poorer for it.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| IMO that era already ended when we transitioned from ICQ, AIM,
| MSN & co to Whatapp, Signal and the google messenger du jour.
| pradn wrote:
| Oh wow, "pull to refresh" was invented by one of these indie
| clients? Do you remember which one?
| waif wrote:
| And wasn't it the Twitterrific client that came up with the
| phrase "tweet", and they also introduced the blue bird icon.
|
| Then musk took over, and he banned them from using the API
| and forced them to close down. What a stand up guy.
| UberFly wrote:
| Tweetie - iPhone Twitter app in like 2008
| moffkalast wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loren_Brichter
| cmcaleer wrote:
| Tweetie for iOS
| waif wrote:
| If the web collectively swings back in the other direction, to
| the fediverse or some other evolution, there will be a revival
| of small indie clients, and a revival of a better web in
| general. Twitter is in freefall and Reddit is on the verge of
| it, so it might not be a long wait.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| The anti-federation argument has always been that centralized
| entities have the resources to make a better product. And if
| that's true, then Apollo is the exception to the rule. Reddit
| has a team with dozens of engineers, while Apollo has one
| developer with some part time help. So why is Apollo so much
| better than the official app?
|
| What the pro-centralization argument misses is that
| centralized apps also have incentive to monetize their app,
| and monetization features can harm quality. But in the case
| of Reddit I'm not sure it's only monetization which has
| ruined the first-party user experience. The engineering
| quality is just bad.
| jtode wrote:
| I left facebook towards the end of 2016, for exactly the
| reason you might think. I used Twitter for a while before
| and after that as a kind of methadone, and even stipulating
| that I was not looking for connection to friends and
| family, the interactions I had on Twitter in 2017 were, by
| and large, incredibly low-quality, and I was only
| interacting with people who ideologically agreed with me,
| the trolls never reached me, or if they did they were in
| stealth mode and ineffective.
|
| In retrospect, some of the accounts might have been
| intended to make the left look extra ridiculous, not sure,
| but I don't really believe that's true, I've seen people
| chase enough bad ideas en masse now that I think these were
| well-meaning people who believed that by participating in
| this infernal attention mill, they were doing things that
| would change the world for the better.
|
| Reddit has likewise never been even mediocre at what it's
| purporting to be, these are all just what happens when
| people approach the internet, which is one thing, as though
| it was a super cool television, which is a whole other
| thing. The illusion of participation and having a voice is
| really what people are buying with all their attention,
| because actually having a voice on the actual internet
| means knowing html at a minimum. Not actually a tall order
| for anyone who has a couple days and a willingness to do a
| bit of mental labour, but why bother when you can just post
| on whichever corporate daemon you favour.
|
| The weirdest thing of all to me, I don't even know how I
| found this place but it's got some of the best interactions
| I've had since Usenet died, and I didn't know know what
| ycombinator was or why it wasn't called hackernews.net or
| whatever. To learn just this week that the platform is just
| a service operated by the people behind quite a lot of this
| VC fuckery, I'm still integrating it, but it kinda feels
| like I wandered into the country club after getting lost in
| the woods and nobody's asked who I'm here with or why I'm
| not fetching them a bowl of nuts.
|
| Anyways didn't come to talk about that, came to say, been
| using Mastodon the last month or so, and I am also having
| pretty high quality interactions there. Nothing remotely
| like the idiocy I encountered daily in my Twitter feed.
| Occasionally a thing that I don't care for, like, I really
| don't need all the furry porn, holy crap are there ever a
| lot of very dedicated people servicing the furry market and
| I'm gonna be looking into that cause I know how to make
| tails move. But that filters out easy.
|
| I'm on the main instance and I'm looking around at others
| while I decide whether to just self-host, but I enjoy the
| scroll with the accounts and hashtags I follow, the quality
| ranges from boring to amazing, very little annoying,
| trollish, spammy, Mindset-infected trash comes through my
| feed, and like I said, the only heavy filtering I've done
| is the porn.
|
| Best part: I loved Facebook when I first joined and when I
| started to get discontented was when the default feed
| stopped being "what you follow in the order they post," and
| that has never been around since, except notably on reddit
| I suppose. Nothing wrong with having an algo feed available
| for discovery, and Mastodon has that, but your feed is just
| what you follow in the order they post as a default. So you
| scroll down till you realize you've seen it already, and
| you know you've seen it all for now and you move on. There
| is no machine trying to hold your attention, there is just
| what you asked for. What a concept.
| piloto_ciego wrote:
| It's only happening this way if we let it.
|
| We can build a Reddit replacement... we just have to want to
| apozem wrote:
| My feelings exactly. We're all stuck with the official Reddit
| and Twitter clients now. They're not even good. We know they're
| not good, but they're now the only place to experience Reddit
| and Twitter. It's like enterprise software for a whole social
| network.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| I wish the Twitter client were half as good as Apollo. I
| really miss the ability to navigate the stack by swiping as
| intuitively as I can with Apollo. In Twitter the best I can
| hope for is a stack of depth two.
| gtsteve wrote:
| I just don't think I'll use Reddit anymore. It was a nice
| place to catch up with my interests but the only way in which
| I used it was via Apollo. The one thing that made Reddit
| unique compared to all its competitors was its developer
| community and they have deliberately torpedoed it.
|
| All good things have to end but this was avoidable.
| dwayne_dibley wrote:
| Where to next though? is there anywhere else like it?
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Twitter pushed me onto Mastodon a while back and i imagine
| Reddit will do the same. Funny enough, i have exactly one of
| the clients mentioned in this discussion - Tweetbot - on
| Mastodon. Ie the app made by the same devs.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Mastodon clients are a fun UI playground, lots of indie apps
| (at least on iOS).
|
| Unfortunately Mastodon feels a bit empty, there's not many
| people on it yet.
| amatecha wrote:
| I mean, according to the joinmastodon.org API stats[0] there
| are nearly 7 million users and wavering around 9-10k
| instances (servers).
|
| [0] https://api.joinmastodon.org/statistics
| iamawacko wrote:
| I've found Lemmy to be a good reddit alternative. https://join-
| lemmy.org/
| jcmontx wrote:
| I seriously don't understand why don't they buy them out, put on
| some tracking/whatever feature on Apollo and keep business as
| usual. I'm pretty sure the guy would take a reasonable offer
| instead of walking out empty handed.
| Reptur wrote:
| I have been browsing Reddit off and on since Digg lost their
| minds. Apollo was the only IOS app that was good quality for a
| long time, and it only got better as time passed.
| kojeovo wrote:
| Looking at #s on the app store / play store and it looks like RIF
| / Apollo usage is a drop in the bucket compared to the actual
| reddit app. I doubt this has any meaningful impact after all is
| settled. Just seems like a loud vocal minority.
| Veen wrote:
| Yes, but all the high-value content on reddit is created by a
| minority of users. The people who moderate reddit are a
| minority of users. The issue for reddit is that these are the
| same people as your "loud vocal minority" who use third-party
| apps. You know, the ones that do the work generates Reddit's
| value in the first place.
| polytely wrote:
| I'm pessimistic that it will matter, the power users will
| leave, the quality of content will drop, and the vast
| majority of users will be perfectly happy with the low
| quality content-slop that is left.
| wahahah wrote:
| Frankly I'd rather see the apps just launch their own backend.
| rsolva wrote:
| So, are mods at subreddits considering a move to alternatives
| like Lemmy?
|
| Spreading the controll of subreddits over multiple domains and
| communities is probably the only insurance against ending up in a
| situation like we are witnessing with Reddit now.
| Havoc wrote:
| Feels like the beginning of the end for Reddit.
| replwoacause wrote:
| It sure as shit aint good for their upcoming IPO
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| Spez just posted that there will be a discussion tomorrow about
| the API:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ce...
| wunderland wrote:
| Funny that this was just demo'd in Apple's Keynote this week
| clessg wrote:
| That explains why WWDC was popping up while searching for
| 'Apollo'!
|
| Reference:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/141mdvt/apollo_o...
| (Video with timestamp: https://youtu.be/GYkq9Rgoj8E?t=2780)
|
| (In other news, TIL Youtube search seemingly looks through
| transcripts. Nice!)
| adiabatty wrote:
| A lot. I've watched both the keynote and also the Platforms
| State of the Union and not only did I hear it by name in the
| keynote, I've seen its icon in the background in both the
| keynote and the PSotU.
| thdespou wrote:
| I don't understand. Why not using the Reddit app?
| scinerio wrote:
| Less features and less user friendly.
| replwoacause wrote:
| Because it's a giant bloated spy machine ad-serving trash app.
| And Apollo is slick with excellent UX.
| replwoacause wrote:
| I'm calling it now, the Reddit devs are already hard at work
| ripping off all the cool shit that makes Apollo 1000% better than
| their crappy app. Christian better LAWYER UP.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Nah. They bought and then just killed a vastly superior mobile
| app (to their own thing) years ago with Alien blue. If they
| _wanted_ to get something better, they would have done it.
| Havoc wrote:
| Given how terrible their ux is they either don't want something
| good or are incapable of it
| shmde wrote:
| I use Sync Pro on Android to browse reddit. That's going out next
| I guess. Just waiting for old.reddit.com to die so I can finally
| leave reddit all together.
| d4nyll wrote:
| I've quit most of the social media like Facebook, I'm not active
| on Twitter or LinkedIn. But I've always struggled to quit Reddit.
|
| But now, partially because of this (and partially because they've
| intentionally made the mobile web experience unusable over the
| last few years), I decided to quit Reddit a few days ago.
|
| And it feels great. I've spent the time that I would have wasted
| on Reddit tackling my TO-READ list of books instead. And I feel
| much happier for it.
| Whatarethese wrote:
| Just unbelievable. This is just sad. I have no other words.
| mr90210 wrote:
| Don't be. Sometimes businesses such as Reddit must make bad
| decisions so that new players emerge. That's exactly how it's
| been, and people jump to alternatives when such platforms start
| acting out.
| gnoop wrote:
| One thing I've noted is that online forums have expanded and
| consolidated a few times over the decades. We saw expansion
| to start, back with BBSes, then consolidation to FidoNet,
| Usenet, and services like AOL. Web forums took us into
| expansion. Link aggregators and meme sites moved toward some
| consolidation. Reddit is basically Usenet 2.0.
|
| I suspect we may see another round of forum expansion again
| as people want to carve out their own niche communities
| again. We might not see Usenet 3.0 for a bit while we let
| people expand then let a new site come along and consolidate.
| mr90210 wrote:
| I agree with your take, I think that the current state of
| traditional social media will further drive people into
| those new forums. I am an example of such a person.
| yakkityyak wrote:
| Ugh, this is the end of reddit for me.
|
| I didn't think I was able to quit social media addictions, but
| I've successfully ignored Twitter since Elon took over. I'm
| confident I can do the same with reddit, although it will be much
| harder.
|
| I suppose all I really need is like some sort of curated RSS
| instead.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| That IPO will go really well with potential investors knowing the
| CEO will be on the legal hook for making libelous statements.
| sh34r wrote:
| Reddit is Digging its own grave. Eternal September awaits all the
| old school forums that still remain. But perhaps that
| decentralization will be a good thing in the end.
|
| I think the network effects of Reddit are a lot easier to undo
| than that of Twitter. There is little core functionality that
| didn't exist in forum software from the Naughties.
| spideymans wrote:
| I'd love to see a federated Reddit clone. Administrators should
| have power over their communities, nor Reddit.
| sh34r wrote:
| I don't like the idea of giving Reddit mods even more power,
| at all. I'd much rather see users empowered to share Usenet
| style kill-lists and whatnot. But I have a bad feeling that
| my desired Goldilocks zone between 2023 Reddit's
| overmoderation and 2023 Twitter's hyper-radicalization engine
| is very narrow. Social media moderation might be an
| intractable problem at scale.
|
| I don't know what the solution is, but I'm really rooting for
| Reddit to crash and burn. I miss the old internet...
|
| It'll be interesting to see how Blue Sky shakes out, if and
| when it opens up to the public.
| LapsangGuzzler wrote:
| Honestly, I'm surprised that spez kept his job after getting
| caught modifying user comments straight from the production
| db[0]. That's who these people are dealing with, to be clear. And
| now he's accusing Apollo of threatening Reddit? Give me a break.
| How is this the guy who's gonna lead Reddit to the promised land?
|
| 0: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-
| stev...
| thih9 wrote:
| > for about an hour
|
| To be fair, this doesn't seem that bad, especially in
| comparison to the API price hike and their handling of it.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| I can't believe people are pretending to be outraged about
| something so boring. Oh no, a forum admin trolled a user in a
| troll subreddit, que horror!
|
| The thread he changed the comments in was filled with users
| literally accusing multiple innocent people of being
| pedophiles who ate children, but sure, it's a bridge too far
| to change the user tag of comments literally threatening him
| rather than e.g. banning everyone who commented there or
| reporting the threats to the police which would have been
| well within his rights!
| durumu wrote:
| I mean that was really stupid of him, but it seems like the
| kind of thing someone would do impulsively one time and then
| never again after getting reprimanded. Meanwhile, this API
| debacle has made me lose all respect for Reddit and its
| leadership -- if everything the Apollo dev is saying is true,
| this is completely inexcusable. Reddit lied to the faces of the
| developers who trusted them and depended on them for their
| livelihood. I think the API thing is dramatically worse, and it
| isn't close.
| replwoacause wrote:
| What a weird take.
| Keyframe wrote:
| There's no leeway for doing that at that level at that size
| of a company and business.
| brokencode wrote:
| Maybe a junior developer fresh out of college does it once
| and gets reprimanded and probably fired.
|
| But the CEO? Who presumably presided over numerous
| discussions involving appropriate data access policies and
| risk to the company's reputation? That's shockingly juvenile
| and shortsighted.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > it seems like the kind of thing someone would do
| impulsively one time and then never again after getting
| reprimanded
|
| Absolutely not at any serious company; fucking with user data
| is a major taboo.
| LapsangGuzzler wrote:
| > I mean that was really stupid of him, but it seems like the
| kind of thing someone would do impulsively one time and then
| never again after getting reprimanded.
|
| Only a founder would get reprimanded for manipulating
| production data, anyone else would get fired on the spot (as
| they should). I'm not here to argue which action is worse,
| I'm simply pointing out that this guy clearly has a control
| issue and poor judgment (which is common among CEO's,
| granted) and it's been obvious for years. Of course he's
| gonna distort his reality to suit his needs, that's what
| these guys do.
|
| People don't learn when they get away with things like this,
| they just go bigger and crazier.
| starbugs wrote:
| Uhm.. Sorry? This is something that you do one time
| impulsively? This is something that you do once and then
| never again, because you're out unless your company has
| unhealthy ethics.
| hackernewds wrote:
| The comment editing in production is indefensible. However,
| there is legitimate reason to suspect the Apollo founder
| _did_ suggest a monetary buyout in exchange for "going
| quiet". It is evident in the audio recording posted by the
| Apollo founder himself, top post of reddit at the moment.
| Moeancurly wrote:
| I haven't been able to find the comment again, but I am 95%
| certain he admitted to editing the production DB long before
| this incident. I think it was an IAMA with kn0thing, where they
| admitted something along the lines of editing the DB to fix
| typos in titles. Not quite as bad, but no surprise he continued
| the behavior.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_.
| ..
| Moeancurly wrote:
| That's it, thanks!
| 19h wrote:
| Can't Apollo be open-sourced and the tokens of the original app
| be used?
|
| I'd absolutely donate on a monthly basis.
| iscrewyou wrote:
| He'd open sourced his Achoo app in the past. All it led to was
| copycats pretending they are not copycats. No attribution and
| the whole nine yards. If you google it, there still might be
| remnants of the incident. So I wouldn't hold out hope on
| Apollo, rightfully so.
| Aachen wrote:
| Or adapted for another platform. Open source UI means you need
| basically the database adapter to set up a clone. Betcha a lot
| of current Apollo users would swing onto that new platform.
| chomp wrote:
| You'd likely have to enter an API agreement with Reddit, and
| it's unlikely they'd be willing to run you through the sales
| funnel and write up a contract just sell you what's effectively
| a $3/mo API plan.
|
| That said, open sourcing the app would be great to archive it
| for posterity.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If you didn't have a need to post, I would assume Apollo
| could be update to allow one to specify a Teddit/libreddit
| instance's API (which would act as a caching proxy for
| reddit). You'd be able to get a similar experience without
| relying on Reddit directly.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > sell you what's effectively a $3/mo API plan.
|
| For a single user, the API is free. But every user would have
| to apply for a key, and there is no guarantee they'd get one.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Missed opportunity imho... they should have made apollo its own
| social network, maybe even a lemmy instance with rooms with
| identical names to some of the reddit ones.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| i don't plan on buying reddit stock anymore, this is unstable
| leadership
| WestCoastJustin wrote:
| In this situation, do you hire someone to negotiate with or for
| you? I'm thinking the intention here was to sell the company for
| $10 million and that came across as a threat because of the
| language that was used. You would not record the call [1] and
| then publish it if you actually were blackmailing them for $10
| million. I'm not faulting the guy here at all, I just think it
| comes down to lack of experience in dealing with negotiations of
| this level. He clearly has an awesome product if you look at any
| of the HN/Reddit comments.
|
| He probably could have walked away will at least a few million vs
| shutting it down if there was a small level of negotiation that
| took place here. I'm not sure who was on the other end of the
| call but strategic accounts normally get pretty seasoned sales
| folks assigned to them. They are used to having hard
| conversations around pricing and pissed off customers. That's all
| part of negotiation.
|
| That call was brutal to listen too.
|
| Or, is saying you're shutting down part of negotiation too? This
| likely took it too far if it was, in that you're making reddit
| look like the bad guy very publicly now. So, it's probably worth
| it for reddit to cut ties and force people into the reddit app.
|
| No winners here: * Apollo the company is gone.
| * Apollo users are gone. * Reddit has no customer paying
| money. * Reddit cannot reference them. * Reddit users
| are ticked off.
|
| This is a case study in bad negotiation tactics on both sides.
| Reddit tried to squeeze them pretty hard right off the bat.
| Should have tried a 3 year contract or something with heavy
| discounts. This is wild.
|
| [1] http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-
| may-3...
| shmatt wrote:
| His app icon was showcased front and center at the WWDC
| keynote, something I always thought was bought with money, for
| (I assume) free. It has tons of users including paying users. I
| have a very hard time imagining being able to sell the app
| right now for less than 10 figures. All this fight has shown me
| is that people will gladly pay for this app monthly
|
| If he's leaving all that on the table out of spite, well thats
| his money to lose. But he shouldn't call the world unfair
| Guest9081239812 wrote:
| It's certainly a strange call. Hey, you want to charge me $20
| million per year, so why don't we make it easy and you just pay
| me $10 million to go quiet?
|
| It's really confusing. He wants Reddit to pay $10 million so he
| isn't "loud" with API usage? He wants them to buy and takeover
| the app? He's wants a payment to shutdown? Is he even serious
| about any of this? I get the impression he lacks the confidence
| to ask for a $10 million acquisition, so instead he approaches
| the subject casually as a joke, and the entire conversation
| spirals into confusion due to the lack of clarity.
|
| Either way, that's not a great deal for Reddit. They might as
| well charge the $20 million, and if he can't find a way to pay
| it then Apollo shuts down and the majority of users return to
| the official Reddit site/app for free. There's no benefit to
| paying $10 million.
|
| The call was a failure between the two parties and likely
| destroyed any future negotiations. I think the best suggestion
| was from another user here. Only allow Reddit official
| subscribers to use third party apps. Reddit can charge users
| whatever they want, and app developers can monetize their apps
| however they choose.
| orange_fritter wrote:
| Reddit should have ended the call politely and told the
| Apollo guy to reach out with some sort of
| negotiator/liaison/agent/manager on the line.
| rightbyte wrote:
| If Reddit thinks Apollo can pay them 20 million a year, 10
| million is certainly a nice deal for the app? I guess that is
| what he meant.
| Guest9081239812 wrote:
| It's not a deal though. Reddit says the users are worth $20
| million in lost advertising. So either Apollo pays the
| money, the users move to another app that pays, or the
| users return to the official site and app. Either way,
| Reddit gets their $20 million.
|
| Apollo has no leverage here unless there is strong evidence
| most of the Apollo users will leave Reddit if the app shuts
| down. I don't believe they will. The other potential
| leverage is the upcoming subreddit blackouts, or hinting at
| taking the Apollo users to start a competitor. The
| developer said they are not going to build a competitor
| (that was a mistake, they shouldn't have revealed that
| card), so I think the blackouts are the only chance of
| lowering API costs.
| o_m wrote:
| Apollo still have some value. If there is another online mass
| migration, like with Digg, he can connect Apollo to whatever
| comes next. Maybe he even can affect the decision with his user
| base. Lemmy could over night have a much larger user base if
| Apollo switched to them.
| bubblethink wrote:
| >it comes down to lack of experience in dealing with
| negotiations of this level
|
| Yeah, the conversation is so cringe. Why is he beating around
| the bush so much ? He wants to sell, shut down, or whatever for
| a $10M payout. It sounds easy to make that proposition.
| Instead, he uses terrible verbiage like, "go quiet, I'm joking,
| opportunity cost, Bob's your uncle, yada yada". Why is he so
| terrible at talking ? Nothing in the call resembles a sales
| pitch if he is actually trying to sell a product for $10M.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > Why is he so terrible at talking ?
|
| He's a 20-something year old developer. This isn't his
| comfort zone and did not expect himself to be in this
| position.
|
| I know I would be terrible if I was in his shoes.
| bubblethink wrote:
| Fair enough. It just isn't the slam dunk that the post
| makes it out to be. He made some extremely vague
| proposition that can easily be misinterpreted and it was
| ultimately unproductive.
| skeaker wrote:
| The claim still stands, given that in the same call
| Reddit immediately and openly admitted that they
| misinterpreted him, only to later turn around and lie
| about it.
| aniforprez wrote:
| > I'm not sure who was on the other end of the call
|
| He mentions that it was spez AKA Steve Huffman the CEO of
| reddit. The call really does sound amateurish and the
| joke/negotiation tactic/money request/??? was really
| unprofessional but Steve seems to have completely misconstrued
| the whole interaction and blown up at him. I would say this is
| worse of the CEO to use this to spread slander especially when
| he already apologised for misunderstanding Selig and then
| privately walked it back
| nulltype wrote:
| It seems a number of people believe that the recorded call
| has Steve Huffman talking, but I don't see this claim
| anywhere in the original post.
| aniforprez wrote:
| If you read the section titled "Bizarre allegations by
| Reddit of Apollo "blackmailing" and "threatening" Reddit",
| he is directly addressing Steve. He starts with the
| transcript of the private mod call with Steve and then
| begins addressing Steve directly. The "you" in that section
| is the Steve Huffman he had calls with who heard the
| "threatening" bit
| nulltype wrote:
| Yeah that part says it's Steve but where does it say it's
| Steve in the phone recording? It just says "Reddit" in
| the transcript.
| lolinder wrote:
| I don't know how serious he was about pursuing a sale in the
| calls, but he made it pretty clear in the post that he's done
| dealing with Reddit. This isn't an attempt at blackmail or
| otherwise an attempt to get Reddit to buy him out, this is him
| getting everything out in the open to head off lies that were
| being spread.
|
| From the post:
|
| > I bring this [audio recording] up for two reasons: ... It
| shows why I've finally come to the conclusion that I don't
| think this situation is recoverable. If Reddit is willing to
| stoop to such deep lows as to slander individuals with blatant
| lies to try to get community favor back, I no longer have any
| faith they want this to work, or ever did.
| melvinmelih wrote:
| I genuinely don't understand the "pay me 10 million to save
| half on 20 million of costs" negotiation tactic... if they
| wanted to save money, why wouldn't they just shut down the API
| access?
| csjh wrote:
| They say somewhere that the 20m is from opportunity cost, so
| 10m for an app that's "costing" them 20m a year would be a
| deal.
| robryan wrote:
| The whole thing was just to illustrate the point that he
| thinks the Apollo API access is worth nowhere near $20
| million a year in opportunity cost.
| LargeToes wrote:
| [flagged]
| hayst4ck wrote:
| I love him. He is showing how labor needs to fight.
|
| There's a reason labor is losing power to owners and it's
| because they aren't having fights like Christian.
|
| Christian is showing how to give our children a future.
| LargeToes wrote:
| [flagged]
| DamnableNook wrote:
| [flagged]
| bogwog wrote:
| Yeah this guy didn't handle this situation very well. I don't
| know if it would've been possible to save Apollo for reddit,
| but that call didn't help at all.
|
| Also, what's the deal with him not wanting to start a
| competitor? That's like his only bargaining chip in this
| situation, and he's just throwing it away because he feels
| overwhelmed and wants to make iOS widgets. I totally sympathize
| with him and how this situation is probably incredibly
| stressful, but when you have 50k+ subscribers per year +
| millions of happy loyal users, you gotta start bringing in
| outside people to help with these things. He's just letting a
| lot of people down.
|
| I don't mean to trash the guy, but I hope that the other third-
| party apps see this example and change their response to find a
| better outcome for their users.
| rewgs wrote:
| > Also, what's the deal with him not wanting to start a
| competitor?
|
| Yeah, what's the deal with this iOS developer not wanting to
| start a competitor to _checks notes_ one of the largest
| websites in the world? Surely you just up and did that last
| week, it 's no big deal.
|
| I guess I should start getting used to saying "Jesus christ,
| HN" now that I won't be saying "Jesus christ, Reddit"
| anymore.
| clutchdude wrote:
| Because sometimes, you don't want to reclimb the mountain you
| just hiked up and down.
| WestCoastJustin wrote:
| Yeah, Reddit needs to majorly up their game too. You strong
| arm your major customers right out of the gate. What a loss
| for both sides. You want the guy to pay $20 million and you
| just give him a call on the phone. Total amateur hour.
|
| This should have gone like, "Hey, in a few months we're
| rolling this out and wanted to give you a heads up so you
| know before anyone else, since you're a major API user. We
| wanted to offer you a grace period and special pricing.
| When's a good time to chat we'll fly out.". Fly the sales
| team over to where he lives, wine and dine him, etc. This is
| what sales people do all day long for deals that are like
| $250k+. For deals that are $20 million a year you'll have all
| parts of the company bending over backwards trying to win
| that.
|
| This is all just my opinion based on what I've read so far.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Reddit needs to majorly up their game too. You strong arm
| your major customers right out of the gate. What a loss for
| both sides. You want the guy to pay $20 million and you
| just give him a call on the phone. Total amateur hour.
|
| If they wanted him to pay $20 million, they'd certainly
| have given him much better than a brief phone call.
|
| But that's the point. They're revealing with their actions
| that they don't actually want him to pay the money. What
| they want is to _shut it down_. Charging a sum of money
| that they know he won 't pay is just an easy way to do
| that.
| imajes wrote:
| 'course it's not just him, but it's him and _everyone
| else_. i'm not sure what their overall intent here was,
| but it's been a shit show from start to finish, and they
| gotta at the very least start thinking hard about pausing
| the rollout till they can get their ducks in a row.
| [deleted]
| lolinder wrote:
| I thought he was pretty clear that he was done bargaining:
|
| > ... I've finally come to the conclusion that I don't think
| this situation is recoverable. If Reddit is willing to stoop
| to such deep lows as to slander individuals with blatant lies
| to try to get community favor back, I no longer have any
| faith they want this to work, or ever did.
|
| If a bargaining chip is only useful in making a deal you've
| decided cannot be made, why bother holding onto it? Better to
| tell your fans outright that you're worn out and not
| interested.
| itake wrote:
| > Also, what's the deal with him not wanting to start a
| competitor?
|
| I suspect that both reddit and apollo know that most of the
| content generation happens on Reddit controlled properties.
|
| Apollo users probably do not generate enough content to
| sustain a reddit-like website.
| SlimyHog wrote:
| > Also, what's the deal with him not wanting to start a
| competitor?
|
| In addition to what everyone else has said, he really has 1
| month if he has any chance of siphoning off reddit users.
| devjab wrote:
| > Also, what's the deal with him not wanting to start a
| competitor?
|
| Would you want to moderate Reddit? I get that Apollo is in a
| good position to take their users with them, but it's not
| like it's going to be easy to build a Reddit when what you've
| made so far has been a frontend for Reddit and some mobile
| widget spin-offs.
|
| Many of us can make a frontpage for hacker news in a few
| hours, some might even be able to grow a userbase on it but
| that doesn't mean we can do what dang does.
| renewiltord wrote:
| He can't start a competitor because he has no market power.
| Not enough will use the competitor product for it to be worth
| it. A past example of someone attempting to disintermediate
| Reddit was /r/changemyview which attempted to switch to
| changeaview.com and met immediate and total backlash.
| Reddit's SSO multi-forum user-generated experience is why
| people use it.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Why should he be forced to do something he doesn't want to
| do?
|
| He's made it abundantly clear why he doesn't want to do that,
| who are you (or anyone else _but_ him) to say "No you're not
| allowed to have opinions, you MUST create your own
| alternative"?
|
| > I've received so many messages of kind people offering to
| work with me to build a competitor to Reddit, and while I'm
| very flattered, that's not something I'm interested in doing.
| I'm a product guy, I like building fun apps for people to
| use, and I'm just not personally interested in something more
| managerial.
|
| > These last several months have also been incredibly
| exhausting and mentally draining, I don't have it in me to
| engage in something so enormous.
| DHPersonal wrote:
| Why don't we all monetize our hobbies? Why don't we market
| our personal lives? Why don't we each have our own line of
| branded merchandise? Why haven't we written a memoir?
|
| Because some people don't want to! And that's okay.
| moffkalast wrote:
| And frankly it's a failing of society that we would ever
| need to.
| tylerhou wrote:
| I don't think Apollo is just a hobby for Christian, given
| that he said that working on it is now his full-time job.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Trying to start a new social network (or whatever you'd
| call Reddit) from the ground-up is not only very likely
| to fail, but it's also a totally different skillset than
| building iOS apps. Of course he'd rather just find
| another job.
| trilobyte wrote:
| His point was that there is a big difference between
| building a product and operating a service. I can
| understanding not wanting to do the latter, because it's
| a COO job and unless you like doing that it is not fun.
| sexydev wrote:
| Remember when FB made changes and switched to timeline views.
| Everyone was saying this is the death of Facebook. Then in the
| next earnings call, they showed average engagement and time spent
| more than doubled.
|
| Everyone boycotting reddit is all talk and no hat. They will
| still be on reddit.
| dimgl wrote:
| This is false equivalency. And since then Facebook has
| deteriorated and its usage has plummeted.
| goolz wrote:
| You mean the same Facebook that no one under 30 uses?
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Yeah, the way people stop using a platform is usually by slowly
| losing interest and visiting less and less.
|
| People making dramatic announcements of departure, on the other
| hand, are actually extremely engaged with the platform and
| rarely make good on their promise.
| rvz wrote:
| A lesson to be learned. Do not build your entire business on
| someone else's API.
|
| The outcome was unsurprising and it is unfortunate. But this is
| why third-party apps are always at a disadvantage. The same
| happened with Twitter and they made that clear and now so did
| Reddit.
|
| Like I said before in [0]
|
| "Either the API gets blocked for third-party clients, or you
| purchase a high price for it."
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36087219
| thewataccount wrote:
| Which other api's should he be using?
|
| Or are you just saying third party clients shouldn't be
| considered viable to begin with?
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Do not build your entire business on someone else's API
|
| For iPhone apps this isn't really an option in the first place.
| mr90210 wrote:
| Too bad you are being downvoted. You are rather accurate.
| [deleted]
| srvmshr wrote:
| Maybe for Reddit and Apollo case, this is alright & makes
| sense. But at the risk of sounding pedantic, don't generalize
| it.
|
| Most of our commodity software is built & deployed by packages,
| APIs and frameworks we have very little control on. We just
| hope things don't break/change as drastically and we can
| modularize our projects as much as we could, to bear some shock
| or disruption. Unlikely anyone can build & maintain consumer
| grade softwares _ab initio_
| heisenbit wrote:
| The closer you are to the final customer the better is your
| chance to bill for the value you deliver (standing on a
| fragile cobbled together set of third party components). The
| short term rewards strongly favor relying on others. The
| business dynamic compounds this as it places a premium on
| first movers. Going against this dynamic must be carefully
| considered and only makes sense in isolated cases (where it
| is the winning move).
| srvmshr wrote:
| Disagree. (In the generalized sense) You cannot extricate
| yourself entirely and call it a winning move, unless your
| business is at a scale as large as Dropbox moving out from
| AWS ecosystem.
|
| I still feel no matter how natively one tries to build
| products - they cannot build everything. You cannot create
| CI/CD, monitoring, frontend, containerization, and cloud
| services just for your software or service. Those depend on
| some platform API which you won't create just for your
| product. Short or long business value - unless one becomes
| a major player with several software engineering teams
| building a product ecosystem - other people's APIs and
| frameworks will be used. And that is perfectly fine. That
| is how good products should be -using nice building blocks.
| No need to reinvent the wheel everytime.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Or do, but have a contract in place that ensures longevity. Of
| course not applicable in this case, but just addressing the
| generality of the statement, "Do not build your entire business
| on someone else's API."
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| Just imagine what'll happen when sideloading eventually makes
| its way to the US - the less-illegal sister of piracy,
| scraping, is going to make a huge resurgence.
| oldtownroad wrote:
| The tired "don't build on someone else's api" lesson doesn't
| apply to this case because Apollo is specifically a method for
| accessing Reddit: Apollo wouldn't exist without Reddit. The
| outcome here is sad, yes, but the author built a wildly
| successful app and made great money for close to a decade: a
| disappointing end does not discredit the journey.
|
| (Ps. your obsession with citing yourself is one of the worst
| parts of reading HN)
| notsound wrote:
| They also cite themselves within that citation. That second
| citation contains a citation also written by them.
| Citationception!
| rvz wrote:
| > (Ps. your obsession with citing yourself is one of the
| worst parts of reading HN)
|
| Good. I don't care.
|
| It is a priceless prediction that became true. Hence how
| unsurprising this is.
| honksillet wrote:
| Reddit's censorship of r/the_donald was a huge moment in the
| splintering of political discourse into disconnected silos. It
| used to be you could go to the front page of Reddit and see what
| each side of American politics was pushing that day. People on
| both the left and right would be confronted with news that
| otherwise they might not see in their personal echo chambers.
| That all died when spez and co first "quarantined" (ironic jargon
| choice) then ultimately killed T_D. Truly a sad chain of events.
| PS. T_D still lives at patriots.win fwiw.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| If you want a website where radical centrisim is the word,
| check out rdrama.net
| rcxdude wrote:
| No, you could see what the_donald was pushing. They were
| constantly manipulating things to be as over-represented on the
| front page as they could. This is why they got canned.
| Panoramix wrote:
| Indeed. I despise everything right wing, but I'm also not a fan
| of what Reddit has become as of late. On the larger subs there
| are plenty of threads where somebody asks "can somebody give
| their perspective on why [XX issue that usually right wing
| people complain about]". Followed by a storm of progressive
| commenters stating a variation of "because if you care about XX
| you're insane/you're a nazi/etc". That makes up about the top
| 300 top level comments. If you scroll past that, there are
| hundreds of comments from people that intended to actually
| answer the question and provide nuance, but, but those comments
| are all deleted by the mods. It's mostly a progressive echo
| chamber nowadays.
| dimgl wrote:
| The problem with this is that the discourse in those kinds of
| sites are way too extreme. People who have been kicked off of
| Reddit and want to _only_ engage in that topic tend to be
| fanatical. We need companies to embrace _both_ sides.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| Interesting that the CEO is doing an AMA this Friday to discuss
| the API. It seems a bit strange to advertise this using a system-
| wide notification. I imagine most users don't care.
| chrismsimpson wrote:
| This guy should be done with Reddit and build his own API. Not an
| easy ask, I know, but if he's got one of the preferred clients
| he's not starting from zero.
| golemotron wrote:
| > Six weeks later, they called to discuss pricing. I quickly put
| together a small app where I could input the prices and it would
| output monthly/yearly cost, cost for free users, paid users, etc.
| so I'd be able to process the information immediately.
|
| Spreadsheets.. (cough, cough)
| chillbill wrote:
| Not only does Steve Huffman need to step down and quit this whole
| business, the entire team of senior management at Reddit needs to
| just get away as far as they can from managing anything larger
| than a lemon stand. Impossibly stupid way of running things.
|
| Edit: Jesus Christ, that guy on the other end of the phone has
| just completely destroyed himself in the world of business by
| lying about the conversation he had with the Apollo developer:
| https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-...
| vachina wrote:
| > 50,000 yearly subscribers at $10 per year
|
| Wow. Now I know why reddit is tightening the noose. Third party
| developers making bank feeding off of the firehose that is reddit
| API.
| hayd wrote:
| 500k a year is not "making bank". To Reddit this is the cost of
| a couple of devs.
|
| There is/was a Reddit ecosystem, it's not a zero sum game. It
| seems short-sighted.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| $10 a year doesn't cover the estimated $2.50 per user per month
| cost after the API changes go through (especially considering
| Apple's cut). That estimated cost is also substantially higher
| then the estimated revenue reddit gets per user.
|
| The issue isn't that third party developers now have to pay for
| API access. That was a long time coming, and I don't know of
| anyone opposed to this. The issue is the price seems completely
| unreasonable, and the time frame is ridiculously short.
| bilekas wrote:
| > with my current usage would cost almost $2 million dollars per
| month, or over $20 million per year
|
| This isn't the first story like this but the prices that are
| being calculated are absolutely outrageous.
|
| I have a feeling Redit just figured they have cornered this
| market already and the AI training that's being done is
| definitely a good reason to start paying for the API.
|
| But there are ways to offer "genuine enrichment integrations
| apps" a particular license.
|
| This flat rate is just not tenable for most if not all!
| jiripospisil wrote:
| Looks like June 30th is also the day I'll stop using Reddit. What
| a coincidence!
| petercammeraat wrote:
| Same. I only accessed Reddit with Apollo.
| [deleted]
| jdlyga wrote:
| This is the equivalent of Firefox closing down in 2005 and
| everyone being forced to use Internet Explorer. Reddit has been
| adding nothing but annoying clutter to their official app.
| commiepatrol wrote:
| I'm sad about this. I use apollo daily, I really don't like the
| reddit app one bit. I guess I can still use the old.reddit.com
| for the 3-4 subreddits I still follow.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Looks like I will be quitting Reddit on the 30th then. I refuse
| to use their dumpster fire known as the official app.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| You can stop now. Web 2.0 social media is dead and web3 is
| unrefined garbage.
|
| Time for web1 bulletin board/forums to return!
| d1str0 wrote:
| I personally like forums better anyways rather than the
| multithreaded up/down vote systems. I feel like the
| gamification of Reddit style discussion exaggerates echo
| chambers.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| Yep. Discussion boards should have a flagging mechanism for
| user-driven-moderation to help remove
| hateful/inappropriate/offensive content but that's it.
| rewgs wrote:
| I much prefer the multithreaded UI, but agree that the
| up/down vote systems aren't great. If it were simply sorted
| by time, I'd be happy.
| jayknight wrote:
| You might be right about the voting system, but reddit-
| (and HN-) style threading is so much better for following
| discussions as they naturally branch into different things.
| Trying to follow a certain "thread" of discussion in a
| traditional linear forum thread can be next to impossible
| when you have 10s of pages to flip through looking for any
| replies addressed to a comment on page 4.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Can we venture back to Web0 and BBSes? I was too born too
| late in to this world to encounter such glory.
| meepmorp wrote:
| gopher and nntp via serial terminals
| jcims wrote:
| As a redditor from 2008 that still uses it too much every day, I
| kind of hope it dies and stops sucking up the attention from good
| ideas on how to run a similar smorgasboard of a site.
| obblekk wrote:
| It's totally unreasonable to expect you to make changes in 30
| days. Consider app review time, that might not even be possible.
|
| After you shutdown, can you turn Apollo into a site-specific
| browser? Like request reddit html, write a custom transformer to
| make it less bad, render with a safari webview, and push nav
| changes as views on the stack?
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| Unlikely, see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn
| brokencode wrote:
| I never thought Reddit would be so aggressive with their
| community after how poorly things went for Twitter.
|
| Why not roll out these changes slower and ramp up fees over time?
| Why not give app developers time to adapt?
|
| Apollo is written by one guy. Is it really fair to tell him to
| rewrite his business model and make significant changes to his
| app in just a month or two?
| [deleted]
| ellisd wrote:
| Reddit 16-year club member here. Reddit has made the the most
| tone-deaf decision in their entire 17 year history. This will be
| a future case study on how to self-immolate your entire
| community.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| Yeah they should have slow boiled the frog if the goal was to
| migrate everyone to their own app.
| davidktr wrote:
| 15-year-club here: This time it feels more being about Reddit
| itself than about specific persons, like with Ellen Pao. Just
| the vibe I'm getting.
|
| Anyway, I quit cold turkey end of last year after being a daily
| user for those 15 years. Definitely right move.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| 12-year here, but before that, I was a lurker. I quit using
| Reddit two years ago. Haven't looked back.
| baq wrote:
| Digg: looks confused
| ietktnz wrote:
| How to Digg your own grave
| asciimov wrote:
| Guess I need to start winding down my time on reddit, the next 3
| weeks will go by fast.
| nkotov wrote:
| Bad move from Reddit's end. Apollo is one of my most used apps
| because I absolutely refuse to use the official app. Just like
| the new Reddit experience on desktop version, the mobile app is
| just as terrible. Clunky, slow, not user friendly. No thanks.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And exactly what are they losing from business perspective? Few
| users that generate only costs?
| teamspirit wrote:
| That's the thing, to use an overused adage: it's a feature
| not a bug. They want these people gone. They calculated their
| contributions and decided it won't hurt, or hurt badly
| enough, for them to care. They'll all make millions on the
| IPO, step away, and sell. None of this makes a difference to
| that master plan. The sooner everyone accepts this the less
| time will get wasted on trying to convince Reddit this is a
| mistake. It's not a bug.
|
| Reddit is a shell of what it was when I started on the
| platform 14+ years ago.
| smodo wrote:
| The opportunity to stand out from other enshittified
| platforms. But I guess now we need to find a new thing for
| VCs to fund for us. Maybe an app that pretends to use AI to
| create memes or something.
| tshaddox wrote:
| It's an ads business, so the game is always "giving away a
| huge number of requests for free to monetize an extremely
| tiny portion of those requests." So as soon as bean counters
| look at the books, it's easy to be tempted to just identify
| cohorts of those requests that are unlikely to convert and
| cut off those users.
|
| It takes someone who is more than just a bean counter to
| realize that maybe, just maybe, the only reason people are
| interested in those free requests in the first place is
| because of the communities on Reddit that bring all the
| actual value.
|
| And who knows, maybe one day everyone will realize that the
| "free social media monetized by ads" business just totally
| sucks and can only ever lead to situations like this.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| The 3rd party apps don't have ads which is surely a
| gigantic part of why they're being banned. I would guess
| that most Apollo users literally provide zero revenue as
| they use adblock on desktop and most people never actually
| give reddit any money. The only argument for their value
| add is that they're contributing which makes other users
| likely to join but I suspect reddit has reason to believe
| they're too adducted to stop even when the app they use is
| banned,.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Power users who generate the content that makes Reddit
| valuable to begin with.
| sangnoir wrote:
| This Is the corporate equivalent of "I can't give you
| money, but I'll pay you with in exposure on my socials".
| Reddit prefers to be paid in dollars, not with content.
| They likely have more than enough content from non-Apollo
| users.
|
| Reddit's free APIs left a lot of uncaptured value on the
| table. This has become obvious by the sheer number of AI
| models trained on Reddit data. Free Reddit data goes into
| the machine, and piles of VC money comes out. Reddit wants
| in on it, but is unable to stop free API access without the
| consumer apps being collateral.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Their content is going to be porn bots and astroturfed
| product accounts. Maybe they want that as part of their
| enshittification process to extract as much value from
| the brand as possible during their quick death.
| tshaddox wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. It's not that Reddit the company
| wants to be paid in content, obviously. It's that Reddit
| needs people to _want_ to visit their website. Reddit
| gets paid for ads, but people don't want to see ads, so
| Reddit needs to deliver content that people want so badly
| that they're willing to see ads. Driving away content
| producers to lower costs just doesn't make any sense at
| all, unless they actually have a plan to get cheaper
| content (GPT ain't gonna be it, sorry).
| sangnoir wrote:
| > That doesn't make sense. It's not that Reddit the
| company wants to be paid in content, obviously. It's that
| Reddit needs people to want to visit their website
|
| We're not disagreeing. The comment I was responding to
| was saying they are "paying" Reddit with content. As you
| noted, Reddit doesn't want that, instead, it's asking API
| users to pay real money so they can see the content
| without ads. That in itself is pretty reasonable I think
| - what may not be reasonable is how much Reddit is asking
| for.
|
| > Driving away content producers to lower costs just
| doesn't make any sense at all
|
| What's the breakdown of content producers on 3rd Party
| apps vs reddit.com and reddit apps? It is reasonable to
| assume this is a rational decision being made by Reddit
| after looking at the numbers and doing some projections.
|
| Edit: removed references to ads from parent commenter
| paraphrasing
| kstrauser wrote:
| > The comment I was responding to was saying they don't
| want to see ads,
|
| I never said any such thing about ads.
|
| I mean, I'd rather not, but that wasn't even part of the
| discussion.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I have edited to remove references to ads. However, it's
| clear to me that you consider content to be the value
| you're providing to Reddit in exchange for your usage of
| the API.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| The vast majority of an online community's content is
| produced by a small fraction of users. Most are just
| reading posts. Without user generated content Reddit has
| zero value. Reddit fighting its most active, invested
| users is not a smart move.
|
| YouTube got away with lots of bad changes because many
| creators are getting paid to produce content and
| competing with YouTube is near impossible. But Reddit is
| one of many primarily text-based online communities and
| they are currently destroying the only things holding
| people on their platform. Aside from the userbase Reddit
| has no redeeming qualities that would make anyone
| hesitate to leave.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Is there a built-in assumption of incompetence at Reddit
| in your comment?
|
| If you assume they know all what you said, and that they
| have dashboards showing breakdowns of
| submitters/commenters/voters by client, can you imagine a
| charitable explanation of what may motivate their current
| actions? Even if you do not like the reason, do you think
| it may be rational?
| robotnikman wrote:
| Most of the content on reddit is created by power users who
| are more likely to use 3rd party tools. Most people who use
| the official app only consume content.
| itake wrote:
| Do you have a source for that? I am sure Reddit knows the
| truth and took that into account in their negotiations.
| Ekaros wrote:
| So do they really use a phone app to produce this massive
| number of content?
|
| Then again. I hate using my phone in general, so I always
| think that any content creators would use desktop and maybe
| old reddit.
| Kalium wrote:
| No, but power users are disproportionately to be invested
| enough to use third-party clients. Further, many power
| users play key roles as moderators. Community moderators
| on Reddit rely extensively on API access to enable the
| moderation tools that Reddit never really built.
| throwaway462910 wrote:
| On the other hand, you might also expect that being so
| invested, they won't quit over third-party apps, time
| will tell.
| Kalium wrote:
| Mods will definitely have a much more difficult time of
| it if all the useful moderation tools break.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| I post a ton of comments on HN, and at times, on Reddit.
| I do it all from my phone because my desktop is for work
| and my mobile is for leisure.
|
| I can type just as quickly on a phone as I can on
| desktop, and in many ways I prefer it.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Reddit was caught using AI to produce artificial content;
| so I guess that's what will happen.
| comprev wrote:
| A key element is moderation via automated tools using 3rd
| party access.
|
| Imagine a free music festival with zero security. It would
| be chaos and the volunteer artists would stop performing.
| lawn wrote:
| Reddit's whole value proposition is user generated content
| (and moderation).
|
| Labeling that as "only costs" is extremely shortsighted.
| elabajaba wrote:
| Mods and other power users.
| jdhendrickson wrote:
| I'm sure Digg had the same line of thinking. Worked out great
| for them.
| rabuse wrote:
| Not being able to understand indirect value as a business is
| seriously why so many businesses fail.
| valine wrote:
| Those users generate content. They're literally the ones
| creating value, reddit doesn't have a product without them.
| erulabs wrote:
| Others are saying "power users", but... I agree with you. It
| _is_ just an assumption that the "power users" make the
| product better, although a reasonable one. However, Reddit
| was pretty awesome, arguably _much better_ , before there
| were semi-professional power users and moderators.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Well done to Christian for remaining calm, professional, and
| engaging with this process in an honest way, standing up for his
| users, but not attacking Reddit or its staff with emotion, just
| stating facts and holding them to account in a considered way. He
| comes across as a mature individual and one that I'm sure many
| would want to deal with in business or hire as an engineer or
| leader.
|
| In a way, Reddit couldn't have asked for a worse outcome, they
| have come out looking terrible and he has come out looking great
| and defining the community discussion.
| mulmen wrote:
| I hope someone has been working on a Reddit replacement and is
| close to ready. This is Reddit's Digg moment and the time is now
| to market yourself as a place to go.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Apollo should launch its own backend IMO, with a usable
| old.reddit style web interface and API access to other clients
| stagger87 wrote:
| Maybe I missed it, but why not just increase Apollo subscription
| rates to match the new pricing? It sounds like Apollo has a huge
| following that would be willing to support it. Take advantage of
| the hate train, tons of people would donate through a
| subscription model. It also sounds like these third party apps
| provide much better moderation interfaces, that could a selling
| point for the rates. Even if your subscriptions drop, it's still
| profit. I'm sure someone would be willing to do this, I don't
| understand the reason for not wanting to sell the app either. To
| me it sounds like the Apollo developer is undervaluing their
| position.
| mandevil wrote:
| He says, in the FA, that the problem was that Reddit's prices
| kick in 1 month from now, but plenty of people have already
| pre-paid him for a year at the old price. So he loses 50k the
| first month, then 10% of his user base re-ups at the new price
| and month 2 he only loses 45k, then another 10% renew and he
| only loses 40k in month 3... not really a sustainable way to
| run a business.
| stagger87 wrote:
| Yea, I read that. I think that's a negative outlook. How many
| of those customers are sympathetic and would re-up at a new
| subscription rate? How many sympathetic new subscriptions
| could be generated? Refund current outstanding subs, and
| start a new sub, never take a hit. I mean, don't get me
| wrong, they can do whatever they want, it just doesn't seem
| like the dead end they make it.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Yeah, especially when he says he'll be giving pro-rated
| refunds when it shuts down anyways, so it's not like he
| can't/won't do that. I'm honestly a bit baffled by both
| sides' behavior in this situation.
| mulmen wrote:
| The developer discusses this in the post so you did indeed miss
| it.
| [deleted]
| CharlesW wrote:
| The end of Apollo is the end of Reddit for me. As with Twitter,
| I'll be taking my toys with me when I leave the sandbox.
|
| What are good tools for erasing one's Reddit history? I just
| learned about redact.dev (but haven't tried it yet) for example.
|
| UPDATE: react.dev seems to work well. It's deleted 1.5K+ posts as
| I type this at 0.65-0.85 per second.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| >Do I support the protest/Reddit blackout?
|
| >Abundantly. Unlike other social media companies like Facebook
| and Twitter who pay their moderators as employees, Reddit relies
| on volunteers to do the hard work for free. I completely
| understand that when tools they take to do their volunteer,
| important job are taken away, there is anger and frustration
| there. While I haven't personally mobilized anyone to participate
| in the blackout out of fear of retaliation from Reddit, the last
| thing I want is for that to feel like I don't support the folks
| speaking up. I wholeheartedly do.
|
| >It's been a horrible week, and the kindness Redditors and
| moderators and communities have shown Apollo and other third-
| party apps has genuinely made it much more bearable and I am
| genuinely so appreciative.
|
| >I am, admittedly, doubtful Reddit wants to listen to folks
| anymore so I don't see it having an effect.
|
| Man this is just a bummer to read.
| _hypx wrote:
| It's moves like these that will create the alternative to
| Reddit. It was this style of anti-consumer moves that killed
| Digg. History is repeating itself.
| ptoo wrote:
| People have tried to create alternatives to Reddit numerous
| times over previous controversies. It never sticks. I don't
| see this time being different.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| Most Reddit alternatives were founded on the basis of
| defending "free speech" in direct reaction to Reddit
| banning places like /r/FatPeopleHate and /r/The_Donald.
| Their userbase predictably filled up quickly with shameless
| bigots and generated correspondingly bigoted content.
|
| I am not absolutely certain that this will produce a viable
| competitor but I would give it better odds than anything
| else in the past. It is not only a direct, immediate hit to
| the enjoyability of being on Reddit for any reason: it also
| heralds worse changes to come. Deprecating RES and
| old.reddit is the next natural step.
|
| Honestly I would say that apps like Alien Blue and later
| Apollo made the difference in making Reddit as big and
| durably popular as it is now. Killing them, especially so
| visibly and messily, will cause an immediate exodus of some
| app users and a slow drain of the others. It certainly will
| not _grow_ Reddit.
| rcxdude wrote:
| This. The main issue is there doesn't seem to be a
| natural alternative like reddit was to digg (since, as
| you say, the ones that have popped up so far are often
| quickly filled with people toxic enough to get banned
| from reddit). So I think any transition will be a lot
| messier.
| _hypx wrote:
| Largely because there was no need, or the experience was
| much worse. This is starting to change.
| howenterprisey wrote:
| The previous controversies have been stuff that it's pretty
| easy to not care about. This time, it's actually affecting
| a fair number of people. We'll have to see if this time is
| different.
| zassy wrote:
| Previous controversies include the subreddit dedicated to
| jailbait and on multiple occasions protecting abusers and
| pedophiles.
|
| While you might be right, super fucked up if their users
| care more about third party apps being killed than their
| long past acceptance of child exploitation.
| lawn wrote:
| It never does, until it does.
|
| Tha dam will burst, it's not a question of if but when.
| It's a guarantee from the ever declining quality of reddit.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| You don't need all of Reddit.
|
| You need enough power users to sustain interest, post
| content, and launch it.
|
| The goal shouldn't be to replace Reddit as it exists today,
| because if you go down that route you are doomed to repeat
| their mistakes of constant growth at the cost of everything
| else.
| dt3ft wrote:
| This is exactly my goal with building https://flingup.com
| goolz wrote:
| The year is 2030, Reddit is now on it's 38th iteration. Steve and
| team have been slaving away, year after year, trying to come up
| with ideas on how to make the loads quicker, memes funnier, all
| while also pumping in 2000 metric tonnes of adverts/second. As it
| dawns on them that the app is somehow even slower, they frown.
| But Steve notices something out of the corner of his eye (despite
| all of the full page ads)... what could it be? It is a
| notification that ad-based revenue has gone UP!!! Everyone
| rejoices, Reddit is saved and Steve-and-Co have once again saved
| the world. Hooray.
| jacksnipe wrote:
| Wow, up until this point I thought the Reddit api drama was a bit
| tragic, but the inevitable endpoint of Reddit being a profit-
| driven corporation.
|
| This is straight-up villainy.
| graeme wrote:
| Very odd for reddit to discount that it survives based on the
| free labour of power users, many of whom use Apollo and similar
| apps. This is one of those areas where a pure cost benefit
| analysis doesn't work.
|
| I mod a top 1% sub and one of our moderators exclusively uses
| Apollo for moderation work. Official Reddit app doesn't work
| well, and their workflow for modding doesn't involve a computer.
|
| ....what's that worth to Reddit?
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| I feel like a mod blackout on all of Reddit would send a nice
| message. Reddit without the mods becomes 4chan. Maybe the mods
| should send Reddit a bill? I'd love that. Thousands and
| thousands of bills from mods for their time over the years.
| Then take them to collections and small claims court when they
| don't pay. Would be entertaining if nothing else.
| sterwill wrote:
| I use "rif is fun golden platinum" because it's simple and fast
| and I don't have to look at ads. I'll gladly pay Reddit _and_ rif
| to keep using that combination without ads. I'm certain whatever
| I pay Reddit to use their API through another app will be worth
| more to them than any ad revenue they could get from me, because
| that will be $0.
| the_doctah wrote:
| Also shutting down.
| perfectstorm wrote:
| why can't reddit just give a 1yr grace period so 3p apps can
| update their pricing model to account for the new API prices? i
| know this is what I would do to avoid pissing off a massive use
| base if i were a decision maker at reddit.
| throwaway4837 wrote:
| The Reddit mobile app has a few big issues for me:
|
| 1. When I click a post, sometimes it goes to a different post's
| detail page. The only way to remedy this is to refresh and visit
| the sub directly via Reddit search function, or restart the app.
|
| 2. Video player sometimes just doesn't play the video no matter
| how often you click "play", similar fix as above.
|
| 3. Google search is better at searching Reddit than Reddit
| search.
|
| Very annoying, but I still use it and never felt the need to use
| Apollo. To slightly defend Reddit, Apollo is just a client, and I
| assume they bring nothing else to the table. Apollo team should
| have had the foresight to see this coming years ago. Reddit can't
| be blamed for trying to monetize their data. If I had to choose
| between Reddit and Apollo, obviously I'd choose Reddit because
| Reddit is where the data lives.
| BEEdwards wrote:
| >Apollo team should have had the foresight to see this coming
| years ago. Isn't this your fault for building
| a service reliant on someone else? To a certain
| extent, yes. However, I was assured this year by Reddit not
| even that long ago that no changes were planned to be made to
| the API Apollo uses, and I've made decisions about how to
| monetize my business based on what Reddit has said.
| January 26, 2023 Reddit: "So I would expect no
| change, certainly not in the short to medium term. And we're
| talking like order of years." Another portion of
| the call: January 26, 2023 Reddit:
| "There's not gonna be any change on it. There's no plans to,
| there's no plans to touch it right now in 2023.
| Me: "Fair enough." Reddit: "And if we do touch it,
| we're going to be improving it in some way."
| mnd999 wrote:
| Sounds like Apollo has a nice frontend with a proven API behind
| it. Reimplementing the API on a different backend couldn't be
| _that_ hard, at least for a POC. Supabase anyone?
| switch007 wrote:
| Reading the transcript, you could tell Steve was trying to bait
| Christian after hearing "I could make it really easy on you". You
| can feel the power imbalance. Steve didn't get much but he
| obviously still felt like it was enough to make the accusations
| he did. Steve was probably recording too.
|
| Christian should have had a lawyer sit next to him on that call.
| generalizations wrote:
| > Please note that I recorded all my calls with Reddit, so my
| statements are not based on memory, but the recorded statements
| by Reddit over the course of the year. One-party consent
| recording is legal in my country of Canada. Also I won't be
| naming names, that's not important and I don't want to doxx
| people.
|
| IMO this should be much more common practice, where it's legal.
| It would be cool to one day have built-in functions in our
| smartphones that automatically enable it when the detected
| location allows for it.
| DangerousPie wrote:
| Shit, I really hope it doesn't. Do you really want every silly
| thing you say be recorded, to come bite you in the ass decades
| down the line?
| rchaud wrote:
| A question Canadians don't seem to be partly perturbed by.
|
| The legality is immaterial as this isn't a court case. If
| someone wants to record you without notifying you, they will.
| polytely wrote:
| In things to do with business, yes, if you behave ethically
| the risk is minimal and the upsides can save your ass like in
| this case.
| sorenjan wrote:
| My Xiaomi phone records every call, it should be a standard
| feature, but Google doesn't seem to like it.
|
| https://karnatakastateopenuniversity.in/call-recording-on-xi...
|
| https://www.androidpolice.com/google-ends-call-recording-app...
| justusthane wrote:
| Apollo is such an incredibly high quality app -- in fact, it's so
| good that I haven't had it installed on my phone in a couple of
| years because when I have it I spend way too much time on Reddit.
|
| The features, the polish, the customizability -- everything about
| it is really top notch.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| I always enthusiastically recommended it to my friends telling
| them it felt more like a native first-party Apple app than any
| actual native first-party Apple app.
| kernal wrote:
| I use both Apollo for iOS and Sync on Android and I would give
| the edge to Sync for polish, aesthetics and customizability.
| nkjnlknlk wrote:
| I agree. I'm not a mobile dev but I am a software dev and I'm
| continually impressed by how good an app Apollo is. It's one of
| the apps I use that seem like they should be the standard for
| quality.
| Scarblac wrote:
| I had never heard of it before this. Could he just make a
| backend for it and take his users with him?
| d1str0 wrote:
| Might be a pretty big legal argument if he just copied Reddit
| backend functionality. Would probably have to redesign the
| front end from the ground up as well to make it clear it's
| not just a rip off.
| geuis wrote:
| I don't remember the specific case at the moment, but a few
| years back I think Oracle was suing Google (or some mix of
| big companies) about Google replicating the Java api but
| with a complete from-scratch backend reimplementation.
| Google wasn't using private Oracle source code, just
| building a replacement that used the publicly published
| api. Google won the case, and it I remember right that
| established public api's as non copyright or something.
| Again, not a lawyer and someone else probably has the
| details better than I do.
| dustyharddrive wrote:
| I don't think cloning products is illegal, and can't find
| any patents held by Reddit.
| baq wrote:
| No need for a front end, he's got the app, that's the whole
| point
| post-it wrote:
| He addressed it in the post, he's not really interested in
| that kind of work.
| [deleted]
| Brendinooo wrote:
| This never struck me as a realistic option. The Apollo user
| base is orders of magnitude less than Reddit, and, even
| though Apollo is an incredible iOS app, the primary benefit
| of a large social network like Reddit is the social network.
| waboremo wrote:
| Technically possible, but not really feasible due to the way
| Reddit is set up and people who signed up for the app agreed
| to. It would be a gigantic mess, and I reckon he's not
| interested in creating a new social platform/link aggregate
| which is why he would rather refund the ~$250k.
| apozem wrote:
| You should read the post, he addresses this in it.
| dcow wrote:
| Totally agree that Reddit are being glorious ass-munching
| _hentais_ here. I fucking hate all that Reddit has become as a
| company and as a product.
|
| But also, dude just raise your prices. I read the whole
| announcement and truly don't understand why Apollo can't be
| $20/year. I don't know anybody who attributes a meaningful
| difference to $10/year and $20/year. I'm not a user but if I was
| faced with that type of price change and some language around
| needing to adjust pricing because Reddit is now charging for API
| access, I'd not give it a second thought.
|
| It really really seems weird to want to die on this hill when you
| don't need to. Maybe it is the harbinger of the end for Reddit
| and we're just overdue. But I see no reason the founder of a
| popular Reddit reader couldn't secure some temporary funding to
| weather the transition, or simply negotiate a longer lead time
| rather than spending all the time in talks and ugly back and
| forth.
| flutas wrote:
| > I don't know anybody who attributes a meaningful difference
| to $10/year and $20/year.
|
| You forgot to factor in other things.
|
| Base API cost: $2.52/mo (0.00024/call @ 345req/day)
|
| App Store Taxes / Fees: $1.08/mo (I doubt he qualifies for the
| reduced fees at this point)
|
| Just adding the appstore tax makes this $43.20 a year. That
| doesn't factor in any servers he has to pay for (push
| notifications). The app dev fee $99 per year, not a huge amount
| but small parts add up. Add in the cost to pay his server
| engineer, or any profit for him to live off (likely less users,
| so has to be more $ per user) of while making the app and it
| probably goes to something like $60/yr.
| dcow wrote:
| He said he could make the pricing work at half what reddit is
| asking, for $1.26/mo base API cost. I assume he has the best
| insight into his own business. I was just conservatively
| spitballing that doubling his revenue would mean he could
| manage the price Reddit is asking (since he said he could
| make due with half). Just looking at it from the other angle.
| flutas wrote:
| > He said he could make the pricing work at half what
| reddit is asking, for $1.26/mo base API cost.
|
| He said a much more reasonable thing would be to cut the
| price in half and give a 3 month transition period to make
| it "feasible for more developers, myself included."
|
| > However in a perfect world I think lowering the price by
| half and providing a three month transition period to the
| paid API would make the transition feasible for more
| developers, myself included. These concessions seem minor
| and reasonable in the face of the changes.
|
| What that would likely mean is removing as many API calls
| as possible and removing features as a result. Which means
| fewer users would want to pay for it.
|
| > I was just spitballing that doubling his revenue would
| mean he could manage the price Reddit is asking (since he
| said he could make due with half).
|
| Also, as a tidbit. His current subscription pricing is
| $5/mo for ultra.
|
| If we want to take that as his revenue for an ongoing
| subscription to double (since API access is going to be
| monthly), then the app would be $10/mo or $120/yr.
| dcow wrote:
| Fair. That definitely changes the situation a lot.
| zamadatix wrote:
| What, then, are you arguing his proposal was making
| feasible?
| zamadatix wrote:
| The "Why not just increase the price of Apollo" section says
| he's already sold 50,000 yearly subscriptions at normal price.
| He's going to offer a pro-rated refund and, at that point,
| he'll be out $250,000 of revenue he already recognized while
| still having all of the lifetime user loss to contend with.
| Even if he could optimize the API usage to halve it in the next
| 30 days that's still $1.25/m ($15/y) in API fees per user.
| After the App Store cut, the $20/y would only barely cover API
| cost of users who sign back up. Something like $30/y might make
| more sense to cover overall cost and bring in profit but then
| it comes to the question of "is it really worth trying to put
| all of this effort in to save a fraction of the userbase and
| MRR with a company that won't even give him more than a months
| notice to make these kinds of changes".
|
| While I think there is a way to keep Apollo running in some
| form or another, I by no means blame them for going to this
| hill to let it die on. Waaaay too much work for far too little
| reward to have the burden of massive risk from dependency on
| Reddit's future whims lingering in the background.
| MWil wrote:
| I deleted my reddit account, a 10 yr old account - saw a bunch of
| others doing the same. Hopefully they get the message - better
| yet, hope they RECEIVE the message in the form of karma.
| butterisgood wrote:
| So back to digg then?
| manx wrote:
| Maybe it's time for federated link aggregators.
| raydev wrote:
| While I agree with services pricing their APIs in any way they
| like, it's worth pointing out that Reddit's current CEO Steve
| Huffman is the very same person responsible for editing Reddit
| user comments as recently as 2016, like he was just an admin on
| some no-name forum. [1] On the eve of an IPO, someone that
| irresponsible and childish should not be leading this company.
|
| I was initally on Reddit's side in this particular matter (and I
| still think Selig's API pricing justifications are worthless),
| but I was shocked to learn Huffman is still the CEO, so his
| offhand comments about this situation and Reddit's general bad
| faith interactions with Selig in the past week are now very
| obvious to me.
|
| Anyway, all the best to Selig.
|
| 1: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-
| stev...
| munchler wrote:
| Why do you think Selig's pricing justifications are worthless?
| marcell wrote:
| Interesting to note that /u/spez hasn't posted anything on reddit
| for 10 months now: https://old.reddit.com/user/spez
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Maybe he uses other users' accounts to express his opinions.
| replwoacause wrote:
| You mean the guy that manually edits posts in the Production
| DB that he disagrees with? Nah, no way he'd pull a stunt like
| that.
| 3327 wrote:
| [dead]
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Just deleted my account.
| kaqvze wrote:
| Does anyone have the least bit of business experience? This is
| outrageous. I have not followed this at all but how can everyone
| here be so biased against Steve?
|
| If you listen to the call this Christian guy literally said: "if
| your opportunity cost is really $20 million, you cut me a cheque
| for $10 million dollars and we can both skip off into the sunset"
|
| A joke, seriously? Why on earth would you say this in what was
| audibly a very tense, high-stakes call and negotiation for both
| sides? There is no excuse whatsoever.
|
| Very funny, because one week later he dishes reddit and Steve the
| biggest shitstorm in the entire history of the site - which it
| would be even without all the blackmail call drama. Hello?
| Costing and causing surely 10s of millions in damage.
|
| Can we appreciate that even if this Christian guy is just so
| genuinely ignorant, selfish and toxic without intentionally
| meaning any harm that at least Steve certainly was fully aware of
| all the implications, the seriousness and non-funny nature of the
| conversation?
|
| He had and has every reason and right to feel blackmailed. The
| only interpretation one can take away from Christian's behavior
| now is that Steve had better taken him up on the "joke". Clearly,
| the PR disaster could have been avoided by paying up instead of
| accepting the cost and reacting exactly as Steve did - in the
| call Steve rejected the offer and notion of doing any deals. The
| way he apologised is what you do to save the other person's face
| and keep the door open for the relationship. It's not what you
| literally think and mean.
|
| Steve was never going to go back to his team and say "silly me!
| I'm such an idiot for getting this idea into my head. That he's
| threatening us because he's about to shut down, cause maximum
| damage on the way out and stage a user revolt. When he was just
| trying to entertain us with a funny joke about us buying him out
| for $10 million. When we have no legal or moral obligation to do
| so. I love him, he's so funny, glad I apologised on the spot.".
|
| If anything, one should pay some respect to Steve, not taking up
| the blackmail and steering head on into this mess. Good luck!
| replwoacause wrote:
| The only thing I agree with you on is how Christian brought up
| Reddit acquiring Apollo. He didn't give that topic the right
| amount of seriousness, but besides for that Steve comes off
| really poorly here.
| goolz wrote:
| Did you listen to the same call? He immediately clarified the
| statement. And uh, I would be arrogant too if I was doing the
| job of an entire team of people who had the audacity to pretend
| otherwise. Pay respect to Steve? Jeez man, don't simp too hard
| there, it might seem like you are biased or something. I see
| your account is an hour old . . . Steve, is that you?
| satysin wrote:
| It is a shame it came to this. The primary way I use Reddit is
| via Apollo so I guess I won't be using Reddit as much.
|
| On the web I still use old.reddit.com but I can see them killing
| that off sooner or later.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| Here's a wild thought. What I would love to happen is that one of
| these apps (Sync or Apollo) release a version of their app where
| a user can enter their own API key. This would put the cost of
| the API usage on to the individual user instead of the app owner
| and the app owner can continue to focus on the app UI/features
| without worry. It wouldn't change how they made money off these
| apps either.
|
| Let's see what that would cost the average user.
|
| As mentioned in the post:
|
| $0.24 for 1,000 API calls, average 345 requests per day per user
|
| I have no idea if they prorate charges if you use less than 1000
| calls so lets assume they don't, so the minimum daily cost for a
| user is $0.24.
|
| $0.24 per day, for a 30 days is: $7.20
|
| Hmm, I can't see many people wanting to pay that monthly.
|
| Maybe if reddit had a lower tier (0.12 for 500 calls would be
| $3.60/month)
| kristofferR wrote:
| A Twitter client I used (Spring) had that, and it worked for
| months after Twitter killed off Tweetbot and all other clients.
|
| However, it naturally stopped working when Twitter basically
| killed the free tier of their API.
|
| It would likely still work on the "Basic" API tier, but I'm not
| paying $100 a month to use a Twitter app.
| tedivm wrote:
| Don't forget that they're getting their tokens from an OAuth
| endpoint. In otherwords it's already tied to a specific user.
| Reddit could have simply said "third party api support is only
| for reddit gold users".
| tzs wrote:
| > I have no idea if they prorate charges if you use less than
| 1000 calls so lets assume they don't, so the minimum daily cost
| for a user is $0.24.
|
| The way these things work nearly everywhere is that $0.24 for
| 1000 API calls means your cost in a given billing period for N
| API calls during a billing period is 0.24 [?]N/1000[?] or 0.24
| N/1000. The first is if they do not prorate, the second is if
| they do.
|
| If it takes on average 345 requests per day per user, that
| would be 10 500 per month per user, which would be $2.64 per
| month per user if they do not prorate and $2.52 per month per
| user if they do prorate.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| The main issue is there isn't enough time to implement such a
| solution. You have to develop this new system of handling API
| keys, communicate this change to customers, develop a process
| to migrate users, and figure out what to do with people who
| paid for an entire year of access 3 months ago. All of that is
| a herculean task for a small dev team to accomplish in 30 days.
|
| That's not even dealing with the fact that this process would
| be difficult for users to actually use, and may run afoul of
| Apple's app store rules.
|
| While that solution may be appealing to tech-savy end users,
| it's completely untenable for a popular app, especially given
| the tight time window required.
| scinerio wrote:
| This is an interesting option. I'd assume the added friction
| for an average user will drop the Apollo user base drastically,
| but it would still allow it to stay alive.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| Here's an anecdote. I was subscribed to ChatGPT Plus for a
| while, to get access to GPT4.
|
| I stopped subscribing after after I got GPT4 API access because
| I developed a little personal app which used the OpenAI API to
| just read and write directly from plain text files and that
| suits my workflow better than the ChatGPT website.
|
| But it sucks because I'm constantly thinking about how much I'm
| using, and how many tokens I'm putting into my query, because
| each API call costs me money. It was way nicer just paying a
| flat fee and using it "as much as I want", even though this
| actually costs me way less because I use don't use $20USD worth
| of API calls in a month, even with GPT4.
|
| It would be a nightmare to use Reddit if it cost money to
| scroll down or post a comment. On the other hand, that might
| actually be a good disincentive to help me spend less time on
| it.
| ckolkey wrote:
| I completely take your point, and would _love_ some kind of
| negative externality to keep from scrolling to much. I'd see
| that as a positive.
| californical wrote:
| I had the same reaction when Kagi search changed their
| pricing to a fixed number 1,000 searches per month for $10. I
| couldn't imagine trying to use search thinking "is this one
| worth searching for?"
|
| ... I now pay $25 for their unlimited option even though I
| probably use less than 1k searches per month anyways
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| If I was designing such an app I would prominently display
| your ongoing monthly costs and add a budget/limit feature.
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| When your landlord raises your rent from $2000 to $8000, they're
| not really hoping to raise your rent. They're evicting you.
|
| I think the new API pricing model was developed with a single
| purpose: extinguishing third-party apps to improve the official
| app's install/usage metrics before their upcoming IPO.
| samstave wrote:
| When they go to IPO, there should be a public announcement of
| all the reprehensible content they allowed for decades, such as
| spacedicks, violentacruz, picsofdeadkids, cannabilism, etc
|
| (and dont forget that cannabilism was the sub ran by CEO
| /u/spez where he was openly talking about how much he wanted to
| eat a baby.)
|
| I am not slandering him -- I am QUOTING him.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Agreed. All those 3rd party apps were blocking ads and
| trackers.
|
| Hell you can't even browse Reddit without an account anymore!
| tantalor wrote:
| Not sure what you mean by "trackers". Reddit knows exactly
| what you did in the 3rd party app via the API. The app tells
| the API who you are.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Hell you can't even browse Reddit without an account
| anymore!
|
| Yes, you can, via old.reddit.com.
| plandis wrote:
| ...that's going to be the next thing they get rid of
| samstave wrote:
| They tried to a while ago - and the old.redditors (like
| me, 17 year account) complained - and they keep it
| around. I exclusively use old.
|
| -- Replying to below:
|
| ???
|
| I use OLD+RES for MY consumption and data density - if
| you dont know how to configure these together to create a
| much faster, and more aesthetically pleasing (to me) UX -
| then that sucks.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/gdDawWz.png
|
| https://i.imgur.com/jlTJGaT.png
|
| So much more pleasant and quicker - especially with hover
| - I dont even need to click links
|
| https://i.imgur.com/jDvjQwM.jpg
|
| Which of the following do you find pleasing, its personal
| opinion, so choose what you like - I prefer old.
|
| These are the same page, the only diff is old. vs www.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/mnl5pCb.png <-- www
|
| https://i.imgur.com/JfFZMQX.png <-- old
|
| ---
|
| https://i.imgur.com/WxsmDkc.png <-- www
|
| https://i.imgur.com/cKs3uVA.png <-- old
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| Hate to break it to you, but nobody uses old anymore. As
| a subreddit mod you can see traffic breakdown stats, and
| old makes up around 5% of traffic. Up to 10% on some
| subs. I'm a moderator of a highly technical niche sub and
| it's about 5-10% for me. Other mods of various subs have
| commented with their stats and it's always in that 5-10
| range.
|
| Old users _may_ create more content than normal users, I
| don 't know about that. The niche subs might take a hit,
| but the main website and big subs will continue on
| without disruption if they kill old. (Assuming mods
| continue to mod - and Reddit can replace/hire mods as
| needed)
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Which is exactly why i'm leaving Reddit. I don't imagine
| old.reddit will be around much longer either.
| brainbag wrote:
| They were not "blocking" ads and trackers, those features are
| not exposed by the API. They couldn't do it even if they
| wanted to, which was discussed at some point.
| [deleted]
| Infinity315 wrote:
| I don't know what's a reasonable rate per API call. But it
| costs reddit to provide this API for free, not only are these
| apps not serving reddit's ads but they are actively taking up
| server resources.
| andremedeiros wrote:
| I'm the guy who built the server end of Apollo. I can tell
| you that there would be no problem paying for API usage. In
| fact, it would have been welcomed, as this is a sure fire way
| to support the service you depend on.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Was the asking price really so unreasonable? Facebook makes
| $70 per user/year, how much would the reddit API have to
| cost to hit that number? All the comments about it just
| point to "server cost break even point", but reddit has
| tons of other costs, plus it's a business that exists to
| make a profit. I haven't done the math here, but the
| analysis I've seen seems flawed.
| goolz wrote:
| This is certain. Can you imagine how embarrassing it must be? A
| solo dev did what you couldn't all because you were too busy
| force feeding everyone ads. I would love to know what these
| executives tell themselves to convince each other they are not
| the bad guys.
| mike00632 wrote:
| I think they were also considering the crawlers that were using
| Reddit data to train AI models.
| sydney6 wrote:
| A note about api pricing: I imagine many of these social networks
| will give themselves a reality check in terms of true value to
| their users, after years of everything for free. I believe there
| are pretty, pretty hard times ahead of FB, Twitter et al., once
| reality truly hits. And from what seems to be the disparity of
| perception in terms of api pricing/value at reddit, they too. 20
| million.. lol. I mean, who will be even able to pay that? Same at
| Twitter's api pricing. For many, like it appears to be the case
| with Apollo, it is not even an viable alternative.
| antonjs wrote:
| This move by reddit is so crazy I can't help but wonder if
| they're lighting all this user goodwill on fire in the hopes of
| improving their negotiating stance with folks using reddit for
| other things (like OpenAI and others training models), and that
| they're thinking they'll be able to change API pricing for Apollo
| and others once they have those big contracts locked in. It seems
| incredibly risky upfront, and with hindsight right now, totally
| untenable if that's the game they're playing.
| monksy wrote:
| RedditSync and RIF has also made the same announcements.
| hinkley wrote:
| Can anyone in the know illuminate us on whether the assertion
| that the new pay scale for the API makes all of these apps
| impossible to implement? Is this truly the case or is it more a
| matter of treating the remote server as essentially free and not
| working to retain all previously seen information to avoid
| duplicate calls?
|
| Some RSS readers pull data per user. Others aggregate across
| their entire userbase, so that the most popular feeds are only
| read once (or once per data center)
| robbiet480 wrote:
| I just don't see Reddit's response here other than "yes, turns
| out we are the bad guys who have been continually lying and
| manipulating the situation for our benefit". I wonder if they'll
| see employees quit over this. How do you trust your employer
| after this? I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or
| delete themselves over this.
|
| Just absolutely stunning turn of events, massive kudos to
| Christian for recording his calls with them for over a year
| (legally I might add). Reddit has 0 wiggle room here.
|
| EDIT: Just spitballing here but could an employee bring a
| shareholder lawsuit for negatively impacting financial outlook or
| destroying brand value? I feel like this is going to
| significantly reshape Reddit as moderators of large subreddits
| will be furious and quit if not destroy entire subreddits. Just
| look at how many big (millions and tens of millions of
| subscribers) subreddits are signed onto the blackout letter
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplet...
|
| EDIT 2: Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose
| his job over this?
|
| EDIT 3: Christian says in the post the refunds will cost him
| personally about $250,000. Does he have a claim against Reddit
| for that money I wonder? I'm sure lawyers are looking closely at
| the agreements right now.
|
| EDIT 4: #1 Reddit Android app "Reddit is Fun" is shutting down
| too
| https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_wi...
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Other social media companies seem far less ethical to me.
| Facebook still has tons of employees even though they treat
| users much worse than reddit. In the end reddit is a business
| that exists to make money. They were never going to let third
| party apps that undercut ad revenue exist forever.
| thx-2718 wrote:
| It's a weird balance right?
|
| You'd think letting 3rd party developed apps for your
| platform frees up resources you would otherwise put in to
| develop your own app.
|
| Individuals that use third party apps are probably power
| users so they're the one's submitting content and writing
| good comments. The very backbone to what brings people to the
| platform.
|
| With quality of submissions and comments going down then
| presumably the number of actual visiters to the site will
| also go down. Thus lowering potential revenue.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| The problem is their revenue per user is garbage compared
| to other sites. Facebook is sitting at $70 per user/year.
| More users who don't bring revenue doesn't actually help
| the company. I think they should focus more on getting
| their ad platform to make a reasonable CPM, but I assume
| they've been trying and for whatever reason just can't make
| it happen. Maybe forcing users onto the official app is how
| they plan to boost the ad numbers?
| edgyquant wrote:
| The quality of Reddit comments has never been particularly
| high. Sure there are quality posts, but like other social
| media most posts are essentially spam and those that aren't
| inaccurate/hyperbolic or just memes.
| thx-2718 wrote:
| Once upon a time you could go to Reddit and skip the link
| because the top comment both summarized the article and
| gave poignant relevant commentary. Often times from
| someone that had professional knowledge in that field.
| Alupis wrote:
| Folks - if you want Apollo to survive, go make it known you are
| willing to pay $5 a month for access.
|
| I know it's popular to hate on Reddit right now - _and for good
| reasons_ , but folks, Apollo made a business decision that was
| unsustainable and entirely dependent on the good will of
| another (untrustworthy) 3rd party company.
|
| It seems foolish to just shut down out of spite. The support
| for Apollo seems very strong - how about you all put your money
| where your support is and support Apollo?
|
| How can we claim Apollo was so critical and necessary and
| everyone loves it - yet nobody wants to pay for a high quality
| app? This doesn't seem possible.
| swid wrote:
| The post details how yearly subscriptions is one of the major
| issues, not monthly ones. There is already an update to
| monthly prices from 1.99 to 5.99, but the people on the
| yearly subscription locked in 0.99 or something like that.
|
| The 30 day window was not enough time to rectify that and
| would cost him 50k in the first month to cover the diff. The
| author suggested he needed at least 3 months to implement
| changes and switch at least some portion of yearly
| subscribers to a higher price.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Right now, I would only pay for a subscription if there was a
| way for reddit to get none of the money.
| mulmen wrote:
| I can understand that position in this case but really the
| idea of passing the cost along to provide a high quality
| experience seems nice. Like imagine a third party YouTube
| client where you pay the UI developer to make a UI that
| doesn't urinate in your breakfast cereal. You get a better
| experience and they show you the YouTube catalog. Now
| imagine the same app has access to HBO and Disney and
| Netflix. I could see paying a premium for that because it
| separates the platform's incentives from the UI incentives,
| which removes the dark pattern incentives like promoting
| the platform's own content.
| websap wrote:
| Seems stupid to reward Reddit's decision. The $5 ends up in
| Reddit's pocket. I'd much rather fund a decentralized
| competitor to Reddit.
| Alupis wrote:
| > I'd much rather fund a decentralized competitor to Reddit
|
| Right - and in 10 years everyone will still be using
| Reddit, Apollo will just be a distant memory, and nobody
| will give any thought to the API pricing model.
|
| Just reality...
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Or, this will be Reddit's Digg moment, and the masses
| will move on from an increasingly user-hostile platform,
| onto the next new shiny thing, for another cycle.
| websap wrote:
| I can't change the world, but I can control my individual
| actions. I'll be deleting my Reddit account by the end of
| the month. Reddit is basically unusable for me from all
| their default surfaces: 1. Mobile website has large
| banners to download the app. 2. Mobile app is confusing
| as shit and tries to mimic TikTok 3. Desktop browsing
| experience is probably one of the worst apps. I've been
| using old.reddit and RES to keep it somewhat useable.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Did you read the thread? It includes a section about
| increasing the cost and how it wouldn't really do much.
|
| > Why not just increase the price of Apollo?
|
| > One option many have suggested is to simply increase the
| price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that
| Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the
| moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a
| price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time
| (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server
| engineer). Those users are owed service as they already
| prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best
| case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit
| fees. That's $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start
| incurring in 30 days.
|
| > So you see, even if I increase the price for new
| subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with.
| If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month
| after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000,
| second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until
| everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of
| dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users.
|
| > I hope you can recognize how that's an enormous amount of
| money to suddenly start incurring with 30 days notice. Even
| if I added 12,000 new subscribers at $5/month (an enormous
| feat given the short notice), after Apple's fees that would
| just be enough to break even.
|
| > Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring
| massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work with
| only 30 days. That's a lot of users to migrate, plans to
| create, things to test, and to get through app review, and
| it's just not economically feasible. It's much cheaper for me
| to simply shut down.
| Alupis wrote:
| Apollo made business decisions, that turned out to be very
| short sighted. Apollo sold access to someone else's system,
| for next to nothing, and now is caught having to pay for
| that access like any reasonable business would expect.
|
| We can debate if the API fees are reasonable or not - but
| at the end of the day, Apollo chose a model that doesn't
| work unless Reddit continued to favor them and apps like
| them. Foolish, is one word that comes to mind.
|
| Given the popularity of Apollo, and the public outcry over
| the news it will be shutting down - I see zero reason
| Apollo couldn't switch to a monthly billing model - even if
| it requires refunding old subscriptions _which they are
| already going to do_.
|
| This is a self-made disaster for Apollo, a failure to be
| forward thinking and control risks.
|
| The founder started Apollo as a university project - but
| somehow forgot to become a real business along the way it
| seems.
| mcphage wrote:
| > I see zero reason Apollo couldn't switch to a monthly
| billing model
|
| He probably could, but not in 30 days.
|
| > but somehow forgot to become a real business along the
| way it seems.
|
| Or chose not to.
| shagie wrote:
| Thirty days is not entirely representative of the
| timeframe for the change. Two and a half months is closer
| to the proper range.
|
| Reddit will begin charging for access to its API
| (nytimes.com) 303 points by alexrustic 51 days ago | 339
| comments ---
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35617763
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/12ram0f/had_a
| _fe... was posted April 19th.
|
| https://www.redditinc.com/blog/2023apiupdates
|
| > ANNOUNCEMENTS Staff * April 18, 2023
|
| > ...
|
| > To ensure developers have the tools and information
| they need to continue to use Reddit safely, protect our
| users' privacy and security, and adhere to local
| regulations, we're making updates to the ways some can
| access the Reddit Data API:
|
| > We are introducing a new premium access point for third
| parties who require additional capabilities, higher usage
| limits, and broader usage rights.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| How, exactly, would you expect someone to change their
| pricing model when they don't know what the prices would
| be?
|
| The prices themselves were announced May 30th. I guess if
| you're feeling generous, that would be 32 days notice.
|
| He had notice there would be _a_ change and was
| explicitly told:
|
| > The information they did provide however was: we will
| be moving to a paid API as it's not tenable for Reddit to
| pay for third-party apps indefinitely (understandable,
| agreed), so they're looking to do equitable pricing based
| in reality. They mentioned that they were not looking to
| be like Twitter, which has API pricing so high it was
| publicly ridiculed.
|
| There is absolutely no actionable information there, and
| everything they said indicated that it wouldn't be an
| unreasonable change.
| Alupis wrote:
| They were supposed to have all of the billing framework
| figured out for monthly subscription model. The exact
| pricing could have been a variable set when the changes
| pushed into production.
|
| 30 days is ample notice to Apollo's users.
|
| Apollo has had since April to figure out how to make a
| monthly subscription work, on a technical level. Now...
| having done nothing smart in the meantime, are left with
| very little time to make the changes. That is 100% on
| Apollo.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Are you employed by Reddit or something?
|
| You shift the blame like there's no tomorrow. At this
| point you either work for them, or are getting paid
| exorbitant amounts of money to defend them. That's the
| only reasonable explanation for why you'd be pushing the
| blame so hard.
|
| Even if he had a full system set up in a month and a half
| (a fairly tight deadline), 32 days is an unreasonably
| short amount of time to make any sort of material change
| to your terms, let alone raising the cost exorbitantly.
|
| Hilariously, your first comment wishes people would
| pledge to pay for Apollo. How we got from there to...
| this bullshit is beyond me. At least it only took a few
| hours to show your true colors.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I'm not really sure what benefit you get out of harping
| on a developer you will likely never meet or interact
| with in a third party forum, but power to you.
|
| Nobody really cares about your opinion on him or a
| monthly subscription; he explicitly said it's not going
| to happen and at the end of the day that's his decision
| to make, not yours.
|
| He doesn't even need to _give_ a reason for shutting
| down. It 's his personal project to manage and he's the
| only one who's ever worked on it.
|
| It's also clear you _haven 't_ read the article, because
| he explicitly calls out a bunch of criticisms you have of
| him directly.
|
| > Isn't this your fault for building a service reliant on
| someone else?
|
| > To a certain extent, yes. However, I was assured this
| year by Reddit not even that long ago that no changes
| were planned to be made to the API Apollo uses, and I've
| made decisions about how to monetize my business based on
| what Reddit has said.
|
| > > January 26, 2023 Reddit: "So I would expect no
| change, certainly not in the short to medium term. And
| we're talking like order of years."
|
| > Another portion of the call:
|
| > > January 26, 2023 Reddit: "There's not gonna be any
| change on it. There's no plans to, there's no plans to
| touch it right now in 2023. Me: "Fair enough." Reddit:
| "And if we do touch it, we're going to be improving it in
| some way."
|
| > Your initial post in April sounded quite optimistic.
| Are you dumb?
|
| > In hindsight, kinda yeah. Many of the other developers
| and folks I talked to were much less optimistic than I
| was, but I legitimately had great interactions with
| Reddit for many years prior to last week (they were kind,
| communicative, gave me heads up of changes), so when they
| said they were aiming to have pricing that would be fair
| and based in reality, I honestly believed them. That was
| foolish of me in hindsight, and maybe could have had a
| different outcome if I was more aggressive in the
| beginning. Sorry. /canadian
|
| > (And to be clear, they did indeed say this. They used
| the word "substantive" and I wanted to make sure we had
| the same definition of something "having a firm basis in
| reality and therefore important, meaningful, or
| considerable")
|
| > > Reddit: "That's exactly right. And I think,
| thankfully, the word is exactly the right one. It's going
| to have a firm basis in reality. I also just looked it
| up. We're going to try to be as transparent as we can."
| websap wrote:
| [flagged]
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| It occurs to me--could he go after Reddit for the cost of
| all those refunds? Detrimental reliance.
| hajile wrote:
| That "no changes for years" sounds very much like a
| verbal contract that could/should be enforced.
| mulmen wrote:
| The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
|
| Reading this with 15 years of corporate experience the
| developer was at best naive. In corporate speak Reddit is
| completely consistent in their actions and words. It's a
| crappy situation and I'm sure the developer is a great
| person and I agree Reddit did them dirty but also that's
| how these things work. You don't take dependencies on
| third parties without a lawyer and a contract.
|
| > There's not gonna be any change on it.
|
| Nobody can make this promise, those are just words to
| make you feel good.
|
| > There's no plans to, there's no plans to touch it right
| now in 2023.
|
| Plans can be made quickly. Action can be taken without a
| plan. What is the guarantee on lead time?
|
| > And if we do touch it, we're going to be improving it
| in some way.
|
| Define improvement. Improved for who?
|
| > It's going to have a firm basis in reality.
|
| I have no doubt that Reddit based the API pricing on them
| making money on it. We can debate if they got it right.
|
| > We're going to try to be as transparent as we can.
|
| Try is a weasel word, this sentence is meaningless. Zero
| transparency can be provided and still meet the standard
| of being "as transparent as possible". "Try" here even
| gives them the opportunity to be less transparent than
| possible. The Glomar defense ("We can neither confirm nor
| deny") is "as transparent as possible" and actually meets
| a higher standard than Reddit promised here because the
| CIA didn't just "try", they successfully provided the
| most possible transparency (almost none).
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I'm just going to leave this first sentence from my
| comment here; it very much applies to you as well.
|
| > I'm not really sure what benefit you get out of harping
| on a developer you will likely never meet or interact
| with in a third party forum, but power to you.
|
| Y'all need to find a better hobby. As per his own words,
| he also clearly realizes that in hindsight he should have
| been more pessimistic. But that's all moot now. The past
| is in the past. Pointing it out is not going to do
| anything.
| mulmen wrote:
| I'm not harping on the developer. I'm using this
| opportunity to explain how communication with
| corporations can be confusing. The developer clearly
| knows they made mistakes and is doing the best they can.
| They did a great job of tracking the conversations and
| keeping the receipts, which is important in these
| situations, but isn't enough to save the app.
| rtsil wrote:
| There is nothing foolish about all of this. The developer
| saw an opportunity based on the platform's free access,
| and built a business on it. Wise decision. Then the
| platform is no longer free, so the original business case
| no longer exists, and they decide to shut down. Another
| wise decision.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > We can debate if the API fees are reasonable or not -
| but at the end of the day, Apollo chose a model that
| doesn't work unless Reddit continued to favor them and
| apps like them.
|
| Reddit could simply treat them reasonably and things
| would be fine. There's no need for favoritism, they just
| need to stop being actively harmful. And part of that is
| the fees (they're not reasonable).
| mulmen wrote:
| Yeah a ramp-up of the fees or more than 30 days of notice
| would be enough.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I have real sympathy for the developer of Apollo; at the
| same time it was such a huge and obvious risk to stake
| your entire business on the whims of another that I find
| it difficult to be 100% sympathetic.
|
| It's like, I know this funded company that's doing a lot
| of work using intel SGX, if intel kill it, about 80
| people lose the jobs and several million in VC goes up in
| smoke. It's insane to me that people are building
| businesses that can be killed by 3rd parties that they
| have no hope of influencing, and have no contracts with.
|
| Another chapter of the internet drama concludes, I
| suppose. I wish them all the best and I'll be curious to
| see if reddit survives.
| tremon wrote:
| _it was such a huge and obvious risk to stake your entire
| business on the whims of another_
|
| How is this different than any other business running
| (part of) their operations at a large cloud provider? Or
| a business having to renew their contract with the power
| company?
| cyberpunk wrote:
| You can change cloud and energy provider, Apollo can't
| change reddit provider. ?
| [deleted]
| garbagecoder wrote:
| It would be a cheap shot for me to just say "you didn't read
| the post, did you?" but he does explain it.
|
| Spite is how humans enforce social norms. In this case, they
| lied to him, slandered him with easily falsifiable things
| they even admitted he didn't say.
|
| The relationship is broken.
| Alupis wrote:
| Sometimes, in the real world, and especially with business
| - you must swallow your pride to survive another day.
|
| Shutting down a popular business because things got
| temporarily inconvenient is immature at best.
|
| HN, alone, is filled with people willing to pay $5 a month.
| He doesn't need to find _new_ subscribers, he already has
| them! He 's just not asking them for what he needs to
| continue operating.
|
| That's entirely on Apollo...
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Nah nobody's going to pay for Reddit.
|
| Monetisation of social networks only works via
| ads/tracking.
| Alupis wrote:
| The amount of Reddit Gold that's thrown around seems to
| disagree...
| garbagecoder wrote:
| No, no you don't. In business relationships are critical.
| Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably one of the
| people you don't want to do business with. There's a name
| for people who will do anything for money and those are
| usually one off transactions. You've had a month of
| everyone telling this guy he's dumb to trust a 3rd party
| with your platform and now the 2cynical4u people are
| saying shut up and be a whore.
|
| You're just being an unconstructive critic.
|
| And you have no evidence it's temporary.
| pierat wrote:
| Do you know what happens when you pay blackmail or protection
| money? It keeps happening, and at more cost each iteration.
|
| If they came out with a reasonable set of conditions to do
| API access, people would be a lot less upset. But they
| didn't. And those API fees are guaranteed to go only up, up,
| and further up.
|
| Time to get out of reddit when the gettin's good.
| [deleted]
| ryanmercer wrote:
| >I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or delete
| themselves over this.
|
| It's my understanding that Apollo users make up a fraction of a
| percent of active users. Reddit almost certainly doesn't care.
| Fact is they've taken in over a billion in funding and aren't
| really returning a profit, charging for API access starts
| moving them in the right direction though.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > EDIT 2: Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to
| lose his job over this?
|
| Why would he lose his job? Realistically, it's a smart business
| move to monetise their users. It's Reddit, them being pissy
| about having to pay is part of the course. There is a reason
| they're the lowest valued social media users.
|
| >EDIT 3: Christian says in the post the refunds will cost him
| personally about $250,000. Does he have a claim against Reddit
| for that money I wonder? I'm sure lawyers are looking closely
| at the agreements right now.
|
| What would he have a claim for? He wasn't paying for the API.
| He could pay for the API and continue to operate. You can't sue
| someone because they stopped letting you use their services for
| free. You sure can't sue a business for asking your for-profit
| company to pay expenses.
|
| Realistically, these app users would have made tens if not
| hundreds of thousands a month if they just added subscription
| model to their app and only had paying customers. These apps
| could still exist and be extremely profitable for a one-man
| apps.
|
| Simple maths $5 a month subscription $2.50 to reddit $1.50 to
| apple and $1 to the app developer. Say 10% of their users
| convert which seems very reasonable considering the reception a
| price increase to $6.99 seem to get on the Apollo subreddit.
| That would have been $100,000 a month profit. But instead, they
| shut it down.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| I mean, Tortious interference can apply when a service which
| could reasonably have been expected to charge reasonable
| amounts suddenly increases their prices for no reason, if it
| prevents a third party from being able to fulfill a contract.
| I have no idea if one of this is one of those cases though, I
| wouldn't expect so but IANAL.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Reddit lawyers would show other social networks such as
| Twitter and Imgur offical pricing charging more. That would
| make it a reasonable amount. And there is a reason, they're
| unprofitable. It really annoys me that people say the price
| is unreasonable when it's so low that a $5 a month
| subscription covers it and makes profit.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| > Just look at how many big (millions and tens of millions of
| subscribers) subreddits are signed onto the blackout letter
|
| Is there a running list of subs (over a certain high number of
| subscribers, to keep it focused) that aren't in the blackout
| list? That would be interesting to see. Wouldn't be too hard to
| implement, at least while the API is still free...
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Why even wait. Id shut it down on the 12th.
| anlaw wrote:
| [flagged]
| nsn90 wrote:
| they don't just claim, it's there
|
| https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-
| may-...
| koolba wrote:
| > Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose his
| job over this?
|
| If spez wasn't fired on the spot for abusing his power to
| manually edit posts critical of him, why would you expect them
| to sack him over something that actually has a legitimate
| business angle?
| robbiet480 wrote:
| Good point, I totally forgot that he was caught editing posts
| directly in the production DB
| https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-
| stev...
| [deleted]
| shp0ngle wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| I hate Reddit, Reddit Admins, Reddit Mods, etc more than
| most people. Especially how they love to gaslight you and
| subtly screw you over/sabotage you, as we saw with their
| attacks on the_donald.
|
| BUT if you take the edits in context, there was nothing
| wrong with them. Dozens of people were talking shit, and he
| responded by very lightly and very obviously trolling them.
| There were still a lot of old school internet users/4chan
| types running the show back then, so they should have been
| able to deal with a tiny bit of counter-trolling without
| losing their minds.
| rvba wrote:
| [flagged]
| meroes wrote:
| How can you hate those groups but not hate the_donald
| where mods were also a disaster?! They absolutely love to
| gaslight you in general. Shouldn't a good faith response
| to a post in the_donald not be immediately removed and OP
| banned? The mods would never let any non-hyperventilated
| group think through. It's the same with r/conspiracy back
| then where I happily took my ban for calling out the
| worst mod I've ever encountered who would again ban good
| faith discussion for arbitrary reasons. r/politics mods
| are also horrible, to add some balance. I'm banned there
| too.
| bmarquez wrote:
| the_donald made it very clear that they were a subreddit
| trying to mimic a Trump campaign rally. You could even be
| a conservative, mildly critical of Trump's policy and
| still get banned. It never claimed to be unbiased and
| proudly proclaimed the opposite.
|
| On the other hand, we expect some level of fairness and
| professionalism from Reddit and its administrators.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| I hated the_donald plenty, mostly because they banned
| people for no reason or for stupid reasons. Which is the
| exact same offense that Reddit at large committed, but at
| least the_donald people were upfront about it.
|
| I think we're on the same page overall here, just that I
| never put any faith in the sanctity of Reddit's database
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >the_donald people were upfront about it
|
| They sure as fuck were not! Even to this day,
| /Conservative still claims the moral high ground bastion
| of free speech and balance while banning you for any
| slight question of the narrative being encouraged.
| Importantly, this is VERBATIM what they claim /politics
| does.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I think that while the trolling wasn't egregious, the
| issue was that words were being put in their mouths,
| which undermines trust. It's a whole other level of
| manipulation compared to even just impersonating someone.
| kstrauser wrote:
| It would be impossible for me to disagree more. Editing
| someone's comments to put your own words in their mouth
| is despicable. Basically, he impersonated those users and
| put them on record as saying something they'd never said.
| It's like the text version of a deep fake recording.
| qup wrote:
| I don't disagree with this take, I just disagree with
| your implied evaluation of how important that is. Who
| cares if he put some usernames on record as saying
| something they never said?
|
| I know that you do, and you have your reasons,
| but...well, I don't. I think people are taking reddit
| commenting way too seriously if heads need to roll over a
| comment edit.
| duncan-donuts wrote:
| Reddit activity has been used in court. Someone
| falsifying data is dangerous.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Dude have you see some of the shit that happens to people
| over stuff they wrote on reddit n years ago?
|
| This isn't the old days when everything on the internet
| was in good fun. For a lot of people these days, internet
| unironically srs bsns. And a lot of those people think
| it's okay to harass folks over their passing thoughts on
| the internet.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Imagine having to testify in court that you didn't
| _actually_ say the things that the other attorney found
| in your social media posts, knowing that you really didn
| 't say them but also knowing that no one's going to
| believe you. "Oh, sure you were _hacked_. _eye roll_ "
| kstrauser wrote:
| I almost can't believe you're serious here, but I'll
| reply sincerely.
|
| Suppose dang edited your post to say "I like to get drunk
| at work", and there it is for the world to see. You never
| said that, but anyone looking at Hacker News would see:
|
| "qup 10 minutes ago: I like to get drunk at work."
|
| No, that's absolutely not OK! Now, consider that spez
| could just as easily edit some old Reddit comments
| someone wrote years ago to say something horrendous. Do
| you often go back to verify that all your old comments
| are unchanged? I certainly don't.
|
| I have no way of knowing exactly which comments spez
| edited, or how significantly he changed them. And
| honestly, the not knowing is simply inexcusable. All we
| know is that he _has_ tampered with the production
| database, not how often or how much.
| koolba wrote:
| > All we know is that he has tampered with the production
| database, not how often or how much.
|
| Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
| Tuckerism wrote:
| A phrase that eerily yet accurately sums up (or some
| would believe to sum up) lots of public discourse these
| days.
| IanCal wrote:
| I think there are two distinct things getting mixed up.
|
| Should he have been able to? No, that's a concerning
| setup for the reasons you say.
|
| How bad is what he actually did, from what we actually
| know? For about an hour, comments that said "fuck spez"
| after he banned the pizzagate sub were changed to "fuck
| $the_donald_mod_name".
|
| I just don't find that a big deal. It's not like editing
| your comment to say you drink at work.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The problem is that it is impossible to prove he has
| never done that other times. He played his hand that he
| is willing to put words in other people's mouths
| basically just for entertainment, so why should we
| believe he hasn't done it in much more important cases?
| kstrauser wrote:
| Again, all we know is that he _has_ lied about what users
| have said in comments. We just don 't know to what
| degree. For me, not knowing that is completely
| unacceptable.
|
| If he _only_ made those changes and solemnly vowed never
| to do it again, fine, shouldn 't have done it but
| whatever. But who besides him can say for sure?
| IanCal wrote:
| > Again, all we know is that he has lied about what users
| have said in comments
|
| You mean changing fuck spez to fuck $mod?
|
| > We just don't know to what degree
|
| Well I'm not sure what auditing they have, and I know
| there's public databases of all Reddit comments. It's
| been a while and I'm not aware of other claims.
|
| My point was more that you two were arguing at
| crossroads. You seemed more concerned about what could
| have happened, and they were talking about what has
| evidence.
| deanCommie wrote:
| https://twitter.com/InternetHippo/status/8700100139006115
| 84
|
| Before: I have no evidence that spez tampers with
| anyone's reddit comments in production
|
| After: I have evidence that spez tampered with ONE reddit
| comment in production.
|
| The new status quo does not increase the likelyhood of "I
| have evidence that spez may be inexplicably tampering
| with old reddit comments habitually" being more true.
|
| And thinking that it does shows a poor understanding of
| human behaviour and nature, especially under stressful
| emotional circumstances.
| qup wrote:
| I'm serious. Who doesn't like to get drunk at work? I do
| (it's only happened once, but it's one of my best
| memories).
|
| Dang can edit my comments. (He does have to edit comments
| sometimes, I'm sure, but for reasons you approve of.) I
| would find it annoying. Until this comment thread,
| though, I'm not sure I would have considered that dang
| would get fired for it.
|
| I don't think I nor anyone should be held accountable at
| work for comments made on Hacker News. If I lost my job
| over dang editing my post, I would think I worked for a
| really shit company and nobody went to bat for me.
| Basically, I would continue believing the interaction on
| the forum was totally unimportant, and I would be
| dumbfounded by the idiocy of my manager for elevating it
| to that a fireable offense, particularly after I let them
| know I did not make that comment.
|
| FWIW, nobody needs to worry about me. I do not have a
| boss.
| lesuorac wrote:
| What situation do you think dang would need to edit a
| comment that a deletion wouldn't work?
|
| HN isn't partnering with the CIA to catch some Russian
| spy by modifying a comment so that the drop is in a
| monitored location. He's just going to delete the comment
| if it contains something it shouldn't.
| klyrs wrote:
| > Who doesn't like to get drunk at work? I do (it's only
| happened once, but it's one of my best memories).
|
| This is the saddest thing I've read all week and my uncle
| just died.
| [deleted]
| sidfthec wrote:
| > I don't think I nor anyone should be held accountable
| at work for comments made on Hacker News.
|
| > FWIW, nobody needs to worry about me. I do not have a
| boss.
|
| Great, but now bring it back to real life, because a ton
| of people are held accountable at work for comments made
| on social media and do have a boss.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| It wasn't the first time he did it, it was the first time
| he got caught.
| d4mi3n wrote:
| This is a short-sighted argument. A list of who cares:
|
| * Any media reporting on what's happening within Reddit.
| Remember when WSB was all over the news cycles? Picture
| that but with some malicious mod/admin setting somebody
| up to take the fall for equities fraud.
|
| * Any person or entity with legal or fincial muscle
| looking to protect their reputation or product. You don't
| want Wizards of the Coast sending the Pinkertons to your
| door because they think you're selling stolen goods.
|
| * Anyone who values their own reputation in the internet.
| Imagine being an aspiring politician and having somebody
| insert racial slurs into your historical posts.
|
| The issue isn't somebody being petty, it's that there is
| potential for systemic abuse of power and trust.
| voldacar wrote:
| >as we saw with their attacks on the_donald
|
| what attacks are you specifically referring to here,
| other than kicking them off the site?
| anononaut wrote:
| Their manipulation of votes and what was allowed to be on
| /all is pretty well documented. After a certain point,
| the_donald and several other right-of-center subs were
| disallowed entirely to appear on the meta lists.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Honestly? Good. So many of the right wing subs were
| absolute breeding grounds for content violations
| regarding hate speech, and the sub mods turned a blind
| eye. It was plainly obvious they were blatantly bad
| actors on the site long before they got quarantined and
| banned.
| rightbyte wrote:
| The original sub was nothing special rule wise in my
| opinion. Did you ever visit their spinoff own site? It
| was psychotic in comparison. Kicking them off Reddit was
| a mistake for society at large.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I mean yes that's my opinion, but it's important to look
| at possible neutral interpretations.
|
| I don't think there is a neutral interpretation better
| than "the_donald was a lot of trouble for reddit as a
| business and social network, because they caused
| hostility, even by their existence, and it's not reddit's
| business to make humans less tribal, so why continue
| supporting them? Especially after they were clearly
| brigaiding and manipulating front page content. This
| front page manipulation was different from what the
| reddit owners wanted to be on the front page, which for
| the most part is benign and fun stuff that's easy to
| monetize."
| baq wrote:
| It should be noted we're typing this on one of the most
| heavily moderated (in both transparent and opaque ways)
| sites on the Internet.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| There was this ongoing war of attrition by Reddit admins
| on the_donald (and on a lot of other subs, including
| their big cash cow WallStreetBets)
|
| The admins always had some new rules and some specific
| ways they had to be enforced, and were always happy to
| heap ever-increasing punishments on the subreddits
| capriciously
|
| Oh, you can't say "Retard" any more, if we find any more
| examples of this prohibited hate speech your subreddit is
| going to be actioned against. Also we banned half of your
| most active moderators for wrongthink. We'll continue
| banning moderators and levying punishments until the
| situation is rectified.
| Izkata wrote:
| Whatever it was reddit claimed they did, they couldn't
| have done because they had already moved to a different
| site about four months before reddit "kicked them off".
| The subreddit had been locked the whole time.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| My memory on this is murky, although do I recall correctly
| that his reply to criticism of the production db comment edit
| amounted to something like "it was just a prank bro"?
| pbasista wrote:
| It seems to me that some people have no regard for the law,
| the ethics, the morals, etc.. If it benefits them to break
| it, they will do it, as long as they know they will face no
| or minimal consequences if caught.
|
| They would even feel good about it because they have
| managed to obtain an unfair advantage and get away with it.
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| Basically, and if it was a small-time forum, it would be
| more "reasonable".
|
| But Reddit is and always has pretended to be a "big name"
| company like Youtube, Facebook, etc.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| This seems like an even more egregious act, it's like
| attempted character assassination of a developer beloved by
| the community. This app got shouted out in WWDC and Spez's
| decision shortly after is to concoct an alternate reality
| where Christian is a villain and present it as fact, and then
| get caught almost immediately.
|
| It seems apparent Spez is burdened by a serious lack of
| ethics, and I think that burden is now compromising Reddit as
| well much more than before. As far as I know, going to IPO
| with a crook at the helm usually only works if they haven't
| been caught multiple times first.
|
| Edit: Really, what an especially awful thing to do to a
| developer whose full-time job your policy change has just
| shut down - tell the world they're an extortionist liar from
| your comfy office.
| conradev wrote:
| I feel like it is much, much simpler than that
|
| Reddit makes money off of ads, and Apollo doesn't show ads.
| The same was the case for Twitter and Tweetbot. In some
| ways, Christian is directly capturing revenue that Reddit
| otherwise would.
|
| I would agree that the proposed API pricing is not a
| workable starting point, but I do think Apollo (and, by
| proxy, its users) will eventually have to pay Reddit
| something.
| detaro wrote:
| ... then require apps to show ads to users that don't pay
| reddit for ad-free access?
| dmix wrote:
| What does this look like in practice? Reddit devs extend
| their ad platform into the API and then make a mandatory
| design guideline, which they require with whatever app
| has x API demand level?
|
| I guess the Reddit premium users just have to use Reddit
| apps to get it ad free?
| detaro wrote:
| > _What does this look like in practice? Reddit devs
| extend their ad platform into the API and then make a
| mandatory design guideline, which they require with
| whatever app has x userbase?_
|
| Pretty much. Long tail of tiny-userbase clients probably
| doesn't matter that much, I suspect a small number of
| apps that can reasonably be spot-checked if it complies
| is the vast majority of traffic.
|
| > _I guess the Reddit premium users just have to use
| Reddit apps to get it ad free?_
|
| No reason third-party apps couldn't be allowed to be ad-
| free for premium users too. (or if the API is explicitly
| pushing "show ad URL X to user in this context" the API
| can take care of adjusting that)
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Christian agrees, as he describes in the linked post. But
| the pricing and timeline are untenable.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| Regardless of how simple the business case for this
| change is or is not, Steve's choice to egregiously lie
| about his conversation with Christian is a completely
| unnecessary and frankly daft risk to take. It's bullying,
| and he was almost immediately caught out as a liar.
|
| I cannot understand how anyone in his team with a sturdy
| ethical compass could look him in the eye after seeing
| that post, especially if they were party to the original
| conversation. I can't remember the last time I saw a
| corporate leader get caught in such a high profile
| absolute falsehood, especially directed at a single
| individual.
|
| If this reflects the company's culture I have no idea how
| it can succeed as a public firm. How will Steve deal with
| criticism from public investors? What is he _not_ willing
| to lie about?
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Reddit is terrible at everything but getting a massive
| user base in the early 2010s, which it has coasted on
| since. They could have had a phenomenal IPO in 2021, but
| with the current market conditions they don't really have
| a hook (no AI involvement).
|
| Their best case scenario is really Twitter's case, where
| they go public, have middling performance, and then get
| bought out by a billionaire after annoying them with bad
| moderation decisions lmao
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| voisin wrote:
| > Steve's choice to egregiously lie about his
| conversation with Christian
|
| Can you point to a source for this for those of us not
| familiar with his comments?
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| The thread linked at the top of this page covers the
| accusations made by Steve directed at Christian and
| includes the call recordings Steve was apparently unaware
| of completely contradicting those accusations.
|
| Additionally, someone else in the comments here linked
| the text of a post[0] made in /r/partnercommunities with
| similar accusations to what's quoted in TFA.
|
| [0]https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/143sho8/ad
| mins_c...
| voisin wrote:
| Thanks!
| voisin wrote:
| > Why charge? > It's very expensive to run - it takes
| millions of dollars to effectively subsidize other
| people's businesses / apps. > It's an extraordinary
| amount of data, and these are for-profit businesses built
| on our data for free.
|
| This is rich. The entire for-profit Reddit business is
| based on people contributing data for free, subsidizing
| their for-profit business. These guys couldn't be any
| more clueless.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| I remember a long while back someone on HN characterized
| the Reddit leadership team as like a regular driver who's
| dropped into the seat of a formula 1 car halfway through
| a race, in the lead. Tons of momentum but the person at
| the controls can't keep from steering it into the wall.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It hasn't stopped them from becoming personally wealthy
| and "powerful" in whatever world they live in. If you
| keep being told not to touch the hot stove, but not
| touching the hot stove doesn't burn you, not only will
| you NOT learn to not touch the stove, but you will learn
| to not listen to people who tell you not to do other
| things.
|
| We owe it to the world to make sure touching the stove
| DOES burn you, otherwise it's just DARE all over again.
| spamboy wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apoll
| o_w...
|
| See the section titled " Bizarre allegations by Reddit of
| Apollo "blackmailing" and "threatening" Reddit"
| voisin wrote:
| Thanks!
| digging wrote:
| > but I do think Apollo (and, by proxy, its users) will
| eventually have to pay Reddit something.
|
| Apollo will never pay, because it's shutting down. It was
| always an option to monetize 3PA but Reddit decided not
| to.
| function_seven wrote:
| Why fuck around with 20x pricing then? If the ARPU is on
| the order of $0.12 a month, why attempt to charge $2.50 a
| month?
| mrweasel wrote:
| He comments on that in the post: It's not about the cost
| of running the servers, it's about the "lost revenue" on
| that user.
|
| From the post:
|
| > Me: "Because I assume the majority of it isn't server
| costs. I assume the majority is the opportunity cost per
| user."
|
| > Reddit: "Exactly.""
|
| Reddit's doesn't care about the $0.12, they care about
| the ads that doesn't get shown.
| dingledork69 wrote:
| ...the reason they want to show the ads is so they can
| get paid for that.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| As other's have pointed out, they probably think AI will
| pay them more than even ads. Or, since they want to IPO
| and cash out, they are betting, with the current hype
| around "AI", that public markets will value AI high
| enough to value "possible" data sources of AI highly.
| csa wrote:
| I think the $0.12 figure that was calculated on the post
| may have been too low.
|
| Iirc, the entirety of Reddit's user base was used for the
| calculation. My guess is that Apollo's subset of users
| are much more active (and probably more lucrative in
| terms of ads and user data) than probably 99% of all
| Reddit users.
| kaba0 wrote:
| It was already a calculation with massively generous
| values -- come on, hardware serving easily cache-able
| data is dirt cheap, especially when quite a lot of that
| is just text. And there is data from Christian about the
| average daily API calls an Apollo user makes, so no need
| to guess.
| orra wrote:
| On the flip side side, if Apollo users are much more
| active, Reddit will be worse for lurkers if Apollo users
| disappear.
| robryan wrote:
| Yeah, I'd expect a lot of power users on the 3rd party
| clients are generating a lot of the content and doing
| free moderation that produces the product they can get
| the masses to use via the website/ official app.
| csa wrote:
| > Reddit will be worse for lurkers if Apollo users
| disappear
|
| Within the realm of folks who are willing to pay for a
| Reddit skin, imagine that very few of them will just give
| up the site once their skin is gone.
|
| More likely is that someone comes in and makes a similar
| app and charges more for it. Power users and professional
| users will pay, and most of them will gladly pay a
| premium.
|
| Not gonna lie... I think op said he charged $10 _a year_.
| I raised my eyebrows... that should probably be the
| bottom option of a three-tier monthly price matrix.
|
| I think someone should buy this app and just price it
| properly based on value add. Im not sure what the various
| user profiles of Apollo are, but my guess is that there
| are a few profiles that can be profitably monetized even
| with the new Reddit API charges. Imho, Reddit is being
| shortsighted, but they do have a unique and large
| community.
| skyyler wrote:
| >that should probably be the bottom option of a three-
| tier monthly price matrix.
|
| I'm so annoyed with three-tier monthly price matrices.
| It's honestly a red flag for me at this point.
| annexrichmond wrote:
| > If the ARPU is on the order of $0.12 a month
|
| Is that a matter of fact? How do you know it isn't
| higher? Also consider that it's not just advertising, it
| is also about funneling users to new products Reddit may
| want to develop
| rcxdude wrote:
| You can see how that number is derived in the post. It's
| based on very optimistic projections from data that
| reddit has previously released about their revenue, and
| very pessimistic projections of their user growth. If
| reddit somehow has massively increased the value they can
| get from each user compared to that I think the burden of
| proof is on them for that.
| yifanl wrote:
| From TFA, $0.12 is an optimistic calculation taking
| better-than-best revenue divided by a pessimistic user
| count. We can double that again if you're expecting a
| late-stage product like reddit to launch a new highly
| monetizable feature soon, and it's still quite far away.
| chemeng wrote:
| This is likely an indication of their internal targets
| for ARPU over the next months as they start aggressively
| monetizing and push to IPO.
|
| For reference, approximate global ARPU if converted to
| monthly for other social networks in 2022: Pinterest:
| ~$0.5, Snap: ~$1, Twitter: ~$1.6, FB: ~$3.3
|
| This says the IPO roadshow will say Reddit has potential
| somewhere between Twitter and Facebook, which feels like
| the right sales pitch to me.
| dingledork69 wrote:
| Reddit could just return the ads via the api & mandate
| how they are displayed in apps.
| waboremo wrote:
| This gets repeated a lot, with the assumption that
| they're refusing to pay at all, but in the very original
| post they highlight how they do pay for API usage
| elsewhere (Imgur) already and therefore have no problem
| adding Reddit to that at a reasonable cost.
|
| I get the want to simplify things, but it's already
| simple enough:
|
| 1. Reddit brings out absurdly priced API
|
| 2. Developers don't want to pay that much
|
| 3. Reddit then behind the scenes berates developers,
| claiming they are trying to blackmail millions of
| dollars, to the apps serving harmful ads, to posting
| about how the apps aren't "good citizens" and instead are
| scraping wildly
|
| 4. Developers push back and announce app closures
|
| If it was about "showing ads", they would have budged on
| price a long time ago, added in guidelines to use the API
| and serve ads, etc. This is about controlling user data,
| tracking every bit they can, leveraging their content,
| and then monetizing the fuck out of it in the age of AI.
| ugl wrote:
| in the moderator subreddit, the admins have stated
| several times that non-commercial access will remain
| free, and have skirted replying to direct questions, from
| what I can tell. u/spez (reddit ceo) is doing a ama
| tomorrow.
|
| >Hi Mods,
|
| We're providing a follow-up on the last API update we
| made to make sure our mods, developers, and users have
| clarity on changes we are (and aren't) making.
|
| API Free Access
|
| This exists and continues to be available.
|
| If usage is legal, non-commercial, and helps our mods, we
| won't stand in your way. Moderators will continue to have
| access to their communities via the API - including
| sexually explicit content across Reddit. Moderators will
| be able to see sexually-explicit content even on
| subreddits they don't directly moderate.
|
| We will ensure existing utilities, especially moderation
| tools, have free access to our API. We will support legal
| and non-commercial tools like Toolbox, Context Mod,
| Remind Me, and anti-spam detection bots. And if they
| break, we will work with you to fix them.
|
| Developers can continue non-commercial usage of the API,
| free of charge within stated rates. Reddit is also
| covering hosting for apps via the Developer Platform,
| which uses the Data API.
| albio wrote:
| They think their data is worth $X to AI and think that AI
| will pay that much.
|
| They think $X is vastly larger than the $Y they would get
| from third party app developers. So, goodbye to third
| party app developers.
| kentm wrote:
| I'd respect them more if they just came out and admitted
| it.
| weaksauce wrote:
| > They think their data is worth $X to AI and think that
| AI will pay that much.
|
| which is absurd... the entirety of reddit has already
| been scraped before. the marginal utility of this today
| onward feed of data is a lot less than they think it is.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah - obviously (imo).
|
| Similarly to twitter third party api access with no ads
| doesn't make any sense for a business that's an ad
| business, it's stupid they've allowed this at all for as
| long as they have (and it was stupid for twitter to do
| the same).
|
| If you want to build a non ad-based subscription business
| go ahead! I strongly prefer models that do that (e.g.
| substack), but if you're not going to do that then don't
| operate some weird half measure that's clearly counter to
| the company incentives. Apollo is just upset the free
| party is over.
|
| I'm a little surprised reddit would not just shut it all
| down like twitter did since that makes more sense for
| this model, but having the price set crazy high is
| effectively the same thing anyway. It makes sense they
| don't want to negotiate, they'd rather have no third
| party API access at all.
|
| This argument doesn't mean I'm a fan of data access and
| control (I'm not - I work on urbit to give people a way
| to escape it), but I recognize the business as it is. If
| you're running an ad business and allow third parties to
| build apps on your business that prevent you from
| controlling users at the client level (and prevent you
| from showing ads) you're making stupid decisions.
|
| Like most things it's a problem of incentives. You can't
| fix the behavior without fixing the incentives. You can't
| escape the megacorp ad world we're trapped in by just
| wishing the existing incentives didn't exist.
| kaba0 wrote:
| You are missing the fact that these social media sites
| are 100% dependent on freely provided user-generated
| content. Third party apps were quite likely necessary for
| Reddit's success so far. It's much more complex than what
| you make it sound like.
| mejari wrote:
| Except the way Reddit works increasing the volume of
| users, even if they aren't seeing ads, provides the
| entirety of the value of the site that the users who
| _are_ seeing ads come to see.
|
| This 100% reeks of business people who don't even care to
| understand what Reddit is coming in and seeing the raw
| metrics of "% of users who aren't seeing ads" and the
| "lost" revenue.
| voisin wrote:
| Can't Reddit just have a tiered API: one pricing for ad-
| free API and another for ad-supported? Surely a system
| could be put in place to ensure compliance.
|
| I have to think there was a path here for Reddit to get
| its ad money without alienating so many users and mods.
| bob-09 wrote:
| You make them sound like freeloaders, when in reality
| they provide value to the community by committing
| significant time contributing to Reddit through posts,
| comments, original content, and volunteer moderation.
|
| Reddit is worthless without community contributions, and
| Reddit is very clearly telling the community (both users
| and developers) that they aren't valuable and should go
| find somewhere else to spend their time.
| rcxdude wrote:
| in TFA paying a price isn't a problem. The insanely high
| price isn't necessarily even a dealbreaker (Apollo is a
| paid app already, though it'll be a steep as hell
| increase). The issue is he (and everyone else) had 30
| days notice between the new pricing and the pricing going
| into force, which is not enough to actually adapt to the
| changes without going deeply into the read in the
| meantime (for example, much of Apollo's users are on a
| yearly plan).
| housemusicfan wrote:
| Your first mistake was assuming these social media
| companies _aren 't_ run by complete sociopaths.
| djbusby wrote:
| A second mistake is thinking these types aren't in lots
| of other businesses and even government! Just happening
| on smaller scale to smaller groups.
| babyshake wrote:
| In my experience, some amount of sociopathic behavior
| among executives is not the exception, it's the rule.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Why would it be limited to social media companies? Have
| companies like Airbnb done anything to show YC companies
| are more or less just as bad (once they are big of
| course)
| paradox460 wrote:
| Reddit is a YC company. One of the first
| moralestapia wrote:
| >It seems apparent Spez is burdened by a serious lack of
| ethics [...]
|
| 10 years too late.
| popey wrote:
| He's doing an AMA about the API changes tomorrow. Bring
| popcorn. https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/joi
| n_our_ce...
| mvdtnz wrote:
| What an extremely strange equivalence you've drawn.
| [deleted]
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| >yes, turns out we are the bad guys who have been continually
| lying and manipulating the situation for our benefit
|
| This is *literally* what is expected of someone running a
| company with intitutional investors - anything other than this
| and investors are not interested.
|
| What more proof do we need that there is nothing more important
| to a small group of humans that own all the money, than them
| getting more money?
| duxup wrote:
| > I wonder if they'll see employees quit over this.
|
| What is the employee culture like it Reddit?
|
| I've never gotten the impression that people working at Reddit
| better care all that much about the community. It's just not
| something that ever came across from the site... rather, I've
| suspected just the opposite.
|
| Statements by some admin's make me wonder if they've EVER dealt
| with a community before ... and their decisions based on
| personal relationships, rather than anything else.
| ellisv wrote:
| I've known a couple of people who previously worked at Reddit
| and I can't imagine they'd quit over something like this. I
| think most employees don't feel any personal responsibility
| or sense of control for the situation and are happy to get
| paid a comfortable salary.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Considering some of the bad hiring decisions they have made
| in the past, I'm guessing not that great.
| duxup wrote:
| I don't know of many such situations but this one was odd:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/24/22348255/reddit-
| moderator...
|
| I don't really understand how they could make that hire or
| why they would have thought that person was a good
| choice...
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| > Christian says in the post the refunds will cost him
| personally about $250,000. Does he have a claim against Reddit
| for that money I wonder?
|
| Why would they?
|
| In fact, lots of people were already frustrated with the
| handling of "lifetime access" while having ads being pushed.
|
| A business, Apollo, made an offer (lifetime access) to gain
| marketshare. It worked as Apollo is the defacto Reddit App for
| iOS. Now they cannot hold true to their offer, so they're
| forced to refund it. This is the price of the bargain Apollo
| made.
|
| I feel terrible for Christian on an individual level. He must
| be going through hell. However, there is a business being run
| by Apollo and it needs to be held to it's commitments.
| kossTKR wrote:
| Reddit is stupid, and the whole situation is bad, but
| shouldn't the man behind the biggest app for the biggest
| forum in the world, in the lucrative ios ecosystem have made
| himself wealthy enough so that 250k is close to nothing?
|
| Or am i misunderstanding how much money there is in this
| space?
|
| If he isn't "10+ million"-wealthy that's extremely
| disappointing for all solo devs out there in my eyes.
| chihuahua wrote:
| I think you may be overestimating how much money there is
| in this space. People don't want to pay for things if they
| can avoid it. The biggest app for the biggest forum in the
| world apparently had 50k paying users. The author was
| complaining about the cost of icons, which to me suggests
| that he is not terribly wealthy.
|
| But there's a lot about this story that I don't understand:
|
| * How can the Apollo guy be perceived as "threatening"
| Reddit? He has no leverage.
|
| * Why does he suggest that they buy his app for $10m, when
| they can just terminate his API access at a cost of $0 - "I
| have altered the deal; pray that I do not alter it any
| further"
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > _Why does he suggest that they buy his app for $10m,
| when they can just terminate his API access at a cost of
| $0_
|
| Because according to Reddit, the problem with Apollo is
| the opportunity cost of Reddit not being able to monetize
| its users.
|
| Acquiring Apollo is user acquisition. Destroying the app
| does not necessarily mean that all those users will now
| start using Reddit's official app and become monetizable,
| they might just quit Reddit entirely. By acquiring Apollo
| Reddit could monetize those users through Apollo instead
| of the official Reddit app.
| roblabla wrote:
| It has 50k users paying yearly. There's supposedly more
| users paying monthly, and yet more that got the
| "lifetime" deal. I'm part of the later category.
| robbiet480 wrote:
| I don't think lifetime access is getting refunded since that
| was just a one time unlock. He says the $250,000 cost is to
| refund all "subscriptions".
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| How does Apple's refunds work?
|
| I'm surprised more people don't do one-time purchases to
| avoid these subscription refund stories I keep hearing.
| sco1 wrote:
| > How does Apple's refunds work? I don't know how monthly
| subscriptions work, but yearly subscription refunds are
| pro-rated.
|
| > I'm surprised more people don't do one-time purchases
| to avoid these subscription refund stories I keep hearing
|
| I'm not, at least not for apps like this that need
| consistent revenue to support regular maintenance and/or
| server costs in an era where customers balk when an app
| costs more than a few dollars. To achieve this you end up
| balancing whether or not to serve ads, hope you can just
| grow enough new users forever, charge for major updates,
| charge a subscription, or beg for tips. While there are
| some exceptions, you can probably tell that ads or
| subscriptions are generally winning this nowadays.
|
| One-time purchases are a tricky thing, since you've
| realisitcally now precluded ever charging for a major
| update. This is great for them, and might be for you if
| you've gotten your math right, but if you haven't (or it
| changes) then you're stuck. And, for better or for worse,
| they tend to be the loudest users.
|
| Marco Arment talks about this balance in general on an
| episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast a couple weeks ago
| when discussing how Casey (another host) should price an
| app he's writing. For context if folks aren't aware,
| Marco created Overcast, which is a popular 3rd party iOS
| podcast app. The discussion spans a couple episodes but I
| the post-show of [Episode 535](https://atp.fm/535)
| captures the gist.
| paulmd wrote:
| > Why would they?
|
| > A business, Apollo, made an offer (lifetime access) to gain
| marketshare. It worked as Apollo is the defacto Reddit App
| for iOS. Now they cannot hold true to their offer, so they're
| forced to refund it. This is the price of the bargain Apollo
| made.
|
| That's practically the definition of tortious interference.
|
| https://www.findlaw.com/smallbusiness/liability-and-
| insuranc...
|
| "The most common form of [tortious interference], however,
| occurs when an individual forces or induces someone to break
| a contract they have with a third party. This can happen in
| many ways: someone could offer below market prices to induce
| a breach, they could blackmail or threaten someone into
| violating a contract, or they could make it impossible for
| the other person to perform and receive the benefits of that
| contract - by refusing to transport goods, for instance."
| gamblor956 wrote:
| No, it's not the definition of tortious interference.
|
| Reddit did not force or induce Apollo to break a contract
| with its own customers. Apollo unilaterally chose to do
| that because it could not afford continued access to
| Reddit's APIs, which Reddit was not under a legal
| obligation to continue providing at historical rates that
| Apollo had based its entire product around, despite long-
| standing advice not to do so.
| paulmd wrote:
| > Reddit did not force or induce Apollo to break a
| contract with its own customers. Apollo unilaterally
| chose to do that because it could not afford continued
| access to Reddit's APIs,
|
| "I didn't refuse to transport your goods, I just said it
| would cost a billion dollars per pound to do it and you
| couldn't afford it" is not the gotcha that you think it
| is. The law is technical but it's enforced by humans.
|
| It's straightforward: Apollo and Reddit have a
| longstanding business relationship, via these APIs that
| Reddit has provided for a long time at zero cost. Reddit
| generally no longer wants third parties to use the API,
| so they are increasing the price to a level that they
| know will cause everyone to balk (other third-party
| clients are closing up too) so that they can direct that
| traffic to their own native client and first-party sites,
| while knowing that Apollo has these long-standing
| business relationships of their own that are built on
| this relationship with Reddit.
|
| In short, reddit is deliberately taking action to
| sabotage and cause economic harm to a business partner by
| changing aspects of the relationship that make it
| impossible for the partner to fulfill their contracts to
| third parties, so that Reddit can direct that business to
| themselves instead.
|
| That is an improper taking under tortious interference,
| and the rest of the tests (intent actual economic loss -
| not just refunds but future income, etc) are trivially
| satisfied here.
|
| I know people are libertarians here but the right to
| swing your fist ends at someone else's face, and legally
| speaking if you take actions that you know will result in
| a business partner being forced to sustain _economic
| losses_ due to your improper breaking of your business
| relationship with them, you are generally liable for that
| damage you cause to the partner. That is the basic
| concept of tortious interference, you 're paying for the
| damage you caused to your business partner. Swing your
| fist and hit someone's face and you get to pay for the
| surgery.
|
| (IANAL and Reddit's lawyers would obviously say their
| conduct is proper, but, generally this is the type of
| situation where people can unexpectedly get themselves
| into legitimate legal trouble based on actions they think
| are perfectly legitimate. And generally they may have
| been legitimate if you didn't have this prior
| relationship, that changes things! It's different to not
| build an API at all, vs having the API be free and have
| third parties start selling clients and then to stop
| doing the API.)
|
| (As a sibling comment notes, estoppel is another - if you
| promise something to someone, even a verbal promise, and
| they take a financially detrimental action on the
| expectation that you will follow through on your side of
| the promise and you don't, then you are generally liable
| for the financial harm you have caused them too.
| Libertarianism doesn't mean you can wiggle out of
| contracts, even verbal ones.)
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| > business partner
|
| This is the part that you seem to be confusing.
|
| Apollo and Reddit do not appear to be business partners.
| Nor does Apollo seem to have any contractual agreement
| with Reddit, outside of the API usage agreement.
|
| The API terms were lasted updated May 25, 2016. These
| include this language:
|
| > a. Fees. Reddit reserves the right to charge fees for
| future use or access to the Reddit APIs, rates to be
| determined in Reddit's sole discretion.
|
| I assume these are the terms that Apollo are bound to. If
| that's the case, I don't see how you can support your
| claim. Reddit is using it's contractual right.
| paulmd wrote:
| > Apollo and Reddit do not appear to be business
| partners. Nor does Apollo seem to have any contractual
| agreement with Reddit, outside of the API usage
| agreement.
|
| Sorry, I am confused what you are arguing here. If you
| think a usage agreement is binding they are certainly
| business partners. They may still be business partners or
| generally covered by tortious interference even if they
| do not have an explicit contract either.
|
| This is quite a wide legal net by design - it is a "swing
| your fist and hit someone and their lawyers may have
| something to say about it" area of law, of course it's a
| wide net. You really don't even have to have an explicit
| contract.
| orra wrote:
| > If you think a usage agreement is binding they are
| certainly business partners.
|
| Precisely. If the API agreement wasn't binding, why would
| it bother saying Reddit reserve the right to vary the
| fees?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| I'm not a libertarian, I'm a lawyer, and I'm looking at
| this from the legal perspective.
|
| Reddit's Data API TOS has _always_ allowed it the right
| to start charging for access. That it chose not to do so
| until recently was its prerogative. That it chooses to do
| so now, is _also_ it 's prerogative.
|
| This is not a unfair taking, since Reddit isn't taking
| anything from Christian, they are simply no longer freely
| providing something.
|
| This is not an issue of estoppel, since Reddit never
| promised to make their API free forever. And Reddit gave
| him due notice, as required by their TOS, of changes that
| would take effect...several months after notice was given
| of the changes...
|
| This is not tortious inteference, since Apollo could have
| continued to provide Reddit services to their customers,
| though this might have required Christian to change his
| business model.
|
| This is not slander, since on the call Christian _clearly
| suggests to Reddit_ to give him $10 million and he 'll go
| away and not make a fuss about things.
|
| It's irrelevant that they have a "prior relationship"
| since that means nothing in this context, since Christian
| did not have a binding contractual relationship that
| entitled Christian to perpetual free access to the Reddit
| Data API.
| roblabla wrote:
| > This is not tortious inteference, since Apollo could
| have continued to provide Reddit services to their
| customers, though this might have required Christian to
| change his business model.
|
| So, this is the one thing I'm not sure I entirely agree
| with. While it's true that Apollo could have changed its
| business model, they only had 30 days to migrate users to
| a new business model, including some users that are on a
| yearly model.
|
| Furthermore, Reddit had previously stated to Christian
| that the timeline was flexible, and that they'd be open
| to extending it. They then walked back on that promise,
| leaving Apollo scrambling to move all their existing
| users to the new model in very limited time. And that's
| after telling christian multiple time earlier in the year
| that no change to the pricing policy was being considered
| for at least the year to come.
|
| There's essentially no solution for Christian here. They
| don't have the money to pay for the usage of their
| existing 50k yearly that won't migrate for up to 12
| months.
|
| While I'm not a lawyer, I'd be very surprised if a case
| couldn't be made with this behavior.
|
| Not that it'd ever go to court anyways - it'd be a huge
| time and money sink with unclear outcomes. Better to
| focus on the next steps.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _While I 'm not a lawyer, I'd be very surprised if a case
| couldn't be made with this behavior._
|
| I am a lawyer. I can say, with 100% certainty, that this
| case would never make it to trial. It's unlikely that
| Christian would even make it to discovery, as based on
| the facts stated, by Christian himself, even viewed in
| the light most favorable to Christian, he does not have
| any colorable legal claims.
| ted_dunning wrote:
| You should read the article. Christian recorded calls
| during which said that no increase was under
| consideration and that any change was "at least a year
| away".
| gamblor956 wrote:
| I did read the article. And I listened to the recording.
| As a businessperson, Christian should know that the
| salespersons statements were not a binding promise, since
| there was no mutual consideration and those statements
| were not reflected in the actual written agreement he
| would have signed.
|
| As I said, I'm looking at this from the legal
| perspective, not the emotional perspective.
| tzs wrote:
| The act that is alleged to be tortious interference has to
| be improper for it to actually potentially be tortious
| interference (see farther down on the page you quoted).
|
| There's nothing obviously improper about a site replacing a
| free API with a paid API even if it causes problems for
| those who relied on the API being free.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Sorry, I don't see how that's a textbook case of what
| you've cited.
| paulmd wrote:
| OK. Do you have a specific aspect of the test that you
| don't believe has been satisfied here, or just don't
| believe in the general concept?
|
| Generally speaking the law doesn't care whether or not
| _you personally_ think it applies, merely that you 've
| broken it.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I'm not trying to challenge you. I'm just not familiar
| enough with this area of the law to infer the point
| you're trying to make.
| tolmasky wrote:
| I believe his point is that since the creator of Apollo
| was in frequent conversations with Reddit, who apparently
| told him they weren't planning big changes to the API
| anytime soon, that then making it impossible for him to
| deliver the app by instead charging an exorbitant amount
| (very shortly after telling him there wouldn't be
| changes), then that would qualify as forcing him to break
| the contract with his users. On the other hand, you could
| argue that since the promise was "lifetime," this put to
| much up in the air (vs. like 5 years or something). On
| the other other hand, you could argue that there is an
| implied possibility that the app could shut down, given
| that Reddit itself could for example close down and make
| it impossible to deliver, which I think courts would
| plausibly accept as a sufficient delivery of services.
| Anyways, to the original point, I'm not sure what a court
| would find, but hopefully now at least the comparison
| he's drawing is clear.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel
|
| "By way of illustration:
|
| If a landlord promises the tenant that he will not exercise
| his right to terminate a lease, and relying upon that
| promise the tenant spends money improving the premises, the
| doctrine of promissory estoppel may prevent the landlord
| from exercising a right to terminate, even though his
| promise might not otherwise have been legally binding as a
| contract. The landlord is precluded from asserting a
| specific right."
| nocoiner wrote:
| I generally agree with this type of analysis regarding for-
| profit ventures, but as a lifetime purchaser, I'm not going
| to try to get a refund here. I got my money's worth out of
| Apollo, and Christian is handling this like a steely-eyed
| capitalist. He's not asking the community to bail him out
| from his business decisions or Reddit taking things in a
| different direction, and I respect that a lot.
|
| Very different tone from when the Twitter client developers
| were complaining that no one could possibly have foreseen a
| situation where they couldn't deliver on services they'd
| happily taken money for upfront.
| data-ottawa wrote:
| The lifetime subscription doesn't need a refund, it lasted
| the lifetime of the app, and it wasn't just a bait and
| switch either.
| Silhouette wrote:
| Did people really sell services that necessarily depended
| on a third party's services without some contractual
| safeguard in their terms in case the third party changed
| how they operate? There's always a risk in building your
| offering on top of someone else's and plenty of attempts to
| do that in that past didn't work out so surely any lawyer
| who works in this field should have seen that one coming?
|
| Edit: This was an honest question in response to the parent
| comment about Twitter clients. What's with the downvotes?
| actionablefiber wrote:
| > A business, Apollo, made an offer (lifetime access) to gain
| marketshare. It worked as Apollo is the defacto Reddit App
| for iOS. Now they cannot hold true to their offer, so they're
| forced to refund it. This is the price of the bargain Apollo
| made.
|
| Did I miss something? I downloaded and used Apollo for free
| for a time, then later bought Pro for like $5 a couple years
| back. There is/was a subscription tier, Ultra, which for a
| time had a lifetime option, but it was never a particularly
| _necessary_ expense and I have always enjoyed Apollo without
| it.
| hrrsn wrote:
| The "Pro" tier was a one-off payment at one point in time,
| but at some point this switched to a monthly subscription.
| Previous owners were grandfathered in.
| internetter wrote:
| > Why would they?
|
| I do kinda wonder. IANAL, but based on these comments I
| imagine there could be a case?
|
| > Reddit: "So I would expect no change, certainly not in the
| short to medium term. And we're talking like order of years."
| > "There's not gonna be any change on it. There's no plans
| to, there's no plans to touch it right now in 2023.
|
| At least for the yearly subscriptions
| dbbk wrote:
| > Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose his
| job over this?
|
| Oh please. Let's be honest, this is not financially going to
| hurt the company.
| toyg wrote:
| But it has generated enough bad PR and user bleeding to
| significantly push competitors, which eventually will
| financially hurt Reddit - or possibly even kill it.
|
| An old-school investor would be fuming right now, but VCs
| only care about IPOs and they probably blessed this strategy
| already.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| "Old school investors" haven't mattered since the Dotcom
| boom showed you can just make money by making up a
| narrative, selling, and walking away.
|
| That's been the economy in the US for two decades now.
| jakkos wrote:
| It's a large and protracted public backlash and another
| example of the CEO being incompetent and dishonest right
| before an IPO.
|
| It would definitely impact my view of the company as an
| investor.
| afgrant wrote:
| If employees are getting paid salary, getting health insurance,
| getting retirement contributions, they're by-and-large not
| going to quit
| sgustard wrote:
| Reddit has been mired in controversy since day one. It is also
| regularly touted on HN as THE ONLY trustworthy place on the web
| to find, for example, honest product reviews; where Google,
| Amazon, Yelp, Wirecutter etc are hopelessly corrupted. I'm not
| buying that a brief fit of bad PR will hurt them; and in the
| meantime Reddit thinks there's 20m of revenue on the table they
| will recapture when the app goes away.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| Most users won't opt for a refund from Apollo. People are on
| his side.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Apple automatically grants refunds unless you opt out.
| Tweetbot did a big push trying to get people to opt out of
| the refund.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I uninstalled Tweetbot prior to any push, forgot about it
| and then got a refund like a month or two later. Whoops.
| TwoNineA wrote:
| I would not ask for refund. This app is a jewel on iOS,
| extremely well polished and gave me hours and hours and hours
| of enjoyment.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The smart move for the Apollo devs might be to create a
| back end of their own. There's no reason why their app
| needs to work only with Reddit, is there? Quite a few users
| would migrate to a new forum just to keep using the app.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| He addressed that in the post, saying he basically
| doesn't have the energy for it. Which is understandable.
|
| I really don't see why Reddit doesn't just purchase the
| app.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > I really don't see why Reddit doesn't just purchase the
| app.
|
| They've all but stated openly that their goal is to kill
| Apollo in its current form. Why pay millions to do that
| when they can accomplish it for free?
| WaxProlix wrote:
| He addresses this partway down the post:
|
| > Will you build a competitor? Move to one of the
| existing alternatives?
|
| > I've received so many messages of kind people offering
| to work with me to build a competitor to Reddit, and
| while I'm very flattered, that's not something I'm
| interested in doing. I'm a product guy, I like building
| fun apps for people to use, and I'm just not personally
| interested in something more managerial.
|
| > These last several months have also been incredibly
| exhausting and mentally draining, I don't have it in me
| to engage in something so enormous.
|
| seems reasonable.
| com2kid wrote:
| Reddit should try honestly.
|
| "We are losing lots of money, we need to start making money,
| reddit gold isn't bringing in enough revenue to pay the bills.
| 3rd party apps don't show ads, which costs us a lot of money
| every month. Keeping the 3rd party APIs up and running also
| costs us money. Because Reddit needs to stop losing money, we
| are closing down 3rd party apps."
|
| I don't know what why it is so hard to say that...
| xmprt wrote:
| Because I'm not so sure that it's true. Reddit isn't
| massively profitable but it also doesn't have to lose a ton
| of money. IIRC they were able to run a much tighter ship and
| operate off of just Reddit Gold and ads for at least a decade
| before they started this recent hypergrowth phase
| paradox460 wrote:
| 13 years ago, when I worked part time for them, it was
| about 5 people, with support being provided by Conde Nast
| peeps. This was right during the middle of the Digg v4
| exodus to reddit. I remember when reddit got its billionth
| pageview month
| hospitalJail wrote:
| I wonder how much of costs went up due to hosting their own
| images and videos.
|
| A text website is easy to run.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| They probably spent more money on staffing rewriting into
| a shitty React SPA and then trying to address its dire
| performance.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| because they're going public, saying "we're broke, please
| invest" isn't going to work for them -- at this point
| everything they do is to more or less prop up the value until
| everyone can cash out
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Yeah. The wikipedia approach to an online platform seems
| ideal.
|
| Wikipedia is pretty fantastic. Signal is pretty great. I'm
| pretty happy with NPR. Archive.org makes me happy.
|
| Appeal to people with money (the professional class) and then
| beg.
|
| I feel like the next great social media platform will result
| from a rich person disillusioned by reddit (a Bryan Acton
| type) creating a platform resistant to "next quarters
| profit"-ism.
| taurath wrote:
| There's a step before this. They're losing a lot of money
| because the choices they made to take investment to earn more
| money. They could've gone the route of wikipedia. They
| could've stayed extremely lean. They took $1.3 BILLION in
| funding, minimum. They have 500-1000 employees.
|
| Its greed that they got here. They made choices, and then as
| a consequence of those choices they made choices that are
| significantly reducing the value they provide to their users.
| Its enshittification, its killing the golden goose, its
| destroying a public good for the benefit of investors who
| don't care about anything other than making a return.
|
| The worst part is the investors don't care about anything
| other than making the numbers look good in the short term so
| they can dump their investment onto other investors. Its like
| all of corporate america decided to watch The Wire and go "Oh
| see how they're pumping up the numbers to make them look good
| for the mayor, but not actually solving crime? THAT should be
| our business plan!". Providing value is a side effect of
| making money, on the false equivalence that making money
| means you're providing value, so therefore making more money
| means you're providing more value.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Because you can't IPO for a zillion dollars and leave suckers
| holding the bag that way
| kmac_ wrote:
| I wonder if Reddit ever considered and calculated options
| like showing ads, selling reddit gold and merchandise through
| partner apps. Maybe it could be coined into win-win-win but
| ended as it is.
| takeda wrote:
| The fees aren't small, they also forbid 3rd party apps to
| show their own ads and will be blocking NSFW subreddits from
| API (none of those things apply to their mobile app).
|
| So ultimately they want 3rd party to use subscription model
| to ultimately get worse experience.
| jsheard wrote:
| Reddit had an easy way out for the issue of 3rd party apps
| not showing ads, they already have a paid subscription which
| removes the ads on the official clients, so they could have
| made the API exclusive to users with a subscription. People
| would have been upset, but not this upset.
| bscphil wrote:
| Aren't they effectively just offloading this whole question
| onto the apps? For the sake of argument, let's say what
| they are charging for the API is about 80% per-user of what
| they make for users who use the official app (and therefore
| see ads). I have no idea what the actual numbers are, this
| is just theoretical.
|
| In that case, app developers have several options:
|
| * start showing users ads, and use that to pay both
| themselves and Reddit
|
| * start charging a monthly fee for the app, and use that to
| pay both themselves and Reddit
|
| * some combination of these two (e.g. pay a subscription
| for ad-free use)
|
| Sure, Reddit could make this easier for app developers, but
| isn't it all basically the same thing at the end of the
| day? Reddit wants (or needs? I have no idea what their
| financials look like) to make a certain amount of money
| per-user or per page view. Apps take home ~100% of their
| profits currently, and make Reddit ~nothing. So Reddit is
| pricing in a profit rate into API access.
|
| I mean, just to look at Apollo, they have 166K _ratings_ on
| the Apple App Store, and surely far more _users_ than that.
| Reddit wants $20M a year from them. That 's high, maybe too
| high, but how does it compare to the value of (say) a
| million users a year on the official Reddit app? If Apollo
| switched to a subscription model on which they charged $1 a
| month to users, would they be able to pay Reddit's API
| fees? (Assuming those API fees would drop by at least 50%
| after non-paying users quit using Apollo.)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > I have no idea what the actual numbers are, this is
| just theoretical.
|
| The issue is that the actual numbers are closer to
| 2,000%, not 80%. [0]
|
| [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/
| had_a_ca...
| MostlyStable wrote:
| The comment you are responding to is talking about
| revenue, not costs. Very different.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Read before correcting, I am also talking about revenue.
| darkarmani wrote:
| Isn't that why Apollo said they'd sell the company for
| $10M to Reddit if they wanted to take it over? If it
| costs Reddit $20M/year, surely they could make more than
| $10M/year if they took it over themselves.
| bbatsell wrote:
| Nearly every element of your comment is blatantly wrong,
| some directly addressed by the post this comment thread
| is discussing.
|
| - Reddit is charging the equivalent of 20x its published
| revenue per user for the API.
|
| - The new API agreements ban the display of any
| advertising by API users. (Apollo did not show ads, but
| other third-party clients did, and Reddit claims the low
| quality of ads was harming Reddit by association.)
|
| - Charging $5/month would be break-even given the API
| pricing, and only for new customers. Apollo would still
| have to serve earlier subscribers at a huge loss. API
| fees would certainly not "drop by 50%" -- the vast
| majority of people subscribing to Apollo are power users,
| so the average API usage per customer would _increase_.
| bscphil wrote:
| I say pretty clearly that I'm talking about purely
| theoretical numbers. The underlying fact is that the
| status quo is probably unsustainable for Reddit. It's
| hard to be "blatantly wrong" about a series of
| hypotheticals, IMO.
|
| There's a lot of strange stuff happening in your comment.
| On the one hand, let's take for granted that Reddit is
| charging 20x its revenue per _average_ user for the API.
| But that 's just the _average_ user; as you yourself
| point out "the vast majority of people subscribing to
| Apollo are power users". Surely they are worth much more
| to Reddit than the average, extremely casual user?
|
| The underlying problem explained in the post is that the
| author _pre-sold_ access to Reddit through an app to
| users, while this access was _actually_ conditioned on
| the continuing availability of access to the Reddit API.
| No doubt this does put the author in an uncomfortable
| position! Given that the current plan is to shut down the
| app _anyway_ , surely cancelling active subscriptions
| should also be on the table? Subscribers are going to
| lose access to Reddit through Apollo either way! So
| realistically, what we're talking about here is whether
| $5/month is a reasonable price point for power users. My
| answer is... maybe?
|
| I think my instinct is to say that this is all ultimately
| the place where negotiations are supposed to happen.
| Reddit needs to go from making zero dollars off the API
| to making something. Is what they want to charge too
| high? Probably so. But a lot of people are acting as if
| any charge at all is untenable.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > But a lot of people are acting as if any charge at all
| is untenable.
|
| Is that the case? Every reaction I have seen has been to
| the magnitude of the price, which is much, much, much
| more than what Reddit makes off of users
| marcolussetti wrote:
| Honestly, I think they would have had a sizeable amount of
| people paying for the subscription.
|
| Now, even if they backtrack on this later on in a few
| months or years, they burned the good will, so I doubt
| developers are going invest the time to make a good Reddit
| client after this.
| Alupis wrote:
| Not at all - if anything, this opened the door for more
| premium Reddit apps that charge monthly - with billing
| being in-line with Reddit Premium.
| Silhouette wrote:
| It also opened the door for a more premium _non-Reddit_
| app that charges monthly and directly competes with
| Reddit. From everything I 've seen so far there might be
| enough of the existing Reddit community who are upset
| enough with the recent direction to make that leap viable
| and if the reported figures are accurate then the
| finances might also work if enough people jump ship to
| establish a new community.
| Alupis wrote:
| Yes, but much like the "exodus" from Twitter, and others
| over the years - they all fail to reach critical mass.
| There's a very real early-mover effect, the likes of
| which have prevented Mastodon and even Truth from gaining
| huge ground.
|
| Truth, being perhaps the most interesting, because the
| main personality behind it sort of compelled it to be
| semi-well-known simply because of media coverage. The
| other attempts do not share that effect, however.
| Silhouette wrote:
| They all fail to reach critical mass until someone does.
| That's always been the history of social networks. Once
| sites like Myspace and LiveJournal were everywhere. The
| next generation mostly went on Facebook and Facebook
| snapped up Instagram. Now a younger generation is on
| sites like TikTok. Digg and Slashdot are still going but
| they didn't stop Reddit becoming huge or more specialised
| sites with overlapping demographics (like HN for example)
| from building their own communities.
|
| You're right that early movers have some advantage but
| it's a big world and the Next Big Thing doesn't have to
| win the whole market on day one - only enough of it to
| plant seeds that can grow over time.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Exactly. In fact, Spotify works _exactly_ like this: you
| can use any third-party client you like, so long as you
| have a Spotify Premium paid subscription. If you have a
| free account, you need to use the official clients with
| ads.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| or the web client with an adblocker
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| shhhhh
| Alupis wrote:
| > they already have a paid subscription which removes the
| ads on the official clients
|
| Apollo is shutting down because the founder thinks they'll
| incur about $2.50 per month of costs per user, and
| apparently doesn't believe enough people will be willing to
| pay $5 monthly to keep Apollo running.
|
| So, this Reddit Premium (billed at $5.99 monthly) either
| has few-to-no paid users, or Apollo's founder isn't even
| trying to sustain his business.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| He can't make the transition on that short a notice. Lots
| of people were paying $10/yr.
| cutenewt wrote:
| > Apollo's founder isn't even trying to sustain his
| business.
|
| Good call out. It's like the business equivalent of:
|
| You changed the rules of the game because you didn't like
| how I played. So I'm not even going to bother playing
| with the new rules. I retire.
| buffington wrote:
| Can you blame him?
|
| The rules of the game changed so severely that playing
| the game isn't just disagreeable, it's impossible.
|
| What would you have done instead?
| Alupis wrote:
| > What would you have done instead?
|
| Charge $5 monthly and refund the annual fee for those who
| want it (which is already being done it seems, regardless
| of Apollo's future).
|
| Apollo has options. They're just choosing to shutdown.
| That's the founder's prerogative, of course, but it is
| totally unnecessary.
|
| Look at the support in this thread alone - Apollo has
| tons of people willing to throw money at them.
| [deleted]
| phonon wrote:
| He addresses that in the post. He only has 30 days to
| accommodate the price increase. What is he supposed to do
| about his current clients that already paid for the year?
| Take a huge financial loss until his updated pricing
| catches up? He asked for more time, they said no.
| Alupis wrote:
| More choices he made. He even admits in his post he's
| known API pricing was coming down the pipeline since
| April - but for some reason just decided to _hope_ the
| pricing was affordable under his current model - which is
| why he keeps emphasizing pricing based on "reality" -
| whatever that means. In the meantime, he did nothing to
| convert to a paid subscription model...
|
| Hope is not a strategy - yet appears to have been the
| only strategy Apollo employed.
| Veen wrote:
| He made those decisions based on information he'd
| received from Reddit. His mistake was believing they were
| acting in good faith (rather than being lying scumbags).
| toyg wrote:
| I'd be similarly judgemental if Christian had been the
| only one to behave like this. But when you look at the
| field, _everyone_ was taken by surprise by the prices.
| Pretty much _all_ the major apps are closing. Were all
| developers hopelessly naive? All of them? I find that
| hard to believe.
| takeda wrote:
| The OP didn't even bother to read the conversation. This
| was announced in April, but Reddit did not provide
| prices. It only assured this won't be as expensive as
| Twitter API access, and then it actually did.
| kimixa wrote:
| That "hope" appears to be founded on statements made to
| them by Reddit themselves, according to the linked post
| and it's communication snippets.
|
| Or at least a much larger time to recalibrate that
| "hope".
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Apollo is shutting down because the founder thinks
| they'll incur about $2.50 per month of costs per user,
| and apparently doesn't believe enough people will be
| willing to pay $5 monthly to keep Apollo running.
|
| > So, this Reddit Premium (billed at $5.99 monthly)
| either has few-to-no paid users, or Apollo's founder
| isn't even trying to sustain his business.
|
| If you read the post, it's not just about the willingness
| of users to pay. It's also about the existing obligations
| (prepaid subscriptions), the timeline of the changes, and
| the amount of work that would be required on his end to
| adapt to the new changes within the next three weeks.
|
| None of that would be an issue with the proposed solution
| of Reddit charging the users directly.
| BackBlast wrote:
| He has to flush the existing subscriptions no matter
| what. It's done. He has said he can afford it.
|
| He could fire up a new system with appropriate pricing as
| soon as he can manage. All customers, if they want to
| come back, are then forced into the new system at new
| pricing levels. Maybe this takes a month or two or three.
| He's not losing money in the mean time and can re-open at
| something resembling a profitable stance when he can do
| so.
|
| Yes, it sucks. But there's a path here if he wants to go
| for it. I don't blame him for throwing in the towel. He's
| tired of getting yanked around. I would be very hesitant
| to keep throwing good time(money) after bad.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| As a person who has been using reddit very regularly for
| about the last ten years...my bet is that Reddit Premium
| has few to no paid users.
| neolefty wrote:
| Reddit premium subscriber here -- I use it because it
| hides ads, I get a lot of value from Reddit (and want to
| make that sustainable, if possible), and Premium gives me
| stickers I can award to comments occasionally in addition
| to upvotes.
| LeonenTheDK wrote:
| I didn't even know Reddit Premium existed until this
| debacle started. I had assumed all their revenue came
| from ads and people buying awards.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| As a person who's been paying for Apollo for a while and
| intended to continue, once it goes down, I will simply
| just stop using reddit.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| As someone who spends way too much time on reddit and
| would be their prime target audience: i have no idea why
| I'd sign up for reddit premium. Not a single feature i
| care about.
| [deleted]
| heisenbit wrote:
| I may consider 6$ per month if the money goes to app
| maintainer, content creators, moderators and good
| commentators. But 3$ to Reddit for providing an api, a
| few bytes db space is simply too much.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Sibling comment already addresses it. But to add, I'd
| happily pay and I want to pay $5 or more to Reddit. But
| not everyone is like that. Reddit cornered third party
| apps into a single subscription model with very little
| time to adapt. I think Apollo could have accommodated
| these changes over 6 months. Reddit could have also added
| an ad based tier. Instead they forced a huge price hike
| with less than a month to react to it.
| unreal37 wrote:
| I don't understand your hostility, sorry.
|
| He has 50,000 customers who paid $10/year for the app.
| Now he's put into a position to support those customers
| at $2.50/month. (He estimates their server cost is $0.10
| per month.) That's an instant $125,000 per month out of
| his own pocket that he can't recoup from existing
| customers for at least the next 6 months.
|
| Over the course of 2023, he'll have to pay Reddit $1
| million MORE than he has made from the app this year.
|
| Reddit doesn't want to work with third-party apps. That's
| fine. That's their right. But it's certainly not the app
| developer's fault that he's forced to quit.
| Alupis wrote:
| > Reddit doesn't want to work with third-party apps
|
| This sentiment is obviously false. Reddit doesn't want to
| support third-party apps at Reddit's own expense. That is
| reasonable.
|
| > He has 50,000 customers who paid $10/year for the app
|
| And now we get to the issue. This was never a sustainable
| business model. It depended on Reddit API being free -
| even at the massive volume Apollo operates at. That is
| unreasonable.
| unreal37 wrote:
| And he was willing to pay for access. His argument is
| that the price far exceeds their cost and, with 30 days
| notice, that's unreasonable.
|
| I take him at his word that he was willing to pay a
| reasonable amount.
|
| Again, Reddit has the right to run their business however
| they wish. Not arguing that it should be free.
| Alupis wrote:
| > I take him at his word that he was willing to pay a
| reasonable amount
|
| This is subjective. He's basically saying he's willing to
| pay an amount that fit into his old, not well thought out
| business model, and it's up to Reddit to pay for the
| rest.
|
| That's unfair. He also had way more than 30 day's notice
| and chose not to do anything until the last moment. He
| was hoping his idea of "reasonable" meant zero changes
| for his customers - but that was foolish and short
| sighted. He basically hoped he could cover all of his API
| access expenses with $10 a year per user... it doesn't
| even sound reasonable when you say it out loud, given how
| much content an average Reddit user consumes daily.
|
| He has had several months to prepare for a new billing
| model - but chose to do nothing.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > He also had way more than 30 day's notice and chose not
| to do anything until the last moment.
|
| > He has had several months to prepare for a new billing
| model - but chose to do nothing.
|
| I like how you keep on refusing to read the article, but
| claiming things from it that are straight up untrue.
|
| Reddit announced _less than two months ago_ that there
| would be pricing changes. But not what those prices would
| be. Even the loosest possible interpretation of the words
| "notice" and "several" barely covers that.
|
| Explicitly:
|
| > On April 18th, Reddit announced changes that would be
| coming to the API, namely that the API is moving to a
| paid model for third-party apps. Shortly thereafter we
| received phone calls, however the price (the key element
| in an announcement to move to a paid API) was notably
| missing, with the intent to follow up with it in 2-4
| weeks.
|
| And at the time, there was absolutely no indication that
| the prices would be this high.
|
| > The information they did provide however was: we will
| be moving to a paid API as it's not tenable for Reddit to
| pay for third-party apps indefinitely (understandable,
| agreed), so they're looking to do equitable pricing based
| in reality. They mentioned that they were not looking to
| be like Twitter, which has API pricing so high it was
| publicly ridiculed.
|
| They announced the _actual_ prices six weeks later, which
| would put it May 30th. The day he posted this: https://ol
| d.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...
|
| Literally the most cursory of reading of _the first few
| paragraphs of the OP would have given you this
| information_.
|
| If you aren't going to bother to read it (that's your
| prerogative), then don't bother making easily provably
| false assertions as if they were facts, either.
| onli wrote:
| The prices were not known before. There was nothing he
| could have done.
| Jochim wrote:
| > This is subjective. He's basically saying he's willing
| to pay an amount that fit into his old, not well thought
| out business model, and it's up to Reddit to pay for the
| rest.
|
| That's not what he said. He said that it's not feasible
| to transfer from the current pricing with 30 days notice.
|
| That choice is entirely on Reddit, the situation did not
| demand such a short notice period. They could have
| smoothed it out but chose not to.
|
| I find it strange to push the blame onto someone who was
| assured by Reddit of their intention to charge a
| reasonable price, and to work with 3rd parties on a
| flexible timeline for the introduction of the charges.
|
| The worst I can say about the Apollo developer is that he
| believed Reddit were acting in good faith. Reddit on the
| other hand look like incompetent arseholes.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| > And now we get to the issue. This was never a
| sustainable business model. It depended on Reddit API
| being free - even at the massive volume Apollo operates
| at. That is unreasonable.
|
| Christian has already shared his correspondence on Reddit
| with this. He pretty clearly sought and received regular
| assurances that when and if Reddit moved their API to a
| paid model that it would be at a reasonable cost and with
| a flexible timeline to accommodate third party apps.
|
| After telling him no such big moves were happening in
| 2023 they changed their mind, set punitively high prices
| and gave barely a month's notice.
| Alupis wrote:
| > a paid model that it would be at a reasonable cost
|
| What does this even mean? "Reasonable" is subjective -
| and from Reddit's perspective, I'd bet they believe the
| fees are reasonable.
|
| It's on the business operator to mitigate risk. Apollo
| didn't do that - and is now throwing in the towel instead
| of charging their customer's more.
|
| > set punitively high prices and gave barely a month's
| notice.
|
| Apollo has had since April to figure out a new billing
| model - but sat on their hands hoping whatever Reddit
| came up with could be afforded with their existing $10
| per year per user model. Say it out loud - it's absurd.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > Apollo has had since April to figure out a new billing
| model - but sat on their hands hoping whatever Reddit
| came up with could be afforded with their existing $10
| per year per user model. Say it out loud - it's absurd.
|
| Just stop.
|
| You've been told multiple times, by multiple people, that
| this was not the case.
|
| You've been provided the timeline, which you refuse to
| acknowledge.
|
| You very well know that he was not provided the pricing
| until 8 days ago.
|
| At this point, you continuing to say this is just being
| disingenuous and talking in bad faith.
|
| What, exactly, are you getting out of this? Is
| unreasonably placing the blame on a single developer your
| way of getting your rocks off?
| Alupis wrote:
| Are we reading the same information? There is not one
| thing I've said that is not in the linked post, or any of
| the previous posts regarding this topic.
|
| You may want to _believe_ and be sympathetic toward
| Apollo - fine.
|
| That doesn't change the circumstances nor realities.
| Apollo screwed up, and is now throwing in the towel. It's
| really hard to be sympathetic towards a business operator
| that's made a series of bad choices and now is playing
| the victim card and shutting down.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| You have constantly pushed a reframed timeline that isn't
| actually indicative of reality. You have been told
| multiple times why. You have ignored multiple different
| things that Reddit has done in an effort to shift the
| blame entirely onto the Apollo dev.
|
| You're the only one who is finding it hard, and your
| constant push to shift the blame off of a massive
| corporation and onto a developer is frankly weird.
|
| Re-evaluate your life choices if you truly believe this,
| but it's clear you are the extreme minority here.
| Alupis wrote:
| I'm sorry you cannot understand the situation.
|
| This may go down in history as a case-study in how _not_
| to operate an internet business.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > I'm sorry you cannot understand the situation.
|
| Says the person who has been told multiple times to stop
| making things up and incorrectly reframing the facts by
| multiple different people. The projection is strong with
| this one.
|
| > This may go down in history as a case-study in how not
| to operate an internet business.
|
| It _certainly_ will, but not Apollo's handling as you so
| desperately want, for whatever reason.
|
| Reddit fucked up, are probably going to lose a chunk of
| their most active users and volunteer moderators, and
| will probably materially damage their IPO as a result of
| this.
|
| You seem to be one of _very few people_ who refuse to
| even remotely consider this idea.
| ckolkey wrote:
| But like.. He asked if they had any plans to change it.
| And they said no. I can't imagine the hoop you're
| expecting him to jump through - get a seat on their board
| covertly?
| [deleted]
| bardfinn wrote:
| Hi there, I am a so-called reddit "powermod"
|
| So, my understanding is that third party apps are supposed to
| have the user authenticate via OAuth (or some other means), and
| then the app requests content from Reddit's servers under the
| user's authentication, because the user's authentication is
| what determines whether the user can see the contents of i.e.
| private subreddits and mod privileged post/comment views, &
| take mod actions.
|
| My understanding is that anyone using a phone/tablet third
| party app isn't going to even get close to the 60 items per
| minute limit that existed.
|
| It's also my understanding that moderators would hit the 60
| items a minute limit if they were using Toolbox to action a
| bunch of comments in a post, or were actively clearing the mod
| queues of several large, active subreddits, simultaneously.
|
| The only way I can imagine that Apollo would be charged premium
| firehose api access is if Apollo was being a man-in-the-middle
| between Reddit's servers and their user base -- if Apollo was
| running a server, which server was authenticating as the users,
| and then the Apollo server was sending material back to the
| phone/tablet client app.
|
| Which ... should not be happening, for oh-so-many reasons.
|
| For one, if Apollo is doing that to remove Reddit's
| advertisements and/or insert their own advertisements ... that
| would be shenanigans.
|
| If Apollo is store-and-forwarding user data -- are they
| complying with California user privacy & GDPR requirements?
|
| etc etc etc
|
| If I'm using a third party app to access Reddit, I do not
| expect that the API calls made by the app to go through the app
| publisher's systems.
|
| So I'm really not grokking how this state of affairs is a
| crisis for a third party app publisher, unless the third party
| app publisher architected their app in a completely upside down
| fashion, or is pulling some sort of MITM shenanigans, or the
| publisher completely misunderstands what the changes to the API
| will mean.
|
| In short, "where's the fettucine?"
| bbatsell wrote:
| The "free" limits are per-app, not per-user. Any API call
| using Apollo's OAuth client_id and client_secret is
| attributed to Apollo's limits and then API usage, whether it
| comes directly from a user's device or through another
| server.
|
| Reddit has never provided access to its ads to third-parties,
| and now third-party apps are banned from showing any
| advertising at all.
| riseagainst22 wrote:
| You are also a wife beater. Please leave this website, you
| are not tolerated here you aggressive felon.
| jdhendrickson wrote:
| Is this just invective or is there an actual story behind
| it?
| riseagainst22 wrote:
| https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/theres-another-
| abusive-...
| fartbin wrote:
| [flagged]
| bobsmooth wrote:
| >Hi there, I am a so-called reddit "powermod"
|
| Why?
| dmix wrote:
| They have nothing else going on but still want to do some
| form of work?
| [deleted]
| Jackim wrote:
| You need an API key to access the reddit API. There's no
| MITM, it's just that requests made through Apollo are tracked
| to Apollo. And Apollo will be charged for those requests.
| bluecalm wrote:
| I was using RiF myself. Reddit is unusable for me without a 3rd
| party up as their interface is a clusterfuck. I can't complain,
| I was spending too much time there anyway and it's easy to cut
| off now.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| >#1 Reddit Android app "Reddit is Fun"
|
| Guess no more bathroom reddit for me. 4chan still works.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| An appropriate place to read 4chan, I suppose.
| paradox460 wrote:
| Why do you think they call it shit posting?
| [deleted]
| bastardoperator wrote:
| [flagged]
| skeaker wrote:
| Consider reading TFA. The dev in question was actively lied
| to by reddit about the availability of the API, and DID have
| a plan for this scenario, just not one that could be executed
| in the unreasonably short time frame of the API changes.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| That's one side of the story and unless an enforceable
| contract exists, it's completely meaningless what reddit
| supposedly said.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| But there are both sides, actual recordings of the calls.
| growthwtf wrote:
| Agree with the commenter above, I encourage you to read
| the original post we are commenting on. All of the calls
| were recorded and transcribed.
|
| You are right that there is no agreement of course, but
| the way they're treating the dev sounds, in the most
| charitable explanation, extremely disorganized and a bit
| rude.
| skeaker wrote:
| Meaningless in a court sense, maybe. Indefensible in all
| other respects.
| blowski wrote:
| What kind of obligation is Reddit under to allow Apollo to
| continue? They've made a decision they think (rightly or
| wrongly) is in the long-term interests of the company.
|
| How long will Reddit survive if they don't do this? I have no
| idea. But I do know the CEO has to deliver more than happy
| users.
| ezfe wrote:
| They're not under any obligation legally - but they've been
| intentionally misleading at every step to try to make Apollo
| the bad guy
| baq wrote:
| Yes, but he also should listen to Ru Paul and not duck it up.
| Or maybe not digg it.
| Jochim wrote:
| Putting aside why Reddit's behaviour is objectionable. Reddit
| did this in a way that will cost them money and harm both
| their reputation and quality.
|
| Had they set out a reasonable timeline for the new prices,
| they would have had a new revenue stream. Instead they killed
| it and at the same time created an incentive for some of
| their most active users to leave.
| punnerud wrote:
| Christian (the maker of Apollo) is from Norway, and if the
| recordings was done in Norway it's legal as far as I know.
|
| Even a specific point in the law that specify that you can
| record audio without informing about it, as long as you are
| part of the conversation yourself.
|
| SS205 :
| https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2005-05-20-28/KAPITTEL_2-...
|
| EDIT: See now that he was in Canada when it was recorded, and
| they have the same kind of laws.
| kernal wrote:
| Isn't he a citizen and current resident of Canada?
| BizarreByte wrote:
| Yep and it's completely legal here too as long as one
| participant knows and is fine with it being recorded (him
| in this instance).
| gradys wrote:
| It might be legal from Canada's perspective, but that
| doesn't necessarily mean legal action couldn't be taken
| in the US. Is there something specific to the law on
| recording phone calls that makes this not a problem?
| bmitc wrote:
| How do you launch a lawsuit in your own country against a
| person when said person lives, works, and operates in and
| is a citizen of another country? That would be truly
| bizarre.
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| Reddit is unlikely to sue Christian for recording these
| calls, it would be an extension of what is already a PR
| nightmare for them.
| what_ever wrote:
| Reddit Sync as well -
| https://old.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/144jp3w/sync_wi...
| srge wrote:
| That's a disaster
| anlaw wrote:
| [flagged]
| bradac56 wrote:
| [flagged]
| robbiet480 wrote:
| I'm aware it's a private company. Employees have been issued
| stock options and/or RSUs as part of their compensation
| package for years now which would make them shareholders.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Employees have been issued stock options and/or RSUs as
| part of their compensation package for years now which
| would make them shareholders.
|
| Well, no, options don't make them shareholders unless
| they're exercised. RSUs don't make them shareholders at
| all, because they're not actually stock (they're stock
| _units_ ).
|
| Reddit's cap table is probably a mess at this point, so I
| imagine that some current employees are also shareholders,
| but I don't know if all are, and RSUs don't make them
| shareholders.
| angoragoats wrote:
| > RSUs don't make them shareholders at all, because
| they're not actually stock (they're stock units).
|
| What? As the grandparent implied, when RSUs vest, they
| turn into shares of stock, which makes the employee a
| shareholder.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > What? As the grandparent implied, when RSUs vest, they
| turn into shares of stock, which makes the employee a
| shareholder.
|
| Most RSUs for private companies (especially those issued
| by companies as old as Reddit) are double trigger, not
| single trigger. They don't turn into stock at vesting
| because that would be a taxable event. They turn into
| stock after the second trigger, which is a liquidity
| event (IPO or acquisition).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _could an employee bring a shareholder lawsuit for negatively
| impacting financial outlook_
|
| Tech employees are somewhat notorious for not enforcing their
| shareholder rights. Most companies, for example, ignore their
| books & records requirements under Delaware law, or force
| private sales to occur at terms favourable to management and
| the Board's friends.
| clintonb wrote:
| It all depends on the terms of the equity grant. You may get
| RSUs, but voting rights are retained by the founders or
| someone else.
| hiram112 wrote:
| What refunds will he need to provide?
|
| I paid for the app years ago - it was $5 or so and I don't
| expect to get anything back. That's just how the game works.
|
| I know he also had some sort of monthly subscription - it
| seemed quite absurd for whatever additional trivial features it
| provided, but then again there apparently was some sort of
| Apollo fanboy group who got a lot of excitement out of new app
| logos, which seemed to be the main updates in the last few
| years, even at the expense of serious bugs that lingered for
| months.
|
| I'd assume those subscriptions would just stop being charged
| going forward. So again, who is getting $250k in refunds?
|
| Furthermore, if he is refunding that much money, I wonder what
| kind of revenue and profits he was pulling in? I had kind of
| assumed he was making a very good living (deservedly - it was a
| good app) - maybe a few hundred thousand dollars a year, but
| now I'm wondering if he was making a order of magnitude more
| than that...
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| It is really astounding to see the CEO of Reddit being caught
| in a blatant lie denigrating a third party developer whose work
| has done a lot for the platform and who has the ear of a
| reasonably sized and loud portion of the community.
|
| I really hadn't expected _that._ Corporate doublespeak is one
| thing, and management decisions aren't necessarily always in
| the interest of their users - but such an egregious act is
| really beyond the pale.
|
| From the IPO mindset, what questions does this raise about the
| risk to the business from the leadership's lack of integrity?
| And not just the propensity to lie, but to _get caught_ so
| blatantly. Why would even a ruthless money-over-everything Wall
| Street investor want to gamble on that?
|
| And kudos to Christian for doing what he did. Bullies need to
| learn that the truth will come out eventually, and if the
| revelation they can't gaslight with impunity is a shock to them
| - good.
|
| Edit: not to mention Christian's full-time job has just been
| ended by this policy change. How especially and thoughtlessly
| cruel to now also make him out to be an extortionist liar, and
| for nothing really.
| DecayingOrganic wrote:
| After carefully reading the comments and going back to the
| post, I take back my argument. It was flawed and did not
| represent the whole picture. I apologize for that. I think it
| wasn't a threat, but rather an unsuccessful attempt to sell
| Apollo before time runs out. I apologize for the confusion I
| created with my poor argument. I need to read more carefully.
|
| --- I initially clicked on this post fully prepared to be
| outraged at Reddit and its CEO, but after carefully going
| through the audio, I just can't share that sentiment. I've
| listened to the recording multiple times, making sure that
| I'm not missing any crucial points in the conversation. It is
| evident to me that this statement, "if you want Apollo to go
| quiet," did come across as a threat.
|
| Yes, the developer tried to backtrack later in the call by
| adding "in terms of API usage," but the damage was already
| done. Steve's side even provided several opportunities for
| him to clarify his statement, claiming that he couldn't hear
| him properly. I understand that many members of this
| community are rightfully upset with Reddit and its actions in
| recent years (me included), but we cannot turn a blind eye to
| the fact that it really felt and sounded like a threat. ---
|
| Transcript of the call: https://gist.github.com/christianseli
| g/fda7e8bc5a25aec9824f9...
|
| Audio: http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-
| call-may-3...
| BashiBazouk wrote:
| From reading the transcript it reads to me that Reddit says
| Apollo is costing them $20 mil a year from lost opportunity
| cost, which I take to mean advertising/tracking et? The
| Apollo dev seems skeptical of that cost and is jokingly
| suggesting that if they cut him a $10 mil check, they can
| make it up in 6 months purely from getting that
| "opportunity" back with the added benefit Apollo just
| disappears.
|
| I look at less of a threat and more of a calling the
| bluff...
| wayne-li2 wrote:
| I strongly disagree. First of all, in normal situations,
| you can't "threaten" a billion dollar company as an
| individual. The power balance there is so asymmetrical that
| any logical person's first thought shouldn't be "the
| individual has threatened the billion dollar company". Sure
| there might be exceptions, whistle blowing, etc. but
| overwhelmingly, this rule holds.
|
| It is clear that Christian was asking Reddit to buy out
| Apollo. It was a business proposition. Pay me 6 months, and
| I'll shut off my app, which is _what Reddit wants_. They
| want more users on their official app so they can make
| revenue. The language he used was clumsy, but it is clear,
| and it was clarified afterwards. The natural easy response
| is to say no, we are unwilling to pay, end of conversation.
|
| The problem here is that Reddit seems to be litigating
| free-flowing language from part of a conversation as part
| of its defense for its changes. That is not only
| ridiculous, but wildly inappropriate.
|
| To be honest, reddit has all the justification it needs to
| do what they're doing. Do I think they're making the right
| decision? No. But they're free to raise prices however they
| want. It's their API. But a billion dollar company accusing
| an individual of threatening them and then continuing to
| litigate the words used even after clarifications have been
| made is indicative of a catastrophic leadership failure on
| Reddit's side.
| Zak wrote:
| > _But they 're free to raise prices however they want.
| It's their API._
|
| They may not be. According to Christian's post, they told
| him they will not do that in 2023. Were he inclined to
| sue them, he might be able to hold them to that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel#Reliance-
| based_estopp...
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| I believe what's happening here is that Reddit leadership
| _feels_ like they 've been threatened, and are acting
| accordingly without seriously considering the actual
| power imbalance. People under privilege rarely, if ever,
| actually consider their relative power when disagreeing
| with people in less power than them and have exaggerated
| responses when people in less power than them try to gain
| any leverage, such as an app developer trying to
| negotiate with the platform the app runs on. You can also
| observe this when people get very upset about
| $perceived_thing_that_people_less_well_off_than_them_get.
| I'd list exact examples but I fear I'd distract with
| people getting angry, lol.
| lapcat wrote:
| > It is evident to me that this statement, "if you want
| Apollo to go quiet," did come across as a threat.
|
| I just listened to your audio link several times, and I
| totally disagree that it sounded like a threat.
|
| Also, the call was _not_ with Steve, as Christian
| explained:
|
| > Have you talked to CEO Steve Huffman about any of this?
|
| > I requested a call to talk to Steve about some
| suggestions I had, his response was "Sorry, no. You can
| give name-redacted a ping if you want."
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| In the most charitable possible interpretation for
| Christian, he spoke in a way that was misinterpreted,
| conclusively clarified it at the end of the call, both
| parties shared an apology for the misunderstanding, and
| then Steve made public comments of the original
| misinterpretation only (with an editorialized paraphrase).
|
| In the least charitable possible interpretation for
| Christian, he made an implicit threat that he would
| continue to raise community clamor if not bought out, then
| backtracked it as soon as he was asked about it, both
| parties shared an apology for a misunderstanding neither
| believed was really a misunderstanding, and then Steve made
| public statements of the original interpreted threat only,
| with that editorialized paraphrase. In responding to that
| statement, Christian announced his app would close in 22
| days, so it sounds like he can't be doing much with
| Reddit's community by then regardless.
|
| I don't see the point in either of these situations for
| Steve to have said what he did, and he must have been aware
| of how this call could be interpreted in transcript and did
| it anyway. If I was hearing about this as a disagreement
| between business partners retold in a bar conversation, I
| might give reddit's team the same benefit of the doubt as
| you. In this case, it doesn't seem to matter much. The
| question remains WTF was spez thinking even making those
| comments.
| DecayingOrganic wrote:
| Great charitable interpretations! I wish you had done
| this impartially for both parties, but no worries! Now,
| let's look at the situation realistically. Let's say that
| instead of Steve's side asking for clarifications, he had
| agreed to pay Christian $10M when he said "I could make
| it really easy on you, if you think Apollo is costing you
| $20 million per year, cut me a check for $10 million and
| we can both skip off into the sunset. Six months of use.
| We're good. That's mostly a joke." Would Christian then
| say, "Oh no, I was merely making a joke," or would he
| accept the offer?
|
| And do you think if Steve had made this offer, would we
| have even heard a second of this recording?
|
| I mean, come on guys. He literally said "I can make it
| easy on you," named a price, and then clarified that he
| was _mostly_ joking.
|
| edit: Thank you for catching that! I've now changed
| "Steve" with "Steve's side."
| lapcat wrote:
| > Let's say that instead of Steve asking for
| clarifications
|
| It was _not_ Steve on the call, it was an unnamed Reddit
| employee. Christian makes this clear in his post.
| kaba0 wrote:
| You are misinterpreting the whole situation. The
| price/selling is not even the "misunderstandable" part --
| there is no evil in telling a company that they could
| earn back half of their "lost" opportunity cost by buying
| out Christian's app. It was quite clearly a joke (that
| didn't land), but what exactly is evil about that,
| besides possibly Apollo's community's hurt feelings?
|
| The misinterpretation came from the 'quieting down'
| expression, which referred to the API usage (I think
| quite obviously).
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| >I wish you had done this impartially for both parties
|
| instead of your thought experiment, I'd request you just
| pose your impartial take on the most charitable view for
| Steve and explain why in that view it was a reasonable
| act of good leadership for him to make these comments.
| Otherwise I don't think we're really talking about the
| same thing.
|
| You've quoted the transcript elsewhere for people to
| "decide for themselves" and I'm not sure how you could be
| convinced we all did in fact read it and already did, and
| just don't agree with you.
| DecayingOrganic wrote:
| Well, I don't agree with myself too anymore! I stand
| correct, and I apologize for the confusion I created with
| my poor argument. I need to read more carefully.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| Hey, for what it's worth I think it was valuable to take
| a critical look at the situation and where the real
| wrongdoing vs internet outrage snowball lies. And I think
| with this outcome I've experienced a civil and rewarding
| discussion of alternating viewpoints that is delightfully
| un-reddit!
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| I actually think the most charitable position doesn't
| require either one to have any negative intentions. This
| is quite possibly a very simple explanation: It is
| possible to apologize in the face of _feeling_
| threatened, even if you are not in fact under any threat,
| and then later reconcile one 's feelings of being
| threatened in a space where they feel safer.
|
| There's a common error where, because one _believes_ they
| have been aggressed upon, they can behave as if they
| actually have been aggrieved without actually examining
| realistic positions of actual evidence. I 've seen this
| sort of thing happen in a variety of circumstances.
| Whether or not the Apollo developer intended to threaten
| or not doesn't actually change the behavior of the person
| who took whatever was said as a threat, and acting in a
| reconciliatory manner when one feels threatened is
| actually a very reasonable thing to do.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _Yes, the developer tried to backtrack later in the
| call..._
|
| You say it was later in the call, but it was an immediate
| request for clarification and then reworded and clarified
| once that statement was made. There wasn't some long back
| and forth where the developer finally relented and changed
| his mind.
|
| If anything, the immediate response of "No, no, sorry. I
| didn't mean that to-" seems to indicate that he wanted to
| clarify what he meant.
|
| And "if you want Apollo to go quiet" isn't the original
| quote anyways, not sure why you had to paraphrase but
| pretend otherwise.
| DecayingOrganic wrote:
| Instead of arguing further, I'll directly drop the
| verbatim quote from the transcript here so that people
| can decide for themselves:
|
| Christian: I said "If you want Apollo to go quiet". Like
| in terms of- I would say it's quite loud in terms of its
| API usage.
| Goronmon wrote:
| Right, but the original statement that was meant to be
| the "threat" was "If you want to rip that band-aid off
| once. And have Apollo quiet down, you know, six months."
| where the wording lines up with "...it's quite loud in
| terms of its API usage".
| lijok wrote:
| Did you miss the part where spez apologised for
| misunderstanding him?
| DeRock wrote:
| The complaint was not with the audio call itself, but how
| Steve had paraphrased the audio call to others not in
| attendance, specifically saying:
|
| > Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they'll "make it easy"
| if Reddit gave them $10 million."
|
| > Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's
| threatening us."
|
| In the audio call Steve apologizes for the
| misinterpretation after clarifying, but then goes off and
| still makes claims of threats.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| I'm curious what the threat here is. Is the implication
| that they can pay 10 Million and he shuts down the app
| quiet or he shuts the app down revealing the cost of the
| API?
| skyyler wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but reddit is trying to do an
| IPO soon and this guy is projecting a lot of uncertainty
| about their business. He's offering to stop that if he
| gets paid off.
|
| (for the record, I almost feel like he's in the right to
| do so. Still weird how this is being presented)
| kaba0 wrote:
| He jokingly offered that the whole situation can easily
| be solved -- he shuts down/sells his app for half of the
| "lost" money reddit would make were Apollo's users using
| the official app. Win-win for both sides. The other side
| of the phone call misinterpreted a "quiet down"
| expression, which was used for the API calls from Apollo
| servers (serving which costs Reddit money).
| skyyler wrote:
| It seems too ambiguous to judge, honestly.
|
| It seems like he was trying to invoke a sort of ironic
| use of quiet down to ease the situation, but ironic
| extortion is still extortion.
| Jochim wrote:
| The implication is they buy the app and do what they like
| with it.
|
| The alternative is that he has no choice but to shut down
| the app, given that they've announced what the price will
| be 30 days before it's introduction. Even if he'd said
| nothing there would have been a shitstorm; the timing
| would be obvious.
|
| Reasonable notice of the price increase would have given
| 3rd party developers time to monetise and meet the new
| costs. A more reasonable price could have been borne by
| 3rd party apps with very little fuss. Making API access a
| premium Reddit feature would have put even more money in
| Reddit's pocket. Buying out the 3rd party apps would have
| been unpopular but would give Reddit the appearance of
| being less incompetent, underhanded, and duplicitous.
|
| Instead, Reddit made literally the worst possible choice
| in this situation: alienating their users and the
| moderators that do most of the work on the platform.
| dtech wrote:
| the first part yes, the second part would be more like
| causing a public nuisance.
| jlmorton wrote:
| This is exactly correct.
|
| It is always amazing to me how easily people will accept
| however an issue is framed for them on social media.
|
| Of course this was a threat. It wasn't a language issue.
| And the post-hoc explanation was nonsense. It was an
| obvious and indisputable threat.
| kaba0 wrote:
| > It is always amazing to me how easily people will
| accept however an issue is framed for them on social
| media.
|
| And it's even more amazing when people think they are
| smarter "than the average" and go the exact opposite way
| just because, failing a proper evaluation.
| eclipxe wrote:
| The call wasn't with Steve, and it was clear to me
| listening that he wasn't making a threat at all. He was
| talking about the API chatter, it was obvious to me.
| dtech wrote:
| Same, while it's blatantly clear that Reddit is trying to
| kill 3rd party apps, I don't get the sentiment that this is
| being misrepresented at all. The audio gives me a very
| strong "would be a shame if someone would stir up trouble,
| $10M can make it all disappear" vibe, just as how the CEO
| interpreted it.
| kaba0 wrote:
| It's absolutely not that, not from a hundred miles. The
| guy was jokingly telling that if the free usage of
| reddit's apis cost them $20million bucks in a year, than
| for half of that he can "quit down" the API calls by
| shutting down the app, letting the users back to the main
| site where they could generate that opportunity cost.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| He's saying:
|
| "You are claiming that my app is costing you $20M a year in
| API calls. Just buy it from me for $10M. Then it's yours to
| shut down if you want, or modify, or whatever you want to
| do with it."
|
| That's not a threat. At that point it seems like he didn't
| have any obligation to do anything, and was offering them a
| mutually beneficial deal. Reddit's cost go down by $20M a
| year, he gets paid, and everybody (except probably the
| apollo users) benefits.
| dameyawn wrote:
| I think, for one, it is important to note that Christian
| doesn't say "go quiet". He said "quiet down", and those
| carry different interpretable implications regardless of
| context (the latter having much less potential implied
| threat imo).
|
| Second, listening to the actual audio, it doesn't sound
| like a threat at all, and it all cleared up right away.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > It is really astounding to see the CEO of Reddit being
| caught in a blatant lie denigrating a third party developer
| whose work has done a lot for the platform and who has the
| ear of a reasonably sized and loud portion of the community.
|
| I listened to the audio. It was very clear from the get-go
| the minute he said pay me $10m they were taking it very
| seriously, they said repeatedly "I just want to be very clear
| about what you're saying" and then said "that's sounds like a
| threat". The wording doesn't really make sense for a native
| English speaker when talking about a buyout. And they end
| that part with "I'm just going to hope that's not what you
| meant." which is generally how someone acts when they think
| you've threatened them but are going to be civil about it. So
| I don't think it's fair to say it's a blatant lie. And
| wouldn't you know it, what they thought was being threatened
| is what is happened?
| yankjenets wrote:
| I listened to the audio as well. Can you please explain how
| you think Spez interpreted the threat? He thinks that
| Apollo is threatening to blast them on social media?
| Slander him? Break his legs? Murder him?
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| >He thinks that Apollo is threatening to blast them on
| social media?
|
| Threaten him with pretty much what he did. We'll go
| quietly instead of making a large amount of noise and
| complaining and getting the generally hostile Reddit user
| base riled up.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I am not a native speaker but I first read the transcript
| and then listened to the audio. It sounds like a Good
| Fellas dialogue. To my non-businesses ears you don't
| propose a $10m deal for things to go quietly, even in terms
| of API usage. It makes no sense. I don't see where's the
| leverage in that unless quiet refer to "no fuss from me"
| because Reddit could legally just close the API without
| paying the dev. If Reddit were to give even a dollar to the
| dev for Apolo to slowly go away and with the promise the
| dev wouldn't make a fuss about it that would be extortion
| right ?
|
| > If you want to rip that band-aid off once. And have
| Apollo quiet down, you know, six months. Beautiful deal.
| Again this is mostly a joke, I'm just saying if the
| opportunity cost is that high, and if that is something
| that could make it easier on you guys, that could happen
| too.
|
| Again, I am not a native speaker _and_ I havent ' listened
| to the whole conversation just that segment, maybe there
| were other attempts like that at humor ?
|
| edit: just read that comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36248834
|
| > From reading the transcript it reads to me that Reddit
| says Apollo is costing them $20 mil a year from lost
| opportunity cost, which I take to mean advertising/tracking
| et? The Apollo dev seems skeptical of that cost and is
| jokingly suggesting that if they cut him a $10 mil check,
| they can make it up in 6 months purely from getting that
| "opportunity" back with the added benefit Apollo just
| disappears.
|
| > I look at less of a threat and more of a calling the
| bluff...
|
| Could be but there are no laugh or tone that suggests the
| dev is joking or half-joking, there no audio cues that
| suggests "hey, it's a joke" but maybe it's the end of a 3
| hours long talk and fatigue adds up and the joke really
| fell flat (edit: listening again, I can hear audio cues in
| the dev speech pattern at the end that indicates the intent
| to joke).
|
| Jeez, and they made those TV shows about courts and crimes
| and lawyers look so easy to spot liars, jokers, innoncents,
| culprits :D.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| To me, as a native speaker, it sounds like it was a
| serious offer but he didn't know how else to bring it up.
| Which I don't blame him. And I think he knew what the
| Reddit community response was going to be like and he
| sure as hell worded his original post that started this
| off really well to make sure the reddit community went
| nuts.
|
| For me "go quiet" doesn't even make sense in that
| conversation other than the way it was taken. In the
| terms of loud api user, it would still have been a large
| user of the API if Reddit owned it or not.
|
| I can't wait until next month for it to all blow over.
| Because I really don't see anyone building a competitor.
| [deleted]
| kaba0 wrote:
| It's 140% clear from both the audio and the transcript that
| this whole buyout thing is a failed to land joke. And it is
| not even a problematic thing! Why would offering to sell
| their own app be a negative? The negative, threat part is
| from a misunderstood expression of "quiet down", which was
| meant about the API calls.
|
| But even from Christian's voice.. I swear, should we start
| using /s in real life as well?!
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > I swear, should we start using /s in real life as
| well?!
|
| No, but sarcasm is a tool and using it carries its own
| meaning, especially in negotiations.
| paganel wrote:
| I haven't listened to the audio recording per se but that
| was my understanding, too, by reading this guy's written
| description of what happened.
|
| Him and Spez (or whatever his name is) got together in a
| tense meeting on two opposing sides, there was a failure of
| communication (like in many such cases), things escalated
| for a bit after that but, in the end, I see that Spez
| recognised that he had understood things in an incorrect
| manner. That is I see no deliberate "lying" coming from the
| reddit CEO.
| wpietri wrote:
| I believe the referenced "lying" is not in the call, but
| when afterwards he claimed internally that the incorrect
| understanding was the true one.
| bbatsell wrote:
| > That is I see no deliberate "lying" coming from the
| reddit CEO.
|
| Days afterward, spez got on a conference call and falsely
| claimed that Christian was blackmailing him. An employee
| of Reddit itself affirmed that he said it in a summary of
| the call they posted to a (private) sub of high-level
| moderators, replicated here:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/143rk5p/reddit
| _he...
|
| (The summary in the main thread was written by members of
| the community on the call, the comment I linked is
| Reddit's own summary.)
|
| Reddit has also repeated the same claim off-the-record to
| multiple journalists.
| napsterbr wrote:
| At this point, I'm just glad Apollo's author will be able to
| get some indemnification (and cover his refunds) with the
| likely lawsuit that will come from this lie.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Then he might finally be able to cover the API costs for a
| month.
| bardfinn wrote:
| [flagged]
| the_doctah wrote:
| >This is Pride month. The anti-LGBTQ legislation going up
| around the US has a precedent in post-Weimar Germany. The
| people promoting these blackouts over "Reddit is ending
| abuse of their API" sure aren't protesting hatred and
| legalized harassment. This should be a month where people
| are politically organizing on Reddit to defeat hatred. This
| convenient dead-cat-issue now has stolen all the protest
| oxygen.
|
| This has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation at
| hand, and to be frank, I get enough LGBTQ propaganda
| firehosed at me every other which way, thank you very much.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| There have been subreddit going dark for 2-3 days en masse
| in the past. IIRC they usually accomplished their stated
| goal.
| naet wrote:
| A Reddit moderator and Reddit user coordinated temporary
| blackout of various subreddits to protest changes made by
| Reddit that impact Reddit moderators and users makes
| perfect sense and may end up being effective in achieving
| it's goal.
|
| A coordinated blackout on Reddit to protest the new Ugandan
| anti lgbt legislation wouldn't make as much sense or be as
| effective. There are regularly posts voted to the front
| page of reddit about these new laws and other human rights
| issues and what you might be able to do to help if
| interested.
|
| These different issues don't have to be in competition and
| aren't analogous to each other.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| To clarify, I'm not opining personally on reddit's API
| changes at all in my comment. I'm pointing out that
| regardless of anyone's opinion of the API changes, Steve's
| behavior is just egregious, ridiculous, and cruel.
|
| You certainly raise good points about the policy change
| itself and about the ensuing debate and my own view is
| certainly closer to yours than to "not care / no position."
| I'm just not talking about it here, my comment was my
| stunned reaction to steve huffman's abominable public
| behavior.
| vic-traill wrote:
| >has a precedent in post-Weimar Germany
|
| That's an effective end-run on Godwin's law. Well played,
| sir.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Godwin's law does not require the references to Nazi
| Germany be direct. "post-Weimar Germany" == (even though
| it doesn't ===) Nazi Germany.
| wordsarelies wrote:
| The latest revelations have started pushing folks to
| completely removing their content from the platform.
|
| Nuke reddit (only on the edge extension store it looks
| like) is giving their frontends a workout.
| digging wrote:
| > Yet another thing is that two-day boycotts ... don't ...
| work. It's "we're going out of town for a weekend", except
| at scale. It just shows Reddit that some moderation teams
| will participate in a power-flex protest that is a result
| of some folks angry that Reddit is no longer their golden
| goose, no longer laying golden eggs for them.
|
| My only disagreement is to say that some subs will be going
| dark permanently, which _does_ work. Otherwise, carry on,
| and thank you for your service to the community.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Bullies need to learn that the truth will come out
| eventually,
|
| At this point, this is just speculation and wishful thinking
| on your part. History has shown that this is not always the
| outcome. Things we try to teach kids like "winners don't
| cheat, and cheaters don't win", "crime doesn't pay", or any
| similar platitudes do not hold true in real life which adults
| live. If Reddit were to die tomorrow, it would affect me in
| no way. So this has all been a bunch of popcorn eating for me
| to watch everyone on their soapboxes make outlandish
| statements made on pure emotion.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's the same as people always saying "The winners write
| the history" while most of what the public took as gospel
| about Nazi Germany came from the very people who ran it,
| like autobiographies and memoirs from literal Nazi military
| higher ups.
|
| The myth that Germany lost the war because of "human wave
| tactics" of the Soviets is exactly one of those lies from
| the losers.
| bardfinn wrote:
| Their fight with ad blocking is the same Cold War every other
| social media site has. If they're serving ads off of
| distinctly named infrastructure, or even distinctly subnetted
| or IP-addressed infrastructure, an adblocking router config
| will kill them no matter, & there'd be people writing those
| and distributing them. Their only hope would be to serve ads
| inline with content, to defeat those. Which ... they already
| do, I think? I dunno. It would be how they'd serve adverts to
| Apollo users and RiF users. I think the biggest adblocking
| issue they have is people on desktop chrome & Firefox. Who
| already aren't using the API.
|
| They didn't lock old.reddit out of new features; it's a
| really unwieldy codebase, and making changes to old,reddit is
| like shaking a wooden water tower. It holds up the water tank
| as long as it's a static load, not dynamic. I've had to read
| / maintain / debug source code in my career - and I've read
| the old open sourced Reddit code, and it is ... well, it's
| not designed for building up and out. It's not even designed
| for maintaining over time. It was designed to get a message
| board running with occasional weekly downtimes, and a lot of
| "you broke reddit" and a bunch of RSS feeds and API
| endpoints, and no view to end user experience. It was built
| with the same mindset as building windows 3.1. Coding some of
| the features would be like backporting their support code to
| windows 3.1 - but not as libraries, as device drivers.
| sroussey wrote:
| Ad blocking companies then come to publishers with
| extortion payment plans.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Spez has always made Ellen Pao look like a genius CEO
| wpietri wrote:
| > It is really astounding to see the CEO of Reddit being
| caught in a blatant lie denigrating a third party developer
| whose work has done a lot for the platform and who has the
| ear of a reasonably sized and loud portion of the community.
|
| I would like to be astounded. But Reddit has taken $1.4
| billion in venture capital, meaning they are expected to make
| VCs well more than that. And one way that can happen is
| aggressively juicing the short-term numbers and IPOing, so
| that VCs can dump their holdings before everybody realizes
| that they were sold a bill of goods. I suspect that they were
| thinking nobody would catch them like this. Or that even if
| they did, people would have forgotten by the IPO pop.
|
| I think there's a fundamental conflict of interest in the
| business models of web communities. I saw somebody sum up Web
| 2.0 as "you do all the work, we make all the money", which
| totally applies to Reddit. Those communities can work well on
| a pay-the-bills basis. But investors generally don't give a
| shit about communities; they just want money. So from the
| perspective of the economic rational actor, the right thing
| to do is to strip-mine the years of goodwill built up,
| maximizing short-term revenue. That will set the business up
| for long-term failure, but by that point it will have been
| sold off.
|
| That's an important part of the private equity playbook and
| has been for a while. A good example is Simmons Mattress: htt
| ps://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/...
|
| And Cory Doctorow has been talking about this as
| enshittification: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-
| platforms-cory-doctorow/
| raywu wrote:
| Thanks for sharing these goldmines
| Demmme wrote:
| I actually believe reddit when they say the impact is small
|
| I'm using reddit for ages and never even considered anything
| besides their website.
|
| If the traffic to their site is primarily from the web (or
| web mobile or the official Reddit app), the client (3th
| party) users are only a loud minority.
|
| Of course I think the behavior is shitty but I don't think
| most people really care and reddit will not see any real
| impact of it either.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| >I'm using reddit for ages and never even considered
| anything besides their website.
|
| Same. I have never used anything other than old.reddit on a
| proper computer, with the exception being when I need to
| edit the new.reddit sidebars for subs I moderate, which I
| still do on a proper computer.
| stefs wrote:
| the (passive) consumers may use the native interfaces, but
| the power users - especially the mods - use 3rd party apps.
| the bigger subs are pretty much unmoddable without them.
|
| they might not lose many users, but they'll lose their most
| important users.
| laserbeam wrote:
| So have I only used the official apps, and I believe most
| users are in the same bucket.
|
| But. I'm not a mod. I don't know what mods use. And the
| only reason reddit is good is because communities have
| tools to moderate themselves.
|
| What I use is kind of irrelevant if the people who keep the
| communities I visit consistent and relatively clean are
| pissed and walk out. A casual user won't drop the site when
| Apolo closes, it would be slightly later when reddit
| becomes 4chan in absence of moderation.
| munk-a wrote:
| There are some amazingly good alternatives. I personally
| use Boost which presents threads in a much more readable
| manner and allows you to easily swap between different
| contexts. Before they disappear it might be good to give
| some alternatives a try and see just how terrible the
| native app experience is compared to what it could be.
| vkou wrote:
| The impact will be small?
|
| I won't be using Reddit on mobile going forward, and I'll
| stop using it on desktop when old.reddit inevitably goes
| away.
|
| That sounds like a pretty big impact for me...
| spyder wrote:
| Sure, and that's why they value API users around 20x more
| than their website users ? (based on the rough estimation
| in the post)
| fireflash38 wrote:
| > I actually believe reddit when they say the impact is
| small
|
| I think this neglects the power struggle that would occur
| if its many unpaid moderators who _do_ use apps far more
| than any other group, either shutdown subreddits or
| straight up quit.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > the client (3th party) users are only a loud minority
|
| The loud minority argument assumes homogenous cohorts, and
| that the loudness happens to cluster around inconsequential
| things. These criteria are almost never satisfied in
| practice.
|
| Any online community today has extreme differences: usually
| a tiny minority contribute almost all content to the site
| (posts, comments). In Reddit's case, moderation is also
| done by human volunteers assured by 3p bots (as opposed to
| automated ML policing + human intervention when someone
| famous gets sour). The vast majority of users are passively
| consuming, occasionally upvoting/downvoting.
|
| Now, Reddit gained a massive amount of users in the last
| few years (something like 2x-4x) so bean counters start
| drooling over ad revenue from them. They may think that the
| old timers, power users and mods are a minority that can be
| gradually replaced by the new user pool without major
| incident. I don't know if that's true, but I'm pretty sure
| that the bean counters don't know either, simply because
| the graphs they're looking at don't have the predictive
| power they think. They're risking the company's main asset
| to find out.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Uhh, I'm pretty sure that you and me and anyone on this
| site are extremely far from a representative sample of
| Reddit's userbase these days. It is a fact that their
| traffic is primarily from their official (and shitty)
| mobile app.
| nfriedly wrote:
| The thing is, I think a lot of moderators use third-party
| apps.
|
| So, while it may be a small percentage of users, I suspect
| that losing them (or even just impairing their ability to
| moderate) will have an outsized negative impact on reddit.
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| Then why raise the API rates if it so "insignificant"?
| Short sighted GREED. See the Studios opening up their own
| streaming services to choke out NetFlix and observe how
| that is playing out even for DISNEY+.
| tootie wrote:
| Apollo says they have 50K paying users. That seems pretty
| insignificant. And where else are they going to go?
| Twitter?
| yurishimo wrote:
| And millions of free users.
| dimmke wrote:
| To be clear, that's people paying a monthly subscription
| fee for an app that is free and has several premium one
| time IAP unlocks.
|
| For example, I paid for Apollo Pro as a one time thing so
| I'm not a subscriber. Only people paying for Apollo Ultra
| every month are counted. That 50k is just the most
| invested and dedicated of Apollo users.
| Hoyadonis wrote:
| >If the traffic to their site is primarily from the web
|
| Of course it's not. According to this site, around 3/4 of
| their traffic is from mobile.
|
| https://www.semrush.com/website/reddit.com/overview/
|
| HackerNews, I love you, but some of the comments in here
| are detached from reality. You'd be hard pressed to find
| _any_ social media company that gets more traffic from
| desktop than mobile in the year 2023. This site is the
| exception, not the rule.
| Demmme wrote:
| I use reddit, as I do most of my surfing, very successful
| with my smartphone browser.
|
| I know reddit is pushing it's all but even that is not
| 3th party apps.
| radec wrote:
| Yeah I've used reddit daily for over a decade. I just use
| a mobile browser. I tried a couple apps a few years back,
| but just when back to mobile browser after a few weeks.
|
| I just hope they don't get rid of old.reddit.com
| layer8 wrote:
| Mobile includes mobile web browsers.
| Sharlin wrote:
| And I can guarantee that there are approximately five
| people using Reddit via a browser _on mobile_. Mobile
| means the app, to a precision of two or three significant
| digits.
| silisili wrote:
| As one of the five, I didn't believe this so went trying
| to determine more realistic numbers.
|
| Per the link below, mobile web is anywhere from 15 to 60%
| of mobile traffic. Reddit isn't listed, and it's 4 years
| old, so who knows, but I'd imagine it falls somewhere in
| the same range, probably closer to the lower end?
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1019768/us-retailers-
| app...
| quickthrowman wrote:
| I am one of the five. I use the Reddit website on iOS
| Safari and have for years. I only read one subreddit, so
| my usage pattern may be different than a normal reddit
| user. The only thing that annoys me is the ever
| persistent 'website or app' modal dialogue but I'm used
| to it now.
|
| I try to use mobile websites instead of apps because I
| feel like the tracking data a company can get from a web
| browser is less granular than app tracking data.
| cyberax wrote:
| Wrong. Their mobile crapp is well, crap. That's why they
| try to shove it up everybody's arse with the "Open this
| page in our app" blurbs.
| atdrummond wrote:
| I use old.reddit on my mobile browser.
|
| The app sucks.
| fsckboy wrote:
| old.reddit is starting to come apart at the seams, tho.
| (maybe it's because r/subs don't keep the style sheets up
| to date or something? i dunno) in many cases you can't up
| or downvote, there's no search button, there's no sidebar
| with the flair and the rules/mods, etc.
| sentientslug wrote:
| You might be the only person that browses old.reddit with
| subreddit CSS turned on
| ericd wrote:
| Err why? The css adds a lot of flavor, generally doesn't
| get in the way of functionality.
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm one of those five people then. Very casual use, but
| that's probably the large majority of Reddit users.
| sroussey wrote:
| I'm one of those five as well. I have the Reddit app but
| still use mobile web.
| Sharlin wrote:
| I'd wager that most Reddit users these days, casual or
| not, are only dimly aware that the platform even exists
| as a website. Or at least a large plurality.
| layer8 wrote:
| According to [1], Reddit has 52 million daily active
| users (and 430 monthly users), while according to [2] the
| Reddit app has 17 million daily active users. Both
| numbers are from 2021. So only about a third of DAUs
| would be using the Reddit app. Apollo has 50,000 yearly
| subscribers, so is probably more on the negligible side.
|
| [1] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/reddit-
| statistics/
|
| [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1255714/reddit-
| app-dau-w...
| internetter wrote:
| > Apollo has 50,000 yearly subscribers, so is probably
| more on the negligible side overall.
|
| Note this figure does not include free users, nor the
| users of the plethora of other clients... But regardless
|
| Clearly, Reddit has deemed 3rd party clients pose a huge
| cost to their platform, otherwise they wouldn't charge
| through the roof. IMO, all these numbers are meaningless
| given this fact.
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm not sure what Reddit's rationale is here. Third-party
| app users are less than 1% (can't find the link where I
| read this). The most plausible explanation is that they
| want to get rid of a potential future threat, because I
| don't believe that current third-party usage constitutes
| any substantial loss. Otherwise buying out Apollo as
| mentioned in TFA should have been an easy decision.
| seviu wrote:
| Maybe I am a little naive here but...
|
| Wouldn't an ad support guideline be enough for third
| party apps to continue coexisting with the official
| Reddit app?
|
| Call it that, or sdk. But if ad based revenue is so
| important for Reddit, getting Apollo and the rest to
| properly display and track ads is imho a no brainer and
| would totally solve the issue at hand.
|
| As I said maybe I am too naive, and I only see part of
| the picture.
| kaba0 wrote:
| You assume they act rationally. As mentioned in the post,
| the API costs are orders of magnitude more than the
| expected value from an average user.
| josephg wrote:
| In the post further down they discuss that. Reddit's
| rationale is opportunity cost per user, not the price of
| serving the api.
| bee_rider wrote:
| We've got lots of web devs and startup space folks on
| this site, I guess somebody must know how to look this
| sort of thing up?
|
| I googled "percentage of reddit mobile traffic in app"
| but got a bunch of marketing sites, and wasn't able to
| sort out which ones were bullshit. I bet there's a good
| source for this sort of thing though.
|
| In any case, we don't need to wager right? It seems like
| this ought to be measurable.
| tootie wrote:
| I'd wager you're completely wrong. Reddit at this point
| gets a ton of traffic from search. Remember the old
| 90/9/1 rule. 90% of users are just browsing cat pictures
| and are eyeball fodder for ads.
| lapcat wrote:
| > And I can guarantee that there are approximately five
| people using Reddit via a browser on mobile.
|
| Apparently all five of them use my little web browser
| extension with Reddit-specific features, requested by
| users.
|
| But I can guarantee that your estimate is totally wrong.
| arianvanp wrote:
| You cant use reddit website on mobile. It will force you
| to install the app to view most subreddits
| throwmeaway1212 wrote:
| I use it all the time on my phone old.reddit.com
| t-sauer wrote:
| This is false. I only browse reddit in the browser
| version on my phone. It annoys you all the time to
| install their app, but you can read and post perfectly
| fine.
| ncann wrote:
| If you use a browser that supports uBlock (e.g. Firefox
| or Kiwi) you can easily block the app advertisement as
| well.
| housemusicfan wrote:
| Your rebuttal is false and the parent is accurate. Reddit
| will throw up a full screen interstitial on most popular
| subreddits preventing even viewing and redirect you to
| download the app. This is on the mobile (not old.reddit
| desktop-only) site. Their UX is shite and full of dark
| patterns.
| zargon wrote:
| If you log in, the mobile site is perfectly usable. You
| might also have to set a preference as well (like the
| old.reddit preference). It has been so many years of
| using it this way I don't remember.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Not forced, if you are logged in. You'll get notified to
| install it but you can click it away.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| It's possible, they just make it as annoying and
| difficult as possible.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| You absolutely can. Old reddit still works.
| mattl wrote:
| And .compact is gone
| dimmke wrote:
| I think you're wrong - the audience that Reddit was built
| on is paying attention to this, and it's going to have a
| lot of knock on effects. People who have been around for a
| while. Hell, I was one of the people that moved from Digg
| to Reddit in 2009 and I'm barely in my thirties.
|
| Do I think it's going to kill Reddit? No. But I think this
| is going to have a large effect on their IPO and they will
| be treated as a hostile entity going forward than a neutral
| one, and that will add up over time. There's no plausible
| deniability.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Traffic is really a bad way to look at it, Traffic exisits
| because there is content to view
|
| If the majority of people posting, commenting, etc are
| coming from the other interface it does not matter if the
| bulk of the "traffic" which is largely going to be non-
| power users that just read reddit comes from the web and
| the new interface.
|
| There seems to be this idea that reddit will need to see
| massive traffic loss to die, no they need to see massive
| loss of quality link submissions and comments to die, that
| is a very different metric
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > are only a loud minority.
|
| Hmmm ...
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Only if you believe that all users are equal, but just like
| free to play games that have whales Reddit has power users
| that create most of the content and are typically the mods
| that work for free. They are going to be the most impacted
| by the API cost changes, and if they leave Reddit will not
| work.
| hajile wrote:
| If they are insignificant, then it's a really stupid bad-PR
| hill to die on.
| Demmme wrote:
| Oh yes absolutely but I don't think they will die on this
| PR hill, that's exactly my point.
|
| For me I will continue to use reddit as I have before.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| So if the impact of the change is so small, why does the
| CEO of this company with thousands of employees feel
| remotely compelled to concoct a fantasy story where the
| Apollo developer is an evil villain that is so unbelievable
| and _verifiably_ unbelievable it doesn 't last six hours
| before blowing up in his face?
|
| Even if you completely accept these policy changes as a
| long-term positive for reddit's growth, how can you have
| confidence in that leadership? How can you trust anything
| they tell you as an investor?
|
| Steve has some kind of problem. It's been apparent before
| with editing comments in the live db, and it's apparent
| now. This problem is a risk for reddit. "Don't lie on or
| about phone calls" is pretty basic risk management and he
| can't handle it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > So if the impact of the change is so small, why does
| the CEO of this company [...]
|
| A thousand times this. Plus their repeated insistence
| that they "aren't like Twitter" (which is true, I think.
| They're worse.) They are obviously running scared of
| something, and that something can really only be that the
| impact of this is potentially enormous.
| nawgz wrote:
| This breathless take that capitalists aren't
| propagandists taking advantage of every step and
| spreading FUD at every other is shockingly naive. The CEO
| of Reddit is trying to punish this guy for overstepping
| because capital naturally positions itself at the top and
| bullies all threats it perceives
|
| It also makes no sense you're implying this is hurting
| Reddit. They just shut down a huge ecosystem of free
| loaders and will be able to show more first party usage
| and therefore ad views and DAU and so on, which aligns so
| obviously with their goal of having a huge IPO I don't
| even know how you think people will "lose trust in
| leadership". They are stoked they're about to make
| ridiculous stacks of cash, and the few that aren't don't
| matter.
| kaba0 wrote:
| > It also makes no sense you're implying this is hurting
| Reddit. They just shut down a huge ecosystem of free
| loaders
|
| It's absolutely insane to call them freeloaders. Reddit's
| business model is not "we serve pages with ads and
| advertisers pay us", it is "those 'freeloaders' create
| content that is the whole value of the company, it is
| nothing without that -- and this results in every traffic
| that hits the site"
| fullstop wrote:
| From what I have read, a lot of moderators also use third
| party apps as moderation tools. They are not paid to do
| this job.
|
| Heck, most of the video content on Reddit is reposted
| from other sources.
| seviu wrote:
| The moderation tools offered by Reddit don't have support
| for accessibility. If you are in r/blind for example...
| How are you gonna moderate that? And for those who don't
| need those tools, third party apps save them a lot of
| time since the official app is so bad for such things.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _They are not paid to do this job._
|
| plenty more people want to moderate, seriously, why
| should they pay them? hear me out:
|
| If you pay them "a livable wage" you'll get people in the
| chair who don't want the job, just the pay. If you pay
| them less, suddenly you'll run afoul of minimum wage
| laws, overhead of having employees, etc.
|
| you could auction off the job (mods pay reddit for the
| privilege, given that more people want to moderate than
| currently can) but that would encourage the mods to
| monetize their sub (the more successfully, the more subs
| would become part of ebaum's world)
|
| voluntary moderation actually is the happy medium, people
| who love the job and the sub are willing/want to do it.
|
| Like they say "everything can't be measured in money"
| (ok, I never say that, but there it is)
| fullstop wrote:
| I never asked for them to be paid. I'm saying that reddit
| can exist due to their generosity, and that these people
| use third party tools and the API to do this. That's
| being taken away.
| wpietri wrote:
| Exactly. I'd argue the true freeloaders at Reddit are the
| Reddit execs and the venture capitalists squeezing for
| profits. Everybody here developer here knows they could
| rebuild Reddit in short order; there's no technology
| moat. The valuable asset is the community. Beyond
| recovering enough money to pay for servers and some core
| staff, everything else is parasitic.
| nawgz wrote:
| I obviously don't believe in capitalist philosophy but
| you're joking if you think the market doesn't consider
| ad-free users as a drain regardless of reality.
|
| Which is what I'm trying to say: you're framing the
| actions of Reddit's CSuite in terms or morals and long
| term outlooks, which is not how the market will look at
| their ipo. At all.
| kaba0 wrote:
| If those ad-free users are over represented in content
| creatin then surely they are no drain. No one comes to
| reddit so they can browse ads.
| fsckboy wrote:
| I non-obviously do believe in the capitalist reality
| underpinning the universe (it's value-add all the way
| down) but you're smoking if you think the market doesn't
| recognize ad-free users are relatively cost-less compared
| to their positive network externalities.
|
| that doesn't mean that some free-to-choose sites won't
| experiment with paywalls, etc. in an attempt to enhance
| cost-covering revenue.
| wpietri wrote:
| Sorry, but "the market" doesn't think anything. That's a
| category error.
|
| If by that you mean something like "VC investors", sure.
| They are people whose job is trying to turn money into
| more money while filling their own pockets to bursting.
| They are zero-sum people by nature and practice. If they
| really understood and cared about communities, they'd
| mostly have different jobs.
|
| But that doesn't make it true. And there's nothing wrong
| with framing Reddit's execs actions in terms of morals
| and long-term outlooks. We should generally not concede
| anything to the world-view of the greedy. Whether or not
| this will hurt Reddit's IPO is worth discussing, but we
| shouldn't confuse that with hurting Reddit the community,
| which it certainly will.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| > They just shut down a huge ecosystem of free loaders
| and will be able to show more first party usage and
| therefore ad views and DAU and so on, which aligns so
| obviously with their goal of having a huge IPO
|
| My take on this comment is that these people are
| considered freeloaders by _Reddit_. It's not necessarily
| rational from an outsiders perspective, but that's not
| the point.
|
| I don't know much about reddit, but if they sell
| advertising, then advertisers are the customers, users
| are the product, and anyone else who extracts value from
| the ecosystem are parasites.
|
| _It doesn't matter if the parasites are an important
| part of the ecosystem_. There is a remarkably deep bench
| of people willing to replace an any "parasites" that are
| removed, and if exfoliating the current layer will
| improve DAU and therefore IPO value then it will be done.
|
| In this context, "freeloader" is a nice way of putting
| it.
|
| To be clear - I don't agree that any of this is OK, and I
| certainly don't agree that moderators or third party apps
| are actually parasites - but that's also the point I
| think the GP is making.
|
| If the only measure of success is money, that's what they
| will optimise for. And an IPO is the shortest of short
| term goals - a single event which must be optimised at
| all costs.
| Demmme wrote:
| Don't get me wrong I'm not here to defend any actions of
| reddit especially not their CEO.
|
| But if they have stats saying 1% and less is 3th party
| App Traffic it's probably more that people in reddit care
| just not their ceo
| internetter wrote:
| So
|
| 1. I feel like you didn't read the comment you replied
| to. It says in a compelling way that reddit wouldn't do
| this if they didn't feel a threat
|
| 2. > But if they have stats saying 1% and less is 3th
| party App
|
| A solid takeaway from the original post is that you can't
| trust Reddit
|
| 3. All the bad press surrounding this is infinitely worse
| for their brand. The subreddit strike, for instance,
| could force their hand into taking authoritarian control
| over the platform, as they've hinted at. "Reddit abandons
| democracy" is a pretty damming headline, and they just
| can't seem to stop digging their hole deeper
| Demmme wrote:
| I don't 'trust' reddit, I surf reddit and it's
| communities.
|
| Reddit is not a bank account
| lkschubert8 wrote:
| Aren't you trusting their published stats?
| dylan604 wrote:
| >All the bad press
|
| You're forgetting the adage, "there is no such thing as
| bad press". If you're not a user of the 3rd party apps,
| then none of these decisions affect you, and most people
| are just not going to get upset about things that don't
| affect them directly.
| e40 wrote:
| I feel like in the age of cancel culture, this adage
| isn't really a thing anymore. News travels too far and
| too fast.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > You're forgetting the adage, "there is no such thing as
| bad press"
|
| Yeah, but that adage has never been true. It's just
| something said by people who get bad press to make
| themselves feel better.
| threeseed wrote:
| Of course there is such thing as bad press.
|
| Look at companies like Theranos where it was the
| investigative reporting that ultimately led to their
| downfall.
|
| And as someone who has been on Reddit for 16 years and
| has never used a 3rd party app this decision does affect
| me. a) I think less of the company and the site which
| will affect my engagement and b) It affects everyone else
| on the site which in turns affects their engagement and
| the quality of their posts.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Theranos was doing shady shit and ripping off investors.
| That's illegal. Bad press didn't shut them down. Criminal
| investigations shut them down and the CEO is now actually
| in jail.
|
| Confusing illegal activity with activity you disagree
| with is not doing the conversation (or society in
| general) a bit of good
| katbyte wrote:
| > If you're not a user of the 3rd party apps, then none
| of these decisions affect you
|
| likely untrue. its not just 3rd party apps it affects. it
| changes api access for anything using the API
|
| for instance modtools will be affected which means
| literally everyone can be affected desktop or not https:/
| /www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/12rt5f8/how_wil...
|
| some subreddits make heavy use of bots
|
| these are all going to be hugely affected
| WJW wrote:
| > you can't trust Reddit
|
| Sure, but what does that even mean? I cannot trust them
| to load the topics from /r/ruby or /r/haskell correctly
| because of nefarious purposes? Perhaps they have replaced
| all the posts with Python propaganda in the hope I
| wouldn't notice?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > if the impact of the change is so small, why does the
| CEO of this company with thousands of employees feel
| remotely compelled to...
|
| We see this all the time on social media, where companies
| respond to the very vocal minority, because even though
| they may be a minority, their voice is amplified by
| social media. Not saying this is the case here, but it's
| why companies often respond even when the real impact may
| be small.
| monksy wrote:
| > may be a minority, their voice is amplified by social
| media.
|
| The same organization that is dealing with that, also
| accepted that when they entered a market to where their
| potential profibility reaches a vast higher amount of
| people.
|
| The companies asked for that level of audience. They got
| it, they're operating on a smaller staff than
| traditionally you would need for that level. Now they're
| upset they're paying the pipper.
| raydev wrote:
| That's the thing, because of Huffman's instability and
| childish behavior in previous years, his words have no
| meaning here.
|
| Reddit is still a decent-sized company with a whole team
| of people who've likely been running the numbers. Third
| party apps like Apollo are a nerd concern anyway, and
| nerds are outnumbered on Reddit these days; I'm sure most
| users are happily poking away at the first party apps.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| It doesn't matter if the "nerds" are outnumbered. Lurkers
| outnumber actual content creators by insane multiples,
| yet everyone knows that the content creators are the ones
| that keep people coming back.
|
| What about mods? Looks like many of them use 3rd party
| apps to help moderate their subs. They are outnumbered
| too, but are they worth less than millions of lurkers? I
| think not.
|
| Reddit is betting that the loud minority are not the ones
| bringing value to their site. If they are wrong, it may
| be too late.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Content creators want their content to be viewed. They're
| not going to just go away, they want the internet points.
| heisenbit wrote:
| Comments are content too and often more insightful.
| Moderators for all the bashing some deservedly get are
| key to keep content creators happy. Each forum is a small
| organization. The sum of the heads of these orgs. and the
| identities of users is what makes Reddit valuable. We are
| however entering an age where identity becomes more
| portable so mess with all the leads of your teams at your
| own peril.
| roblabla wrote:
| The problem is, a very very very large portion of the
| mods are using third party apps. If the mods go away
| (because their tools don't work anymore), reddit will
| have a very big problem on their hands.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Exactly. Reddit without auto mod tools (that require API
| access) gets over run with hate speech and incels.
|
| Reddit won't work without API access... it just turns
| into a 4Chan-like cesspool over night without auto
| moderation.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Based on many of the mods' behavior, that might actually
| be a big win for users. Their persecution and abuse of
| users makes Reddit the cesspool that it is.
|
| After all, Reddit is so shitty that HN will ban you for
| pointing out behavior here as "Reddit-like."
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Their persecution and abuse of users makes Reddit the
| cesspool that it is.
|
| That's not what made Reddit seem like a cesspool to me.
| It was the commenters.
| brookst wrote:
| Is your comment here more Reddit-like, or more HN-like?
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| It's a stand-alone. And it has already received a Reddit-
| like downvote. This behavior degrades HN. Here's a
| question from someone else that got down-voted
| repeatedly:
|
| "Dumb question, but why is OS or browser support
| necessary? Couldn't an HTML canvas element and some JS
| that can parse the file format display any kind of image
| that you might want?"
|
| Persecuting people who ask sincere and relevant questions
| is Reddit-like, and it happens right here on HN. And of
| course, when I asked why this guy's question was
| downvoted, my question was attacked.
|
| That is pathetic. I don't know exactly what the solution
| is, but people are abandoning Stack Overflow for similar
| BS. I'm just not going to go quietly.
|
| Downvote away.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Complaining about downvotes attracts downvotes. News at
| 11.
| donnythecroc wrote:
| Yes people are missing the point here. I'm in Australia
| and I know when I check reddit groups moderated in other
| countries they are full of hate - like 4chan when the
| mods are asleep. I've seen an unmoderated reddit even
| just for a few hours, the site will be destroyed if
| people give up their unpaid voluntary work. They need the
| tools because it's not their fulltime job.
| bl_valance wrote:
| I'm in the same boat tbh, website and app are good enough
| for me, I really don't understand the need for other apps.
| brigandish wrote:
| Are you a mod?
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| And this belief is based on what exactly? If you think
| critically about this, it stands to reason that the impact
| should not be small if it's worth it to Reddit to get
| people off of 3rd party mobile apps and put eyes on ads in
| the first party app.
| Demmme wrote:
| Oh I can even believe that this fucked up CEO is just a
| liar and knows exactly that the API pricing will kill
| apps of and just does it on purpose.
|
| But he will be the person to increase revenue anyway.
|
| Because he can now say that whatever app survived this is
| now paying for it instead.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If they didn't want to support 3rd party apps, then
| that's a decision they are allowed to make. It sounds to
| me as if that's the decision they want to make but don't
| have the moral fortitude to make out right. Instead,
| they've tried to make the API unappealing for someone to
| want to use. In the end, it is the same result. So just
| because they are putting a very high price tag does not
| mean that's the actual cost/worth, but just a number they
| put out to scare people away.
|
| As contractors, we have the same option to us by
| responding to a request with an outrageous fee that you
| think nobody will pay so you can avoid having to actually
| say no.
| kedean wrote:
| You're neglecting the tools and bots that use the API,
| which are heavily utilized by most mod teams. One of the
| pillars of reddit is unpaid moderators, and if the tools
| that make that job doable on the scale of reddit stop
| working, then you will see a mass exodus of those unpaid
| moderators. That means the death of most of the big, well
| moderated communities like AskHistorians, AskScience, AITA,
| etc.
|
| I've already seen many of these subs having moderator led
| discussions about relocation options for the communities.
| bardfinn wrote:
| Reddit has expectations of what moderators are to do, and
| has expectations of what they are not to do, and will
| remove them from roles if they fail to meet those
| expectations. That set of expectations would make them
| employees if compensated.
|
| As for liability, the Ninth Circuit in Mavrix v
| LiveJournal held that if an agent of a user-content-
| hosting ISP (social media) has the means and opportunity
| to moderate, they also have the means and opportunity to
| interdict reasonably known copyright violations, and
| failure to act on those would jeopardise their DMCA Safe
| Harbour.
|
| And there's a lot of registered copyright holders that
| will 100% line up to be a creditor on statutory damages.
| Majromax wrote:
| Reddit moderators do not directly deal with DMCA takedown
| requests. If Reddit is presented with one, they will take
| the offending post down directly. Moderators can be
| suspended or removed, however, if they encourage rule-
| breaking behaviour in a subreddit (such as by soliciting
| content that results in DMCA takedowns).
|
| The primary social role of moderators is to curate the
| community. That involves enforcing some site-wide rules,
| but it also involves more local rules like "stay on-
| topic." It wouldn't do for a forum about NFL football to
| be taken over by discussion for _The Bachelor_ , even
| though that's not actionable at a site-wide level.
| fartbin wrote:
| [flagged]
| dylan604 wrote:
| >are only a loud minority.
|
| is this a rule of the internet about the most vocal part of
| the community tends to be a tiny percentage? the "people on
| the internet" are screaming about something again today. in
| a previous job, i was introduced to this first hand. that's
| when i learned people will just double down on an incorrect
| theory/comment when shown incontrovertible evidence. yet,
| when you look at the numbers of the people shouting online
| is just a tiny percentage, but causes so much work for
| people to defend against. they come across as petulant
| children throwing tantrums because they didn't get exactly
| what they wanted.
| malnourish wrote:
| What percentage of contributors use 3rd party/API-driven
| tools?
| jupp0r wrote:
| "Why would even a ruthless money-over-everything Wall Street
| investor want to gamble on that?"
|
| I think you are missing an even larger point here. What is
| Reddit without its communities and users? At the end of the
| day, if people are no longer love using Reddit, there's
| nothing left to their business. How anybody thinks that the
| API decision was a good one in light of that (alienating your
| own power users) is beyond twitteresque.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >It is really astounding to see the CEO of Reddit being
| caught in a blatant lie
|
| Spez was the person who got caught editing a users comment in
| the backend to make them seem like an asshole or otherwise
| change the public perception of a question and response
|
| This is 100% in line with something I would expect from Spez
| (the CEO)
| 23B1 wrote:
| Whats really telling, though, is that he's managed to hold
| on to his position despite everything.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Because people, in general, don't give a shit. About
| anything really. Unless you directly inconvenience them
| in some way.
| ljm wrote:
| And Reddit has been online the whole time. People love
| boycotting within Reddit, but they're still using Reddit
| to do that.
| brookst wrote:
| Birds of a feather. Presumably the board and major
| investors have similar ethical standards.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > reasonably sized and loud portion of the community
|
| He also spearheaded entirely killing off reasonably sized
| and loud portions of the community - love them or hate
| them, r/The_Donald was a massive, advertisable bloc of
| users.
| bityard wrote:
| It is not surprising to me that a product intended for social
| drama (news) aggregation has basically been steeped in drama
| its whole life.
|
| Like, I can't remember a time that there _hasn't_ been some
| sort of drama going on behind the scenes at Reddit. Really
| seems like one of the last places I would want to work, that's
| for sure.
| okdood64 wrote:
| > I wonder if they'll see employees quit over this.
|
| I'm sure a few will but, I can't name any time in the last 20
| years when a tech company did something bad that enough
| employees quit over it for it to be notable. For 95% of tech
| workers, it's just a job and pays money. And pays well.
| ted_dunning wrote:
| Well, Zynga was an example.
|
| https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/zynga-to-employees-
| give...
| [deleted]
| jacksnipe wrote:
| What he said is definitely defamation, all other damages
| notwithstanding.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| So the bad guys are not the ones making an alternative client
| that makes money off of Reddit while not displaying their ads?
| Oh, okay.
|
| Those 3rd party apps are leeches that are playing
| surprised_pikachu.jpeg when the blood supply is cut.
|
| The simple fact that this guy has to reimburse 250K of
| subscriptions shows the insane amount of money he made off of
| the back of Reddit.
| skeaker wrote:
| That money is pennies to reddit. Apollo was around long
| before the official app and established a majority mobile
| userbase which you could argue helped build reddit into what
| it is today. I guarantee you it 100% made reddit more money
| than it made the developer of the app. Reddit is the bad guy
| for slandering him and gaslighting their users at every turn,
| yes.
| kentm wrote:
| > So the bad guys are not the ones making an alternative
| client that makes money off of Reddit while not displaying
| their ads? Oh, okay.
|
| Correct.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| Reddit literally only makes money of other people's content.
| They contribute absolutely nothing themselves.
|
| Hypocritical much?
| burnished wrote:
| Weird taken given that it was a resource provided for people
| to use that benefited Reddit to offer.
|
| Are shipping companies leeches in your worldview?
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Realistically this is the right time for the large subreddits
| to move onto a different platform. The moderators and the
| community ultimately have the power here, not Reddit. And in
| the sense that those communities are just forums, good old
| PHPbb could be the answer.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Realistically this is the right time for the large
| subreddits to move onto a different platform.
|
| Like Apollo. He could build a backend himself.
| ajross wrote:
| > Just spitballing here but could an employee bring a
| shareholder lawsuit for negatively impacting financial outlook
| or destroying brand value?
|
| Not against a private company, no. Reddit is still owned by
| Conde-Nast, I believe. What to do with it is up to them.
|
| Also in general *employees* don't bring shareholder lawsuits.
| Even if you own significant stock, getting fired for suing your
| boss is usually a losing proposition.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| Subreddits can't be destroyed, only made private, and then
| requested by someone else.
| az226 wrote:
| They can definitely be nerfed. Go private and no one gets
| invited. They can also block any new content except if on a
| post approved list, which could be as few as the mods. Each
| in effect would kill a sub.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| Nah. The mods would just be replaced if they tried anything
| like that.
| benatkin wrote:
| > Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose his
| job over this?
|
| He might be looking to quit, I figure. Taking care of unpopular
| stuff on the way out would make sense.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| I run a small sub, about 50 people.
|
| One day I looked at it, not logged in.
|
| Turned out there was a post, "pinned by moderators", at the top
| of the post list, exhorting people to join the sub lounge -
| that real-time chat thing Reddit was pushing.
|
| I never made that post, nor did I approve it, nor did I ever
| see it in the mod list of posts.
|
| I logged in, and went to the mod list of posts - and lo and
| behold, somehow pinned to the _bottom_ of the list of posts, so
| before the oldest post, is this post.
|
| Reddit made that post, pushed it into my sub, pinned it, and
| hid it from me, not only by forcing it last in the list of
| posts, but also because when I log in as admin, the post is not
| shown to me!
|
| Bloody hell.
|
| At that point I knew Reddit could not be trusted.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| >pushed it into my sub,
|
| *their sub.
| TX81Z wrote:
| Is a bottle of water a bottle or water? Neither right? And
| I'd say a sub is the same.
| whyenot wrote:
| I am astounded that Steve Huffman would do this. There was the
| incident ~7 years ago where he silently edited a post that
| criticized him, but I thought he would have learned from that,
| and this is so much worse.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Why would he have learned from something that didn't punish
| him in the slightest? That edit, ellen pao, that time they
| tried to hire someone who I think was a known pedophile or
| something... None of it has stopped reddit from bringing cash
| and clout to the people in charge, and none of it has
| prevented them from getting to the point where they will most
| likely walk away after the IPO with plenty of millions of
| dollars each.
|
| This is the inevitable outcome of a human who has never been
| told no or punished for their misdeeds. This is what it looks
| like for a spoiled child to run a company.
|
| We have a lot of that lately.
| MrMember wrote:
| >I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or delete
| themselves over this.
|
| Subreddits are run by volunteer moderators and are entirely at
| the whim of reddit. If any substantial subreddit tried to shut
| down or go dark permanently reddit would just remove the
| moderators responsible.
| shagie wrote:
| ... or the community would spin up a new one with a slightly
| different name and a new set of moderators if the demand is
| there.
|
| There are lots of permanently dark/private subreddits out
| there that have been "lost" to some dispute or another.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| See this response reddit posted
| https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/143sho8/admins_c...
|
| Seems the threat of mods to shut down subs holds some weight
| after all, and they are backtracking on some things. Most third
| party apps will still not work, but they are supposedly going
| to improve mod tools in the app, and there will be plenty of
| API exceptions for mod bots, non-commercial apps and
| accessibility focused apps.
|
| This seems a lot more reasonable, although the API pricing is
| still bonkers.
| bardfinn wrote:
| Their willingness to exempt screen reader / accessibility
| capable or accessibility focused third party apps from API
| pricing is good faith IMO.
|
| So the NSFW changes seem to be prompted by regulatory threats
| & Reddit getting the approaches covered, & this also seems to
| confirm that the API shutdown for many third party apps is
| because the API was a golden goose for those developers,
| laying golden eggs - both in user content & in giving those
| app developers the opportunity to run their own adverts
| alongside reddit content.
| shever73 wrote:
| They still repeat the "Apollo threatened us" lie, even though
| Christian's recordings prove that they apologised and
| accepted that misunderstanding.
| petepete wrote:
| Sync too; the true gold standard of Reddit apps.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/144jp3w/_/
| eiiot wrote:
| Losing one of the best Apps on the app store is really
| heartbreaking. Although I'm hoping for Apollo to be open-sourced,
| it's probably unrealistic.
| detourdog wrote:
| He should just make a new service and point the app at that.
| malermeister wrote:
| There's already lemmy, a fediverse reddit alternative!
| detourdog wrote:
| he should make his GUI work with that.
| avani wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| fumar wrote:
| Did you read his post? He recorded the calls which were
| misconstrued publicly. [1]
| https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...
| doublerabbit wrote:
| aka slander. Much kudos to the guy recording the calls
| taubek wrote:
| Reddit CEO will have AMA tomorrow
| https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ce...
| skeaker wrote:
| Anyone wanna take bets on if this will take the throne as the
| new most downvoted thing on reddit?
| data-ottawa wrote:
| It's practically a certainty. I'm going to make some popcorn
| and watch.
|
| There's absolutely nothing good that can come out of this for
| Reddit, unless they're going to put up some concessions which
| are enough to get 3rd party devs back to the table.
| progbits wrote:
| Will he edit users' posts to ask the questions he likes
| answering?
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_...
| badwolf wrote:
| I'm sure that will go over just swimmingly...
| goolz wrote:
| I for one welcome all of these tech CEOs making utter fools
| of themselves for us all to watch. And welcome the paradigm
| shift as people start seeing the technocrats for what they
| are. Steve, you could have walked away from it all years ago.
| And now you get to go down in history as a villain (hint:
| because you are one).
| square_usual wrote:
| > Then yesterday, moderators told me they were on a call with CEO
| Steve Huffman (spez), and he said the following per their
| transcript:
|
| > Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they'll "make it easy" if
| Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes
| is coercing us. He's threatening us."
|
| > Wow. Because my memory is that you didn't take it as a threat,
| and you even apologized profusely when you admitted you misheard
| it.
|
| Wow, I didn't know it'd gotten that bad.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| [flagged]
| goolz wrote:
| Honestly this is the tipping point for me to just move on.
| Reddit is an ad-filled cesspool, with a morally bankrupt
| C-suite. Growing up I actually looked up to this guy. . . how
| pathetic and sad. Such a fall from grace, and for what?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Reddit leadership desperate to dump the pig on public markets,
| pulling out all the stops. Literally their only path forward is
| to find some other greater fool to hold the bags, regardless of
| what they have to say to make it happen.
|
| Edit: Maybe keep an eye on what they say to catch them
| performing material securities fraud? Wayback early, wayback
| often!
|
| Edit 2: Damage control mode:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ce...
| (r/reddit: Join our CEO tomorrow to discuss the API [Locked])
| duffyjp wrote:
| > 0 points (18% upvoted)
|
| lol
| [deleted]
| crazypyro wrote:
| Locking comments on a website built on the commenting system.
| Something hilarious about that.
| timmytokyo wrote:
| Reddit could have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat
| simply by purchasing Apollo and making it available as an
| official app. So many people would have paid a significant
| monthly fee for an ad-free, quality mobile reddit experience.
| But no, they had to go full-on maximalist _destroy-all-
| intruders_ mode, and now they 've got an unnecessary PR
| nightmare on their hands. From the perspective of fiduciary
| responsibility, reddit is completely deficient. What a bunch of
| idiots.
| mulmen wrote:
| How long do you think Reddit would have kept Apollo ad-free?
| That would cost them whatever Apollo cost and have the same
| result. The value proposition of Apollo is that Reddit _doesn
| 't_ own it. They already have a client. It sucks. Why would
| this be better?
| tensor wrote:
| They didn't even need to do that. They could simply have
| changed the terms so that user-facing clients like apollo
| either need to show reddit ads, allowing no ads for users of
| reddit premium. They approve api users anyways, supposedly,
| so mod tools and the like could be exempt, and they could
| introduce higher cost efficient bulk export of comments for
| large scale generative AI machine learning use cases.
|
| Instead of being the shit-show it is now, it could have been
| a good money maker.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| I'll repost this link as it seems so very strange to me with all
| of the complaints these days about bots and fake accounts pushing
| narratives that everyone seems to forget Reddit was built on fake
| accounts replying to each other: It's so gross.
|
| How Reddit Got Huge: Tons of Fake Accounts
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/z4444w/how-reddit-got-huge-t...
| goolz wrote:
| I am tempted to make an allusion that involves us, the making of
| foie gras and Reddit's ad-tech supremacy. With Steve being the
| guy who nails the ducks to the wood, forces the funnel down their
| throat and. . . well ya, you get the point.
| squegles wrote:
| One the best apps on iOS. Will be sad to lose it.
| ketchupdebugger wrote:
| Apollo wont be the only one. This is all for Reddit's greed and
| trying to increase margins before attempting to IPO. Looks like
| I'll finally be free of my reddit addiction on July 1st.
| sebastialonso wrote:
| I see two pretty distinct issues here: 1) most people's favourite
| app is going to die, and 2) many subreddits will be negatively
| affected by this move: prime example is /r/AskHistorians.
|
| Personally, 1) is not really an issue and people are enjoying the
| outrage train, and that's ok and valid and whatever, but it's a
| third party app. It's a no-brainer decision to try to kill it if
| it's hindering your ability to make more money. At the mid term
| is a great incentive for Reddit to improve their shitty app
| experience ("but Ads!" yeah, ads of course, you're not paying
| shot for using it, it's an impopular but pragmatic business
| model)
|
| But 2) it's the one that's really concerning. Hopefully they
| reverse this course for this point specifically cause this has a
| measurable impact on eyeballs, which ultimately means money.
|
| inb4: "Apollo dying means less eyeballs too dummy", yeah as I
| mentioned before the outrage is the fad. Once it passes, will see
| how much people actually leaves (little to none alternatives for
| Reddit btw). My bet is that could result in a small hump, if
| anything, in the long run.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > 1) most people's favourite app is going to die
|
| Third party apps representing less than 5% of Reddit's traffic,
| this is by far not "most people's" favorite app.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| Maybe so. But this situation has been blown up so much that
| now more than 5% of Reddit's traffic probably has a sour
| taste in their mouth about how Reddit treats people. This is
| something that's going to affect a lot more than 5% of their
| traffic as mod tools, bots, and more go down.
| samstave wrote:
| DIGG Ver. 5!
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| I think issue 3, especially in relation to a potential IPO, is
| Reddit's leadership again demonstrating a flippant willingness
| to lie and distort reality to suit their purposes and the
| carelessness to get caught doing it.
|
| Surely there is a reasonable business case to be made for this
| policy change. Attempted character assassination of a 3rd party
| developer with blatant falsehoods, not so much. I dunno, maybe
| they aren't worried and there's plenty of investors an wall
| street ready to hand over big bags of money to a demonstrated
| liar.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| What is causing #2? Do the mods use Apollo exclusively or
| something?
| esdott wrote:
| Yep. While I'm not 100% positive, I also think mods that have
| certain disabilities (like blindness) rely on the app
| extensively.
| [deleted]
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| The change isn't about Apollo exclusively, Reddit is going to
| start charging for their API. Basically all remotely adequate
| (which Reddit's 1st party tools aren't) moderation tools make
| extensive use of said API, so Reddit has basically decided
| "Hey, people who do most of the work necessary to keep our
| platform afloat for free, mind if you start paying us for the
| privilege?"
|
| Cue people being understandably upset.
| ameswarb wrote:
| Most communities rely on third party moderation services and
| tools which will also be impacted by the API changes. Many
| have said that moderating larger communities will be
| untenable without them.
| distances wrote:
| Here's the take by the mentioned AskHistorians: https://old.r
| eddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/142w159/askh...
| masklinn wrote:
| Not Apollo (though some might) but tons of moderation
| extensions and tooling which goes through the api.
|
| https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/142w159/askhisto.
| .. covers the moderation side.
|
| https://reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/13zr8h2/reddits_recently.
| .. Talks about accessibility.
| hendersoon wrote:
| That is of course their right, but they way they went about it
| is really scummy. Third-party apps, and the user-contributed
| content they engendered, built Reddit. Without its users,
| Reddit has nothing, is nothing. Just another forum site.
|
| They could have simply said "Due to business pressures, we're
| going to stop offering our API in 1 year" and honestly, nobody
| would have blinked an eye.
|
| Or they could have said "Due to business pressures, we're going
| to include advertisements in the API. Any clients found
| deliberately not displaying the ads will have their API keys
| permanently revoked."
|
| Or they could have said "Due to business pressures, we're going
| to stop offering free API access. Users who subscribe to Reddit
| can use their own personal API keys with a limit of 1000 calls
| per day."
|
| They did none of those things; they raised prices to a point
| that was completely untenable and gave app developers 30 days
| to FOAD.
| mrigor wrote:
| Relay App is also shutting down
| https://www.reddit.com/r/RelayForReddit/comments/13wsn92/gue...
| ZacnyLos wrote:
| Simply join Lemmy (i.e. beehaw.org) or Kbin (kbin.social).
| Jayakumark wrote:
| Will plan my way out of reddit.
| issafram wrote:
| Android's most popular Reddit app is called RIF (Reddit is fun).
| They will also be shutting down. The official app is so bad.
| Horrible decision by Reddit
| bagels wrote:
| I don't have any dogs in this race, but Apollo should be careful
| about recording calls. Just because he is in a one-party location
| doesn't mean he hasn't violated the law wherever the other party
| is if they are in a two-party location and he didn't have consent
| from the other party.
| elbigbad wrote:
| Just in case anyone sees this and takes it seriously: this is
| absolutely not now that works.
| minimaxir wrote:
| And even if it did in the US, I don't think anyone here is an
| expert on how phone consent laws work cross-country.
| [deleted]
| ericpauley wrote:
| California courts disagree: https://web.archive.org/web/20060
| 823045528/http://www.courti...
|
| Still looking for precedent on this at the national level,
| and of course International is another story. I could imagine
| (IANAL-YMMV) it being further complicated by where Apollo
| (the business) is legally domiciled.
| kanbara wrote:
| man ain't gonna get extradited to the us over recording
| consent.
|
| this makes no sense, these are STATE laws. if he is subject to
| jurisdiction of canada, then legally he is fine. that's like
| florida saying they will go to CA and arrest people who have
| trans kids. they have no legal standing
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| That's not how it works. If the state you are physically in
| allows 1-party recording, you can record.
| George83728 wrote:
| If you don't want to be recorded, then don't have phone calls
| with people who live in one party consent jurisdictions. This
| is common sense.
| thorncorona wrote:
| It doesn't work like this. You are primarily beholden to the
| laws of the country you live in.
|
| Unless you are enough of an issue that the US uses its federal
| might to clobber you internationally. In that case, you are
| pretty universally fucked.
| 3np wrote:
| That's not how that works.
| minimaxir wrote:
| The allegations of bad faith on Reddit's end will make the
| upcoming subreddit protest shutdowns more spicy.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| For what it's worth, I'm looking forward to July 1. Twitter had
| become a chore, but I didn't quit altogether until I was pushed
| out by losing the one client I found decent. It's been for the
| better. Like Twitter, Reddit has been on a long decline and has
| long since become a habit I stick to for no real reason other
| than that it's familiar.
| veilrap wrote:
| Same boat. It's going to be pretty trivial to stop browsing
| reddit once Apollo is gone. I'll probably still read links
| through google search from time to time, but it'll be a 99%
| reduction in usage for me.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Do you guys really expect a for profit company to offer free API
| access to 3rd parties, that offer a better experience with no
| ads, bypassing their revenue stream, and making their own site
| and apps look terrible in comparison?
|
| I've always been shocked Reddit allowed this at all. No other
| major player that owns a platform- FB, instagram, Google, etc.
| offers this either.
|
| I don't like it either but it makes perfect sense. You could even
| make the argument that not doing this would mean Reddit employees
| aren't doing their jobs, and aren't looking out for the company.
| rpmw wrote:
| Frankly I'm surprised they didn't nip this in the bud years
| ago. Hindsight is 20/20, I guess.
| Jackim wrote:
| The developers aren't asking for a free API, just one that is
| justified based on reddit's costs.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| The problem is people think of this in terms of "cost to keep
| the server on that serves an API request" and not the
| opportunity cost for ad engagement that actually makes the
| business viable.
| Jackim wrote:
| Sure, but there's also the value that the users create
| using these apps, and drive engagement to reddit. Not to
| mention the insane amount of volunteer mod work, many of
| who use unofficial apps.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > Sure, but there's also the value that the users create
| using these apps, and drive engagement to reddit.
|
| This is what people said about third-party Twitter apps,
| yet all of those power users and brands are still there,
| except the ones who are ideologically opposed to Elon
| (and were leaving anyway). It doesn't really seem to have
| made a difference.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Also the opportunity cost of optics... why is the overall
| user experience so much better with these apps?
| jkubicek wrote:
| > Do you guys really expect a for profit company to offer free
| API access to 3rd parties, that offer a better experience with
| no ads, bypassing their revenue stream, and making their own
| site and apps look terrible in comparison?
|
| I certainly don't expect this, and if you read the linked
| article, Christian didn't either. His primary issue was that he
| was only given 30 days to find a solution, which wasn't a
| reasonable timeline. His secondary issue was the pricing of the
| API access. Having a paid API in the first place didn't make
| his list of concerns.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Reddit is within their rights to make whatever commercial
| decision they want- concerns of anyone else be damned.
| rcxdude wrote:
| And everyone else is well within their rights to call their
| decision what they want. So what exactly is the point of
| stating this?
| [deleted]
| Sirikon wrote:
| Reddit moment
| ml_giant wrote:
| One thing I dislike about using Reddit (At least when accessing
| the main page from a browser) is that I have to be logged into an
| account in order to sort comments.
|
| Was this always a thing? I cannot remember if this was in the
| case in the past, and I don't really have a Reddit account that I
| actually log into ever.
| seatac76 wrote:
| spez is a comically bad CEO. This should not have been this
| complicated, if they wanted to kill 3P apps they could have just
| said that. This is a very Reddit thread () way of handling this!
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Looks like they just announced (as of about 30 mins ago) an AMA
| with u/spez tomorrow ...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ce...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I'm not a user of Apollo, and honestly have been perfectly fine
| using old.reddit.com on both mobile and desktop.
|
| That said, while I realize it's just his side of the story, the
| Apollo developer comes across as imminently reasonable and
| rational (and he apparently has the receipts to back it up),
| while Reddit comes across as embodying typical corporate greed.
| On a related note, I think everyone should understand that, in
| the long term, "Don't be evil" is simply _impossible_ for large
| corporations - the incentives are just too strong to prioritize
| short /medium term revenue growth over user experience.
|
| In any case, while I don't think the people shouting "I'm done
| with Reddit" will make much of a dent in Reddit's overall usage
| numbers, I personally am deleting my account and blocking reddit
| on my devices. If anything I think this drama gave me a nice
| little push to take more control over my time that will make me
| happier in the long run.
| falcolas wrote:
| > "Don't be evil" is simply impossible for large corporations
|
| I see Patagonia as the antithesis of this broadly accepted
| assertion.
|
| It's possible, it just takes having a goal for your company
| that's more than greed.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| You are right, but as others have noted, I should have put a
| caveat on my assertion that the incentive mismatch is really
| there for companies with "outside owners", either in the form
| of a publicly traded company or large VC/PE investors.
|
| If you keep a company private, and you don't take sizable
| outside funding, you can pretty much do whatever you want
| with your company.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Patagonia didn't take VC money, and reddit wouldn't have even
| survived this long if they hadn't
| paxys wrote:
| > and reddit wouldn't have even survived this long if they
| hadn't
|
| The parts of Reddit that people actually like - a single
| lightweight web app (old.reddit.com) minus all the fluff
| (constant redesigns, broken video player, live streaming
| service, overengineered mobile apps, avatars, NFTs,
| coins/gifts, social networking, chat, clubhouse competitor,
| expensive acquisitions) - would have survived perfectly
| well without VC money.
| srverma wrote:
| How so? It costs money to store & retrieve this content,
| at reddit scale (100m active monthly?). Ads clearly
| weren't paying enough of the bills, so what's the next
| best option?
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| You know: solving the engineering problem you just
| described...
| paxys wrote:
| Reddit made $500M in revenue last year, yet is
| unprofitable. The reason isn't its AWS bill, but the
| "must 5x every year no matter what" mentality of their
| VCs who are looking for their exit. This pushes companies
| to overhire, add useless features and waste money on user
| acquisition just to chase that growth chart and have a
| successful IPO roadshow.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| How true is that honestly?
|
| The more I talk to people the more I feel like people just
| like to party/waste money more than work.
| mulmen wrote:
| > The more I talk to people the more I feel like people
| just like to party/waste money more than work.
|
| Is... that a surprise to you?
| [deleted]
| rednalexa wrote:
| Isn't Patagonia privately owned though?
| nocoiner wrote:
| I don't know the details of Patagonia's ownership either
| now or before they put it in the trust, but Reddit is also
| privately owned (for now, anyway).
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Not just privately owned, but given away irrevocably by
| said owner to charity, and done in a way that intentionally
| incurred a large tax bill.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/patagonia-
| climate...
| blktiger wrote:
| Adam Connover has a video that pretty directly
| contradicts this assertion. I'm sure the truth is
| somewhere in-between.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cu6EbELZ6I
| gen220 wrote:
| It's healthy to have a skepticism of "rich" people, but I
| think it's really uncharitable to view Chouinard's career
| as mere wealth accrual for wealth's sake. To not view him
| as a role model for how business can be ethical is, IMO,
| a missed opportunity.
|
| Chouinard's goal was for his mission (the raison d'etre
| for Patagonia - to make high quality goods for outdoor
| activities, and to use the profits from this venture to
| protect outdoor spaces) to outlive his personal
| stewardship of Patagonia's control.
|
| When that's your goal, the set of options available is
| rather narrow. You have to pass on control to people you
| trust, whom you've developed strong relationships with,
| and whom you trust to evolve and pass that mission down
| to the next generation. Most importantly, you want to
| avoid the kind of grifters that Patagonia has been
| allergic to in its history.
|
| Plus, Patagonia already has a rich synergistic history of
| funding activism. It's not at all comparable to Gates,
| Carnegie, or Rockefeller who made their money and decided
| what "good" to spend it on in two discrete steps. For
| Patagonia, the most important thing is effective
| stewardship over an already-sailing ship
|
| Chouinard has written a lot of material that you can read
| for yourself and form your own opinion on. He's
| remarkably direct and transparent, there aren't really
| smoke and mirrors to navigate.
|
| That being said, anything he does with his "wealth"
| (itself an absurd idea, as he would never liquidate
| Patagonia shares and still never has) is going to rhyme
| with what other powerful people do with their wealth. You
| have to judge the people, not just the structures they're
| working within.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| I didn't know this before and now I'm inclined to buy
| Patagonia items at every opportunity.
|
| Seriously- I've had my eye on a Patagonia black hole
| duffle and now I'll pull the trigger.
| chimerasaurus wrote:
| If you are an REI member, they often have stuff in the
| used (Garage) site that is in excellent quality and also
| less expensive. Patagonia also has worn wear that does
| the same thing. Win-win - awesome stuff, no need to make
| a new one for you, and less expensive!
|
| - The guy who now has too many nanopuff jackets, but I
| will die on this hill.
| ravitation wrote:
| Chouinard is probably marginally better than your average
| billionaire, but it was almost certainly _not_ done in a
| way that didn 't also very clearly benefit him, and, more
| importantly, his family.
|
| https://qz.com/patagonia-s-3-billion-corporate-gift-is-
| also-...
|
| That NYT piece is, more or less, a fluff piece; and, it's
| also worth noting, this same maneuver is frequently used
| in ways that are probably seen less "charitably," given
| the political influence 501(c)(4)s' potentially wield.
| carabiner wrote:
| Reading that interview, it just sounds like a tax-
| optimized donation. It still causes him to give up wealth
| that he could have kept, but he's minimizing the loss. Is
| this not the case? If it is for pure personal financial
| gain, should we expect Jim Simons to pull a similar
| maneuver with Ren Tech at some point?
| ravitation wrote:
| You do realize that I'm responding to someone that made
| the assertion, also implied in the NYT article, that this
| "donation" was "done in a way that intentionally incurred
| a large tax bill." Right? What you're saying directly
| contradicts that, which was my point...
|
| This was _very obviously_ not done "for pure personal
| financial gain..." But should billionaires be able to
| donate billions, tax-free, to exert political influence,
| which, generally (though, with rare exceptions, like
| perhaps Chouinard), they will use to directly benefit
| themselves and their family? And, should they be able to
| do so in a way that maintains that political influence
| for their family for generations to come?
|
| Maybe Chouinard and his family have good intentions, but,
| like the article said, "one doesn't want a constructed
| tax system predicated upon everyone being like the
| Chouinards."
| zem wrote:
| nothing wrong with benefiting yourself and your family -
| the problem is doing that unfairly at the expense of
| someone else, which it appears he has tried hard not to
| do here.
| sota4077 wrote:
| Kinda ironic that the good deeds of Patagonia were
| written about on a website that we cannot even read
| because there is a paywall to access the information.
| Talk about seeing two sides of a spectrum haha.
| joecot wrote:
| That's the thing. A privately owned company can keep its
| morals if it has them, because the owners don't answer to
| anyone else. But as soon as a company accepts Venture
| Capital funding, or goes public, morals go out the window.
| The original owners no longer have control, and can't
| decide what the goal of the company is anymore. The goal is
| now to make money in whatever method is possible.
|
| Remember this whenever you see founders say that they
| didn't betray their original agreements. They betrayed
| those agreements as soon as they accepted VC funding or
| public trading, because that's when they agreed to lose
| control of the direction of the company.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| So is Reddit
| pphysch wrote:
| Fashion companies like Patagonia and online social platforms
| like Reddit are radically different with how they interact
| with network effects.
|
| Fashion benefits from exclusivity and brand identity. It
| behooves Patagonia to brand itself as "not evil" or "not
| capitalist" or whatever, it's ultimately a fashion statement.
|
| Social networks _suffer_ from exclusivity, and brand identity
| is an afterthought. I 'd wager that most Reddit users have a
| neutral/negative view of the Reddit brand, but they use
| Reddit anyways because of network effects (everyone is there)
| and the brand doesn't really impact their favorite
| subreddits. There have been many attempts at "exclusive"
| social networks with carefully crafted brand identity, and
| they always fail.
|
| There's a theory that social media also has fashion phases,
| but I don't think we have enough data to back that up.
| MySpace lasted about 6 years. Facebook is 19 and Twitter is
| 17 and both are going strong.
| mpalczewski wrote:
| Patagonia is pushing polyester with its associated micro-
| plastics, instead of the renewable natural fibers that they
| were using before like wool. Good, evil, depends on who is
| counting.
| mulmen wrote:
| Patagonia is clear about that decision though [1].
| Microplastics are bad but not the whole story. They still
| offer natural fibers which have their own problems. I don't
| think this is Patagonia chasing short term profits, I think
| they are trying to remain true to their corporate goals.
|
| [1]: https://www.patagonia.com/stories/an-update-on-
| microfiber-po...
| 0______0 wrote:
| > Good, evil, depends on who is counting.
|
| I'm gonna use that statement from now on.
| margalabargala wrote:
| It's hard to get to the billion dollar size and do
| literally zero things that anyone could criticize on moral
| grounds.
|
| I would assert that there does not exist a company which is
| both larger than Patagonia, and more moral than they are.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Least bad is not necessarily good.
| mulmen wrote:
| Do you believe Patagonia has done net harm or net good in
| the world?
| aschismatic wrote:
| You could also say least bad is not necessarily bad. It's
| a platitude.
| carabiner wrote:
| Patagonia helped Samsung modify their washing machines to
| reduce microplastic pollution:
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90904159/why-patagonia-helped-
| sa...
|
| Not a perfect company, I mean almost all of their iconic
| garments are plastic, but they're doing far more than other
| technical outerwear companies.
| mulmen wrote:
| I have one of their "iconic" puffy jackets. I bought it
| cheap at a gear swap because it has a tiny rip. That has
| never worsened, which I believe is a property of the
| material. The polyester is quite durable.
|
| I wear it about a third of the year here in Seattle. In
| the five years I have owned it I have washed it maybe
| once and possibly never. I don't even wear it in the rain
| often because I have a rain shell which is also plastic
| and also doesn't get washed.
|
| I do also have some hemp pants from Patagonia. I wear
| those often. They made it about three years before they
| needed to go in to have pockets repaired from cell phone
| damage. Those fibers require farm land and water to grow.
| Repairs help mitigate that damage.
|
| I'm honestly not sure which garment has the most negative
| effect on the environment.
| bhtru wrote:
| Reading the transcripts and listening to the audio and seeing
| how Reddit is behaving is a fucking wild ride.
|
| I use old.reddit.com on mobile and desktop so I'm not directly
| effected by these changes aside from the likely steep decline
| in moderation quality as longstanding mods lose their tools.
|
| I feel compelled to migrate from reddit and only utilize it as
| a resource for knowledge when it's the only resource for some
| obscure niche thing or sub-culture. That last statement alone
| speaks volumes about the danger of centralizing communities as
| reddit has done.
|
| Maybe a federated internet is back on the table for the future.
|
| Reddit for amusement is a blackhole.
|
| For the best really to leave.
| samstave wrote:
| also an exclusively old.reddit user - and my account is 17
| years old...
|
| But I deleted my primary account some months ago *after an
| admin hijacked my mod status* in a sub that has 2MM users...
|
| EDIT:
|
| >> _I 'm not a head mod for any subreddit. But I do mod a
| few. It seems to me that reddit could simply replace the mods
| on subreddits that close down and force them open again._
|
| Was posted in that thread - and this is precisely what they
| did to me after being top mod for TEN YEARS
|
| https://i.imgur.com/6Y5u7O7.png
|
| as far as I am concerned, /u/spez can go eat a dead baby as
| he so much stated in the early days of /r/cannabilism. Maybe
| reddit WILL be the dead baby he gets to eat.
|
| -
|
| I have never used a 3rd party app - but everyone always spoke
| highly of apollo - but this post just shows that apollo's
| founder has more class than the entirety of reddit's staff
| (or at least c-suite) combined.
|
| I imagine they got some sort of 'consultant' or some stupid
| MBA firm like McKinsey or something telling them their KPIs
| were failing...
|
| They needed to increase the revenues from their API to pay
| the consulting fees for their 'experts'
|
| And frankly - reading the comments from spez and other reddit
| respondents in that thread, read like the idiots in
| Succession when they went to LA
| an-allen wrote:
| I second this. I've deleted all the social media, except
| Reddit. When I see an organisation acting like this - its
| toxicity. Deleting reddit. I look forward tothe hours of my
| life back.
|
| Bye bye.
| bhtru wrote:
| Two quotes come to my mind.
|
| 1. From Marcus Aurelius, "The happiness of your life
| depends upon the quality of your thoughts."
|
| There's a lot of toxicity to the comments and opinions
| within the userbase of reddit. I remove that pool of
| thought from my lived life and arguably my happiness ought
| to increase.
|
| 2. From Epictetus, "It is the nature of the wise to resist
| pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them." I'll
| admit do a lot of mindless browsing on reddit. In the past
| I've used site blockers to block loading reddit for me and
| I'd have the muscle memory of cmd+t then typing in "old" to
| load reddit. That all too common doomscroll of post after
| post, reading comment after comment, still has a pronounced
| grip on me. It would serve me well to reclaim that time and
| my unconscious self away from reddit.
|
| This APIgate honestly, in an entirely self-serving way I'm
| thankful for it. For it to give pause to reflect on my own
| relationship with reddit.
|
| If they're doing this, old.reddit.com is on the chopping
| block too, might as well get ahead of that sooner than
| later.
|
| I know this whole situation is doing a lot of harm and
| there's a lot hurt over for folks, especially financially,
| but I'll take this as an opportunity to grow.
| kbenson wrote:
| > There's a lot of toxicity to the comments and opinions
| within the userbase of reddit.
|
| I think there's something weird that goes on with having
| a sub be a part of a whole and subject to the norms of
| the whole to some degree. Subs _can_ keep things good,
| but it takes effort. There 's some subs I'm part of where
| it's just _super_ toxic all around. Part of that is
| because of the nature of the sub (for a game where the
| users constantly feel ignored and a little put upon by
| the devs), but that only partially explains how bad it
| gets.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| What browser do you use for mobile? I just tried old.reddit
| on Brave and Firefox mobile and it was.....not pleasant,
| relative to my current 3rd party app.
|
| For desktop, it's the best, and I'll seriously consider
| ditching Reddit for good when it's killed, but it seems to be
| extremely poorly optimized for mobile (unsurprisingly)
| cortesoft wrote:
| I use old.reddit on iOS safari, works well
| PettingRabbits wrote:
| I enjoyed the .compact version of old.reddit.com until they
| recently got rid of it. Since then my engagement has plummeted,
| which is probably a good thing...
| [deleted]
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I'm sorry but how exactly is it being evil to shut down 3rd
| party clients that use your content and your bandwidth to make
| (huge amounts of) money off of you?
|
| Reddit owes absolutely nothing to those developers. This guy
| has to reimburse 250K of subscriptions, meaning he made
| millions, if not tens of millions, off of exploiting the API
| while not displaying Reddit's ads.
|
| Poor Apollo developer, he's going to have to wipe his tears
| with Benjamins and blow his nose with his silk disposable
| tissue.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| Reddit had no mobile app for years, and yet a ton of mobile
| users on 3rd party apps. Their own mobile app used to be a
| 3rd party app that they bought out. So without even getting
| into other creative uses of the API, they definitely owe some
| of their popularity to 3rd party mobile app developers. How
| much? Who can really say how Reddit would have evolved if it
| had no public API.
| treesknees wrote:
| If you read his post, he presents all the information you
| need to know that this isn't true. Reddit themselves admitted
| that the cost isn't about server/bandwidth usage but
| opportunity cost per user on 3rd party apps. And it's not
| exploiting the API if you are using the API within the terms
| of service agreed to when registering the API token. Apollo
| wasn't exploiting or abusing anything.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| 1) Apollo exploited nothing. Reddit offered their API for
| free for years.
|
| 2) Sure, he made a ton of money running Apollo, doesn't make
| what Reddit did less scummy.
|
| 3) No requirement, but it's largely accepted as courtesy to
| notify developers of any changes to the API policy,
| especially when it comes to pricing. Giving the developer
| only 30 days to rework their business model, change app
| architecture/design/code, pass App Store Reviews with
| Apple/Google, migrate subscribers to a higher-priced tier to
| afford the increase in pricing, and more is tantamount to
| spitting in their face. Especially when it's a drastic change
| from 8+ years of more or less the same.
|
| 4) Even if the developer did update pricing to be able to
| afford the new API rates, the developer himself stated he
| would have to be $50,000/month in the red for months while he
| waits for current subscription holders to have their
| subscription terms expire and renew at the increase rate, and
| that doesn't count lost subscribers who just decide to not
| renew.
|
| 5) Reddit admins and their CEO slandered the developer in
| interviews, outright lied, and got caught as the developer
| recorded the audio of all of their calls proving those lies.
| Reddit has done this stuff before (Back in 2016 the CEO was
| caught editing comments critical of him in the production
| database).
|
| 6) Reddit has every right to do what their doing, as Apollo
| has every right to call them out on how shit this whole thing
| is, when just back in January they said they had no plans to
| change their APIs in the short or medium term.
|
| Bad situation all around, but Reddit knows they're doing this
| to kill third-party apps. They just have to lie that they're
| being reasonable to save face so investors will buy them up
| when they go public in a few months.
| Jaepa wrote:
| > 3) No requirement, but it's largely accepted as courtesy
| to notify developers of any changes to the API policy,
| especially when it comes to pricing. Giving the developer
| only 30 days to rework their business model, change app
| architecture/design/code, pass App Store Reviews with
| Apple/Google, migrate subscribers to a higher-priced tier
| to afford the increase in pricing, and more is tantamount
| to spitting in their face. Especially when it's a drastic
| change from 8+ years of more or less the same.
|
| Doubly so if you've been repeatably telling developers
| you're not changing it & that developer has reach out
| specifically to say I know you have an IPO soon. Anything
| we can do on our end.
| foreverobama wrote:
| [dead]
| briffle wrote:
| How long do you expect old.reddit.com to stick around after
| they force everyone to use their own app for mobile?
| willis936 wrote:
| I think the users that will be leaving reddit are worth 100
| normal reddit users in terms of content value. Drain them and
| the rest will swirl down quickly.
| mayormcmatt wrote:
| For most corporations -- particularly the large ones -- I agree
| with you; however, there is also the B corporation route. Now,
| I have no idea if Reddit ever considered this path back in
| their earlier fund-seeking days, but it would have been an
| intriguing path had they done so.
| VHRanger wrote:
| you must be aware that old.reddit.com is on the chopping block
| in the next few months/years, right?
| joemi wrote:
| Is that official, or just an assumption?
| post-it wrote:
| Just an assumption, but i.reddit.com was recently binned.
| esskay wrote:
| There's been a great deal of talk about it on reddit after
| they closed i.reddit.com (Despite saying they wouldn't). It
| wont get announced officially, it will just vanish at some
| point.
| bhtru wrote:
| Honestly, I'd rather they do it sooner so I have a greater
| impetus to leave Reddit; to go outside and touch the grass
| for once.
| esskay wrote:
| FWIW there is suggestions that old.reddit.com is next on the
| chopping block. If that happens I dont think I could use the
| site anymore. The redesign is outright hostile.
| dandellion wrote:
| I'm hoping at least we'll start to see some alternative
| communities to reddit pop up. I've been on the lookout for new
| smaller communities for a few years now, but the only
| interesting things I've found are a couple of Discord servers.
| While they are nice, Discord has a very different vibe from
| public anonymous forums.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| There are plenty of old school forums. Example: I recently
| got into leatherworking. There are a couple of subreddits for
| it but also a large and active forum at
| https://leatherworker.net/forum/.
|
| Reddit has discoverability and single sign on for a bunch of
| forums. It also has some fun nice to haves like a mixed feed
| of all your interests. But old school forums tend to be less
| commercial and sometimes can be a lot more tightly knit.
| spott wrote:
| The biggest annoyance I have with old school forums is the
| single threaded nature of them. Reading through an entire
| 200 post thread to see if anyone actually responded to the
| one question that was asked in the third post is just
| incredibly inefficient and annoying.
| orangea wrote:
| "Imminently" reasonable and rational? What does that mean?
| re wrote:
| They mean "eminently" (i.e. "very")
| toby- wrote:
| Eminently.
| e40 wrote:
| I just logged into old.reddit.com w/Safari on iOS. The
| difference between that and Apollo is the difference between
| using reddit on my phone and not.
|
| That said, I have to think something is wrong: I seem to have
| been served the desktop version in Safari. I do have 1Blocker
| and AdGuard running in Safari.
| Majromax wrote:
| old.reddit no longer has a mobile version. The mobile
| interface was redirected to the new-style quite a while ago.
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| Yeah. I old.Reddit into specifics subs. Other than that it is
| too radicalized nowadays. Once you are starting out you care
| about user experience, but once you are too big to fail then
| you pretty much don't care - see Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
| they all designed UI around how THEY want the user to use the
| platform instead of how user would actually want to use it.
| d1str0 wrote:
| I turned on my 1Blocker app for ios to block Reddit for the
| first time in months after this drama.
|
| I only name drop the app because it has served me well for ad
| blocking and custom rules (like blocking Reddit).
| mock-possum wrote:
| > the Apollo developer comes across as imminently reasonable
| and rational
|
| honestly that's why Apollo is one of the rare apps I've
| actually fully paid for - iamthatis aka Christian is such a
| solid dude, always keeps his cool, no drama, gets his work
| done, cares about his users, like - it's a tragedy that Reddit
| is killing off his masterwork. They ought to be hiring him to
| do their mobile apps for them.
| kernal wrote:
| As the saying goes - never rely on someone else's platform for
| your livelihood. This was always bound to happen and it was just
| a matter of time. Reddit needs to eliminate all third party
| clients that block their ads and siphon potential ad revenue in
| order to be financially attractive to investors.
|
| For the Redditors that laughed and criticized Twitter when they
| capped user counts in third party apps and raised their API usage
| fees, karma was waiting with patience to return the favor.
|
| I view what Reddit did as an opportunity. Even though Mastodon
| was a spectacular failure, I could see a Reddit alternative that
| uses the federated model that Mastodon does.
| dh2022 wrote:
| I am done with Reddit.
| fermentation wrote:
| What's the next thing?
| randcraw wrote:
| I've heard there's a terrific service out there that's a real
| sleeper. USENET, I think it's called.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| I think Tildes is a good secondary alternative to Reddit, It
| was developed by a Reddit intern and RiD developer.
| intelthrow6 wrote:
| Are you open to sharing an invite?
| cjs_ac wrote:
| There's a pinned thread in /r/tildes where you can ask
| for an invite, and they'll give you one after a cursory
| look at your reddit profile.
| chrisin2d wrote:
| Sure.
|
| ~current Tilderino
| dcow wrote:
| Maybe I'm not cool enough, but how does this translate
| into an invite? I'm on tildes.net right now.
| intelthrow6 wrote:
| Had to read the source code. Go to /register
|
| I assume someone already snapped it; since no
| permutations of the above work
| dcow wrote:
| Anyone else willing to share a few?
| browningstreet wrote:
| For me, both Twitter & Reddit require a not-inconsiderable
| effort to extract value while ignoring/digesting the
| annoyances.
|
| Maybe fewer global social platforms and less time spent on
| them will do a lot of people more good.
|
| I'm guessing Reddit gets less global and ubiquitous, in the
| same way Twitter is more of a slice of a niche crowd now too.
| Maybe that's okay.
| coldpie wrote:
| Seems like things are currently migrating towards smaller,
| more closed communities. Things like Discord servers, any of
| the various services that popped up when Twitter went bad,
| invite-only chats on any of the various chat services, even
| web forums are still hanging around. Honestly can't say I'm
| sad about this transition, I tend to think smaller
| communities are healthier.
| chewonbananas wrote:
| I've been using hackernews as a great alternative to reddit.
| When they shut off compact reddit I completely moved to HN.
| dcow wrote:
| But HN doesn't have communities. We need something that
| gives you lightweight bulletin boards (because that's what
| reddit replaced). I love HN, but it's really just a
| subreddit with its own website.
| politelemon wrote:
| Tildes.net is similar but not a replacement
| [deleted]
| dimgl wrote:
| This is absolutely nuts. The only reason I was still using Reddit
| was because of the Apollo app. Best of luck to you in the future
| Christian.
| weinzierl wrote:
| I don't get this blackmail thing at all. What leverage would
| Christian have anyways. It's not that when he shuts Apollo down
| every of its users will quit Reddit and when it comes to bad
| publicity, the damage is already done.
| jacooper wrote:
| It would be very cool if he made the app free so people can
| actually try it before it gets killed.
| fooey wrote:
| RIF has now announced they will also be shutting down on June
| 30th
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_wi...
| dimgl wrote:
| This is pretty wild. I don't think I've ever seen something
| like this. I like it. I think Reddit needs to come down to
| reality.
| [deleted]
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > I don't think I've ever seen something like this
|
| Except for what happened with Twitter a few months ago.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| But Twitter is better, leaner, and more popular than ever
| now, and deservedly so, now that that sinking ship was
| righted. Reddit doesn't deserve anything like that after
| this.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| If you say so!
| petersellers wrote:
| > But Twitter is better, leaner, and more popular than
| ever now, and deservedly so, now that that sinking ship
| was righted.
|
| Hopefully this is sarcasm, because in reality the
| opposite is true (except for the leaner part).
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-
| sal...
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-is-now-worth-a-
| third-of...
| the_doctah wrote:
| A company's monetary value is not necessarily tied to how
| well the app works for its users.
|
| Twitter _is_ better for users now. Because it 's not
| censored to high hell.
| petersellers wrote:
| > Twitter is better for users now
|
| This is a totally subjective statement. For me its the
| opposite: All I seem to see there in replies lately are
| tweets about culture war bullshit talking points that are
| 100% noise and 0% intellectual value.
|
| > Because it's not censored to high hell.
|
| Except in Turkey, apparently
| amatecha wrote:
| Seriously? It's worse than ever. If I make the mistake of
| loading up that site, my only notifications are crypto
| spam and the homepage has really messed up ads every
| second post, like stuff I never want to see again (like
| some kind of effed up mosquito killer appliance which
| shows them dumping thousands of dead mosquitos onto the
| ground to demonstrate it works -- WTAF?) ... Combined
| with suppressing non-"checkmark" users, which basically
| means "pay to have your voice heard", nonexistent
| moderation, among countless other issues...
| dwayne_dibley wrote:
| I honestly don't think it will matter though. I've no data,
| but I bet Reddit doesn't need this traffic, most people's
| mums will just use the Reddit app and not care.
| graypegg wrote:
| You'd think so, but your mother was coming to the site
| because it was moderated, and had regular interesting
| content. She probably wasn't moderating or a top poster.
| Those people are the ones who are going to be pissed.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| You like it? This is the effect Reddit was trying to create -
| destroying third party apps which they are finding difficult
| to monetize. They're betting that these users will start
| using the website and the official Reddit app. How is this a
| good thing?
| dimgl wrote:
| The only reason I said I like it is because I want Reddit
| to face repercussions for the decisions they're making.
| Sorry if it sounded any other way. This is absolutely awful
| for me as a user, especially since I used Apollo everyday.
| But something NEEDED to happen.
| deeviant wrote:
| If the 3rd part Apps did find some way to eat the cost, it
| would basically solve reddit's monetization problem.
| Redditors could feel good paying 10$/month to their
| favorite reddit ap developer, and not evil corpo Reddit,
| and reddit gets their money.
|
| This was probably the best-case-scenario Reddit was hoping
| for.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I bet the only users they lose will be the real power-
| users, ya know, volunteer moderators and that sort.
|
| Hopefully for the owners' sake they manage to finish their
| IPO before that whole situation explodes.
| gtop3 wrote:
| > Hopefully for the owners' sake they manage to finish
| their IPO before that whole situation explodes.
|
| That just kicks the can. After the IPO there are more
| owners on the hook if things go critically bad.
| eiiot wrote:
| Sync too.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/144jp3w/sync_wi...
| replwoacause wrote:
| If anybody has suggestions on where those of us taking part in
| the mass exodus can go, I'm all ears....
| renewiltord wrote:
| I still don't understand why the user flow can't be:
|
| 1. Download Apollo
|
| 2. Go to Reddit.com
|
| 3. Open your user settings
|
| 4. Generate a client_id and client_secret
|
| 5. Paste that into these two places in Apollo
|
| 6. There you go
|
| Sure it's not strictly to OAuth2, but it's going to work just
| fine, right?
| fooey wrote:
| Obtaining Reddit API keys is an application process, it is not
| automated
| costco wrote:
| Don't you just visit https://old.reddit.com/prefs/apps/ and
| press "create application"? I did this a few years ago and it
| was instant.
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| Because it would get pulled from the App Store.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The App Store doesn't allow for this sort of auth process?
| Surely you could showcase it as just `username` and
| `password`.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Because Reddit wants you to enter an agreement with them for
| the API, so you need to submit a request to get an API key for
| those client_ids.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Ah, not every user would be approved, huh? Cool, makes sense
| then.
| [deleted]
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Can someone please explain to me why users of third-party apps
| like Apollo don't just use their own API keys and pay for their
| API calls themselves?
|
| Why is the third-party app vendor (and not the users themselves)
| paying for these API calls?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's a basic problem for platform rot that the client is usually
| specific to a network today.
|
| Consider the following: AOL instant messenger, ICQ, Paltalk,
| Tivejo, MSN Messenger, Microsoft Messenger, MSN Messenger, Skype,
| Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, 11 different messaging apps from
| Google, Zoom, Go2Meeting, WebEx, Microsoft Lynq, Skype for
| Business, Slack, iMessage, CuSeeMe, Discord, ...
|
| A user looking superficially at those applications might notice
| very little difference or progress between them, the one thing
| they have in common is they are not compatible with each other,
| many of them are tied into a proprietary ecosystem (AOL,
| Facebook, ...) and a major difference is they are tied into
| different proprietary ecosystem.
|
| Such an app always follows a scenario like "You should install
| Skype and contact me, unlike Paltalk it really works these days".
| You try it and you're like "Wow! This really works!" but after a
| few years it becomes less reliable and buggier than it was when
| it started. Some new application comes along and is in a
| honeymoon period where it knows it has to actually work in order
| to add new users while the old broken app can coast because they
| figure nobody can disrupt their two-sided market. History shows
| that the old app really will deteriorate to the point where the
| incumbent advantage is lost and a new app will be better.... For
| a while.
|
| What amazes me is that everybody from users to the app makers are
| stuck in this cycle and seem to have very little insight into it.
|
| It's a reason why you need a service that is separate from the
| client and have to have competition for both. Unfortunately users
| seem to violently opposed to this and open messaging platforms
| like XMPP have only caught on with military and law enforcement
| users.
|
| The "fediverse" is a light of hope in this respect, what you
| learn when you get involved is it is not just Mastodon but there
| are many different systems that are inter operating. I wish the
| EU would take the problem seriously and just legislate
| interoperation between messaging apps, I mean, you can call an
| Android user from an iPhone, a Verizon customer can send a text
| to an AT&T customer, it is long past the time when you should be
| able to send a Slack user a message from Facebook messenger.
| BEEdwards wrote:
| >Unfortunately users seem to violently opposed to this and open
| messaging platforms like XMPP have only caught on with military
| and law enforcement users.
|
| I don't think it's the protocol users have the issue with, it's
| that generally to get the best out of it you need to run your
| own server and nobody wants to run their own server.
|
| I run my own server and don't want to run a server...
| Exuma wrote:
| Fuck reddit
| mindslight wrote:
| Why is there NEVER any talk of _adversarial interoperability_?
| Explicitly maintained and versioned APIs were a nicety, but not a
| necessity! _Especially_ in this day and age of continually pushed
| code updates. Why just throw away Apollo 's popularity and go
| dark, rather than simultaneously diversifying by adding support
| for open platforms that appreciate users (eg Mastodon) while also
| mitigating the damage Reddit can do by continuing to access the
| site like every other HTTP user agent?
| polalavik wrote:
| can Apollo just switch to supporting Lemmy.ml? That would be nice
| their UI kinda sucks at the moment.
| gnoop wrote:
| You mean Lemmy in general? Lemmy.ml is just one of many Lemmy
| servers. Though there's some discussion coming up on how things
| are going in Lemmy regarding anything surrounding any criticism
| of China or Russia.
|
| So far, there's been attempts to spin up new servers to
| mitigate issues on lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml while others are
| looking to Kbin which also federates with Lemmy but uses
| separate software.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Tapbots building a good app for Mastodon after Tweetbot got
| killed didn't suddenly push Mastodon into a top-tier social
| network.
| shafyy wrote:
| No, but great third party apps for Mastodon definitely keep
| me using Mastodon more than I was with the official app. I'm
| sure it's a similar story for many others.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| In the thread he said he rather let it die because he is
| already tired.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Probably not financially viable to do so.
| dijit wrote:
| Depends, could be a cart leading a horse situation.
|
| As in: Maybe Lemmy has bad UX which is why it craters
| adoption.
|
| Spending some resources on an Apollo version with Lemmy
| support sounds like a good idea assuming the dev time can be
| recouped.
|
| Since Apollo is a paid app I think there's a more direct path
| to financial relevance than number of eyes in ads. :)
| bennylava wrote:
| [flagged]
| planetjones wrote:
| My account was 13 years old on Reddit. I just deleted it.
| hokkos wrote:
| Why not provide a form in the app to enter your own reddit API
| token, then a user could register its own pseudo app while
| staying in the free quota, or use the official reddit app token
| ;)
| rogers18445 wrote:
| Is there a legal reason why they can't just scrape reddit and
| forget about API? It would be the app users doing the scraping.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Or just clone whatever API the official Reddit mobile client is
| using. As long as it's offered for free to the official app,
| there's no technical way to stop another app from using the
| same API. The best they could do is bundle some private keys in
| the official app, but ultimately anything on the client can be
| reverse engineered and cloned by another app.
|
| The only solution Reddit has to that is complaining to Apple,
| who can reject the third party app from the App Store. There's
| precedent for this with things like "unofficial" Pokemon Go
| clients. Apple is usually happy to remove them. But I'm not
| sure it's ever gone to trial - it would certainly be
| interesting, given case law around APIs like with Oracle v
| Google, or LinkedIn v HiQ.
| yett wrote:
| I don't think even cloning anything would be necessary. They
| will still allow free tier of 100 requests/minutes if
| authenticated so why not let people use their own tokens? htt
| ps://reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_update_e...
| hold_and_modify wrote:
| Welp, there goes my Reddit usage. It's been a good run.
| jamespo wrote:
| It's quite simple, make API access conditional on having reddit
| premium. Reddit get $50 a year and the apps can continue -
| although the userbase would be significantly lower.
| r00fus wrote:
| Not a high enough tax for management, it appears.
| dcow wrote:
| Reddit is so unimaginative it's baffling.
|
| 10 million for Apollo is also a fucking steal. I mean fire
| your mobile team and buy Apollo for 10 million? WTF why is
| that not the obvious play here...
| r00fus wrote:
| The problem as other stated is that a) Reddit doesn't think
| Apollo moves the needle on users (I disagree but whatever)
| b) Apollo users wouldn't want the value extraction that
| management wants to implement.
|
| Yes, $10M is a fantastically low price even if they throw
| it away in a year.
| giarc wrote:
| >Will you sell Apollo?
|
| >Probably not. Maybe if the perfect buyer came along who thought
| they could turn Apollo into something cool
|
| I get that it's something he built and loves, but if someone
| shows up with $1m and the alternative is to shut it down and get
| nothing. Then take the money even if it's not the "perfect buyer"
| and it won't be "cool".
| rchaud wrote:
| No one is going to buy it, the API pricing makes it impossible
| to turn a profit.
| hayd wrote:
| There is one obvious candidate to buy it... but that was shot
| down as some kind of threat.
| bpye wrote:
| Presumably if someone were to offer to buy it it's because
| they intend to stand up a different back-end and try and
| start a new platform?
| MostlyStable wrote:
| I've heard these new API fees would result in monthly
| subscription numbers between $2 and $5/month. I'd pay $5 to
| keep my third party app (which isn't Apollo). I fully believe
| that _most_ users aren't interested in paying these fees. But
| I'm skeptical that there are so few that _none_ of these 3rd
| party apps will stay afloat. I've got to believe that if none
| of the current big players want to stay in, someone else will
| come along soon.
| fhub wrote:
| Given Apollo made WWDC in a few places including in Vision Pro,
| perhaps someone at Apple might consider just acquiring Apollo and
| pay the yearly API fees to Reddit.
|
| Over time Apple could then perhaps make the Reddit clone.
| replwoacause wrote:
| Wow... the "CEO" of reddit is a clown. I really had no idea.
| torartc wrote:
| I could see this as a Digg moment for reddit. They've made no
| effort to put out quality software of their own and will kill
| some of the best experiences for using Reddit.
| rewgs wrote:
| What an absolute shit show. Reddit is objectively in the wrong
| here. Like Christian says, I fully agree that Reddit should
| charge for API access. But this is ridiculous and is simply a
| transparent (likely successful) attempt to kill 3rd party apps
| and streamline the "brand."
|
| Ultimately, this is symptomatic of trying to monetize a service
| that either a) isn't something people want to pay for, or b)
| monetizing it in a way that kills the spirit of the service. A
| common problem with the internet, sure, but also smacks of a
| complete lack of creativity on the part of the suits. If this
| were an issue of maintaining Reddit's longevity, they could find
| a way to have their cake and eat it too. No, this is a clear
| attempt to raise their value before their IPO, so that a few
| suits can jump ship when the value is at its highest, as we've
| seen time and time again. And they're too stupid to see that
| their efforts fly in the face of their obvious goal.
|
| Reddit got popular for lots of reasons; a big one was that it was
| fun and still felt freewheeling in a way that the increasingly
| corporate internet wasn't. It was still anonymous (if you wanted
| it to be), weird, communal, much like the early internet that was
| seemingly disappearing before our eyes, and yet still decently
| mainstream albeit in a nerdy way.
|
| Something changed when people started referring to it as "social
| media." I've always been confused by that label. It's "social,"
| yes, and I guess it is indeed "media," but it's not "social
| media." It has little in common with Myspace or Facebook or
| Instagram. It has much more in common with internet forums,
| albeit with an IMO better interface (the tiered comments design
| is simple and brilliant, much easier to navigate and keep
| parallel conversations going than your standard in-line forum).
| We don't call forums "social media" -- that label is quite loaded
| and comes with a number of connotations.
|
| But alas, they tried to monetize it via the same model that all
| other "social media" is monetized -- with ads, clamping down on
| the weird, etc.
|
| This kills the Reddit. Remember Tumblr?
|
| My prediction? Reddit is going to limp on, but as even more of
| shadow of its former self than it's already become. It will
| become the Facebook equivalent of this kind of "social media" --
| a distinctly non-hip, safe, boring, corporate place, with an
| ever-aging user base. One day it will be sold for a comparatively
| measly fee to someone social media giant that doesn't even exist
| yet.
|
| Those who long for the Reddit of old will go off to other places.
| I myself already spend most of my time on HN anyways -- it's
| basically everything I want from Reddit and none of what I don't.
| It's got the "old.reddit.com" interface, doesn't require a mobile
| app to use on a mobile browser, is information-dense, clean,
| fast. Content-wise HN and the tech-related subreddits I frequent
| have a huge amount of overlap both in terms of content and I
| presume users. For everything else...meh, I can take it or leave
| it. The hobby subreddits are great, the /r/all comment threads
| for huge events are great, but all that was the cherry on top,
| not the cake.
|
| I'll probably just continue to mostly spend my time here, and
| check out, say, the various fediverse clones of Reddit. But just
| like Mastadon with Twitter, it'll be too fragmented to truly
| replace what everyone is jumping ship from.
|
| It's sad, but I suppose this is the way of all things. It's new,
| it's fun, it matures, it's stable, then it decays. So it goes.
| Exuma wrote:
| What did everyone think of that call?
|
| I'm not a client-facing person (a developer) so I might have been
| tongue in cheek myself as well. Not sure how any of that sounded
| threatening though...
| replwoacause wrote:
| Christian came off somewhat flippantly and didn't sound
| particularly experienced, but overall I trust his account of
| things. The reddit CEO seems like a weirdo to me.
| revskill wrote:
| What is Apollo ?
| paxys wrote:
| Fully understand his stance, but it's a shame that such a great
| client will be shut down. If nothing else I'm sure making it
| paid-only and charging like $10/mo (from the current <$1) will
| still be a sustainable business model.
| nvahalik wrote:
| I've been getting MORE porn spam on Reddit than I ever have
| before...
|
| I've blocked 2 dozen accounts in as many days.
|
| It feels like Reddit is about to implode.
| r00fus wrote:
| This sounds a lot like the whole Twitter issue where they messed
| with MFA, and ruined my ability to login anywhere other than a
| single laptop (that had an existing token).
|
| So that fixed my Twitter addition - I just stopped using it.
|
| The same will likely happen here - Reddit is going to find out
| that I'm happy querying for other users's content (from
| Google/Duck queries) but without Apollo, I'm probably not going
| to contribute.
| retskrad wrote:
| The Apollo app had much better performance than the official
| Reddit app. However, the design of the app was amateurish and
| hideous to look at. The official Reddit app is actually designed
| by designers and it shows.
| randcraw wrote:
| The Reddit website frequently resets itself back to the feed
| page when I'm scrolling up/down through posts. That amount of
| clueless disruption during routine use is a deal breaker for
| me. Goodbye Reddit.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Apollo's design is influenced heavily by Apple's/iOS's Human
| Interface Guidelines: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-
| interface-guideline...
| dubcanada wrote:
| That's an opinion that I'm not really sure matters for the
| conversation at hand. It's not about if Apollo is good, it's
| about how Apollo is being treated.
|
| You are free to use what ever you want, and that's the point.
| This removes everything but the Reddit app.
| phyllistine wrote:
| Swipe to upvote/downvote puts it leagues ahead of the official
| app already.
| to11mtm wrote:
| The official Reddit app, at least on Android, is a buggy mess
| from a UX experience.
|
| - Half the time, clicking on a push notification takes me to
| the front page instead of the post that was interesting enough
| to click on. And then the notification is gone, and I can't get
| to said post easily at that point
|
| - Sometimes, there's two articles that show up on the main
| screen that I want to read. I have to pick which one I want to
| read more, because there's a 50/50 shot that when I hit back, I
| will get a fully refreshed home page instead of being taken
| back to where it was.
|
| - Overall it feels less natural to navigate through than the
| Reddit web interface, let alone the 'classic' (old.reddit.com)
| user interface.
|
| - Probably not related to the design of the mobile app, but the
| hostile behavior of web reddit on mobile, constantly trying to
| force me into their subpar mobile app, is also irritating and
| painful.
| rektide wrote:
| Can someone please record a video of using this app? I'd love to
| have a record of what we are losing.
| activiation wrote:
| I would if it wasnt only available on iPhone
| Aachen wrote:
| Oh! I was wondering how I never even heard of Apollo until
| this debacle. It being only for lockdown platforms explains.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I would if it wasnt only available on iPhone
|
| That makes sense to me. I was also wondering how come I had
| never heard of this app.
|
| It also changes the calculus significantly: how many users
| does Apollo have, and how many users does Reddit have?
|
| Reddit just might not even notice the content produced by
| Apollo users.
| clessg wrote:
| Haven't used the app myself, but the website[0] seems to have a
| trailer video: https://youtu.be/MKbPZVDg-Z8 Apparently posted 5
| years ago, though.
|
| [0] https://apolloapp.io/
| whalesalad wrote:
| This is totally wild. Apollo is easily one of the best iOS apps
| of all time and one that I use daily. I can't imagine it just
| _poof_ disappearing over something like this.
| nerdchum wrote:
| Everyone is looking for an alternative Twitter but Reddit is
| straight up becoming a corporate bad guy and no one is looking
| for an alternative Reddit.
| duped wrote:
| The only thing more embarrassing than Reddit's behavior is that
| after 18 years and hundreds of millions in funding they can't
| make an app or website with a better experience than what someone
| can do in their basement with just API access.
|
| Part of me thinks that one of the reasons they want to kill 3rd
| party apps is because they're embarrassed that they're all better
| than whatever Reddit has come up in the last decade.
|
| Maybe they should listen to mods and users instead of trying to
| push whatever they want down users' throats, because it's not
| going to last much longer.
| LookAtThatBacon wrote:
| They killed Alien Blue to create the objectively worse Reddit
| app, despite the aforementioned funding and presumably skilled
| devs working there.
| khangaroo wrote:
| Probably because third-party apps aren't optimized to shove as
| many ads down the user's throat as possible.
| notatoad wrote:
| nah, their apps aren't just shitty in the normal commercial
| way. they're shitty in the non-functional way, non-money-
| making way. like not being able to figure out how to play
| videos.
| hinkley wrote:
| Even old.reddit.com was having problems playing videos for
| a bit.
|
| It's all clown college over there and this latest saga is
| their new graduate degree program. I'm afraid to see what
| the doctoral program will bring.
| [deleted]
| samstave wrote:
| This is precisely what they thought they were doing.
|
| They are thinking that there is "money on the table" without
| their ability to monetize their traffic...
|
| As opposed to thinking of reddit as a fucking internet
| UTILITY -- they are doing the same VC / MBA bullshit as every
| single other tech company.
| graypegg wrote:
| To be fair, there is a difference between a for-profit
| company that everyone thinks is a utility, and a public
| utility.
|
| However, they've shot themselves in the foot. For
| generating more ad revenue here IMO. The sort of ill-will
| they're creating will probably drive away the top-posters
| and moderators that make the site worth visiting.
|
| Is ad space on a site that's contracted by 1% of its users
| going to tank in value? No probably not. But is the 99%
| going to stick around when the content they came for is
| missing or not moderated? Ehhh...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
| [deleted]
| zzixp wrote:
| Holy shit
| foxbyte wrote:
| Sad news for Apollo users. Reddit's API pricing change hit hard.
| With estimated $20M annual bill, it's impossible to maintain
| service. Users, consider not refunding to support the developers
| in these trying times.
| davesque wrote:
| It really feels as though all of the API pricing issues across
| the industry are signaling a clear ending to the rosey eyed 2nd
| tech boom that began with the invention of smart phones and
| social media.
|
| I remember when my software career started in earnest back in
| 2011. There was a lot of positive energy in the air. A whole
| generation of people was discovering the joys of engineering and
| sharing their efforts and creativity through various forms of
| open access.
|
| Now, it feels like that's all gone. The spirit of generosity and
| altruism in the tech industry is much diminished. It seems we
| have an odd combination of C-suite mental illness and activist
| investors to thank for that.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Good, anything you share now is sucked up by ChatGPT and then
| that knowledge is instantly shared with everyone in the world.
| Let's go back to staying private if we want to keep our jobs.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > The information they did provide however was: we will be moving
| to a paid API as it's not tenable for Reddit to pay for third-
| party apps indefinitely (understandable, agreed), so they're
| looking to do equitable pricing based in reality.
|
| So far so good. Speaking facts, no opinion, no bias.
|
| > The price they gave was $0.24 for 1,000 API calls. I quickly
| inputted this in my app, and saw that it was not far off
| Twitter's outstandingly high API prices, at $12,000, and with my
| current usage would cost almost $2 million dollars per month, or
| over $20 million per year.
|
| No bulk discount?
|
| I guess it's in Reddit's best interest to have people on the
| official Reddit app in the first place.
| auggierose wrote:
| Reads to me like this Christian guy asked for 10 mill to shut
| down his app. Why would they want to pay him that, instead of HIM
| paying THEM 20 mill? They are happy with him just going away.
| Sounds to me like a threat without having actually anything in
| hand to threaten with.
| zamadatix wrote:
| From listening to the audio clip, my understanding was he was
| trying to point out the absurdity in Reddit's claim the app
| actually cost them $20,000,000 per year by facetiously pointing
| out, if it were true, they could have gotten the app
| permanently for a steal of half that yearly cost and both of
| them would have been significantly richer. It didn't seem like
| he was ever legitimately asking for $10,000,000 to shut down
| the app, he knew it didn't cost that much and wasn't worth that
| much. If he thought it was actually worth so much, he wouldn't
| be shutting it down now.
| auggierose wrote:
| I don't know, the argument doesn't work for me. Again, why
| would they pay him half the current operating cost to go away
| (even if that is not 20 mill)? Weird. Also weird to release
| audio publicly based on hear-say, the Steve guy didn't accuse
| him publicly of anything. I'd be very careful to be on the
| phone with this Christian guy, because, I might also "miss"
| (did he mention it at any point to the other guy?) that he is
| recording the conversation.
| zamadatix wrote:
| > Again, why would they pay him half the current operating
| cost to go away (even if that is not 20 mill)?
|
| Again, the insinuation was that if anything was actually
| costing them the absurd $20,000,000 per year for multiple
| years then they would have had equally absurd ways of
| dealing with it, like paying a ridiculous $10,000,000 for
| Apollo and still saving tens of millions of dollars, which
| would have made more sense to do than what they did (let it
| go for years). The most obvious interpretation of this is
| "So obviously it's not costing you that absurdly, and we
| all know it. Now stop jerking me around on this API price
| being 'reasonable'." not "And that's why I'm asking you to
| actually pay me $10,000,000 to go away".
|
| This method of pointing out how absurd the API pricing is
| came from a user, prior to the call: https://www.reddit.com
| /r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/comment/... (the "/s" means
| sarcasm, in case you were thinking they were being serious
| as well).
|
| > Also weird to release audio publicly based on hear-say,
| the Steve guy didn't accuse him publicly of anything.
|
| It's not just private hearsay, the two quotes attributed to
| Steve are from the moderation call transcript which has
| been shared and verified.
|
| > I'd be very careful to be on the phone with this
| Christian guy, because, I might also "miss" (did he mention
| it at any point to the other guy?) that he is recording the
| conversation.
|
| I'd be worried about talking to someone who feels the need
| to be careful when they know the call is recorded.
| wolpoli wrote:
| > Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they'll "make it easy" if
| Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes
| is coercing us. He's threatening us."
|
| I can't believe that CEO of Reddit was telling internal people
| that Apollo tried to blackmail Reddit for a $10 million payout
| when that didn't happen.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I know I'm stretching really far with this, but is it at all
| possible that the mods made that up, or somehow misheard Steve?
|
| Maybe I'm missing it, but that claim seems unverified. Did
| Christian post a transcript somewhere of exactly what Steve
| said to the mods? It seems like this could all be a big
| misunderstanding...
|
| Basically, the whole post hinges on the claim that spez was
| telling internal employees that Christian was making threats.
| But neither the calls nor the transcript seems to give any
| details about what exactly spez said. I'm inclined to take
| Christian's word, but we should all be aware that we are in
| fact taking him at his word, rather than the claim being
| proven.
|
| It seems really hard to believe that spez would apologize for
| misunderstanding him and then immediately tell employees that
| he was threatening Reddit. This _feels_ like a misunderstanding
| rather than malicious intent.
|
| > Then yesterday, moderators told me they were on a call with
| CEO Steve Huffman (spez), and he said the following per their
| transcript:
|
| > Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they'll "make it easy" if
| Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the
| scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."
|
| This doesn't sound like a transcript. I don't know what it is,
| but that's not how anyone in a work call would behave.
| Supposing Apollo did threaten Reddit, why would spez even
| mention that to the mods? Something's weird.
| emilecantin wrote:
| Re-read TFA. He didn't just post a transcript, he posted an
| actual recording.
| Kalium wrote:
| > Maybe I'm missing it, but that claim seems unverified. Did
| Christian post a transcript somewhere of exactly what Steve
| said to the mods? It seems like this could all be a big
| misunderstanding...
|
| He posted a transcript of what Steve told moderators. He
| posted a transcript - and recording - of the exact
| conversation with Steve in which this part of the
| conversation takes place. Both are in the OP reddit thread
| here. Just search for "transcript" in the page.
|
| It's the sort of thing you'd say to mods if you think it will
| get them off your back.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| > He posted a transcript of what Steve told moderators.
|
| The part I pasted, right?
|
| > Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they'll "make it easy"
| if Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind
| the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."
|
| That's not a transcript. That's a sentence devoid of
| context. We're now two steps removed -- not only do we need
| to believe Christian, but Christian needs to believe
| whatever mod sent that to him. Who's the mod? Why is the
| mod telling Christian anything? Why was Steve talking to
| mods about Apollo's threat? None of this makes any sense. I
| don't think anyone has malicious intent here -- bet you $50
| that it turns out to be some weird miscommunication. After
| all, there's zero benefit for Steve to be doing any of
| those things, and a whole lot of downside. Ins't a miscomm
| the more plausible theory?
|
| Ironically, if Christian's claims are unsubstantiated, then
| he's slandering Steve. But Steve slandering Christian to
| internal employees is precisely what Christian's so angry
| about. But why would internal employees break ranks and go
| tell Christian?
|
| There's something more going on here. I'm not sure what.
|
| > He posted a transcript - and recording - of the exact
| conversation with Steve in which this part of the
| conversation takes place.
|
| That's the point -- all that he's posted is a transcript
| where Steve says mea culpa. Then he posted some other
| person's two-sentence "transcript" of Steve badmouthing
| him. But it's not a transcript; it's weird.
| mr_ndrsn wrote:
| Transcript of call: https://gist.github.com/christianseli
| g/fda7e8bc5a25aec9824f9...
|
| > Me: No, no, I'm sorry. Yeah one more time. I was just
| saying if the opportunity cost of Apollo is currently $20
| million a year. And that's a yearly, apparently ongoing
| cost to you folks. If you want to rip that band-aid off
| once. And have Apollo quiet down, you know, six months.
| Beautiful deal. Again this is mostly a joke, I'm just
| saying if the opportunity cost is that high, and if that
| is something that could make it easier on you guys, that
| could happen too. As is, it's quite difficult.
|
| > Reddit: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you. I think it's... I
| don't know what you mean by quiet down. I find that to
| be-
|
| > Me: No, no, sorry. I didn't mean that to-
|
| > Reddit: I'm going to very straightforward to you too,
| it sounds like a threat. And I'm just like "Oh
| interesting". Because one of the things we're trying to
| do is say "You have been using our API free of cost for
| many, many years and we have absolutely sanctioned - you
| have not broken any rules." And now we're changing our
| perspective for what we're telling you - and I know you
| disagree with it. That hey, we want to operate on a thing
| that is financially, you know, footing. And so hopefully
| you mean something completely different from what I said
| when you say like "go quietly", I just want to make sure.
|
| > Me: How did you take that, sorry? Could you elaborate?
|
| > Reddit: Oh, like, because you were like, "Hey, if you
| want this to go away".
|
| > Me: I said "If you want Apollo to go quiet". Like in
| terms of- I would say it's quite loud in terms of its API
| usage.
|
| > Reddit: Oh, go quiet as in that. Okay, got it. Got it.
| Sorry.
|
| > Me: Like it's a very-
|
| > Reddit: Yeah, that's a complete misinterpretation on my
| end.
|
| > Me: Yeah. No, no, it's all good.
|
| > Reddit: I apologize. I apologize immediately.
|
| > Me: No, no, no, it's all good.
|
| > Reddit: Because what we're hearing in some
| conversations is folks are, you know, like in other-
| making threats, and we're like "Hey, that's not a
| conversation that we want to have". So I immediately
| apologize.
|
| > Me: Oh, no, no, it's all good. I'm sorry if it sounded
| like that.
|
| Link to audio: http://christianselig.com/apollo-
| end/reddit-third-call-may-3...
| rocky_raccoon wrote:
| There's an actual mp4 recording of the conversation on
| the phone call which lasts about 3 minutes. Maybe "He
| posted a transcript" should have stated "He posted a call
| recording" instead, but it's all out there now.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I'm not talking about the call. The call proves nothing.
| In fact, it proves that Steve is behaving reasonably --
| he realized his mistake, then apologized.
|
| I'm talking about _after the call_ , which is what the
| central claim of the post hinges on. The claim is that
| Steve went to internal employees and said that Christian
| was threatening Reddit. Where's that transcript? There's
| only two sentences, and those two sentences came from
| some third party moderator that wasn't even introduced in
| the story.
|
| Everyone is being hypnotized by the audio recording. But
| the audio recording doesn't say anything about Steve. The
| only one who said anything about Steve was the unnamed
| moderator, which we get no info about beyond two very
| weird sentences.
|
| EDIT: Ah, https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/143
| sho8/admins_c... gives the rest of the context.
|
| That was posted 20 hours ago. And yeah, if I were
| Christian and saw that, I'd probably go nuclear too.
|
| I thought Steve was badmouthing Apollo behind closed
| doors, and then someone behind those doors went to
| Christian. But that's not what happened. Steve publicly
| accused Christian of threatening Reddit - a council
| meeting counts as public.
|
| Thank you to PrimeMcFly for posting that link!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36246777
|
| Well, that's awful. I don't know what Steve was thinking.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| kstrauser wrote:
| The same CEO that explicitly confessed to editing users'
| comments? I can totally believe that.
| not_a_shill wrote:
| To be fair, buying 3rd party apps out makes absolutely zero
| sense when they can just ban them and improve their own client
| if that aligns with their business priorities.
|
| I stopped reading at that point. I probably would have laughed
| at the suggestion instead of taking it as blackmail though.
| Zetice wrote:
| And you know he's reading these.
|
| Steve, come on. Maybe Apollo shuts down, maybe you figure
| something out, but this whole thing becomes a lot easier to
| judge as an outsider if one group starts throwing mud like
| this. You should know better.
| goles wrote:
| Isn't this the same guy who went and edited comments of users
| who were critical of him on Reddit? If someone shows you who
| they are believe them...
| proxiful-wash wrote:
| Its the same guy who has let the entire platform be exploited
| for years at the expense of the people just wanting to
| connect about subjects online.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| He's also got a pretty sweet panic bunker, guns, food, and
| fuel supplies stashed away so when the division and panic
| he directly benefits from comes to a flash point he can
| ride it out safely.
|
| Steve Huffman is not a good person.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| But hey - he's "a pretty good leader. [Who] will probably
| be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to
| shove."
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-
| prep-...
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Amazing the tone and treatment difference because he is
| very liberal.
| foota wrote:
| The author doesn't want to look at it this way, but this is a
| really weird thing to say. My interpretation was that they'd
| make an offer to sell the app to reddit, but the specific
| phrasing there really is not that.
|
| edit: I still think it was the wrong way to approach the
| situation. Consider this from reddit's perspective, it would
| only make sense for Reddit to pay for the traffic if they think
| they would lose it if it Apollo went away, but then it's not
| opportunity cost.
|
| It doesn't make the change any better of a look for reddit, and
| you can certainly question whether it's true that Apollo users
| would just use reddit, but if you accept that then I don't
| think you can claim the moral high ground if you offer to
| accept payment to "make it go away". The developer should have
| approached this from the perspective of the value that Apollo
| offers users and reddit instead of the cost to make the problem
| go away. I imagine the dev doesn't accept that Apollo users
| would just switch over, but they shouldn't have made their
| statement in those terms then, and I think that was a mistake.
| gigel82 wrote:
| They probably thought it'll be a "he said/she said" situation
| and people will err on the side of the big co vs. the little
| guy. It's extremely funny that the conversation was recorded,
| so satisfying to catch them in a lie so open-faced...
| soneil wrote:
| They also made the same claim in r/partnercommunities too, not
| just internally.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/143sho8/admins_c...
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| That's a private sub, but boy I'd love to see that bloodbath
| of a comment section after Christian released the call
| recordings.
|
| It is always remarkable to see what an absolute bankruptcy of
| ethics some corporate leaders are burdened with, and a relief
| to see the consequences hit them in the face.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| >It's an extraordinary amount of data, and these are for-
| profit businesses built on our data for free.
|
| No spez you utter cunt. The data is not yours. It's my posts
| on your website. Your own fucking terms say I grant you a
| right to copy it, not that it's fucking yours.
| thih9 wrote:
| > We will exempt any mod tool or bot affected by the API
| change.
|
| What's the definition of a mod tool?
|
| If a mod uses Apollo to keep up with the posts on their
| subreddit, is Apollo going to be exempt?
|
| Or should Apollo pivot, add more moderation features and
| rebrand itself as a mod tool?
| Defman wrote:
| From the linked post:
|
| > We are open to postponing the API timeline to launch mod
| tooling, if mods agree to keep their subreddits open. We will
| discuss this in the Council and Partner call tomorrow
|
| Is that a threat, lol?
| flutas wrote:
| Even funnier to me, there's a not even thinly veiled threat
| right below it.
|
| >Blackout
|
| > We respect your right to protest - that's part of
| democracy.
|
| >This situation is a bit different, with some mods leading
| the charge, some users pressuring mods. We're trying to
| work through all of the unique situations.
|
| >Big picture: We are tolerant, but also _a duty to keep
| Reddit online._
|
| >If people want to do this out of anger, we want to make
| sure they're mad for accurate reasons, not over things that
| are untrue. That's a loss for everyone.
|
| AKA: If you protest we will remove you from the mod team
| for that sub, and force the sub back to public.
| Defman wrote:
| Not the first time they are doing it, from what I know.
| There was some AMA controversy that led to a similar
| blackout and mod replacements.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| Mods quitting en mass can destroy the whole website in
| days.
| jonas21 wrote:
| It sounds to me like the conversation went in a way that it
| could be interpreted as a threat.
|
| This is from the Apollo developer's own telling of the story:
|
| > _As said, a common suggestion across the many threads on this
| topic was "If third-party apps are costing Reddit so much
| money, why don't they just buy them out like they did Alien
| Blue?" That was the point I brought up. If running Apollo as it
| stands now would cost you $20 million yearly as you quote, I
| suggested you cut a check to me to end Apollo. I said I'd even
| do it for half that or six months worth: $10 million, what a
| deal!_
|
| If someone said that to me, i.e. "hey, just give me $10 million
| and I'll stop making things difficult for you," I would
| interpret that as a threat, even if they denied that it was.
| yankjenets wrote:
| Isn't that an offer, not a threat?
|
| Apollo is fully allowed to make things difficult by
| complaining on social media that he thinks the pricing is
| unfair. What is illegal or even unethical about that?
| z3c0 wrote:
| You might be prone to perceiving threats where there aren't
| any then. The only threat here was reddit's potential loss in
| revenue - offering to let himself be bought out for half of
| what they would supposedly "lose" in a year is extremely
| generous.
|
| Of course, this is all a deliberate reframing by reddit.
| Reddit wasn't going to "lose" anything so much as "not get".
| roflyear wrote:
| Right, I think some people are like this.
|
| For example, I had a boss once that would interpret
| everything I said as a threat (I had a friendship with the
| owners of the company).
|
| It's just, stupid, and insulting.
| circularfoyers wrote:
| How is he making things difficult for them?
| trilobyte wrote:
| Framing it as "give me money and I'll stop making things
| difficult for you" is disingenuous. The proper framing was
| "buy the app out and the API usage, and thus the $20mm/year
| in costs, will stop, or whatever you want to do with the
| product at that point".
| dbbk wrote:
| The API usage cost still exists, it doesn't just disappear
| if it's owned by Reddit instead of the dev
| rocky_raccoon wrote:
| You should listen to the audio transcript that was posted in
| the original link. I believe it will dispel that notion.
| dbbk wrote:
| It doesn't dispel it
| haberman wrote:
| I listened and I'm still confused.
|
| I would love to see someone state clearly:
|
| 1. What was Christian actually offering to do in exchange
| for $10M?
|
| 2. What did the Reddit person think that Christian was
| offering to do in exchange for $10M?
|
| 3. How are (1) and (2) different?
| dtech wrote:
| To be honest it sounded like that to me too. It's very hard to
| differentiate between some honest clumsy phrasing and fishing
| for a payout, and the "clarification" doesn't help with that
| since it could also be an excuse to save face.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| And the Apollo dev would be well within his right to
| _actually_ threaten them like that, because that's what
| Reddit is doing to him.
| rdlw wrote:
| I don't understand, what is the threat on Christian's part?
| His project is being killed, that's not a threat but
| something that is actually happening. He suggests that they
| pay him a small fraction of what he has cost them to shut
| down without compromising the reddit API as a whole. What's
| the threat, that he keeps operating? That's not an option,
| they are FORCING him to shut down.
| roflyear wrote:
| Christian was extremely awkward during that call - no way
| this guy was making some underhanded threat. He spoke in a
| poor way for sure.
| Panoramix wrote:
| Maybe with text snippets, but I don't see how somebody can
| listen to the conversation and come away with the idea that
| the dev was blackmailing anyone.
|
| https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-
| may-...
| dbbk wrote:
| I don't really buy the phrase "go quiet" in terms of API
| usage, it does sound like the developer was backtracking
| when called out on it
| crypot wrote:
| Definitely.
|
| It just makes no sense otherwise.
| roflyear wrote:
| Why misquote? He said "have Apollo quiet down" not "go
| quiet" he only said "go quiet" after the Reddit rep said
| that, in response.
|
| At least have your facts straight.
| dbbk wrote:
| Okay but what does this even mean in terms of API usage?
| Why would Reddit buying Apollo "quiet down" its API
| usage? I accept I may just be missing something here but
| I don't understand this.
| defen wrote:
| I'm shocked that people are interpreting this as _not_
| fishing for a payoff, honestly. "We can both skip off into
| the sunset" does not mean "rewrite the app to do fewer API
| calls", as he tries to claim later in the call. It means
| it's done, over, everyone is happy. And why would he say
| "mostly joking" if he actually meant doing fewer API
| requests? Nothing about this recording or transcript makes
| me think Selig is an honest person.
| roflyear wrote:
| That isn't what he claims later in the call. He claims
| that he'd shut down the app for $10m. How is that
| unreasonable?
| dbbk wrote:
| The app is getting shut down for $0 regardless, why would
| anyone pay $10m to shut it down?
| xNeil wrote:
| I mean, even in the text snippets you can see that they
| seem to understand after a bit as to what Christian was
| talking about.
| dtech wrote:
| in both the text snippet and the audio it sounds to me
| like 2 people politely pretending that the offer wasn't
| made. Notice how the CEO basically immediately cuts off
| the call after the "clarification"
| gojomo wrote:
| Having just listened, I can understand that
| misinterpretation!
|
| I can buy that Selig's words _may_ have been intended, at
| some level, as a jokey hypothetical to draw a point into
| contrast. That is, he _meant_ it as (fleshed-out
| sympathetic rewording): "If this really is just about a
| $20M drain to you, it'd be a dead-simple & efficient
| solution to pay $10M to make me go away quietly forever.
| But of course I wouldn't ask for that & you wouldn't do it,
| thus this isn't really just about solving your $20M/year
| cost center, but other mutually-agreeable futures."
|
| But Selig's _actual_ wording in the clip is exactly how
| people coyly /semi-deniably imply that they be handed
| various kinds of "go-away" or "hush" money. (That includes
| arrangements that might not technically be "blackmail" as a
| legal definition, but _feel_ like vernacular 'blackmail'
| to laypeople or business-negotiators.)
|
| Selig's opening words, of this audio clip, _absolutely_
| sound like an actionable offer "pay me this specific cash
| amount & your troubles - both technical/competitive & in
| terms of any ruckus I can raise in public - go away." I
| mean, here's Selig's exact words:
|
| "Uh, hey, I could make it really easy on you, if you think
| Apollo is costing you $20M a year, you cut me a check for
| $10M, and we can both skip off into the sunset. 6 months of
| use, we're good. That's mostly a joke."
|
| Until "that's mostly a joke", & depending on earlier
| context/levels-of-mutual-trust, that sounds like a specific
| offer to do whatever eases things for Reddit in return for
| $10M cash.
|
| And even after "that's mostly a joke", the 'mostly' leaves
| open that maybe something of this shape is legitimately in
| Selig's mind as a resolution.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > Uh, hey, I could make it really easy on you, if you
| think Apollo is costing you $20M a year, you cut me a
| check for $10M, and we can both skip off into the sunset.
| 6 months of use, we're good.
|
| This is an offer to sell Apollo. The opening stage of a
| negotiation. There's nothing wrong with saying this, at
| all.
| gojomo wrote:
| That's a possible interpretation. We don't hear the
| discussion before it. And it's a weird wording to merely
| offer a sale of assets for Reddit to then manage.
|
| The word choice, to my ears, more implies a "just gimme
| cash to make me shut up & disappear" attitude, or at
| least openness to torpedoing every other goal as long as
| the cash prize is big enough.
|
| I further think Selig's rush to qualify it as "mostly a
| joke" is evidence that _he_ noticed, in the moment, that
| what he just said sounded a bit brutally grubby. Maybe by
| this point he was getting angry his other hints that he
| mainly wanted an attractive buyout weren 't being met by
| serious offers.
|
| As I mentioned, such a tactic could be far from what the
| law declares as actionable 'blackmail' but still feel
| like a tough, "play ball or else" shakedown on the other
| side of the negotiation - the sort of thing people
| commonly describe, though somewhat
| figuratively/hyperbolically, as 'blackmail'.
|
| Is there anything "wrong" with that style of making
| joking payoff offers to "skip off into the sunset"? Well,
| in negotiations, as long as you're not breaking the law
| or sabotaging your longer-run reputation, what's 'right'
| is largely what gets you what you want, both for now and
| in enduring relationships.
|
| Did Selig get what he wanted? Does he come off as a
| desirable & trustworthy counterparty in other future
| collaborations & negotiations?
|
| I think he's got a legitimate beef with Reddit in many
| dimensions, but at the same time this audio clip doesn't
| make him seem super clear & fair in his communications.
| djdjdj wrote:
| Selig's posted audio doesn't vindicate him like he thinks
| it does. He struggles to speak about what he actually
| wants and should have hired an attorney (or someone who
| doesn't clam up and make unfunny "jokes" when nervous) to
| do the talking for him. I respect what the kid has done,
| but he's clearly out of his element here and I can
| totally see how reddit execs took it that way.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It's still very unclear what exactly right it would be
| buying with that $10 million. Instead of Apollo shutting
| itself down right it would pay for the privilege of being
| the one to shut it down? The payment doesn't make any
| sense and doesn't help Reddit offset the losses in any
| way.
|
| The Proposal was to have reddit by Apollo and monetize
| it, all the talk about going quiet doesn't make sense.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| > "pay me this specific cash amount & your troubles -
| both technical/competitive & in terms of any ruckus I can
| raise in public - go away."
|
| Wait a second, isn't that exactly what Reddit is doing by
| charging for API access with thirty days notice?
| Pyxl101 wrote:
| [flagged]
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Are you deliberately ignoring the next few lines of the
| conversation, then?
| jmholla wrote:
| > What is Reddit buying for $10m? The answer that "Christian
| will shut down the app and go quietly" is the only answer
| that makes sense in context.
|
| They're buying Apollo. Then they can shut it down and make
| the app stop making API requests.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| They don't need to buy Apollo for it to shut down, that's
| the point. Apollo gets shut down with or without the
| buyout, so what exactly is the $10 million payment securing
| roflyear wrote:
| So the whole raise-api-cost was in fact intended to just
| shut these apps down, and isn't to recoup costs, like
| Reddit is saying?
|
| That means Reddit entered in bad faith - at that point
| you can't fault Apollo for reacting to that bad faith in
| any way really, as long as it was legal. You can't be
| expected to act in good faith if the other party isn't.
|
| So, I still see no blame for Apollo folk (I don't use the
| app or know who they are before today)
|
| It's bad all around, my friend.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I dont think there is really anyone to blame.
|
| Apps cost them money they could be making in advertising,
| So they want big money or will cut the apps off. If apps
| could offer more money than reddit thinks they could make
| without them, then everyone would be happy, but that
| doesn't seem to be the case.
| DHPersonal wrote:
| Is it really a threat to offer to sell Apollo rather than
| face the public backlash that will happen by forcing it to
| shut down?
| ink_13 wrote:
| I don't see it that way. That was just a proposed business
| transaction: reddit pays a fee, and in exchange, the Apollo
| dev doesn't comment publicly on the API changes. What's the
| threat, real or implied? The alternative is he goes public,
| which is only a problem for reddit if they know what they're
| doing is wrong.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >The alternative is he goes public
|
| yes, that is the threat. Yes, it is also a business
| transaction. The two are not mutually exclusive.
|
| black*mail:
|
| _demand money or another benefit from (someone) in return
| for not revealing compromising or damaging information
| about them._
| [deleted]
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Not only do the receipts contradict the Reddit CEO, but even if
| they didn't, the Apollo dev is well within his rights to offer
| an ultimatum that either Reddit acquires his app, or he shuts
| it down. If he has enough leverage in that situation for Reddit
| to feel as if that's "blackmail," then it actually means that
| _Reddit_ is the one blackmailing _him_ with the pricing
| changes.
|
| On one hand they claim they need to increase pricing to cover
| their costs, but on the other hand, if he offers (or threatens,
| according to Reddit) to remove all those costs, they consider
| it "blackmail" - meaning they're losing something if Apollo
| shuts down. So why can't they either buy the app or provide
| discounted API rates or some specialized payment schedule that
| derisks Apollo's costs instead of forcing a $50,000 bill on
| them in thirty days?
| Malp wrote:
| DARVO
| hackernewds wrote:
| If you listen to the audio recording, it does appear the
| founder of Apollo heavily and directly proposed a buyout of
| $10M to go quiet.
| favorited wrote:
| I wonder how the employees will feel when they realize they
| were lied to, now that Christian has released an audio
| recording of the call.
| nkjnlknlk wrote:
| Unless there is another job offering with similar
| compensation/benefits/etc. I'm not sure most employees will
| be able to do anything. "Leaders" and bold-faced lies are a
| duo as old as time. Macroeconomic conditions have many
| chained to their shitty bosses.
| favorited wrote:
| It's less about what they can do, and more about whether
| they'll trust whatever their CEO says next time.
| feliscat wrote:
| I don't think that most people trust what the CEO of
| their company says generally. I know I don't.
| esskay wrote:
| given Spez has a long history of lying they probably dont
| care, they're just as complicit as he is.
| [deleted]
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| I'm curious about how this works: it Apollo is going to be unable
| to operate at the new prices, would it be possible to release a
| version of the App that takes the user's API key instead? And
| then the user can pay for Reddit API access directly?
| [deleted]
| whymauri wrote:
| Does anyone know if Reddit has explored acquiring/hiring the
| Apollo team before? And/or why not?!
| yett wrote:
| Back in 2017
| https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/13yc62g/comment...
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I was just thinking this could all just be a ruse to buy Apollo
| for cheap.
| Marsymars wrote:
| Well a) the Apollo team is two people and b) why would they?
| Reddit's priority is monetization. Acquiring/hiring the Apollo
| team doesn't help that goal.
| whymauri wrote:
| Monetization and growth go hand-in-hand. I'm an
| old.reddit.com user (even on MoWeb, I know I'm a psycho), but
| the way people talk about Apollo is like it's absolutely
| superior to the current Reddit app. If I were Reddit, and my
| users loved this third-party product _so much_, I would at
| least explore promoting Apollo to a first-class interface for
| browsing Reddit.
|
| For the scale of Reddit as a company, it's likely a trivial
| deal; whereas the cross-pollination of ideas and UI/UX
| learnings could easily be worth more than the cost of
| collaborating.
| zamadatix wrote:
| It is the vastly superior app. That said, Reddit thinks it
| can get significantly more profit per user itself or it
| wouldn't be pricing the API so high Apollo had to shut
| down. I think they are laughably wrong, but they clearly
| don't see it as worthwhile vs whatever they are planning.
| brycewray wrote:
| He put his email address at the end. As I told him in what I'm
| sure will be jillions of emails about the subject:
|
| > Have just read your amazing, sad, comprehensive Reddit post
| about the end of Apollo.
|
| > I was one of those long-ago paid-once users :-) and happily
| used Apollo for years. When I found out a few days ago what was
| happening to you, I actually deleted Apollo from my devices so I
| wouldn't inadvertently cost you money through background stuff
| once Reddit's API fees went into effect. Then, as I got really
| mad over what they'd done to you and the other third-party app
| devs, I spent hours deleting every comment and every submission
| I'd ever made to Reddit -- because, of course, they don't have a
| UI where you can do that easily -- and then killed my account
| after seven years, just because all of this had made me no longer
| want any association with that platform.
| jffry wrote:
| For anybody who would like to mass delete their own comments
| and submissions: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite/
| zamadatix wrote:
| Note: Reddit switched to archiving posts older than 6 months
| by default many years ago. Individual subreddits can opt-out
| of this behavior. If they have not, you will not be able to
| edit/remove your comments or posts there.
| scinerio wrote:
| This seems like a much more effective protest vs. subreddits
| going dark.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Why not just pay Reddit for their APIs? If you're making $20M a
| year by building an app on their platform, it seems totally fair
| to pay them $10M a year for access. Do you expect AWS to host
| your stuff for free too?
| dimgl wrote:
| It's unlikely the developer is making $20m+ a year. But only
| Reddit would know the real number.
| altairprime wrote:
| With the evidence collected and presented, I no longer support my
| viewpoint in the prior Reddit conversation about this here at HN,
| and I'm glad to see Christian taking steps to protect himself
| from Reddit by shutting down and walking away.
| fumar wrote:
| Apollo saved my Reddit usage years ago. It has too many nice to
| have features to list. I suppose off to Discord I go. Most
| subreddits have a discord parallel. More than ever it feels like
| all of the major platforms are ripe for disruption. They are
| filled with aggressive hostile ads, algorithms set to engagement,
| and closed experiences.
| jraby3 wrote:
| Just seems like that network effect is too powerful. Look at
| all the attempts to create a new Twitter (or Reddit for that
| matter) over the past couple years.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| I suspect that these efforts keep failing in part because
| people never needed Twitter and Reddit in the first place.
| Leaving one social network doesn't imply that a person will
| join another. I didn't open accounts on similar platforms
| after leaving Reddit, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter over
| the years.
| meonmyphone wrote:
| That's sad.
|
| I started using the mobile site after Reddit bought Alien Blue,
| and I saw how the user experience gradually deteriorated to push
| their mobile app.
|
| I occasionally used Apollo as an alternative, and I can
| understand the sentiment of the users. As a reluctant iOS user,
| Apollo was one of the things that kept me on the platform.
|
| Seeing the direction thar Reddit has been taking, I hope a new
| platform comes to take its place with the focus on
| discussions/community.
| colinrand wrote:
| I haven't seen much discussion in defense of Reddit protecting
| their content from LLM training competitors. This to me is why
| they have to crack down on their API, it's no longer just SEO
| links back, it's training someone else's models on your content
| and community for free. This to me is the elephant. It's horrible
| how they treat their app community, but this is a massive problem
| for them.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Even if we ignore the idea of just scraping the site, how much
| would it cost an API user to grab most posts just once? Is it
| actually enough to stop anyone?
| toyg wrote:
| That's already happened; if that were the reason, they'd be
| trying to close the barn after the horses have already crossed
| into another state.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| Sad. Just bought Apollo in March. But no hard feelings.
|
| Anyway, this will probably stop my Reddit consumption altogether.
|
| Already deleted my account a while ago, because some discussions
| became too toxic for me. Stil enjoying to read there and Apollo
| made it really enjoyable, even better than rif is fun on Android.
|
| Is there a good archive of previous Reddit content until now?
| dcow wrote:
| Funny how a history of categorically silencing certain
| viewpoints on a major discussion platform ultimately leads to
| _more toxicity_. Hmm...
| luuurker wrote:
| Allowing toxic viewpoints wouldn't make the platform less
| toxic though.
| adoxyz wrote:
| And my usage of reddit will close down as well.
|
| So excited to have all that time back to be honest.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Wow. That's a real bombshell. If everything he says is accurate
| (I haven't listened to the recordings, of course, but I'm going
| to assume his characterization of them is correct), then Reddit's
| behavior here is beyond the pale. Particularly them accusing him
| of making threats.
|
| It's hard to see how Reddit can actually survive with this level
| of mismanagement.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| Seems foolish to build your company to be entirely dependent on
| the generosity of free API access, then rage quit when you have
| to start paying instead of, you know, charging your customers
| more.
|
| Also I see no evidence that he was accused of blackmail. A linked
| comment in the Reddit thread states:
|
| >Apollo threatened us, said they'll "make it easy" if Reddit gave
| them $10 million.
|
| The linked comment is from "BuckRowdy", apparently not even an
| employee of Reddit and that is not "blackmail". To me that's
| "hey, acquihire me and my company for 10 million and then you
| don't have to do the work!"
| willidiots wrote:
| I hope Apollo's not overplaying their hand here, though it's
| super interesting hearing these conversations from the inside.
| It's clear reddit's got it out for the 3p apps, and I'm
| personally leaving reddit over this (longtime RIF user), but this
| post is a bit concerning.
|
| It focuses on the "[apollo can] quiet down [for $10M]" topic in
| the conversation, and the apparent misunderstanding between
| Apollo and Reddit, Reddit taking "quiet down" to mean "go away
| quietly, without a lot of public noise", as a threat.
|
| Apollo states that they meant "go dark", "reduce API usage",
| "reduce reddit opportunity cost". But for that position to make
| sense, Apollo would need some leverage here. They're using
| Reddit's API and platform behind the scenes - they have no
| leverage I can see. What am I missing?
| remote-dev wrote:
| The post mentions that Reddit calculates a $20M/yr opportunity
| cost to allowing Apollo to continue running as-is. Apollo is
| trying to say that $10M one-time is a bargain if Reddit truly
| believes the users are worth $20M/yr.
|
| I don't think Apollo is using this argument as some sort of
| leverage. Reading through the post, they seem well aware that
| they are defenseless. They only have the court of public
| opinion.
| [deleted]
| zamalek wrote:
| The angle was " _buy_ Apollo from me ":
|
| > "If third-party apps are costing Reddit so much money, why
| don't they just buy them out like they did Alien Blue?" That
| was the point I brought up. If running Apollo as it stands now
| would cost you $20 million yearly as you quote, I suggested you
| cut a check to me to end Apollo. I said I'd even do it for half
| that or six months worth: $10 million, what a deal!
|
| And it would have been a deal: 6 months of opportunity cost
| upfront to then turn into real profit. Instead they are
| permanently lose the [possibly] majority of that opportunity
| when those users lose access to Reddit.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >And it would have been a deal: 6 months of opportunity cost
| upfront to then turn into real profit. Instead they are
| permanently lose the [possibly] majority of that opportunity
| when those users lose access to Reddit.
|
| I dont think that is accurate. Reddit doesnt make 20M a year
| if they buy Apollo in this situation.
|
| If something costs 20 million/yr to operate, buying it doesnt
| reduce that cost. You are just out 10M upfront and then
| 20M/yr.
|
| The solution is not to buy it, but to make it stop.
| zamalek wrote:
| > Reddit doesnt make 20M a year if they buy Apollo in this
| situation.
|
| They claim that they would.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| No, they claim Apollo costs them 20M/yr (agreeably
| dubious). That doesnt mean Apollo can make 20M/yr if
| reddit owns it.
| zamalek wrote:
| Opportunity cost essentially means lost revenue. They
| (Reddit) aren't referring to server/egress/cloud/etc.
| costs. Eliminating lost revenue = new revenue.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >Opportunity cost essentially means lost revenue. They
| (Reddit) aren't referring to server/egress/cloud/etc.
| costs. Eliminating lost revenue = new revenue
|
| Sure, but that doesn't mean buying/owning apollo helps
| them eliminate that lost revenue. They eliminate lost
| revenue when Apollo stops existing, not when they buy it.
| What is the point of buying it if you dont want it to
| exist?
|
| Take 2 options:
|
| A> Buy Apollo for $10M, Apollo shuts down, 20M new
| revenue
|
| B> Don't buy Apollo, Apollo shuts down, 20M new revenue
|
| Spending $10M doesn't stop the losses, Apollo shutting
| down does.
| neoromantique wrote:
| I utilized a JavaScript script to delete all of my
| comments and posts from the past ten years. Despite
| adding delays between deletions, it took multiple tries
| over several days because some posts kept reappearing.
|
| I guess I want to emphasize that despite not being 3p
| client user (I was using old.reddit.com), this situation
| hurts sites reputation enough to bleed me as an user,
| enough for me to go through the trouble of actually
| wiping the account, in stead of leaving my content with
| me under <deleted>.
|
| It is unlikely they'll feel short-term traffic effects of
| this, but content quality will suffer for sure, will see
| how that'll pan out. (From the safety of HN comments, of
| course).
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| They seem to think the 20 million is payable.
|
| Even if they could only get a quarter of that from users,
| they'd be rolling in money after a year or two.
|
| > and then 20M/yr
|
| The servers don't cost anywhere near that much to run.
| comprev wrote:
| Unless you use AWS :-)
| pooper wrote:
| This forces Reddit to say out loud that the reason they
| want to introduce payments is to make third party apps
| stop.
|
| Reddit has to say that the pricing it has is reasonable
| which means that they have to say Apollo can earn (at
| least!) USD 20M a year. If Apollo can earn USD 20M a year,
| buying it for USD 10M is indeed a steal. Normally, if you
| think a company makes 20M a year, you have to pay at least
| x 5, so USD 100M to buy this money printing machine.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Claiming something costs you 20M/yr, doesn't mean that it
| can make 20M/yr.
|
| >If Apollo can earn USD 20M a year, buying it for USD 10M
| is indeed a steal.
|
| Not if you can get the same thing for doing nothing. Buy
| Apollo for 10M up front and make 20M/yr or dont buy
| Apollo and make 20M/yr. Does it really look like a steal
| when the alternative is free?
| nikaspran wrote:
| According to the quotes by Reddit themselves, the 20M a
| year is opportunity cost, not actual cost.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| agreed. Owning Apollo doesnt reduce the opportunity cost.
| They still lose 20M, but now they own Apollo.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| How do you think the Apollo users will lose access to Reddit?
| comprev wrote:
| The Apollo app makes API calls to their own server, which
| in turn makes calls to Reddit's API. From 30 June this
| proxy server will not function.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I'm aware, but that doesn't cut off Apollo users from
| Reddit. They will just have to use a different app or the
| official app.
| BEEdwards wrote:
| Most of the other popular apps are also shutting down and
| the official app is garbage.
|
| If I can't use Sync I'm not going to use reddit.
| comprev wrote:
| The key issue seems to be the 80/20 rule.
|
| The 80% are anonymous lurkers or accounts that very
| rarely post anything.
|
| The remaining 20% is split 15/5, with the former being
| frequent contributors to discussions - and the final 5%
| being _content submitters_ .
|
| The 5% power users interact via 3rd party apps because,
| quite frankly, the "official" UIs (App, Website) are
| totally shite.
|
| They also maintain the automated tooling to keep order of
| communities - again, accessed via API.
|
| Without the 5% submitting content, the 15% won't interact
| and provide the remaining 80% material to read.
|
| No material to consume = no advert page impressions = no
| revenue stream.
| minimaxir wrote:
| The point of the post is that Apollo _has_ no more leverage
| after exhausting all other moves.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Apollo needs to launch its own backend IMO. Reddit itself
| isn't some technological marvel.
| ezfe wrote:
| If Apollo keeps operating, it charges its users more and pays
| reddit $20 million for one year, and presumably continues
| paying that into the future.
|
| If Reddit purchases Apollo for $10 million, then those
| customers now belong to Reddit. For the first year, Reddit
| would "only" earn $20 - $10 = $10 million, but after that those
| customers would continue directly earning revenue.
|
| It's all about reasoning with the value of the app in terms of
| the api rates. Either the rates are unreasonable, or that would
| be a reasonable sale to Reddit.
| elpool2 wrote:
| I'm not sure that math is right? If the API access actually
| costs reddit $20m/year then charging Apollo users $20m/year
| just offsets those costs. So in the first year they actually
| lose $10m, and just break even in following years. It only
| makes sense to buy Apollo if the api costs are low.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > If the API access actually costs reddit $20m/year
|
| Do you think anyone believes that to be true?
| elpool2 wrote:
| Not at all. But it seems like the Apollo dev's argument
| was "if it actually costs reddit $20m they why not buy
| Apollo for only $10m", which doesn't make sense.
|
| This doesn't make what reddit is doing any more
| reasonable though, imo.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The dev specifically said "opportunity cost" as they
| explained, so the suggestion is that reddit thinks
| there's that much revenue available.
| elpool2 wrote:
| Ah, that makes much more sense. But, it could be the case
| that reddit thinks _someone_ will end up paying their
| outrageous fees, just not him. It doesn't necessarily
| follow that they think _Apollo_ is actually worth that
| much. Then again, if that's the case it would be
| reasonable to work out some sort of discount that
| reflects the true value of the Apollo user base.
| baq wrote:
| I'm an Apollo user and can't stand Reddit in any other form
| anymore. Apollo stops working and I'm out.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I'm also an Apollo user and plan to leave Reddit. Honestly,
| I'm kind of glad I'm being pushed to leave. Reddit has become
| a complete cesspool since 2016, and has only gotten
| exponentially worse since then. While I really enjoy the
| niche subs I participate in, the large subs are just a
| breeding ground for extremist views on both sides as well as
| some of the craziest conspiracy theories around. Good
| riddance.
| dend wrote:
| There's no hand to overplay here anymore - the app is shutting
| down, and the author made it clear that is the intention. While
| the verbiage could've been different, that doesn't really
| matter. In these kinds of conversations Reddit folks could've
| asked for clarification, not assume bad intent (which they did,
| but then misrepresented).
|
| Apollo's leverage was "We help keep power users on your
| platform, and keep them happy." And, as it turns out, while
| their numbers are not necessarily large, they are also some of
| the loudest and with most influence (see how many subreddits
| joined the blackout). What the outcome of this will be is to be
| seen, but it's a very shortsighted take from Reddit, in my own
| humble opinion.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Reddit is a huge tree that casts lots of shade across the forest
| floor. It may or may not topple completely, but its pretty clear
| that in the next month at least many large branches are going to
| fall, opening up the canopy for new seedlings to grow.
|
| Maybe we'll finally get some reddit competitors that aren't
| dominated by alt right blowhards.
| jll29 wrote:
| That's why I would not consider investing energy/money/time in
| developing an app/application/client of a proprietary third-party
| platform: they can lock you out any time, sunset the platform
| (seen with Google Search API) or decide to compete with you (seen
| with Facebook regarding games).
|
| Open standards, open-source based or decentralized platforms, or
| your own platform are the way to go (I'm talking here from the
| dev perspective, not from the end user perspective - but
| proprietary sites are equally annoying for end users when they
| get discontinued. Making a one-time exeption to my self-hosting
| preference, I had a blog hosted at Posterous until Twitter
| acquired them and they shut down).
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