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