[HN Gopher] Addressing the community about changes to our API
___________________________________________________________________
Addressing the community about changes to our API
Author : kotaKat
Score : 221 points
Date : 2023-06-09 17:48 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reddit.com)
| MrThoughtful wrote:
| I don't understand why the apps in question (Apollo etc) care
| about the Reddit API and its terms at all.
|
| Those apps are basically browsers. Applications to browse Reddit,
| right?
|
| Why not use the "html over http" API which every other browser
| also uses?
|
| Yes, you would have to harden the code a bit so it gracefully
| deals with the structure of the html changing sometimes. And you
| would have to update the parser from time to time. But is that
| such a big problem?
|
| Also: When using the API, how is the free API limit not enough?
| In TFA it says "100 queries per minute per OAuth client id". That
| is per user, right? Why does it take more than 100 API requests
| per minute to use reddit?
| patwolfe wrote:
| I think you are vastly underestimating the complexity and
| inefficiency of doing this for one of the most visited websites
| in the world.
| MrThoughtful wrote:
| How is the complexity of parsing html related to how much
| visits the website has?
| Timon3 wrote:
| If Reddit doesn't want third party apps, just how long do
| you think the HTML will stay consistent?
| simlevesque wrote:
| The html can change at any time, breaking things. An API must
| manage breaking changes.
| jaywalk wrote:
| > Those apps are basically browsers.
|
| Nope, not even close.
| MrThoughtful wrote:
| I don't mean web browsers. I mean Reddit browsers.
| Applications users use to browse Reddit.
| detaro wrote:
| > _In TFA it says "100 queries per minute per OAuth client id".
| That is per user, right?_
|
| No, it's per app.
| jchw wrote:
| Something changes one day, and then your app is broken until
| you update it, causing you to need to rush to fix it,
| especially if your app has paying customers. This could be a
| _massive, sudden_ change of any kind since you are effectively
| an adversary. Bad.
|
| You are behind a firewall designed to cut out bots, and now
| need to bypass or handle anti-bot CAPTCHA. Again, bad.
|
| You want to provide push notifications, but that requires
| background polling on a server. Yep, that's pretty bad, since
| it multiplies the effort AND erases the "basically just a
| browser" part in one swoop. Now you need to probably pass user
| credentials to your backend (bad) and scrape on the server,
| bypassing Cloudflare/etc in a headless manner (bad.)
|
| Reddit shuts down old.reddit.com and cuts off access to NSFW
| and "edgy" or perhaps just small subreddits except when logged
| in on official apps. Now you need to scrape from either
| official iOS/Android APIs where the keys could go invalid at
| any time, or the JS desktop site which is all JS and XHRs
| everywhere. The only way to make your app truly behave like the
| real thing is to carefully set up an actual browser engine and
| hide evidence that you're using automation, which is a lot
| harder than you might imagine. Yep, you guessed it. Very, very
| bad.
|
| For that last thing, Twitch's "integrity check" mechanism is a
| great illustration of just how user hostile things will quickly
| become. Twitch integrity check won't even pass for real
| browsers half the time. It hates Linux users. This is the
| future you get.
| xdennis wrote:
| > Effective July 5, 2023, we will limit access to mature content
| via our Data API as part of an ongoing effort to provide
| guardrails to how explicit content and communities on Reddit are
| discovered and viewed.
|
| Such a silly justification, as if children are using the API to
| find porn, which is so difficult otherwise.
| fffv wrote:
| Reddit is one of the most-used pornography sites on the
| internet, mostly because it's mixed in with a much larger
| amount of non-pornographic content so can't be filtered by the
| usual domain-blocking tools. Children are certainly accessing
| porn via both the website and apps that use the Reddit API.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if this was the first step towards
| removing all the pornography off Reddit entirely, for good
| reason as much of it is very extreme and not something children
| should be looking at at all really. And even more of it is
| degrading to women, depicting them just as holes to fuck. It
| was worse in the past too, with so-called "jailbait" subreddits
| and pornographic images of dead women, which were only removed
| after a considerable amount of pressure on the admins. Really
| makes one wonder what their priorities are.
| nemothekid wrote:
| You cannot access NSFW content from third party apps, such as
| apollo, without logging into reddit.com and changing a
| setting.
|
| If the goal was to remove porn, then just enforce higher
| moderation standards. Removing porn from the API doesn't give
| the impression of "we want to make the site safer to use",
| it's communicating "if you want your smut, use the official
| app so we can blast you with ads".
|
| I have my own qualms with the "protect the children" argument
| that everyone hides behind for their distaste of porn and
| this is why; it's never about protecting children; it's about
| controlling other people. If you view reddit's motivation as
| driving people towards to the official app where they can be
| monetized, then these actions make the most sense. If you
| delude yourself into think they are doing this to protect
| children, then why are they acting so inefficiently? Reddit
| already has precedence for banning crude subreddits.
| scrum-treats wrote:
| This is correct.
| faangsticle wrote:
| Or you could parent your children instead of relying on Big
| Tech to do it for you.
| cmdli wrote:
| Where are they accessing porn that doesn't already restrict
| all of Reddit? I feel like schools wouldn't allow either.
| LikesPwsh wrote:
| Home computers/mobiles with parental controls, for example.
| nullindividual wrote:
| This isn't the first step. The first step was to reduce
| visibility by removing NSFW porn subreddits from /r/all.
| kats wrote:
| They did explain that:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/143rk5p/reddit_he...
|
| > NSFW
|
| > Regulatory environment around NSFW is changing rapidly and
| aggressively.
|
| > The challenge is regulators and lawmakers (those who fine and
| sue), who don't care about 3rd party apps and don't understand
| them. They'll come after us, not the 3rd party apps. Lawmakers
| don't look at NSFW with nuance.
|
| > We have work to do on our platform around age-gating and
| related stuff to be able to keep that content - we will fight
| for it. Sex is universal.
| itake wrote:
| Their mobile web app public feed lets you view NSFW content
| without logging in, but if you want to view the comments,
| suddenly you need to verify your age.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Sounds more like they're trying to appease Apple's app store
| policy as they push further into app-first territory.
| sosodev wrote:
| How does that make sense? Apollo has been serving Reddit's
| porn to iOS users for years and Apple clearly supports it.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Maybe I'm wrong, but I strongly suspect reddit will crack
| down on adult content as they approach IPO (and is already
| being pressured to do so)... it's happened time and time
| again with community platforms and is one of the major
| dangers of monolithic app stores and investor driven
| decision-making.
| neysofu wrote:
| I don't understand the connection between these two
| events. Why would an IPO mean that Reddit has to crack
| down on adult content? We've seen this with many online
| platforms over the years, again and again, but I just
| don't understand it. Can somebody please explain?
| sodality2 wrote:
| It shines a brighter light on the platform, meaning
| advertisers may suddenly pull out because of their ads
| being shown next to "objectionable content". Reddit could
| preemptively crack down to avoid this.
| Timon3 wrote:
| But why are they blocking porn content for third party
| apps? How does that affect their own app store entries?
| How does it help them with Apples guidelines? There is no
| connection here.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Third party apps _first_ to further push users to the
| first party app. They 'll eventually crack down on all of
| it.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > as if children are using the API to find porn
|
| Yes they are.
|
| > which is so difficult otherwise.
|
| No, it's not.
| sosodev wrote:
| > Yes they are.
|
| What evidence do you have?
| paulddraper wrote:
| "Trust me bro"
| ok_dad wrote:
| Most of the porn limits on social media sites today are because
| of non consensual sharing. Porn sites today primarily have to
| deal with this, and they're not doing a very good job of it.
| Pornhub now requires accounts to verify themselves before
| posting content. The sites which don't require that are over
| run by no consensual images. It's pretty disgusting. Reddit has
| been cracking down on it but hasn't quite gone the whole way to
| eliminating it yet. Mostly they keep just making it harder for
| lazy, horny people to post things. Verification is the key to
| stopping this stuff, but it's hard to safely verify people,
| especially with todays AI tools which make it almost impossible
| to verify without actual personal info.
| [deleted]
| mrguyorama wrote:
| No, the vast majority of social media companies trying to
| limit porn on their platform are certain conservative
| religious fundamentalism groups working their ass off to ban
| all porn, currently by hiding behind the claim of "mountains
| of child porn" which has a small nugget of truth (child porn
| most likely gets uploaded to pornhub and other sites every
| day), but that's just a facade. The same group also goes
| after sites selling sex toys to consenting adults and makes
| no attempt to help victims of sexual violence. They are
| merely a rhetorical tool to justify their awful goals.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Well, I disagree, certain groups and states are attacking
| porn itself, but most of the lock down on social media
| recently is due to increasing levels of non consensual
| sharing.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| 3rd party apps have occasionally been denied app store
| validation because of age-restricted content. Reducing exposure
| this way will aid developers in the review process.
|
| Or it would if there were any 3rd party developers left.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Why would 3rd party apps have stricter requirements than the
| official app?
| cmdli wrote:
| I mean, 3rd party developers could already restrict NSFW
| content, so I don't think forcing it on them is much of a
| help...
| buildbot wrote:
| https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-298.ht...
|
| u/spez is likely violating the Canadian libel laws...
|
| Edit - Note this is not civil libel, this is the criminal code.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> Canadian_
|
| Who cares?
|
| I'm not being flippant: what jurisdiction - especially criminal
| - does Canada have here?
| buildbot wrote:
| The Apollo dev is Canadian
| tenpies wrote:
| I suspect that most Redditors just had rapid expertise
| emergence (REE) in the subject of international law, with a
| specialty in Canadian libellous extradition.
|
| Let's review the facts: Spez is an American citizen in the
| United States - a country famous for its Freedom of Speech.
| Good luck to anyone who wants to make the case that because
| he may have been slanderous to a Canadian citizen he should
| be extradited to face Canadian courts.
| pseudo0 wrote:
| The SPEECH act is specifically designed to protect
| Americans against libel tourism, so good luck getting a
| Canadian judgement to apply in the US.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act
| spiffytech wrote:
| The Apollo developer is Canadian.
|
| Though Reddit is an American company, and I'm not sure what
| the rules are for cross-region lawsuits.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| Even if Canadian laws applied here, which they don't, its not
| clear there is any libel here.
|
| I'm no fan of spez or what Reddit is doing, but it seems like
| the Apollo guy made some not clear messaging as well. He's only
| human, I probably would have made the same mistake, but it
| gives plenty of leeway for spez's comments.
|
| Reddit explicitly doesn't care if Apollo dies, they have
| already done their calculus there, but they don't seem to be in
| any significant risk of libel.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It's the guy that used privileged DB access to edit the content
| of other users' posts. Absolutely not trustworthy to any degree
| it blows my mind that he is still there.
| buildbot wrote:
| I mean that's shitty and unethical, but probably not criminal
|
| He's violating Canadian CRIMINAL code now!
| mikequinlan wrote:
| Overview:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/145bxmi/c...
| mastercheif wrote:
| https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnk8m0z/?cont...
|
| > I acknowledge it was a tight timeline. For what it's worth, we
| are continuing to chat with many of the developers who still want
| to work with us.
|
| This is his worst answer, yet. A complete lack of respect for the
| developers of the affected apps, as well as their users.
|
| I'm genuinely shocked that he's so willing to admit to the
| incompetence of Reddit's decision-makers and their complete
| disconnect with the situation on the ground.
| hysan wrote:
| Doubly so when he later apologizes to a 3rd party app developer
| who has been trying to get in contact with Reddit for the past
| 3 months over the changes:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnkd694
|
| > Apologies for the delay. We are responding now. > > If others
| have apps they would like to be considered for the paid API
| tier, please reach out here and select "This is a partnership
| request."
| tedmiston wrote:
| Still, in terms of the normal transparency level of an AMA,
| this one reads to me like he has a crisis PR person sitting
| right next to him filtering his replies.
| acrispino wrote:
| It seems he may be pasting pre-written answers: https://old.r
| eddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
| mastercheif wrote:
| It wouldn't surprise me if someone is copying questions
| into a GDoc for him and then he's dictating the replies in
| the GDoc, so they're using a Q/A format.
|
| These don't read as prepared answers to me.
| acrispino wrote:
| good point, thanks
| tedmiston wrote:
| I think the copy/paste from a filtered doc is a common
| setup for highly popular AMAs.
|
| I mean the post has 14,000 comments and it's only been
| live for 2 hours...
|
| Reddit's UI is just not good at that use case or threads
| with that amount of comments.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Well... the old UI is perfectly good at it. The new UI
| not so much.
| IanCal wrote:
| Let's not pretend the old ui is good, it's just not as
| bad as the replacements.
| mastercheif wrote:
| I disagree. It sounds like he's shooting from the hip to me.
|
| If there's a crisis PR person there, they've faked it until
| they made it.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| I can't comprehend how a crisis PR person would see the
| comment asking about Apollo and make the suggestion Steve
| pointlessly double down on the same accusation.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| No PR professional would have let him answer the Apollo
| question in the way he did. That made everything much worse.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| This is a contender for worst answer:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
|
| > We'll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive.
| Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.
| IanCal wrote:
| Tbh I think that's a good answer. As someone about to delete
| their account after archiving their data, I'm fine with that.
| They _need_ to be profitable. If they can 't break even
| Reddit will absolutely disappear.
|
| The problem is that they're fucking it all up.
| SSLy wrote:
| at least it's not a in your face lie, gotta hand it to him.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| Though perhaps an unwise comment to make while preparing
| for an IPO. Feels like a bit of a 'Ratner moment' if you
| ask me.
| pimlottc wrote:
| What are the "3P apps"?
| Krastan wrote:
| Third Party Apps like Sync, Apollo RIF etc.
| [deleted]
| dgellow wrote:
| 3rd party applications
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| Other highlights, in _addition_ to that and quotes from other
| users already in reply, include:
|
| - Steve continuing to drag Christian's credibility and doubling
| down on the claim that Christian says "one thing to us while
| saying something completely different externally," and offering
| no evidence a day after having that exact claim blow up in his
| face.
|
| - An admin insisting "We have programs in place to support our
| largest communities" and immediately getting replies by top 1%
| subreddit mods (ie ELI5) who tried those programs and said the
| admins they "adopted" hardly participated and didn't seem to
| understand the basic functionality of the mod tools. No further
| replies from reddit there.
|
| - Steve copy and pasting a comment verbatim from his planning
| document in reply to a blind user and accidentally leaving the
| "A:" as in "answer" on it before stealth-editing it and getting
| caught by the users. No further replies from Steve there.
|
| This is absolutely wild. I hope we get a detailed post-mortem
| on this AMA as a masterclass in poor public relations and
| devrel. It's so densely catastrophic. It's like a fractal of
| compounding mistakes reaching back to the foundation they laid
| when these changes were first announced. I didn't link the
| individual comments since they're all conveniently indexed at
| the top of the thread.
|
| And they have confirmed they are 100% bought into the plan that
| accessibility at Reddit at this time consists of the
| administration promising updates sometime in the future, and
| the expectation 3rd party developers will work "non
| commercially" to maintain alternatives in the meantime.
|
| At this point I have to wonder if this really is an intentional
| strategy to ensure the sort of users reacting negatively to
| these changes are driven away from the site as completely as
| possible as part of Reddit's ongoing macro shift. The fumbling
| is so thorough it looks purposeful.
| hbn wrote:
| All of the noteworthy Reddit apps already announced they're
| shutting down on the 30th.
|
| It's absurd he's even pretending that these developers are
| leaving because they "don't want to work with us." Selig posted
| so many receipts of him going above and beyond to play well
| with reddit, and never even had any qualms with the idea of
| paying for API usage. Steve Huffman pretending that we didn't
| see all of this is so spineless and pathetic. Everyone at
| reddit should be embarrassed to work for him.
|
| I hope their IPO tanks.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Meanwhile the AMA has multiple 3rd party app developers
| claiming they've reached out via official channels for months
| and have been ignored.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_.
| ..
| TheKnack wrote:
| What I don't understand about both this and Twitter's dislike of
| third party apps is why they don't just require third party apps
| display the same ads as their own app, and maybe support whatever
| paid features they have. It seems like that would be a win-win
| for both them and the app developers.
|
| More people use Reddit because of Apollo because the experience
| is so much better than their own app. They should take advantage
| of that by coming up with a mutually beneficial solution instead
| of killing it. They would make a lot more revenue by requiring
| that Apollo display ads than killing it and losing some
| percentage of users or traffic in the process. Are they that
| confident that all of the Apollo users are just going to switch
| to their own app on July 1st? (they won't)
|
| I understand why the status-quo isn't sustainable. Reddit has to
| figure out how to be profitable eventually, but this seems like a
| tone deaf way to try to get there which probably won't have the
| intended result.
| tedmiston wrote:
| The reddit post title mirrored on HN is intentionally vague.
|
| For those not closely following the Reddit killing off third
| party clients via API price gouging drama, this is one of the
| Reddit co-founders and its current CEO u/spez (Steve Huffman)
| doing a live AMA.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Bit disappointing that we haven't seen a competitor pop up since
| the announcement. With the instant hardware access of AWS and the
| infinite money of Silicon Valley banks, it's a bit shameful that
| no one is rushing to fill the market need.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Like how the market rushed to Google+ after the Cambridge
| Analytica scandal?
|
| You underestimate the staying power of a network.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| Well the Digg to Reddit migration was quick and very
| successful.
|
| Once you cross the trust thermocline,[0] collapse is sudden
| and virtually irreversible.
|
| [0] https://every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-
| the-bi...
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember Google+ being released. The
| limited beta is what prevented my friends from adopting it.
| Facebook had just released another garbage redesign and we
| were all eager to drop it like a rock.
|
| Actually now that I think about it, I would argue that the
| limited beta (and weird invite program) of GMail slowed its
| adoption as well.
| [deleted]
| unshavedyak wrote:
| My thoughts as well. At least during the twitter drama we had
| Mastodon, and while instances did struggle with the traffic
| Mastodon was in a decent position to handle that. I'm not sure
| if any alternative exists for this scenario, though.
| jacooper wrote:
| Mastodon absolutely failed at being a twitter alternative.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| /shrug, i use it daily and didn't before. But again, we're
| not talking about a Reddit or Twitter replacement. I don't
| even want that. I want a slice of features that can fill
| the gap that Reddit or Twitter did. Mastodon worked
| excellently for that for me. I've permanently switched from
| Twitter, 6mo ago or w/e.
|
| Reddit has Lemmy, maybe, but they seem in a less mature
| place than Mastodon was when Twitter fumbled.
|
| Naysay Mastodon all you want, but i think it gained a fair
| bit of traction from Twitter's event. Best of all, it's not
| trying to _be_ Twitter. I 'm looking for that with Reddit,
| currently.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| The internet is littered with dead Reddit alternatives, and
| very compelling live ones. I was into Voat for a little bit.
|
| Fact is, they dont have the critical mass Reddit does, and
| never will until it is actually dead, not "dying" like it has
| been for half a decade.
| fffv wrote:
| The generic Reddit alternatives like Voat, Saidit, Ruqqus,
| etc. haven't done too well, but there have been some
| successes when individual subreddits, or groups of
| subreddits, have migrated to their own sites and taken much
| of the userbase with them.
|
| Perhaps that is the better way forward than the aggregated
| approach of Reddit, going back to the old-school approach of
| separate forums with their own websites.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Like, say, HN.
|
| Yeah, this would be great if users move and the right
| entities sponsor it. Again, HN is a good example, as YC
| seems to have the right incentives to keep this place nice.
| tzs wrote:
| This time has a chance to be different. Perhaps not a large
| chance, but still quite a bit higher than sites like Voat
| had.
|
| The problem with Voat and many of the others was that they
| either started in response to Reddit changes that most users
| didn't care about and that of those that did care the
| majority favored the changes, or if they already existed they
| were small enough that the people who left Reddit for them
| due to those Reddit change quickly became the overwhelming
| majority of their users.
|
| Voat, for example either started because or got the majority
| of its users because Reddit got rid of /r/coontown and
| similar racist subreddits and got rid of a bunch of child sex
| subreddits. Those quickly reformed on Voat.
|
| People did make Voat groups for mainstream things like movies
| and science, and some people tried to make those decent
| alternatives to say /r/movies and /r/science but it did't
| work. Any decent discussion on /v/movies or /v/science you
| could also find on /r/movies or /r/science. But on /v/movies
| or /v/science you'd also have a bunch of the racist and
| antisemite discussions too which weren't on /r/movies or
| /r/science.
|
| For example see this Voat discussion of season 2 of The
| Mandalorian from /v/movies [1]. Here's an example from
| /v/science [2].
|
| This time has a chance to be different because this time it
| won't be the dregs of Reddit leaving. It will mostly be
| decent people leaving. Those who remain might actually miss
| them instead of being happy they are gone, and so might
| consider actually following.
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20201225021055/https://voat.c
| o/v...
|
| [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20201223123156/https://voat.c
| o/v...
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| Oh my god, cognito hazard warning on those two links.
|
| Was there some brief moment in time where there was any
| quality content on voat? why else would anyone volunteer to
| say they tried that platform and found it compelling :|
|
| That is insane, it is like a screenshot of the old
| notorious white supremacist boards from the 00s. Yeah no
| wonder that reddit alternative didn't have a meteoric rise
| to popularity.
|
| TBH, it seems like Discord is a natural alternative for
| many reddit communities, many of which already have one.
| And it tends to be more strictly moderated in my
| experience.
| elektor wrote:
| There is Lemmy and Tildes
| peacebeard wrote:
| I am leaving Reddit because I use Apollo and I don't think
| their mobile site or app are acceptable. I would like to try
| Tildes but I cannot because it's invite only and I don't have
| the time to figure out where to get an invite. I'll check out
| Lemmy. Thanks for the suggestions.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| it's because the Reddit users that are actually bothered by
| this are unmonetizable and everyone knows it. nobody is eager
| to jump into that sink hole and Reddit itself is happy to be
| free of it.
| sosodev wrote:
| Do we really want a venture capital backed competitor? It will
| just end up going the same way.
| bastijn wrote:
| The real sad part is that I would hate to see Reddit go down. All
| my searches nowadays are with "site:reddit.com" as regular google
| results will just give you affiliate posts and sponsored top 10s.
| Reddit is my prime source of true reviews, opinions and content
| written for the content, not monetization.
| [deleted]
| Mindwipe wrote:
| An almost textbook example of how not to do comms.
|
| Insincere, lazy, and easily proven wrong on several fronts, this
| has absolutely made things worse. There are several major subs on
| the fence now joining the blackout due to this performance.
|
| What were they hoping to achieve here? Seriously?
| sidcool wrote:
| I wish Reddit goes out of business for a very selfish reason. I
| am addicted to it and want it gone.
| adhvaryu wrote:
| I think this is a cheeky comment but I agree that it is very
| addicting. The karma system gets you hooked from early on and
| then 10 years go by and it becomes a part of your daily
| routine. An alternative without incentives to gain fake
| internet points might fare better.
|
| I've personally quit Reddit as of this debacle because it made
| me realise how much I used it everyday and this was a good
| enough excuse to look elsewhere.
| taldo wrote:
| I wonder if this change will at least mean the end of those
| autogenerated TikTok/Instagram videos of Minecraft playthroughs
| with TTS-narrated content lifted from /r/amitheasshole or
| whatever.
| sorenjan wrote:
| Huffman has been the CEO in charge of Reddit when they
| implemented both "New Reddit" and their mobile apps. I wonder if
| he's at least a little embarrassed that his team can't make
| something as well liked and good as some solo developers with
| only API access, not hundreds of millions of dollars.
|
| Nothing I've seen from Reddit the last years have been
| particularly impressive, they even used some third party company
| for their chat functionality which I don't think many users
| wanted or used. At least the uptime seems to have improved.
| jriggs wrote:
| [flagged]
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Totally wrong. Have you used Apollo vs the official iOS app?
| Night and day user experiences. The official app is buggy,
| ugly, difficult to navigate, and affords not even half of the
| amount of customization that Apollo does.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| I'm not that surprised, a handful or even a couple of
| passionate skilled developers can out-produce a 40-team of
| mediocre architecture astronauts with offshore contractors any
| day of the week.
|
| I have no clue if that's what's going on, but I've seen it many
| many times
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Wouldn't surprise me if the "official" Reddit app is now
| weighed down by a metric tonne of compliance that none of the
| other apps have to do. Not that it explains shipping actively
| user experience degrading features, but it can explain how
| they can get stuck with them once those poor decisions are
| made, because there is so much process involved to fix them
| that you basically give up.
| paulddraper wrote:
| This is a quantitative disagreement. Not emacs vs vim. Straight
| numbers.
|
| Reddit says the API will cost less than a $1/month per user. [1]
|
| Apollo says the API will cost $2.50/month per user. [2]
|
| Moreover, Apollo claims that Reddit itself makes only $0.12/month
| per user, therefore the API charges are absurd. [2]
|
| What are the correct numbers? These are numbers, not opinions.
|
| EDIT: One issue...I suspect that Apollo users are significantly
| more active than the average Reddit MAU. Say, 4x more active. So
| the $0.12/month revenue estimate is like (for example) $0.50 per
| Apollo user.
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
|
| [2]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...
| seanalltogether wrote:
| Reddit may be making their claims based on an app that doesn't
| issue push notifications and thus doesn't need to poll their
| servers 24/7 for every user.
| [deleted]
| itake wrote:
| Just a shot in the dark, but maybe reddit is only counting
| logged in users whereas you don't need to be logged in to use
| apollo?
| austhrow743 wrote:
| If they're not logged in then there's no reason to hit the
| Reddit api on a per user basis.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > Moreover, Apollo claims that Reddit itself makes only
| $0.12/month per user. [2]
|
| MAU are very different users compared to users making 200 reqs
| per day, and bring very different revenue.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Agreed. I think this is an issue in Apollo's math.
|
| Enough to account for an order of magnitude? IDK
| riku_iki wrote:
| > Enough to account for an order of magnitude? IDK
|
| reddit daily users (not MAU) are about 50m, which likely
| also don't generate 200res/d, and this difference is
| already order of magnitude.
|
| Other "issue" from apollo side: he compares reddit API cost
| to his imgur API cost of $166 per 50m reqs, while
| forgetting that official imgur API costs $3k/50m.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| > These are numbers, not opinions.
|
| > Say, 4x more active. So the $0.12/month revenue estimate is
| like (for example) $0.50 per Apollo user.
|
| Numbers can very much be an opinion if you pull them out of
| thin air.
| Timon3 wrote:
| Given the blatant lies by the CEO towards the Apollo developer
| I don't believe a single word that they can't prove.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| It's truly incompetent management. Spotify gatekeeps all
| third party apps behind their premium subscription, they
| could charge $10 a month for Reddit Premium to give access to
| Apollo and they'd make out like bandits. Spez sounds like he
| has personal beef with Christian on the AMA, that's Elon Musk
| level nonsense except replacing electric cars and space
| travel with a shitty web forum
| jupp0r wrote:
| Best summary of the whole saga I've read so far.
| tedivm wrote:
| THIS! Just make it so the third party apps only work for
| reddit gold users, or have limitations for non-gold users,
| and now they've converted a bunch of the apollo users into
| paying members. Instead they're lying and slandering
| people, getting caught, and doubling down.
|
| I'm getting the impression that reddit isn't profitable not
| because of any fundamental issue, but because the
| leadership of the site have absolutely no idea what they're
| doing.
| voytec wrote:
| He now blames[1] Apollo's author for saying other things in
| private and in public and "leaking" the phone call recording
| proving Huffman's lying, which - the developer mentioned at
| least twice - is legal in Canada where he lives.
|
| Sucks that I don't have popcorn at hand.
|
| [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressi
| ng_...
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| What are the odds that Spez replies to the response the
| Apollo dev left under that?
| HaroldBolt78 wrote:
| He could always covertly edit their comments if he's
| upset that people don't have the right opinions. It
| wouldn't be the first time.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| What is this guy's issue? Why does he keep saying and doing
| pointless things that are self-destructive and risky to him
| and the business? How has reddit let this situation run so
| completely out of their control?
|
| Divorcing entirely from the subject of the strategy change,
| the decision to execute it in this manner seems
| incomprehensible unless they truly do want to completely
| drive away as many of the users who even know about this
| change as possible. Maybe we are so ignorant of Reddit's
| real user metrics that they consider almost everyone
| reading that AMA to be a money drain.
| ink_13 wrote:
| He seems to be attempting to use a technique known as
| DARVO ("deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender")
| to smear the Apollo dev. This happens sometimes when
| people who know they've done something wrong are held
| accountable.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| MicropenisMike wrote:
| [flagged]
| gberger wrote:
| Reddit says "typical app user" but Apollo claims that its users
| make more API requests than is typical for other apps, in part
| due to higher usage, and in part due to inefficiencies in how
| Apollo structures its queries.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| It all just blows my mind, because realistically none of these
| details even matter. It's reddit's ball, they can take it and
| go home any time they want. They don't have anything to prove,
| they don't owe anything to anybody, not even an explanation.
| Ultimately they need to make a profit and they think this is
| the way towards that.
|
| I just can't understand why they feel the need to keep
| _publicly stating_ things that are either outright untrue or
| _at least_ misleading. Just make an announcement to the effect
| of "this is the pricing, we have determined this is the best
| way to meet our financial goals" and shut the hell up. It's not
| hard!
|
| The BS / gaslighting about precise numbers and the
| misrepresentation of what they've heard from developers is
| completely pointless.
| pas wrote:
| they are in the business of community building, a bit
| directly but mostly indirectly through the various subreddit
| teams
|
| thus they have a reputation as platform gods, and now they
| put up that reputation as bargaining chip, it's the classic
| "trust us, we care about you", and now it seems they really
| don't.
|
| so now they owe an explanation to users, teams, and in
| general to anyone who they directly or indirectly hurt.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > I just can't understand why they feel the need to keep
| publicly stating things that are either outright untrue or at
| least misleading
|
| I can only think of one reason: they're panicking.
|
| > It's reddit's ball, they can take it and go home any time
| they want.
|
| While this is true, Reddit knows they are dependent on their
| users for their survival. That's why they are panicking.
| cute_boi wrote:
| isn't everything depended upon their users for their
| survival?
| mcphage wrote:
| This is what I don't understand about their API charges: Apollo
| (and other 3rd party clients) make API calls _on behalf of a
| Reddit user_. If I (as a Reddit user) don 't pay money to use
| Reddit directly, why would Apollo have to pay to have me use
| Reddit through itself? It can't be a load issue, since presumably
| going forward I'd be making the same calls, just through Reddit's
| own app instead. Or if the load is reduced, then that means I'm
| using Reddit less, which doesn't seem like it's one of Reddit's
| goals here.
|
| Basically, why is Apollo paying Reddit for my Reddit usage, when
| I don't even pay Reddit for my Reddit usage?
| jmholla wrote:
| Presumably, you are paying for your Reddit usage through
| Reddit's ads.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I don't see where in this address they actually address the real
| concerns (eg: the mismatch between Apollo's statement and
| Reddit's).
| stephanerangaya wrote:
| Me neither
| MicropenisMike wrote:
| They don't
| jjcm wrote:
| The top comment asks that directly, but very unlikely there
| will be any response.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
| [deleted]
| kotaKat wrote:
| Oh, spez just dropped a hot load of defamation.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
|
| "His "joke" is the least of our issues. His behavior and
| communications with us has been all over the place--saying one
| thing to us while saying something completely different
| externally; recording and leaking a private phone call--to the
| point where I don't know how we could do business with him."
| dreadlordbone wrote:
| At least /u/spez hasn't changed one bit.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Can you imagine how badly he wants to edit posts right now?
| It must be killing him.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Is there any reason to believe he can't or doesn't? He's
| still CEO of the company, surely he can get db creds if
| he asks.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| People are quickly replying with screenshots and
| archive.org snapshots. He certainly can, but it would be
| plainly obvious and all eyes are on those comments.
| mastercheif wrote:
| It's incredible to me that VCs willingly invest in a company
| run by someone with the maturity of a 16-year-old.
|
| IMO, investors should ensure that a CEO can pass a 100 level
| undergrad PR class before handing them millions of dollars.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Its even more incredible that investors are going to pile
| into the IPO.
|
| ...What are the odds of Reddit being the next Facebook
| instead of the next MySpace? It has to be astronomically
| low.
| sorenjan wrote:
| The richest man in the world at the moment wouldn't pass
| that class.
| riku_iki wrote:
| but he is right: secretly recording and publishing business
| communication is dick move from the point of view of
| business ethics.
| yborg wrote:
| What sort of move is lying from the point of view of
| business ethics?
| kevdev wrote:
| In general I would agree, but the only reason the
| recordings were made public was because Reddit was
| straight up lying about the Apollo dev. So the recordings
| were released to prove that the Apollo dev was right.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > Reddit was straight up lying
|
| this part is up to debate. I would also consider "joke"
| with $10m sticker to go away quiet as a threat, which
| looks like didn't go through and apollo dev backed up.
| Timon3 wrote:
| The recording contains the Apollo dev explaining that it
| wasn't a threat, and spez acknowledging it as such. To
| other people spez still says he was threatened. How is
| that anything but a lie?
| kats wrote:
| If he was joking then why would he still be asking for
| reddit to buy Apollo?
|
| Yesterday he wrote,
|
| > Why doesn't Reddit just buy Apollo and other third-
| party apps?
|
| > This was a very common comment across the topics: "If
| Apollo has an apparent opportunity cost of $20 million
| per year, why not just buy them and other third-party
| apps, as they did with Alien Blue?"
|
| > I believe it's a fair question. If these apps
| apparently cost so much, an easy solution that would
| likely make everyone happy would be to simply buy these
| apps out. So I brought that up to them during a call on
| May 31st where I was suggesting a variety of potential
| solutions
|
| And he linked to a comment,
|
| https://reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_cal
| l_w...
| Timon3 wrote:
| I don't care whether he is joking, I care whether he is
| making a threat or not. He did not make a threat. spez
| understood him as saying "if you want this discussion and
| situation to go away quietly, pay me this". The Apollo
| dev was asking "if you're having these costs, why not
| just pay me half that and have the app quiet down?". One
| is a threat (pay me or XYZ will happen), the other is a
| legitimate question.
| kats wrote:
| No, he clearly was. I don't know how someone could think
| otherwise. He said "I could make it really easy on you",
| "we can both skip off into the sunset", "Bob's your
| uncle", "And have Apollo quiet down". He just backed up
| at the end I think because they're somewhat scared nerds
| and they don't like that level of confrontation. But
| nobody would go into a business meeting and just say that
| accidentally. You wouldn't even do that at a weekly
| meeting with your own team members, much less talking to
| the CEO of a decent sized company and asking to be
| acquired. And he actually carried out the threat, he
| helped make one of reddit's biggest messes (although
| mostly they did to themselves.)
| Timon3 wrote:
| All of the things you quoted are obviously referring to
| Reddits claim that Apollo is incurring very high costs
| through its API usage. I don't know how you can get
| anything else from it. What do you think "And have Apollo
| quiet down" could mean EXCEPT for this?
|
| spez is free to release counter-evidence, the Apollo dev
| has given his approval for anything to be released. Him
| not doing it means we just have the Apollo devs recording
| to go off - and that is very, very clearly referring to
| what he is claiming it's referring to.
| kats wrote:
| Sorry, had to go check the timeline cause maybe you're
| right. But I don't think so.
|
| Apollo dev said the call was 24hrs before June 1st. So he
| asked reddit for 10 million dollars right before he made
| this post:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a
| _ca...
|
| He had previously made 2 other posts about it before on
| Apr 18-19, so that's what he meant by "quiet down".
| Reddit refused to pay him $10 million and so he went the
| opposite of "quiet", he made a post telling his story and
| it blew up.
|
| For the next week when mods were taking their subs
| private, the Apollo dev didn't disclose to any of them
| that he'd asked for 10 million to "have Apollo quiet
| down." If some reddit employee hadn't asked him about it
| Mastodon, he would never have told anyone about that.
| Timon3 wrote:
| I'm not sure what timeline you're exactly trying to prove
| or disprove. It makes sense to me that he'd make a post
| describing a call with Reddit, after he had a call with
| Reddit. He doesn't have to describe exactly everything he
| describes, but fact is: Reddit is claiming he is costing
| them 20 million dollars per year, he suggested a buy-out
| for half that. You have to actually prove he tried to
| threaten them, because the non-threat explanation makes
| perfect sense - because of course the developer of an app
| would make posts about the status of communications
| regarding these changes!
|
| If I'm missing something you're alluding to in the
| beginning I'd appreciate an explicit explanation :)
| riku_iki wrote:
| Yes, this part is in my opinion: threat didn't go
| through, not accepted, reddit contact explicitly called
| it, and apollo dev is backing up
| Timon3 wrote:
| Okay. So spez acknowledged in the call that it wasn't a
| threat, but he felt threatened, so it's okay for him to
| tell everyone the Apollo dev threatened him?
| riku_iki wrote:
| > So spez acknowledged in the call that it wasn't a
| threat
|
| its regular bs sugar coating, like you know someone is
| cheating, and he knows he is cheating but doesn't admit,
| but you don't have proof and you say "oh it was
| miscommunication" for the sake of continuing cooperation.
| Timon3 wrote:
| Why do you think this is the case? The audio by the
| Apollo dev doesn't support this, and spez has not
| published anything that would prove there was a threat.
| The audio doesn't sound like what you're describing, it
| sounds like what the Apollo dev is describing.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > The audio by the Apollo dev doesn't support this
|
| looks like we are in disagreement about this part.
| Timon3 wrote:
| I'll quote directly from the audio
| (https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-
| may-... starting around 2:18):
|
| > Apollo dev: How did you take that, sorry? Could you
| elaborate?
|
| > spez: Oh, like, cause you were like "hey, if you want
| this, if you want this to go away, like
| [unintelligeble]..."
|
| > Apollo dev: Oh, I said if you want Apollo to go quiet,
| like I would say it's quite loud in terms of its API
| use..."
|
| > spez: Oh, okay, got it. Got it, sorry. That's a
| complete misinterpretation on my part. I apologize
| immediately [...]
|
| Would you expect spez to still consider it a threat given
| both the literal content of what he says, and the tone it
| was said in? I see no way your interpretation makes
| sense.
| riku_iki wrote:
| I read this very carefully several times, and there is
| context which you decided not to quote, what is your
| point?
|
| Update on your updated comment: > and the tone it was
| said in? I see no way your interpretation makes sense.
|
| Looks like we are again in disagreement about this.
| Timon3 wrote:
| Could you explicitly state the context you believe I
| decided not to quote? Timestamps are enough.
| riku_iki wrote:
| context was "joke" about $10m to go quiet.
| Timon3 wrote:
| So the part that spez was talking about misunderstanding,
| which he apologized for? The context you think I didn't
| include is the thing that spez is explicitly saying he
| didn't understand correctly?
| riku_iki wrote:
| > The context you think I didn't include is the thing
| that spez is explicitly saying he didn't understand
| correctly?
|
| sorry, this doesn't make sense to me.
| Timon3 wrote:
| I quoted spez apologizing for misunderstanding something.
| You're saying I left that something out as context.
| Considering spez acknowledged his misunderstanding and
| apologized, it seems a bit ridiculous to expect the
| something he apologized for to "override" his apology,
| doesn't it?
| riku_iki wrote:
| > Considering spez acknowledged his misunderstanding and
| apologized, it seems a bit ridiculous
|
| I answered this already, it could be sugarcoating. Sorry,
| this discussion is low quality to my taste and I have no
| interest in continuing. Good bye.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| Lying about him in a way that denigrated his character at
| almost exactly the same moment his primary source of
| income is being destroyed.
|
| >Here, we took your job away. Now we'll make you
| unhireable.
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| so is blatantly lying about said communication in public
| when you're the CEO of a company looking to IPO.
|
| Christian only released the recording to dispute the
| claim from spez that he threatened Reddit with blackmail
| (quite a serious claim imo)
| Timon3 wrote:
| It's much less of a dick move than publicly defaming a
| business partner. It's the best way for the defamed to
| clear the table.
| bengale wrote:
| In fairness, he only seems to have released it in
| response to Huffman telling people that he was
| blackmailing him.
| doix wrote:
| He was accused of blackmail!? He's lucky he did record,
| without the recording, people might have believed what
| spez was saying.
|
| I can't imagine doing business with Reddit after their
| CEO outright lied to try to tarnish another developers
| reputation.
| paulddraper wrote:
| The US had a whole impeachment relying on that
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The way the US business environment is, if the little guy
| in every business deal ISN'T recording everything they
| can legally get away with, they WILL be taken advantage
| of.
| riku_iki wrote:
| most business negotiations likely will start with nda
| signed.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Why should they stop? Asshole immature CEOs still bring in
| millions a year. If the consuming public refuses to punish
| you, and the government is busy playing sportsball with
| women's reproductive health, why would you ever change?
|
| CEOs will only stop being giant twats when being a giant
| twat inevitably leads you to personal ruin.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Apollo dev response: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments
| /145bram/addressing_...
|
| > Please feel free to give examples where I said something
| differently in public versus what I said to you. I give you
| full permission.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| Does anyone know what the "joke" thats being referenced is?
| I'm not super in the weeds here, but none of the posted
| material looks like a joke or "joke" one way or another.
| doix wrote:
| spez accused the author of Apollo (Christian) of trying to
| blackmail reddit. Christian responds[0] and has a recording
| [1]. There was a misunderstanding, Christian clarified,
| spez apologized.
|
| [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apo
| llo_w...
|
| [1] http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-
| may-3...
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Just for clarity, the timeline was in this order:
|
| Christian suggests that if Apollo is costing reddit
| $20m/year, they could just buy it for $10m as a win/win
| for everyone
|
| Reddit interprets his referring to "going quiet" as some
| sort of extortion/blackmail
|
| Christian clarifies, everyone apologizes for the
| misunderstanding and the conversation moves on
|
| _Weeks later_ , Reddit admins publicly accuse him of
| blackmail
|
| Christian releases his statement and a snippet of a call
| recording
| sodality2 wrote:
| Additional context that Christian was referencing the
| _app_ being "noisy", as in the _noisy neighbor_ effect,
| when a client is misconfigured to cause more activity and
| bring more a burden than it should [0]. Reddit
| interpreted this as "noisy" = "we will complain and raise
| hell", but this was literally immediately worked out as a
| miscommunication in the transcript [1].
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing_issues
| #Perform... [1]: https://gist.github.com/christianselig/f
| da7e8bc5a25aec9824f9...
| mastercheif wrote:
| The Apollo dev "joked" that Reddit should buy Apollo for
| $10 million dollars because, according to Reddit's pricing
| of their API, the opportunity cost of Apollo existing to
| Reddit was $20 million.
| dgellow wrote:
| $20 million per year.
| hysan wrote:
| I'm astonished by the blatant gaslighting.
| wdb wrote:
| Too late, I think?
| torartc wrote:
| Steve is very clearly stuck in a position where he has to kill
| 3rd party apps, but you really have to think there was a much
| better way to go about doing this. His AMA right now is
| embarrassing.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| With the top questions being well-formulated, respectful and
| most importantly, unanswered... Yes. It is embarrassing.
|
| Question is... Does it matter? Will it drive the users that
| create content away?
|
| If the answer is no, it the embarrassment is meaningless.
| basch wrote:
| I cannot fathom why killing third party apps is the only
| solution. As if there cant be an ads api or api access allowed
| to paying accounts. If I were going to pay a reddit
| subscription, I want to be allowed to sign into any third party
| app, vs paying one developer for a portion of their api usage.
| oldtownroad wrote:
| Steve has always been the leader reddit deserves, not the
| leader it needs. The position Reddit is in is of his own
| creation. Even the most uninspired out of touch corporate
| leader would have avoided this entire clown show. Steve
| believes that his relationship with Reddit makes him the best
| leader but alas, it makes him the worst.
|
| Steve has finally said in his AMA today, that Reddit has to be
| a sustainable business to survive! Very true, and that alone is
| justification for making radical change that people may hate.
| Yet, he has been so resistant to saying it that it seems like
| he didn't want to admit it to himself either... and so the
| decisions he's made haven't been founded in an embrace of that
| idea but rather in a desperate attempt to avoid it.
|
| Any competent business leader in charge of Reddit would
| understand that the reason Reddit only spends 100m/year on
| salaries is because they receive hundreds of millions in free
| labor from the small minority of Reddit power users who are
| fundamental to its success... any competent business leader
| would squeeze the 99% of users who have never delivered a
| single contribution to Reddit... and yet, Steve decided to
| target the smallest minority who actually matter to reddit's
| future.
|
| Putting YouTube style unskippable video ads into the official
| Reddit app would have pissed off zero power users and 10xed
| revenue.
| lapcat wrote:
| Reddit is struggling to load under the traffic of the AMA, which
| isn't a good look.
|
| Another bad look is the series potshots taken at 3rd party
| developers: "His behavior and communications with us has been all
| over the place", "We're continuing to work with folks who want to
| work with us. For what it's worth, this includes many of the apps
| that haven't been taking the spotlight this week.", "Unlike some
| of the 3P apps, we are not profitable."
|
| Spoken by a dude about to make bank on IPO, comparing his profits
| to little indie devs who he just put out of business.
|
| I do wonder, when will Reddit abolish its RSS feeds? That was
| actually one of the first signs of the apocalypse at Twitter,
| back in 2012.
| reaperman wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/user/spez/comments/ still works well, of
| course.
| fwlr wrote:
| The rule that you shouldn't build your business on someone else's
| API obviously applies here and in the end Reddit is of course
| justified in choosing to shut out third party apps. But I must
| say it is simply hilarious that their exorbitant new price was so
| absurd that when devs quoted it back to them as a buyout rate,
| Reddit felt like they were being blackmailed. I mean that's
| literally getting offended at your own number.
| deely3 wrote:
| So, you should never use Google, Amazon, Apple, banking system
| API. What the alternative?
| fwlr wrote:
| The rule isn't "never use an API".
|
| If you're a search company you shouldn't build your business
| on the Google search API, if you're a compute provider you
| shouldn't build your business on the AWS API, if you're a
| payment provider you shouldn't build your business on the
| Stripe API, etc. So the pedantic version of the rule is like,
| don't build your business on just repackaging another
| company's API, I guess?
| Dudester230602 wrote:
| If you are a game development company you shouldn't build
| your business on someone else's gaming API (aka game
| engine)?
| callalex wrote:
| That's not quite equivalent, but there was a huge
| developer community upset when Unity switched to their
| freemium revenue sharing model.
| sodality2 wrote:
| This is missing the context that the Reddit staff member
| _immediately apologized for interpreting it as a threat several
| times_ , and spez _still_ chose to regurgitate the same claim.
| https://gist.github.com/christianselig/fda7e8bc5a25aec9824f9...
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| >But I must say it is simply hilarious that their exorbitant
| new price was so absurd that when devs quoted it back to them
| as a buyout rate, Reddit felt like they were being blackmailed.
| I mean that's literally getting offended at your own number.
|
| It was even worse, from what I remember. It was _half_ their
| number that outraged them.
| sunbum wrote:
| It was half 1 year of their number.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| > The rule that you shouldn't build your business on someone
| else's API obviously applies here
|
| Is there an alternative? If your business _is_ an app around
| someone elses API, as it is in this case, Tweetbot, etc - it
| seems super reasonable no?
|
| Yea the API could change at any moment. So maybe don't over
| leverage yourself. Play it safe, knowing any day could be the
| apps last.. but beyond that "building your business around
| someone else's API" isn't bad here is it?
|
| I'd happily do it if it was going to make some money. So i'm
| kinda unsure where the distinction is for that phrase. When is
| it _not_ a good idea? Seems a better phrase would be one that
| includes knowing what type of business you have.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| It just depends on what your timeline is. Tech is very
| ephemeral, so anything that exists today will be gone
| eventually. So build an app using an api, but i would not
| rely on it to be a viable product for more than a couple of
| years.
|
| So its fine if you want beer money, but it wont be a career.
| willis936 wrote:
| The alternative is to pursue safer business.
|
| It makes sense from a risk mitigation perspective, but it
| doesn't sound like the reddit third party app devs were
| unaware or incorrectly weighing this. It sounded like they
| took on personal and financial risk to do something they
| wanted to do and add something to the world that they wanted
| to. Rather than foolish, I find it admirable to abandon
| profit and security for principles. Especially in the context
| of reddit being founded on principles. Regardless of what
| happens to the site and the shareholders: it is safe to say
| that the true reddit is already dead.
| tensor wrote:
| Personally, I think it's reasonable for a small 1-2 person
| shop, but if you are planning a larger company it's pretty
| irresponsible to build it around someone's API like this. If
| you can't feasibly replace a given API, then you're business
| is incredibly fragile, and I think it's unfair to employ a
| large number of people in a fragile business without clearly
| stating to them that they could all be unemployed in an
| instant.
| fwlr wrote:
| If you have good reasons to build on a third party API and
| you do it responsibly (not over-leveraging yourself, not
| annoying the API provider) then it's fine, sure. Perhaps the
| real value of that rule is that it makes you conscious of the
| risks and pushes you to mitigate them.
| 6510 wrote:
| Reddit is dead, Twitter is dead, RSS lives on.
|
| RSS is an API first, there is no CEO, there are no investors,
| the peasants tried to stage a revolt against it many times.
|
| Everyone on HN should probably watch this clip from Aaron
| Swartz again. (who deserves blame for the creation of RSS and
| Reddit)
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aaron_Swartz_-
| _The_N...
|
| It is odd we are to stupid to understand while he explains
| things so wonderfully?
| dejawu wrote:
| I feel like it's worth comparing Reddit to another thing that
| went from being free to paid - Dwarf Fortress. They built up a
| great rapport and trust with their user base, and in return their
| user base happily paid for a product they'd been using for
| decades for free. They made millions over the span of a few days.
| Someone asked in the forums if people really want to pay for this
| and the replies are just thousands of people saying "yes".
|
| Compare that to Reddit's adversarial history with its user base
| and the backlash they're getting now. It's completely possible to
| make money off Reddit without resorting to measures like these.
| I'm a better person today because of Reddit, which is something I
| can't say about any other social media. It deeply hurts my heart
| to see such a valuable and meaningful space possibly die due to
| just simple greed. That, to me, is a far greater loss than
| anything else mentioned in the threads about this impending
| disaster.
| buildbot wrote:
| This should not be flagged? @dang ?
| skilled wrote:
| From the Reddit AMA thread[0]:
|
| >Premium Enterprise API / Third-party apps
|
| >Effective July 1, 2023, the rate for apps that require higher
| usage limits is $0.24 per 1K API calls (less than $1.00 per user
| / month for a typical Reddit third-party app).
|
| >Some apps such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync have decided
| this pricing doesn't work for their businesses and will close
| before pricing goes into effect.
|
| >For the other apps, we will continue talking. We acknowledge
| that the timeline we gave was tight; we are happy to engage with
| folks who want to work with us.
|
| [0]:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
| deely3 wrote:
| > less than $1.00 per user / month for a typical Reddit third-
| party app
|
| This types of generalization irks me everytime. "typical user
| send 20 emails every month, surely if you want to send more
| than 20 emails you will happily pay for it".
| derefr wrote:
| I don't think that's the expectation here, as that would
| imply that users who aren't generating much traffic per user
| would be free, while you'd only charge users who are
| generating more traffic. Which would be terribly broken in
| this case, as Reddit is a long-tail service where the users
| who each make few requests, add up to the supermajority of
| the traffic served.
|
| I think their expectation on Reddit's end is that these
| third-party apps "should" be charging a subscription fee to
| every single user that uses them, of something like $12/year,
| and passing most of that on to Reddit; where the heavy users
| will be negative-margin to retain, but where this doesn't
| matter because the users who _don 't_ use Reddit much will be
| subsidizing them. Like insurance.
|
| Which is _also_ terribly broken, for classical insurance-
| economics reasons: just like healthy people generally don 't
| care about getting health insurance unless they're forced to
| do so, people who don't use Reddit much certainly won't be
| willing to pay $12/year for it. So it'll only be those power
| users interested in paying; and so the average usage _among
| that group_ will be much higher; and so you 'll need to
| charge them quite a bit _more_ than $12 /year... and they
| probably won't be willing to pay that.
| conradfr wrote:
| This AMA is going as well as predicted.
| elteto wrote:
| Did I parse his usage statement correctly? Is he saying a
| typical reddit user only consumes 5000 API calls per _month_???
| I find that VERY hard to believe.
| derefr wrote:
| Power-law usage distribution. The median Reddit user probably
| opens the app for five minutes a day. People who even bother
| to make accounts / join non-default subreddits are a
| minority. People who leave comments on Reddit are basically
| bigfoot.
| elteto wrote:
| Reddit is a social media app, you can't consume anything
| significant in that time. So again, hard to believe.
|
| And if this is somehow true then it doesn't really paint a
| positive picture of Reddit's business.
|
| And this is about API calls, not user engagement. I can't
| imagine that the difference between people who post and
| those who don't, in terms of API usage, to be significant
| based only on how many API calls it takes to post a
| comment.
| derefr wrote:
| Why do you think the median user of any social-media app
| "consumes anything significant" through the app?
|
| The median user of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok,
| or whatever else, uses the app for on average ~five
| minutes a day. They just "check" it to see if there's
| anything interesting; they find that there's _not_ ; and
| then they close it. Or, they just decide to open one such
| app when waiting for a bus, and scroll until their bus
| gets there; then they open a _different_ app while
| waiting for their lunch order to be made, then close that
| one when they get their lunch; etc.
|
| Most people who "use" social media, are not addicted to
| social media, or even _engaged with_ social media. They
| just _barely_ use social media.
|
| This group of people is why every single MAU figure is
| considered to be heavily inflated. All you have to do is
| open the app for a minute once a month and suddenly
| you're an "active user" for that month. Every social
| network has far, _far_ fewer "actually active" users
| than they try to make it seem.
|
| > And this is about API calls, not user engagement.
|
| If you aren't aware: engagement drives linger time. The
| same people who create accounts, etc. are the people who
| spend hours on the app. People who just "poke their nose
| in" but don't engage almost always spend less time on the
| app. Degree of engagement with an app, can be used as a
| very reliable proxy (by third-party analysis firms who
| don't have access to actual usage-time data) for
| likelihood to spend more time using a given app.
| EngCanMan wrote:
| No, I don't think you did...it would be 4000 API calls per
| month.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I'm not even going to bother reading this. No one should be
| returning to Reddit at this point, no matter what they say or
| claim to be changing. They're still going to make user hostile
| decisions as long as they think it will make them more money.
| It's just that the next time they do that they're going to make
| the change more slowly so they don't end up with one big event
| that blows up on them.
| drampa wrote:
| There's some commentary on this at the "Reddit drama" forum, if
| anyone here would enjoy reading some rather more ascerbic takes
| on the Reddit CEO's excuse-making exercise:
|
| https://rdrama.net/post/177376/spez-arrives-to-take-his-flog...
| SSLy wrote:
| From the comments it feels like that site is worse than most of
| 4chan boards.
| RAD-NEOCENTRIST wrote:
| *4chan retirement community
| symlinkk wrote:
| I support what Reddit is doing and I think the Apollo dev is in
| the wrong. You don't get to make millions of dollars building
| your app on someone else's platform with no agreements in place
| and then start crying when they start charging for the platform.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| Apollo's developer has stated multiple times that he has no
| problem with Reddit charging for API access.
|
| The problem is that they are charging so much for it that it
| will kill all of the third party apps, which is likely one of
| reddits main goals with the change.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| So you also think RIF and Sync devs are wrong? They also have
| opted to shutter their apps due to the unreasonable pricing,
| without "crying" as you put it.
|
| And you think that Reddit handled this appropriately, to the
| point where you would "support" them? So you support the libel,
| alienating your userbase, moderators, and 3rd party developers,
| and straight up lying to the community?
|
| Not even getting into the actual API changes and how badly they
| were introduced, this whole thing was an exercise in how to
| permanently alienate their most vocal and engaged users. It's
| truly masterclass in what _not_ to do in a PR crisis.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Yes they're wrong. Raise prices if you need to.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I mean, you're objectively wrong, but that's like your
| opinion man.
|
| Gotta love that you didn't dare reply to the actual meat of
| my comment, either.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if every single app shut down after
| this fiasco. I'm sure it's _their_ fault too, though.
| Couldn 't possibly be the giant corporation who doesn't
| know how to do basic PR and communications.
| RedditTier wrote:
| [dead]
| DueDilligence wrote:
| [dead]
| endisneigh wrote:
| [flagged]
| robin_reala wrote:
| To be fair he only released it after Reddit started to
| effectively slander him about what had been said.
| buildbot wrote:
| Does u/spez not realize the bar for libel in Canada is lower
| than the USA? The dev is Canadian and could file there right?
| [deleted]
| bgc wrote:
| Maybe so, but regardless of the facts this would almost
| certainly not be worth pursuing... In the US, courts are
| generally prohibited from enforcing foreign libel
| judgements against US persons if the country in which the
| judgement was won has looser libel standards than the
| US.[0]
|
| (IANAL)
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act
| buildbot wrote:
| Yeah no idea if that would apply or not. But Canadian
| code I was looking at was the criminal code - there might
| be a difference between civil and criminal libel here.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Don't change the sequence of events around. He released it only
| after they completely misrepresented what transpired in that
| call.
| endisneigh wrote:
| [flagged]
| csmiller wrote:
| what would you have done in Christian's shoes?
| endisneigh wrote:
| [flagged]
| someotherperson wrote:
| It's not about the site at that point, it's accusations
| of blackmail. It is entirely acceptable to defend
| yourself, the other way to do it is inside a courtroom.
| endisneigh wrote:
| So you agree it's ok to record all private conversations
| just in case then?
| buildbot wrote:
| In Canada, it legally is!
| endisneigh wrote:
| Good to know
| elteto wrote:
| If you slander me and I have legally obtained proof proving
| you wrong I will 100% release it. Or use it in legal action
| against you.
|
| Fight fire with fire. Enough of covering for these
| psychopaths.
| dgellow wrote:
| 100 queries by minute per openid for free is quite good. Doesn't
| that cover the needs of the various 3rd party apps?
|
| Edit: oh wait, maybe I misunderstood. Do they mean PER APP? I
| read it as PER USER. If it is per app that's ridiculous.
| [deleted]
| detaro wrote:
| per _client id_ , i.e. _per app_. Not per user.
| quenix wrote:
| Why can't users just register their own keys and paste them
| into various clients? This seems like an easy way to have
| avoided this situation.
| ink_13 wrote:
| The most obvious answer is that killing third-party apps is
| intentional.
|
| It would have been a reasonable compromise to cut off API
| access to users who don't have Reddit Gold, but that's off
| the table, because it doesn't juice the numbers for the IPO
| the right way.
| sodality2 wrote:
| They literally suspended the website [0] where you can
| apply for an app. It's been a perma-waitlist that hasn't
| moved a bit. Several app developers [1, 2, 3] have reached
| out and gotten radio silence.
|
| [0]: https://developers.reddit.com/waitlist
|
| [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addre
| ssing_...
|
| [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addre
| ssing_...
|
| [3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addre
| ssing_...
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| I think it was intentionally worded this way, to sound like its
| per user.
| [deleted]
| pimlottc wrote:
| The poster (CEO of Reddit) has replied to a few comments so far
| but they've been downvoted to oblivion so they aren't visible in
| the main comments; you can see all his replies on his user
| profile page here:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/user/spez
|
| EDIT: links for replies from other reddit officials:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
| colpabar wrote:
| So all the top responses to the top comments in the thread are
| going to be "seriously, this" and nobody is going to see how
| spez actually responds. Classic.
| minimaxir wrote:
| It'll get around. That's how the infamous sense-of-pride-and-
| accomplishment comment did.
|
| Going into a user's profile for their comments is a paradigm
| older than Reddit.
| deely3 wrote:
| spez's responds just a corporate bullshit, and not the hard
| answers. You can read responces here if you want:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/user/spez/comments/
| jmholla wrote:
| Awards on his answers will make them stick around the top.
| [deleted]
| sorenjan wrote:
| You would think Reddit would have made an AMA sorting mode
| that surfaces OP's answers even when they're heavily
| downvoted by now, since it's been a thing for years, but it
| doesn't seem like a priority for them.
| [deleted]
| operator-name wrote:
| Reddit has a Q&A sorting mode.
| sorenjan wrote:
| Yes, but it doesn't seem to work very well. It still
| doesn't show spez's answers, and you could argue that the
| co-founder and long time CEO should use that sorting
| order in his own AMA where he knows full well he'll be
| heavily downvoted, but it seems to use the default
| "best".
| pimlottc wrote:
| His replies still appear to be hidden in the Q&A sorting
| mode.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressi
| ng_...
| tedmiston wrote:
| It's turned on by default on that thread; it's just not
| helping much with the sheer volume of comments.
| pimlottc wrote:
| It wasn't initially; but as you noted, it didn't help
| much anyway.
| callalex wrote:
| The Q&A sort mode still shows the most popular questions
| at the top. The CEO only answered questions with an order
| of magnitude fewer votes than the top questions. The Q&A
| sort works fine, it's just that no questions were
| answered.
| tedmiston wrote:
| Someone made a manual aggregate view of just the answers here.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/145bxmi/c...
|
| There really aren't many answers though, unfortunately. Only 12
| answers from u/spez in a sea of 14k+ comments...
|
| It wasn't much of an AMA IMO. Mostly very short answers and I
| don't see any new insights here.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| > The poster (CEO of Reddit) has replied to a few comments so
| far
|
| Fourteen. He replied to fourteen comments. In the space of four
| hours.
|
| It's not often that you see a platform implode in real time.
| hysan wrote:
| Based on other comments, it appears that there is a lot of vote
| manipulation happening on the CEO's comments. Still in the
| negative, but they are being capped after some time.
| minimaxir wrote:
| It's not brigading if Reddit explicitly put out a homepage
| banner for people to engage with the AMA.
| trollied wrote:
| They're editing & deleting comments frantically. Shambolic.
|
| It was never going to be anything other than a disaster, but this
| is just chucking fuel on the fire.
| elektor wrote:
| Im backing up as many comments as I can using Wayback Machine
| jjcm wrote:
| Some things I find interesting:
|
| 1. They're not backing down at all, and even explicitly mention
| that Apollo/RIF/Sync will be going down because of this.
|
| 2. It looks like they are backtracking a bit on the moderation
| tools that use the API. This makes sense as otherwise Reddit
| would have been a cesspool, but a lot of moderators do use tools
| like Apollo, so it will be interesting to see what happens to the
| quality bar over time.
|
| 3. Removing NSFW content from the API is interesting - I wonder
| if the main app will still have access to this?
| sosodev wrote:
| They have said the main app will still have access to NSFW
| content. He just claimed in a comment that it's being removed
| from the API due to regulatory concerns. Which seems like total
| BS to me.
| paddw wrote:
| Maybe. Probably are a partial truth. Regulatory pressures to
| crack down on NSFW content of any kind are very real.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It would be nice if whenever someone blamed their actions
| on vague "regulatory concerns" they actually listed the
| specific law/code that they were concerned with. For
| example, in this case, what specific law makes API access
| to this content risky but not regular web-based access to
| the content.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > Maybe. Probably are a partial truth. Regulatory pressures
| to crack down on NSFW content of any kind are very real.
|
| Regulatory pressure to perform age verification is real.
|
| But Reddit already requires users to be logged in and their
| account to have gone to the website and clicked on an
| explicit toggle in order to access NSFW content.
|
| When (and sadly inevitably if) Reddit requires age
| verification to access adult content, then it will be on a
| per account basis - and hence the toggle would not be
| enabled without it. So at that point the status quo still
| fulfils the regulatory requirement the account has checked
| age. It is not clear at all to anyone who thinks about it
| for a second why third party clients would change anything
| here.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| 1. I think they don't want to get caught eating their own words
| when they're about to go public with an IPO. Backtracking
| because of third-party apps isn't going to go over well with
| potential investors.
|
| 2. I think it'll go down regardless. Mod tools is one thing,
| but I would really like to know the percentage of mods who use
| third-party Reddit apps like Apollo, RIF, etc. I wonder how
| many will leave the platform. If so we can expect more power-
| hungry mods, or Reddit having to pay for their own moderation.
|
| 3. Reddit says NSFW content is staying within the main app, but
| I can see it going away soon. A popular Reddit image hoster
| banned and deleted all NSFW content which already broke a lot
| of the posts in NSFW subreddits. And with Reddit now having
| investors and needing to attract more expensive advertisers, I
| can see them scrubbing NSFW content in full to become a more
| attractive ad platform. Especially since that's really going to
| be the way they make the bulk of their money.
| LeeroyWasHere wrote:
| That worked so well for tumblr. Reddit pulling a
| TwitterTumblr combo at once, let's see if they can survive
| this. 20-30% traffic drop?
| chx wrote:
| The absolute traffic numbers immediately might not drop
| that big but the power function of participation - number
| of users is _brutal_ for Reddit. There 's a tiny, tiny
| fraction of users who were to leave the entire structure
| would fracture. The house doesn't collapse immediately but
| it's unsound so people begin to leave. First those in the
| know, then those who follow those in the know, and so on
| larger and larger waves until only a few people roam the
| ruins. It might just go on and on -- digg.com is still up.
| Even Slashdot is still there. Heck, I use lycos.com to
| force the login screen when logging in on public Internet.
|
| This is the problem here: these people already started to
| delete their content and will withdraw their tools in three
| weeks. Time is up and the CEO doesn't even acknowledge the
| massive problems this change causes for moderation tools.
| His post should've been an about face but no.
|
| So, no it won't be 20-30% immediately, might be so small it
| doesn't even register beyond normal day to day variance.
| But it will be 90%+ in a year.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| At this point the Reddit CEO's numerous defamatory lies about the
| Apollo dev has been thoroughly debunked. If the CEO had the
| tiniest amount of common sense, he would've made an apology,
| however insincere it may be. So imagine my astonishment when I
| saw him doubling down with even more defamatory statements.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
|
| (Also an archive link here, just in case:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230609180814/https://old.reddi...)
|
| Some people just never cease to surprise you.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| I would expect counsel to discourage an apology in the context
| of potential liability, but they typically also encourage
| shutting one's yap.
| headcanon wrote:
| I won't go so far as to say that this is Reddit's death-knell
| since they've been through a lot of controversies before, and I'm
| sure their business will do just fine in the future, but its
| clear to me at this point the direction they want to take the
| site is continually diverging from what I want it to be.
|
| To be honest, I'm a bit thankful that they are finally doing
| this. Shutting down Apollo is making me realize I'm the frog in
| boiling water as they try to turn it into TikTok. With this move,
| they turned up the temperature a bit too fast, and this is my
| queue to jump out.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Tumblr didn't go down because of the controversies , and there
| were many. It went down because it was hostile to pornography
| shahar2k wrote:
| the key wasnt the pornography, but the kinds of people who
| post what tubmlr CATGORIZED as pornography. everything from
| queer communities, sex education, and people who post a
| variety of things only SOME of which was nsfw. by alienating
| those people who were the core of the community that existed
| there, they drove out the community forming elements that
| existed on the site in the first place.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| I still find it hard to believe that they only banned
| "female presenting" nipples. If a man posted his nipple on
| the site it was fine, at least after appealing the
| moderation decision, but if I woman did it? Banned.
| tedmiston wrote:
| They're setting up for the forthcoming IPO.
|
| I guess it's a classic move out of the IPO playbook at this
| point to gain content and users via third party clients and
| then turn around and eliminate them by killing their API access
| entirely and/or making it prohibitively expensive.
|
| Seems like a weird move by someone who's been at Reddit since
| the beginning and presumably understands its users well to me
| though.
|
| We'll see how it works out for them...
| pkju62dqmx wrote:
| This was my queue as well, now I am here. I'm excited to spend
| far less time on Reddit.
| callalex wrote:
| cue: a prompt or timed call to action queue: an ordered
| collection of people/things waiting their turn
| atyppo wrote:
| This post screams classic Friday afternoon news dump to me. But
| at this point, it doesn't really matter. I'm beginning to grow
| very tired of Reddit. When I signed up almost 9 years ago, it
| felt like a community where I was surrounded by others who were
| genuinely curious, helpful, and smarter than me. Now it feels
| like a slightly better Facebook, even if you exclude the
| constantly interjected political comments. The HN community
| feels to me today what Reddit felt like 9 years ago.
| paulddraper wrote:
| s/queue/cue/
| sorenjan wrote:
| I don't pay a lot of attention to things like revenue and the
| amount of active users, but I think that by those metrics
| Huffman has been a pretty successful CEO. It looks like he
| regrets selling Reddit so cheap the first time, and has had
| growth as his main objective since returning as CEO. I guess
| taking in a lot of venture capital pretty much forced him to do
| that as well. New Reddit and the official apps has brought in a
| lot of new users, while changing what the site is. I don't
| think they value their old users particularly high, there's
| probably not a lot of them compared to the whole user base, and
| getting rid of them is a calculated move.
| tedmiston wrote:
| > ... has had growth as his main objective since returning as
| CEO. I guess taking in a lot of venture capital pretty much
| forced him to do that as well.
|
| Venture capital is a hell of a drug.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| I think you're right on the mark. Reddit doesn't want the old
| users who used it like an internet forum. Reddit wants to be
| another Instagram, TikTok, etc. As a business it's the
| "right" choice and the only way to make their investors
| money.
|
| It's a shame we're losing the biggest internet forum, but
| it's been on this trajectory for a long time anyway.
| tedmiston wrote:
| > It's a shame we're losing the biggest internet forum, but
| it's been on this trajectory for a long time anyway.
|
| But that's what so great about reddit compared to the other
| big social media platforms: hard delineation by interest
| groups (subreddits).
|
| Instagram, and any others (AFAIK) do not have anything like
| this feature. It's all just a jumbled mess of user-to-user
| connections.
|
| I wouldn't say we're "losing the biggest internet forum"
| there. They can still make reddit more mainstream without
| old communities having to change much, right?
| johnisom2001 wrote:
| There won't be many redditors fleeing. The vast majority don't
| care about this. They just log into Reddit's website, or their
| official mobile app, look at cat pics, and continue on with their
| day.
|
| I'm guessing the money Reddit will make from monetizing their API
| will much more than outweigh the losses.
| fooker wrote:
| The people posting the cat pics and the mods making sure it's
| just cat pics might care though
| Apreche wrote:
| > "We'll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive,"
| Huffman wrote. "Unlike some of the [third-party] apps, we are not
| profitable."
|
| I don't think Reddit can be profitable. What business model is
| there that can work? Almost anything that generates revenue harms
| the user experience. Users will only tolerate so much. If they
| try to extract value with ads or paywalls, they lose the users.
|
| If they please the users, how can they make money from that? The
| amount users are willing to pay is not enough.
|
| I think the only way for it to carry on is without capitalism.
| They need to operate more like a Wikipedia or an archive.org. Put
| the profit motive aside and exist for and by the users.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| Huffman's giving us all a masterclass in how to be absolutely
| atrocious at PR, seriously how on Earth did Reddit as a company
| allow this to go ahead? It's like the tech industry equivalent of
| a Liz Truss speech.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Because bad PR hasn't really hurt any company in decades? When
| is the last time "CEO did something awful but not illegal"
| actually significantly reduced a company's income?
|
| Twitter basically became a Nazi rally and they're still going
| to clear a billion dollars in revenue this year.
| elonsrusks wrote:
| > _Twitter basically became a Nazi rally and they 're still
| going to clear a billion dollars in revenue this year._
|
| What? No it didn't. If you're seeing that sort of content on
| Twitter it must be because you're following those sort of
| people.
| krapp wrote:
| I for one definitely have not been following those sort of
| people and I've seen a marked increase in their presence in
| my feed after Elon took over - many people have. Elon
| unbanned a ton of right-wing accounts and it seems like
| he's privileged their content to appear more often in
| people's feeds, likely anyone the demographics have tagged
| as "leftist" or "liberal."
|
| And Elon himself has been retweeting and responding
| favorably to racist content for a while. It's obvious there
| is an attempt on his part to normalize this stuff on the
| platform. He's basically a redpilled troll at this point.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > CEO did something awful but not illegal
|
| Libel is actually quite illegal. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| Kiro wrote:
| > Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that,
| we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require
| large-scale data use.
|
| Is there no merit to this?
| caranti wrote:
| There's absolutely merit to this. If Reddit can't fund itself,
| and goes under, all users loses a valuable community resource.
|
| That Reddit have decided to end free access to their APIs isn't
| itself an issue.
|
| The way they're doing it, and the significant departure from
| the decade and a half long de-facto agreement that a large body
| of the user base believe themselves to be party trading user
| generated content and user sourced moderation in exchange for
| platform access does seem to have missed the mark though.
|
| It doesn't take much creative thought to conceive of a scheme
| whereby the paid Reddit Gold includes API access, for example.
| Which should be a bit like a YouTube Premium or Spotify Premium
| kind of deal - direct contribution as alternative to
| advertising to achieve per user monetization.
|
| It's not even a stretch to partner with third party apps and
| let them collect the user payments as an alternative to
| requiring users to pay for the app and Reddit Gold separately.
|
| But the very short notice period and seemingly unpalatable
| pricing, together with some of the reported questionable
| comments and actions from Reddit, don't come across as
| reasonable from any rational perspective.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| It implies that the bare costs of serving the API requests are
| the issue (subsidising means, it costs us more to provide you
| something than you pay us for it). Reddit wants to charge
| $0.24/1k API calls. That doesn't seem to be reasonable. To
| calibrate this, consider what is charged for API access by say,
| AWS for S3 API calls: $0.005/1k API calls. So they are two
| orders of magnitude higher than AWS.
|
| Obviously it's hard to compete on infrastructure cost with an
| actual cloud provider, but I still think two orders of
| magnitude should be enough that an entity the size of Reddit
| can offer a much more reasonable price than that.
|
| They could also optimise their API layer to better match the
| needs of 3rd party apps if the pure number of calls is the
| issue.
| majani wrote:
| They absolutely cannot budge, their investors won't let them. And
| by now, the investors probably own most of the company. Reddit is
| targeting LLMs as their main API clients and that will give a
| huge bounce on share price after the IPO. Right now, being firmly
| in the AI supply chain is probably the biggest driver of share
| price growth
| oldtownroad wrote:
| LLM developers have no need for Reddit's API: Reddit data is
| available through a variety of sources that don't require usage
| of the API. The API they're targeting are third-party clients
| used by humans. Apps like Apollo are the target. Reddit's
| comment volume is high but not high enough to drive significant
| revenue if LLM developers were consuming comments via the API.
| happycube wrote:
| And even if they did need it, they won't need it nearly as
| much the way things are going now...
| skilled wrote:
| Exactly. I think perhaps the biggest value is actually the
| "links" that get shared on Reddit, as an aggregate. And you
| can totally get all that somewhere else, in OpenAI's case -
| that would be Bing.
| reaperman wrote:
| How about a per-user API key that users can copy/paste into a
| third-party app ( _or use an OAuth solution_ ) which requires a
| $2-5/month subscription fee ( _cough_ *reddit premium* _cough_
| ) to make more money than they would from showing these users
| advertisements?
|
| This could also be used as a NSFW flag.
|
| Enough people use 3rd party apps that this would also cover the
| high fees that they wish you could charge to LLMs. Which, due
| to LinkedIn vs. HiQ -- they're just going to scrape publicly
| anyways. I build anti-captcha systems for bot scraping, it's
| trivially easy to bypass bot protection...there's no way around
| this without making logging in and agreeing to ToS necessary
| just to view comments.
|
| Hell they could even still include advertisements that come
| through the API as native posts and would not only be difficult
| to filter, but also be against API ToS to filter out. Yeah they
| wouldn't be as precisely-targeted but I mean, if someone is on
| a niche subreddit, how much more targeting do you need when
| you're already getting subscription fees from the same user
| you'd be showing additional ads to.
|
| _Point is, they can still be extremely greedy while not
| kneecapping 3rd party clients that don 't suck like their app
| does._
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > How about a per-user API key that users can copy/paste into
| a third-party app (or use an OAuth solution) which requires a
| $2-5/month subscription fee (cough _reddit premium_ cough) to
| make more money than they would from showing these users
| advertisements?
|
| Two problems with this from their perspective:
|
| - It cedes control of the user experience to third party
| apps, forgoing potential monetization "opportunities"
| (aggressively pushing NFT avatars, etc) and possibility of
| keeping users perpetually sucked in TikTok-style
|
| - It greatly reduces the amount of data that can be harvested
|
| Clearly, they value these things more than the do keeping
| around "core reddit" (chronological list of posts) users who
| only care for the base product, even if they contribute
| disproportionally relative to average users.
| reaperman wrote:
| At the end of the day, corporations care mainly about
| money. I wonder what per-user price would fully offset the
| potential monetary value of these additional potential
| revenue streams.
| opello wrote:
| Yes! This seems like something a business would consider
| given the backlash against these choices.
| basch wrote:
| >https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/michael-arndt-
| re...
|
| Which the paying subscriber is paying to avoid.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I think the mistake is to assume that user interaction data
| isn't something that they _desperately_ want.
|
| Regardless of the AI/ML play on the data - I suspect they
| just aren't willing to lose the user signals.
|
| Frankly - it's a good way to provide more compelling numbers
| around advertising effectiveness and impact, and it lets them
| tap into that information to generate more effective
| campaigns.
|
| I think reddit's advertising success depends a lot on being
| able to help companies approach the userbase effectively (and
| charge money for that service). Otherwise... it's a really
| tight position - because companies will just do an end run
| around paid services by generating their own organic looking
| content and posting it directly to the site (Why pay reddit
| for an ad for these boots... I can just generate some posts
| on r/buyitforlife and then bring it up in the comments)
| reaperman wrote:
| The reddit API is insanely granular. They should still get
| a huge amount of interaction data, unless 3rd party caching
| is involved -- which by default it shouldn't be because
| that costs 3rd parties a lot more money if they don't have
| to do it.
| kevdev wrote:
| Funny how he keeps using the phrase "developers that want to work
| with us". Clearly trying to suggest that some don't (wonder which
| ones he thinks do not want to work with them /s)
| stefanos82 wrote:
| To me this reads like digg.com catastrophe, v2!
|
| Oh well...
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| https://reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/_/jnk9izp/?cont...
|
| Confirmation that these changes are at least partially due to LLM
| training using Reddit data, which many have speculated to be the
| case.
| prahladyeri wrote:
| They're testing the water it seems. They must have realized that
| those leaving Reddit for other pasteurs must have already left by
| now, so there will be little resistance in monetizing those on
| the platform. Either that, or they're deliberately wanting to
| lose their user base as part of some grand strategy as Digg did
| many years ago!
| zui wrote:
| I agree. They probably have the stats to predict how much the
| "revolt" is costing them long term, compare to the upside of
| the IPO.
|
| But only time will tell whether this actually hold.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Just from a technical perspective, what is Apollo doing that
| requires more than 100 queries per minute?
|
| (Okay, so apparently client ID isn't user ID, but app ID.
| Explains a lot.)
| tomrod wrote:
| No idea. Also, I suspect Apollo made a judgment error in
| looking at their usage stats through the lens of the mean,
| rather than their median and 99% percentile, usage.
|
| They likely have power users greatly pulling that mean up that,
| in all cases, should probably be capped.
|
| EDIT: Ooof, people dislike this thought. Has the Apollo dev
| spoken out about their approach? I'll be the first to admit I
| haven't seen reddit's entire debacle, but thought I was
| reasonably following the play by play.
| hysan wrote:
| re: your edit:
|
| See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36261736
| tomrod wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| The reddit post is what I was referencing by looking at
| mean vs. median/99%
| pimlottc wrote:
| Apollo uses an average of 324 requests per user per day,
| according to the developer's farewell announcement posted
| yesterday [0].
|
| I hadn't heard anything about the "Free Data API" limit of 100
| qpm before this either, so I assume the issues is that the free
| API is filtered and does not include any "mature content".
|
| > Effective July 5, 2023, we will limit access to mature
| content via our Data API as part of an ongoing effort to
| provide guardrails to how explicit content and communities on
| Reddit are discovered and viewed. This change will not impact
| any moderator bots or extensions. In our conversations with
| moderators and developers, we heard two areas of feedback we
| plan to address.
|
| 0:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...
| detaro wrote:
| Let's say Apollo can cut down to 100 requests per user per
| day. at 100 qpm, assuming equal distribution, they now can
| have one user for each minute in a day. Somehow I don't think
| having 1440 users is going to cut it.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I _think_ the free limit is supposed to be per user, since
| he says that "over 90% of apps" make rates at requests
| within the free limit.
| detaro wrote:
| ... if they meant per user, they'd say per user. They
| don't, but explicitly say that it is per client id
| (=app).
|
| > _since he says that "over 90% of apps" make rates at
| requests within the free limit._
|
| >90% of apps are people that played around with the API a
| bit for fun or run a small hobby-bot or something. Of
| course those stay below the limit (and for many of those,
| 100 qpm is indeed quite generous). It's also entirely
| irrelevant to the small number of apps that non-dev end
| users use.
| pimlottc wrote:
| > ... if they meant per user, they'd say per user. They
| don't, but explicitly say that it is per client id
| (=app).
|
| You may be right, the reddit post has been edited
| multiple times. I assumed when it referenced OAuth that
| it was per end user, but it does seem that "client_id" is
| global to the application. I wish I could find any place
| else that lays out the details on the limit besides just
| this one reddit post...
|
| Currently, it says the limit is "100 queries per minute
| per OAuth client id if you are using OAuth
| authentication"
|
| And it's pretty shitty if he's including every single toy
| project within the "90% of apps".
| bbatsell wrote:
| > Important note: currently, our rate limit response
| headers indicate counts by client id/user id combination.
| These headers will update to reflect this new policy
| based on client id only on July 1.
|
| https://reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_updat
| e_e...
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Let's say Apollo has 1 million users (I think the actual # is
| significantly higher). Reddit doesn't have a push API for
| notifications (like if someone messages you or replies to your
| comment), so you have to poll. Just checking those inboxes
| _once per week_ gets you to 100 queries per minute. In reality,
| most people want inbox notifications more frequently than that.
|
| And in the meantime, users are also upvoting posts, commenting,
| scrolling, and doing other things that cut into the API quota
| treesciencebot wrote:
| As far as I understand, its 100 qpm per oauth user. Each
| logged-in user will have 100 qpm, so they can actually query
| inbox once per minute and still be left with 99 queries for
| that minute alone. I thought the problem was that, if you
| exceed this limit even for some users (e.g. particularly
| active ones) then you are no longer eligible for the free-
| tier and get kicked out of the club and pay price even for
| the free tier.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| It's 100 qpm per oauth client ID, which is tied to the
| _developer 's_ account in the API portal (at least that's
| how it worked when I used the API in the past). I suppose
| someone could make an app that lets users provide their own
| API keys, but most people aren't going to go through the
| hassle of setting up a dev account and generating API keys.
| That might also be a TOS violation?
| detaro wrote:
| No, it's not. It's 100 qpm per _client id_ , i.e. _app_.
| saxonww wrote:
| That was my initial question too, but note it's per oauth
| application. It could be that per-user it could get under 100,
| but in aggregate the only way they'd get there is if only one
| person used Apollo at a time.
| fffv wrote:
| I wonder why didn't Apollo just have each user register a new
| OAuth app at https://old.reddit.com/prefs/apps, the details
| of which would then be used per-user. It could even be done
| automatically upon entering one's credentials into the Apollo
| app. Wouldn't this have solved the problem?
| detaro wrote:
| if you assume that reddit won't just ban or at least take
| API access away from any user doing that, sure. I would not
| assume that.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Probably because the Apollo dev was sick of this shit and
| just wants to be done, especially after being slandered by
| the CEO of the company
| colinchartier wrote:
| As far as I understand, that's 100 shared queries across all
| users.
| ezekg wrote:
| Why can't Apollo use per-user OAuth and not Apollo's own API
| keys?
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| Wouldn't that require each user to go in the developer
| settings for their account and set up their own OAuth app
| integration? That's probably not feasible for end-users and
| I would imagine breaks the spirit of the API terms if not
| the letter of them.
| Zetobal wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_upd
| a...
| hysan wrote:
| Background reading you may be interested in:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256167
| Merad wrote:
| "100 queries per minute per OAuth client id". An app like
| Apollo uses a single client id, AFAIK.
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| Why is Spez so insistent on becoming public enemy #1? He's so
| obviously in the wrong here, yet is doubling, tripling, and
| quadrupling down on what is an obvious screw-up.
|
| Frankly I think this might be a worse PR move than what Elon did
| when he did this with Twitter's API.
|
| Is it someone in panic over a potential large impact on the IPO?
| I dont even think it would have that much of an effect if he
| hadn't gone on the platform to make the problem worse.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Whenever you see a smart person doing things that seem to make no
| logical sense you seek out missing information that would unlock
| a logical explanation.
|
| I am curious really here about Huffman's behaviour. He may be
| quite incompetent (I'm judging that primarily based on the
| observation that changes in the web site and app sit somewhere
| between willful negligence and active sabotage in terms of what
| they have done to the user experience). But it still doesn't
| explain some of the completely nonsensical aspects of his
| decisions.
|
| I feel like there's something behind the scenes here. For
| example, Huffman has been told he has until September to make
| money or he's fired and Reddit is being sold for parts to "big
| LLM". Probably because there's a concrete offer on the table by
| some private equity or something like that which dwarfs anything
| they could conceivably make another way.
|
| Possibly, in an alternative (similar) theory, they have a
| concrete offer from a player (say OpenAI) for LLM access that
| would make them profitable forever, but it requires exclusivity,
| and these API changes are designed to get 3rd party usage down to
| a level that would comply with that agreement.
|
| In any of these cases he's bound by confidentially not to talk
| about it so he's stuck with doing what seem like crazy non-
| sensical things in public to achieve these outcomes.
| stjo wrote:
| As far as conspiracy theories go, this must be the most logical
| explanation of the events. Yet I see no evidence. Maybe one
| could try asking OpenAI?
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