[HN Gopher] Reddit CEO doubles down on attack on Apollo develope...
___________________________________________________________________
Reddit CEO doubles down on attack on Apollo developer in drama-
filled AMA
Author : coloneltcb
Score : 289 points
Date : 2023-06-09 21:12 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| jchw wrote:
| > ...calling out the developer, Christian Selig's, "behavior and
| communications" as being "all over the place" and saying he
| couldn't see Reddit working with the developer further.
|
| Yes, there's only one problem spez, aside from your track record,
| we also have basically every other major API user voicing the
| exact same concerns. Maybe the somewhat erratic communications
| have something to do with breaking over a decade of trust and
| giving only a few weeks notice.
|
| On another note, I definitely can't see myself working with or
| using Reddit in any way in the future.
|
| Reddit is another notch. They got to where they were by building
| goodwill. It was open source, the APIs were openly accessible,
| they fought against censorship and they were relatively measured
| in their moderation. Now? It's just another fucking ad company.
| There's nothing left.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I was hoping that Spez would say something like "we're
| reviewing our decisions based on feedback" or similar, but no.
| The AMA clenched it for me, and I deleted the Apollo apps off
| my phone and iPad in solidarity with Selig.
|
| It was fun, Reddit. Best of luck. I'm outta here.
| mduggles wrote:
| Reddit cannot go public. Its product is volunteer work by
| moderators and users to produce value. There's no way to take
| that work and guarantee its delivery on a quarterly cycle.
|
| This is all a ridiculous self-delusion that Reddit management has
| engaged in that the platform is really the "value add". It's not.
| Reddit has become the shorthand for cut through ML spam and
| that's based on users constantly posting up to the minute
| accurate data. There's almost no historical value to that data.
| jwie wrote:
| The time for Reddit to have gone public was with all that other
| spac mania during the pandemic.
|
| These days pesky investors are going to demand things like, a
| business model and a profit opportunity.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| > Its product is volunteer work by moderators and users to
| produce value.
|
| The way the Reddit works, moderation is a free and limitless
| resource. You will never run out of people volunteering for the
| job.
| BEEdwards wrote:
| You will run out of the people doing it remotely well very
| quickly though.
|
| The high quality modding of askhistory, anthropology and
| other science sub reddits are provided by actual domain
| experts working for free. You can find someone to replace
| them, but the quality will plummet and the users will leave.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| You're assuming that the current mods are already doing it
| "remotely well." There are no shortage of cases where
| people have been banned from a subreddit for ridiculous
| reasons, myself included (e.g. talking about studies that
| support safe sleep practices for infants). When Ceddit
| still worked, it was eye-opening to see how much shadow-
| censorship was happening, and for the most petty reasons.
|
| The subreddits you mentioned are good examples where domain
| knowledge is a very desirable trait in a mod. But by and
| large, it's not necessary for a mod to have deep domain
| knowledge in order to be able to enforce rules
| consistently. There's a reason why it's called being a
| "glorified internet janitor."
| [deleted]
| protastus wrote:
| The Reddit board of directors should choose a CEO with better
| judgement because this doesn't look good.
|
| While I am sad for the communities, I am excited at the
| opportunity to short this stock if it ever goes public with
| such poor leadership.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| This would assume that spez is not doing exactly what the
| Board of directors want.
|
| I think is he, I think they think this will be better for the
| long term, users will be upset for a little while, but will
| not actually leave.
|
| He has already said 3rd party apps make up a small amount of
| "traffic" and "90% fall in to the free plan" anyway.
|
| So they are betting this is a tempest in a tea pot...
|
| Sadly they are probably right because people are sheep and
| creatures of habit, for me I am going to archive my data
| before the 30th and purge all of my accounts. I personally am
| done with reddit, but I am likely the minority
| mrandish wrote:
| They've probably tried recruiting a good CEO. The problem is
| no one remotely competent wants the job.
| drumhead wrote:
| All they have to do is keep the ship afloat until it goes
| public, once thats done they cash out with their
| millions/billions and then to hell with the site. They'll
| resign, get fired or whatever but they wont care because
| they'll have their money by then.
| riku_iki wrote:
| somehow facebook made it through..
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| It's going to be a fun thought experiment at the bar for years
| now - how would _you_ have brought reddit to profitability
| starting in Q1 2023?
|
| Maybe there was a way to lever that value for ML training - and
| the constantly updated nature of the "training database" - into
| a profit model unlike any other social media app. Not the kind
| of innovation this team wanted to build, clearly.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| I think a place like reddit should be a non-profit foundation
| rather than a business. The Archive Of Our Own community was
| able to do it, the reddit community can do it too.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| We had something like that. It was called USENET. With the
| right reader and a decent ISP, it was great.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Usenet still exists though?
|
| Plus the vast vast majority of reddit content consists of
| mindless nonsense, or even worse, so it's probably best
| that USENET didn't continue growing in popularity.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > mindless nonsense
|
| That's the vast majority of anything (aka Sturgeon's
| Law).
|
| Soon to be "improved by AI".
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Yes Usenet is still around, it mainly for the downloading
| "LinuxISO's(tm)"
| rjh29 wrote:
| It's not even profitable _now_ with all their monetization.
| But their overhead is millions of $/year. There is precedent
| for non-profit sites of that size but it won't be easy.
| scythmic_waves wrote:
| Honestly with the amount of charity fundraising that reddit
| does, I bet they could pull it off. Just recently someone
| accidentally gave $15k to charity and in response, a bunch
| of users raised an additional $55k [1]. If they did
| intentional, annual fundraising with clear goals I wouldn't
| be surprised if reddit the non-profit organization could be
| self-sustaining.
|
| But I'm just some guy on the internet who doesn't actually
| know anything about non-profits.
|
| [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comment
| s/1456...
| jeffparsons wrote:
| I'd feel a lot more comfortable giving my time to "the
| community" under an arrangement like that, too. The fediverse
| has its place, for sure, but I think a centralised platform
| run by a non-profit has the best chance of unseating Reddit
| in the short term.
|
| It could even connect to the fediverse, but with its own
| moderation hierarchy etc. so it has its own culture and
| doesn't _rely_ on the fediverse.
| drumhead wrote:
| Thats actually the best structure for reddit because of its
| coopertive nature, and the difficulty of making money from it
| without compromising its essential nature.
| asah wrote:
| are there lessons from Wikipedia ?
| next_xibalba wrote:
| This whole drama is very odd to me and feels like a (very) vocal
| minority of users incorrectly extrapolating their preferences to
| those of all Reddit users.
|
| Reddit owns its API. It has every right to price access however
| they see fit. It is wild to think that will spend $10s of
| millions to support 3rd party apps. Or to expect that they would
| acquire third party apps.
|
| I predict Reddit will stick to their guns and that this entire
| brouhaha will have little to no effect on Reddit's user and
| engagement metrics over the medium term.
|
| If you're outraged and highly engaged with this controversy, do
| you think its possible you're in a bubble?
| predictabl3 wrote:
| [flagged]
| hatsunearu wrote:
| I'm a moderator and poweruser on reddit and I have very mixed
| feelings about this.
|
| I think the truth is somewhere between the middle--reddit does
| genuinely not want to support 3rd party apps (shucks, but
| that's fine), but powerusers/mods want to use third party apps
| because the official one sucks ass and 3rd party apps want to,
| well, survive.
|
| I think a compromise must be reached.
|
| Also spez is a horrible CEO and should probably step down. I
| care more about reddit as a resource to me as an individual
| than what his feelings are.
| plandis wrote:
| The part I'm outraged about is that the CEO of Reddit was
| caught in a lie about how 3P app developer tried to "blackmail"
| them and when said developer released the audio it's clear that
| never happened and now Reddit is doubling down on dragging this
| developers name through the mud still.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| I just don't understand why the big app devs are so against
| making their apps subscription based. The Apollo dev even said
| they'd have to charge like $2.50pm for each user. Do it then?
| If you lose users, you pay less for the API anyway. Maybe less
| users means less income and less time to spend on the app, but
| I'm pretty sure most Apollo users would be willing to subscribe
| to it.
|
| It seems like all the 3rd party apps took this stance and are
| now just giving up at the first hurdle instead of adapting
| their business plan. Reddit's own site and app is so bad that
| people are boycotting them over losing third party apps, and
| third party app devs don't think they have any way of charging
| for their apps? Like, are they even listening.
| plandis wrote:
| Reddit announced the pricing with 30 days for app developers
| to start being charged. That's not a realistic timeline.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| App developers can just close off their apps until they
| implement the subscription. I literally can't understand
| why the 30 days is an issue. Instead of inconveniencing
| users for a few weeks while the changes are made, they're
| inconveniencing users for a lifetime by discontinuing the
| app.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| I think for a lot of people, they _want_ to see Reddit not as a
| "company trying to be profitable" but more as "the de-facto
| community message board on the internet" where everything is
| free, open, and equitable. Shutting down third-party APIs makes
| the site less open in a lot of ways, which is rubbing people
| the wrong way.
|
| That being said, I do agree that they own the API and have
| every right to charge for it. I am going to be very
| disappointed that my preferred way of browsing Reddit is going
| to stop working, since the official app is not a great
| experience.
| tigeroil wrote:
| I don't know why but I really, really hoped he'd come into the
| AMA with good intentions, or maybe even to announce that
| actually, you know what, they've reconsidered and now they're
| going to walk back some of the changes to the API pricing so as
| not to affect average users.
|
| If only.
| [deleted]
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| For whatever reason I had similar hopes, just grasping at
| straws not wanting to lose my addiction [1] ... Alas, I need to
| let go.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36123342
|
| In retrospect, there's a lot of irony in that comment, I had no
| idea this was coming ... Thanks spez for ruining something I
| liked, and saving me.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Communication from executives is just like communication from
| politicians. It's designed to get the outcome they want, to
| manipulate, to make the strategic commitments they want, avoid
| those they don't, hide the things they don't want you to know
| yet, play to 40 different audiences etc..
|
| On one hand I get why they do that, on the other hand it's made
| communicating with these people or believing them completely
| impossible if you just want to know what they think or what their
| plans are.
| parasubvert wrote:
| s/executives/humans/g
| personjerry wrote:
| Link to the AMA:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
|
| The funny part is all the top questions didn't get answered...
| "Ask Me Anything but I won't answer it"
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| He didn't answer many questions. I guess he gave up.
| superkuh wrote:
| >The response was surprising. Unlike most companies, which try to
| soften their blows behind corporate PR speak, Huffman answered
| rather plainly.
|
| I strongly disagree. The response is line with his past behavior
| and notice that nowhere in it does spez response address the fact
| that he was caught lying. That is exactly what corporate PR speak
| is. Deflecting away from lies and guilt and refusing to answer
| the question. He wants us to be mad the Apollo dev protected
| himself by recording the conversation.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Spez's response is making me question the integrity of not
| merely Reddit, but YC as a whole.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
|
| The whole point of YC was to imbue every founder with "do not
| be evil" in their DNA. Otherwise, it's a cartel.
|
| This is pretty clear-cut case of Huffman not only trying to lie
| publicly (for no apparent reason, no less!) but then further
| trying to damage his reputation.
|
| I'm unreasonably upset about this, and should probably step
| away from computers for a bit. I don't know if I'm getting old
| and just feeling like "it's the end of an era," or what. But I
| grew up in a 2008 that was unlike anything on display here.
|
| I thought someone would be on the phone with Huffman trying to
| convince him that lying publicly about a developer is a bad
| idea. But if they are, they're not getting the message through.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| My impression of YC was that it was a way to convince a bunch
| of kids in their 20s that they were the "chosen ones" with a
| chance (albeit very small) to become fabulously wealthy along
| with the power that follows, while making YC and follow on
| VCs fabulously wealthy. Everyone and everything else is fuel
| for those goals.
|
| http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| People keep saying he was caught lying - to be honest, I don't
| really see where where that happened.
|
| Reading the transcript of the conversation with the Apollo dev,
| it was a fairly awkward exchange, and the Apollo dev was using
| all these innuendos to imply that a monetary exchange would
| avoid a negative outcome.
|
| I don't think we know who it was specifically at Reddit that
| acknowledged the Apollo dev was not delivering a threat. The
| transcript notably attributed that to a general "Reddit", not
| the CEO. Do we even know that the CEO was on the call? Why
| didn't the Apollo dev note who was speaking?
|
| Especially after the way he was acting on the call to try and
| negotiate a cash payment, I don't entirely trust the Apollo
| dev's telling of events.
| SahAssar wrote:
| A good "PR answer" does not raise concrete questions, it makes
| all questions feel equally invalid. In this case /u/spez'es
| answer did not calm or invalidate the questions.
| Exuma wrote:
| What would be a good PR answer to refute the audio recording,
| out of curiosity?
| SahAssar wrote:
| "While we do understand the concerns of individual
| developers we are moving forward with them as a community
| on these changes. As for mentions of acquisitions or
| valuations of future partnerships we consider those talks
| private and unfinished until we have something to announce"
| or some similar corporate bullshit.
|
| It's not an answer I would have liked, but it seems like it
| would have been far more in character.
| kemayo wrote:
| Spitballing here, but for the interpreting-as-a-threat
| thing he could double-down on the misunderstanding claim --
| it sounds like the CEO wasn't actually on that call, so he
| can throw an unnamed underling under the bus for how it was
| represented to him, and backpedal on the specific
| accusation while trying to still convey the _vibe_ that he
| thinks Apollo was being unreasonable.
| Exuma wrote:
| Interesting, thanks. I see now what you mean about
| 'invalidating all statements'
|
| edit: maybe you are not OP, but I still see now.
| jongjong wrote:
| Something similar also happened to me with my previous
| employer. After I quit, the founders tried to make it look like
| I was blackmailing them. Shortly after, they were forced to
| change their story (at least the one told to my ex-colleagues)
| because my colleagues knew why I had wanted to quit since
| months and they knew it didn't make any sense... Cringe. Anyway
| in my case, they told one story to employees and a different
| story to investors. Unfortunately, it's very easy for certain
| founders to tell 3 different stories to 3 different sets of
| people these days and the lies exist in parallel and never
| reconcile for years due to divergent incentives and class
| divides (and media filter bubbles).
| walterbell wrote:
| _> founders to tell 3 different stories to 3 different sets
| of people these days and the lies exist in parallel and never
| reconcile for years due to divergent incentives and class
| divides (and media filter bubbles)_
|
| The cost of automated detection of story arbitrage is also
| falling, e.g. hypothetical StoryGPT analysis of testimony to
| a blockchain (or paper) notary.
| vkou wrote:
| You're assuming that anyone cares about dishonesty.
| walterbell wrote:
| Investors have a financial incentive to care.
|
| Hedge funds have a financial incentive to uncover
| deception or incongruent claims.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Unfortunately, it's very easy for certain founders to tell 3
| different stories to 3 different sets of people these days
| and the lies exist in parallel and never reconcile for years
| due to divergent incentives and class divides (and media
| filter bubbles)."
|
| "These days" .. but was it better before?
|
| The ruling class literally spoke a different language
| (aristocraties in europe french and the clerics latin).
|
| That made it even easier to seperate realities and not
| accidently share insights to peasants what they are not
| supposed to hear.
| sshine wrote:
| I think it's more likely that investors don't mind that the
| CEO is a two-face liar if he can make the company profitable
| up to an IPO.
|
| "Community" is such an intangible KPI.
| bionhoward wrote:
| What makes you say that Community is intangible?
| chmod775 wrote:
| An intangible key performance indicator is qualitative
| rather than quantitative and can't be easily measured.
| Community clearly falls under any common definition
| you'll find.
|
| That said, I don't think _community_ could be considered
| tangible in any context.
| rebolek wrote:
| He had eighteen years to make the company profitable.
| djbusby wrote:
| If anything, this shows the VALUE in recording conversations -
| especially for weaker party.
|
| Would like to have one-party consent recording all over USA.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > especially for weaker party.
|
| How often do you see the weaker party's interests enshrined
| in law?
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Also in devices -- both Android and iPhone have
| consistently made it obnoxiously hard to record calls,
| across many years and many security decisions.
| nico wrote:
| IANAL, this is not legal advice
|
| You can always take notes, write down things about the
| conversation, you can even write down the whole conversation
| without consent
|
| So essentially you can have a transcription of a
| conversation, but not the audio recording (without consent)
| eulers_secret wrote:
| Depends on state, I live in a 1-party consent state.
|
| Thus, I record all my interviews so I can review them
| later... and use them if I find a need to.
|
| Remember: _always_ assume you 're being recorded.
|
| Even if it's illegal the court of public option makes it's
| own rulings, and even if you 'win' legally you could still
| be ruined.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| It is better than nothing, but an actual recording would be
| a way more solid proof.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Not necessarily. With a recording you need to take the
| good with the bad. Recordings can become toxic as you
| can't get rid of them when the shit hits the fan. There
| are people who record their entire working day on their
| phones or Apple Watches and get themselves into
| trouble... do you know that the guy in your conference
| call was in Maryland? Did you say something dumb? You're
| always going to run afoul of something in doing that.
|
| With contemporaneous notes, you control the editorial
| aspects of it and have no legal risk in most situations.
| If you know you are exposed to some sort of problem,
| email yourself to make discovery easy. Otherwise, keep a
| handwritten journal.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| Also not a lawyer, but you should strive to document
| "contemporaneous notes" as substitute for a recording. A
| good way to do this is to document the conversation as soon
| as it happened, with a clear timeline, and email it to
| yourself.
| hackermatic wrote:
| And in many circumstances, email it to them! Say "These
| are my notes of our meeting, please let me know if there
| is anything that needs correcting."
| evan_ wrote:
| This is one of the most important things I've learned in
| my career- after a meeting where any kind of requirements
| are decided upon, just write up a synopsis and email it
| to all parties and say "Here's what we decided, let me
| know if I got anything wrong."
|
| 99 times out of 100 it's immediately forgotten but there
| have been a few times when I've been _really really glad_
| to have a contemporaneous record of a meeting.
| bo1024 wrote:
| I wonder if an automated stenographer would be legal even
| when recording isn't. (A device that listens to the
| conversation and writes down the transcript automatically
| without recording anything.)
| LegitShady wrote:
| it depends where you live.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > I strongly disagree. The response is line with his past
| behavior and notice that nowhere in it does spez response
| address the fact that he was caught lying.
|
| Was he though? In the audio it's clear he took it as a threat
| straight away. He literally said so. And the threat he
| understood was that the ApolloDev would create a fuss and make
| a lot of noise. Which the ApolloDev went on to do. The
| ApolloDev's response to Spez saying this was "I didn't think
| you took that as a threat" while posting an audio of him taking
| it as a threat. Then saying it's a blatant lie. While posting
| audio of spez saying he's taking it as a threat and using
| common language for moving past threats in business calls "I'll
| hope that's not what you meant" which is always code for "I'm
| going to pretend you didn't do that." You can say he was wrong
| but I don't think you can say someone is lying for believing
| something that is wrong.
| bionhoward wrote:
| Just throwing it out there: I love Reddit, but only via Apollo,
| so when Apollo shuts down, I'll probably quit Reddit. What a dumb
| move for Reddit to blow their best UI like this!
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Funny was that he seems to have gotten his responses from a
| shared document with answers that his team prepared for him. At
| one point he copied "A: ...", which users noticed so he removed
| the "A:" afterwards.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| To be fair to all parties, it doesn't seem unreasonable to have
| the CEO workshopping answers in a shared document with other
| team members and counsel during such an event.
|
| To also be fair to all parties, it seems unbelievable such
| oversight would still result in him making the comments he did.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| What'll really bake your noodle is that the question he was
| answering was almost certainly a plant. Extremely common "town
| hall" technique (see: the scandal where Clinton was fed "town
| hall" questions in advance by the DNC chairwoman.)
|
| Any time you see an AMA run by a major corp or media property,
| it's all just a dog and pony show. Listen to some interviews
| the same person is giving media personalities and you'll see
| the same topics and talking points.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, let's do this CPS style. Recent and related:
|
| _Addressing the community about changes to our API_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36261369 - June 2023 (320
| comments)
|
| _Archive your Reddit data before it 's too late_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36259930 - June 2023 (341
| comments)
|
| _Shreddit is a Python program to remove all your Reddit
| comments_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36257981 - June
| 2023 (221 comments)
|
| _Ask HN: Anyone else disinterested in Reddit API drama?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256545 - June 2023 (26
| comments)
|
| _Apollo Back end just made public_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256167 - June 2023 (229
| comments)
|
| _Ask HN: You are given 100M to launch a new Reddit competitor_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36255767 - June 2023 (23
| comments)
|
| _ArchiveTeam has saved over 11.2B Reddit links_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254172 - June 2023 (150
| comments)
|
| _Using unmodified third-party Reddit apps with a custom server_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36252061 - June 2023 (20
| comments)
|
| _Power Delete Suite for Reddit_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36250785 - June 2023 (31
| comments)
|
| _Apollo will close down on June 30th_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435 - June 2023 (1568
| comments)
|
| More:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36251707
| stolen_biscuit wrote:
| Such a shame, I've used reddit for over a decade and enjoyed it
| for the most part. There's a lot of value in the communities and
| discussions on reddit, but I think the writings on the wall for
| this one. Hopefully someone can build something that captures the
| reddit experience and pulls in the communities
| predictabl3 wrote:
| I removed Relay and blocked reddit on my computers. Capitalism is
| one thing but Steve has shown himself to be void of _any_
| integrity. It 's very obvious that it will only get worse as they
| ramp up for, and then after, the IPO.
| infecto wrote:
| I know this is repeated over and over but in the case of Reddit I
| think it's pretty true. They should never have taken VC money. I
| don't think technically they are doing anything that is very
| tricky. They have surely innovated on their tech stack but even
| the things they have tried to do seem pretty miserable. Their
| media player is horrendous and while they do have scale problems,
| I don't see much happening on the product side. They have not
| done much to make admin's life easier. Beyond the new UI they got
| years back, I am not sure what they have done to improve the
| product.
|
| Maybe I have not paid close enough attention but Reddit feels
| mostly the same since forever.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| It feels like there have been some desperate attempts at
| monetization over the past few years, with their "Coins" that
| you can use to "reward" comments/posts, NFTs, and paid avatar
| personalization. I imagine not very many users buy these, and
| they aren't really something that even a "whale" would end up
| buying a lot of because they are largely useless and don't
| enhance the experience of the site at all.
| vvillena wrote:
| Well, good luck trying to commoditize a mob. Reddit are not the
| first one who try, but they will probably be the next to fail.
| drewmol wrote:
| Fwiw, if you get a call from a debt collector and would prefer
| not to speak to them, tell them the call will be recorded and ask
| for their permission. It's been some time since I've had this
| happen but I've been 6 for 6 on them not giving permission and
| the conversation ending. (Yes, even after I consented to them
| recording the call)
| brookst wrote:
| Yep, been a long time, but as I recall they usually start by
| saying "this call may be recorded".
|
| Back when I was young and poor in in debt collector land,
| choosing to interpret that statement as permission to record
| and responding "that's great, I'll record it as well" always
| ended the conversation.
| predictabl3 wrote:
| When Capital One locked my card four times in a row in three
| days, left me stranded while traveling (partially my fault
| for not having a backup), and then didn't answer their
| customer support line for 12+ hours, and then _lied_ about
| all of it to me, I tried to record my calls with them. I 've
| never heard someone get so freaked out and cagey on a phone
| call in my life, and of course they hung up. Utterly
| despicable, I'm glad I'm in a place now where I don't have to
| even disclose.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| This is a selfish ask, but is anyone motivated enough to read
| through the AMA answers and share a summary of the interesting
| points?
| stolen_biscuit wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/user/spez can read through his responses
| here and check the context of the question, he hasn't answered
| all that many
| lemming wrote:
| Not me, but someone was:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/145bxmi/c...
| zulban wrote:
| ChatGPT can do it. Really.
| skeaker wrote:
| Felt so disappointed when I read that in the AMA thread. I guess
| it's not unexpected, someone stupid enough to make such an
| obvious lie would of course be stupid enough to also double down,
| but it really does dispel any remaining droplets of hope that
| their priorities could still be in some tiny way in the right
| place. Here's to hoping their valuation drops like a rock.
| commandar wrote:
| The whole AMA felt like a really ill-advised idea when it was
| announced given spez's track record of interacting with the
| community.
|
| Somehow, it managed to be worse than I was expecting. I figured
| there'd be non-answers; I wasn't expecting some of the
| incredibly tone-deaf ones.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| If it wasn't for stuff like that I might disregard it as
| another negotiation in the media, but yeah that's nuts. But at
| the same time I think they're uncorking a lot of festering
| resentment about other things that are wrong with the platform.
| EscapeFromNY wrote:
| Reddit's valuation has been tanking even before this drama.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/fidelity-marks-down-stripe-r...
|
| They're so eager to screw over their users, they couldn't even
| wait until after the IPO payday to torpedo their own business
| ren_engineer wrote:
| that applies to basically every company, Stripe is mentioned in
| the article you posted as well. Rising interest rates do that
| to high growth companies, Reddit actually declined slightly
| less than Stripe in comparison
| DirectorKrennic wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if Elon Musk bought Reddit at this
| point. He would be capable of it.
| vkou wrote:
| Please don't give that man ideas.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I don't think he would; it's not anywhere near the echo
| chamber Twitter was when he bought it. He had a huge army
| of supporters cheering him driving the company into the
| ground...Reddit in the last year or two has pretty
| collectively come to despite the hell out of him and his
| "fans."
|
| I can't remember the last time I saw an /r/all comment
| thread where Musk was spoken of in anything approaching a
| positive way. /r/programmerhumor absolutely eviscerated the
| man almost several times a day, in threads that saw wide
| visibility, where programmers explained to non-programmer
| redditors just how dumb the stuff he was doing was.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Aaron Swartz must be spinning in his grave.
| kylec wrote:
| He wasn't actually a co-founder though, his startup got merged
| into Reddit and he was given the "co-founder" title, but my
| understanding is that Reddit was created/co-founded by Steve
| Huffman and Alexis Ohanian.
| mattl wrote:
| Correct but he also worked on reddit and wouldn't have
| handled this situation anything like this.
| emtel wrote:
| This is correct, although its not unheard of for people who
| join a team very early to be called "founders" even if they
| aren't there from day 1.
| karaterobot wrote:
| At this point, I think he should back up his claim that Selig has
| acted disingenuously by saying one thing in public and another in
| private. I'm not sure it's legally defamatory, but it's
| definitely a bad look for a nominal leader. The only example I'm
| aware of him providing (the 'threat') was pretty soundly debunked
| by the audio recording. Ignoring the merits of their individual
| cases, Selig has been transparent, and so is capturing the public
| sympathy, while Huffman looks like a sweaty Joseph McCarthy,
| claiming to have a briefcase full of evidence he won't show
| anybody.
| kemayo wrote:
| Selig's response to that private/public claim was "Please feel
| free to give examples where I said something differently in
| public versus what I said to you. I give you full permission."
| He's doing very well at making Reddit look like a lying bully.
|
| Context (the article mentions spez's comment doubling-down, but
| doesn't mention Selig's immediate reply):
| https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
| hachiroku wrote:
| [dead]
| gigel82 wrote:
| So the AMA had 21,294 comments/questions and it included a total
| of 14 comments from u/spez (some duped), and a total of 21
| comments from all the staff participating. LOL, why even bother
| with a "Ask Me _Anything_ "?
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| Hey, you can ask, doesn't mean you'll get an answer. I feel
| like this AMA was just a way to let users vent their
| frustrations and concentrate the vitriol in one space instead
| of having it spill over throughout the entire app.
| adoxyz wrote:
| What's the point of doing an AMA if you're not going to answer
| the most upvoted questions.
| Exuma wrote:
| Cause he was pasting answers haha
| https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
| adoxyz wrote:
| Oh that's even worse. What a dumpster fire this has become.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Copy and pasting _and_ editing them after the fact when
| called out on it god what a mess
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| Spez, editing comments? He would never.
| AuthError wrote:
| I think he was downvoted so hard that his answers are marked
| hidden, you ll have to check his profile to see his replies
| stolen_biscuit wrote:
| You'd still be able to see that he's replied in the thread
| though, it'll just be collapsed but still there
| vdfs wrote:
| 14 replies on a 20K comments post
| mosen wrote:
| His responses are getting downvoted - you should be able to see
| them if you go to /u/spez
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| He's barely answered any questions. Just 14 at last count. It's
| not much of an "Ask Me Anything" if you miss out the "And I'll
| Respond" bit.
| gcdhvx wrote:
| Why does the Apollo guy see the API as his entitlement? Reddit
| ain't a charity. Neither is HN.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| A lot of what makes Reddit work is charity on the part of mods,
| devs, etc.
| dmattia wrote:
| "the Apollo guy" mentioned that they were willing to pay for
| their API usage and were in multiple discussions on pricing
| over a period of months with teams at Reddit.
|
| Imagine if you were willing to pay for API usage and asked a
| company what the costs would be, and they gave a number that
| was infeasible for you to the extent that it wasn't even
| considerable, such as $1 million per user. Obviously you
| wouldn't be able to pay that amount if you were making far less
| money per user of your app, and would feel as the Apollo
| creator does.
|
| If you can agree to that, then it seems like you just disagree
| on what a reasonable cost for this service is, which is fine,
| but I wouldn't call it entitlement.
|
| I agree that Reddit ain't a charity. And I agree that HN isn't
| either. But I'd also add that Apollo isn't.
| stale2002 wrote:
| His company isn't a charity either though. If his strategy is
| to cause massive PR damage to reddit, he's allowed to do that,
| and its currently working.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| I don't think he does? To be honest if someone continued to
| spread lies about me even after I had released recordings
| disproving them I would be more than a little upset.
| 23B1 wrote:
| What we're seeing here is exactly the sort of executive
| immaturity/arrogance that gets SO MANY startups in trouble.
|
| Young men/aspiring founders: for the love of god understand that
| your investors are NOT the whole picture when it comes to
| leadership. You need to find yourself a graybeard/executive coach
| and pay them out the ass to tell you about things like:
|
| - Rapport-building
|
| - Professional development
|
| - Values
|
| - Adaptability
|
| - Brand reputation/equity
|
| - Tone > message
|
| - Prioritization
|
| - Candor
|
| - Empathy
|
| - Ethics
|
| - Humility
|
| - Accepting feedback
|
| - Understanding second- and third-order effects
| nemo44x wrote:
| [flagged]
| userbinator wrote:
| "API pricing"? The absurdity of thinking that it's normal to be
| needing to ask permission for and even paying to essentially
| access a site with a different user-agent is what lead to this
| situation in the first place. It may not have gotten to this
| point had people almost all realised what was really happening to
| the Internet when sites started offering "API access" and
| rejected it.
|
| "third party app"? My browser is a "third party app".
|
| (Note: I am not actually a Reddit user --- I use the site read-
| only.)
| egberts1 wrote:
| So, this spez CEO is worse than a politician.
|
| Obfuscate, redirect, and blame.
|
| We all know that he is caustic, and so should the future
| shareholders.
| janoc wrote:
| Shareholders don't care, the shareholders are the VCs that are
| now demanding profits and dividends for their initial
| investment. Why do you think the sudden push for the
| monetization of the API and the "lost opportunities"?
| LegitShady wrote:
| The only valuable things that reddit has are the free labour
| of the mods and the eyeballs of their community. attacking
| them seems counterproductive to making the website more
| valuable.
| plandis wrote:
| Wasn't YC an early investor in Reddit? Pretty sure Steve and
| Alexis were in one of the early batches, right?
| spacemadness wrote:
| It blows my mind to think it will have any shareholders. A fool
| and their money.
| slg wrote:
| Why did Reddit even have an AMA for this? Everyone knew it would
| turn out exactly like it did. The most difficult questions went
| unanswered. The answers they did give were either just bland
| corporate speak or actively detrimental, giving their critics
| more ammunition including opening Reddit up to accusations of
| libel. The whole ordeal seems to leave them in a worse position
| than if they just never did the AMA.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| To control the narrative.
| Natsu wrote:
| This isn't exactly the first drama from Spez...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/5emsq3/reddit_reacts.
| ..
| dogleash wrote:
| If they don't say anything, they're incommunicative. But if
| talk and say effectively nothing, they might get egg on their
| face for people watching. However they can convince people who
| don't pay much attention that it's just a disagreement.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| At this point my theories are
|
| 1) Ego and emotion are driving decisions at reddit
|
| or
|
| 2) Reddit's leadership has run the numbers and genuinely thinks
| it will benefit their profitability plans if the users reacting
| negatively to these changes all leave. This is well past the
| point of just killing 3rd party apps because the API changes
| alone would have accomplished that.
|
| "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately
| explained by incompetence." What do you do when incompetence
| would be unbelievable in scope and malice would be unbelievably
| incompetent.
| LegitShady wrote:
| reddit receives hundreds of millions of dollars per year of
| free moderating from their community. The community is the
| only valuable thing in reddit. The website is worth nothing,
| the eyeballs and free labour are everything.
|
| When the parts of their community with outsize influence
| start talking about abandoning the site to somewhere else it
| threatens both their hundreds of millions in free labour per
| year, and also the future of their site.
|
| Reddit exists as it does today because Digg made a series of
| bad decisions that led to mass movement away from Digg. The
| same thing can happen to Reddit.
| Semaphor wrote:
| As has been mentioned a few times: When Digg fucked up,
| reddit existed as a growing but small competitor. Reddit
| has no such competitor.
| fphhotchips wrote:
| That may be true in the US but it's not everywhere, and
| it certainly won't be for long.
|
| Anyway, for many, the competition is "nothing at all". I
| will _never_ download the official Reddit app. It 's that
| bad. The mobile experience is worse. I'll just find
| something more productive to do with my time.
| LegitShady wrote:
| now that its clear there's a need for an alternative they
| will show up. It's not that hard to spin up an old pre-
| shittification version of reddit.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I'd go so far as to say the free moderation labor is the
| _only_ thing worth anything.
|
| Acquiring users is relatively easy. Retention is hard.
| chrsstrm wrote:
| You're not wrong, but that's a very one-sided view. The
| alternate outcome is that when the current mods abandon
| ship there's likely going to be many more people waiting in
| the wings to get their shot at modding their own sub. What
| other service is a perfect substitute for Reddit? The
| thought that most users will give up Reddit cold-turkey and
| stay away permanently is a bit naive. Internet use can be
| an addiction and addicts staying away under their own power
| and no alternative is unlikely. Ultimately a vacuum will be
| created, it will be filled with fresh bodies, and Reddit
| will continue along after a short period of unrest and
| uncertainty, with new mods running new subs.
|
| "The time to buy is when there's blood in the streets."
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| The reality is that the Reddit users that actually care about
| this enough to show up and rage in the AMA are also the ones
| that are almost completely unmonetizable. So I doubt there
| was ever really any risk of major loss from this.
| prox wrote:
| A bit under the radar, but Twitch is having a similar moment
| with new ad directives which would kill independent
| streamers. It caused an upset in the community. Twitch
| backtracks but the damage is already done.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Making wildly unpopular changes and then "rolling them
| back" to something "more reasonable" is a very commonly
| employed corporate management strategy for implementing
| unpopular policy changes with both customers and employees.
|
| Want to drop PTO rates by 5%? Announce a 10% reduction,
| ignore the furor for a few days, then the CEO publishes the
| already-written "oops" letter and says that they listened
| to feedback from employees, looked at the "books" and
| decided they could compromise to 5%. Half the company
| thinks he's a great leader for listening and pushing back
| against the evil bitch running HR. If they wanted to just
| make more money off API calls, they would have announced
| the pricing, but then rolled it back part-way.
| Unfortunately, the Apollo dev recording his conversations
| with them, and their sheer incompetence/ego, seems to have
| taken all that off the table and instead they're just
| doubling down, which definitely does not work.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Yeah, but the thing is, you've broken a lot of trust with
| your employees once you pull shit like this. Places like
| Apple and Google, who have been shitty in different ways
| with their RTO plans, are never getting back that trust,
| not fully. If they go full-blown cynical like this they'd
| see really serious attrition in places they didn't want
| it to happen, and no amount of stock would bring those
| people back.
|
| I know it's not you personally; not trying to shoot the
| messenger here. People need to understand that these
| tactics are bad for the company in the long term.
| adamckay wrote:
| It's worthwhile pointing out his wasn't a genuine AMA - it was
| a "ask me anything we have a pre-written answer for" [1]. It's
| an obvious thing to do because the whole situation has been
| received badly by the community, so you'd expect some
| preparation of good answers to likely questions, but to copy
| and paste blindly the pre-written answers from the PR team is
| just pure laziness and a blatant disregard for the community
| you've built.
|
| 1 -
| https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
| endisneigh wrote:
| I don't even know why this guy bothered to explain. Just change
| the api and be done with it
| [deleted]
| asmor wrote:
| Can anyone explain the joke to me? Why would reddit cut Apollo a
| $10M check? Is this just a cheeky "so you think my use of the API
| provides me with $20M of value" comeback at the ridiculous API
| pricing? It did, in part, sound like a "half serious" (as in
| completely serious but with plausible deniability) attempt at
| "give me money and I'll announce my completely unrelated
| retirement and stop making a stink about this", which I'd agree
| is a bad look.
| 542458 wrote:
| Even if it was a threat, I don't see why that's a problem.
| Reddit is a multibillion dollar business. At that scale
| businesses routinely threaten each other - I.e., "If you sue us
| over patent A we will sue you over patents B, C, and D". Apollo
| saying "If you move to kill my business I will deploy my
| consumer goodwill against you" is a completely reasonable thing
| to do.
| asmor wrote:
| But that's not exactly what happened here. I'm totally with
| you on mobilizing your users to affect change, but this was
| asking for hush money instead of enabling Apollo to continue
| operating?
| 542458 wrote:
| "If you move to kill my business (instead of offering a
| reasonable exit i.e., acquiring it) I will deploy my
| consumer goodwill against you."
| plandis wrote:
| It wasn't asking for hush money. The developer was asking
| to be acquired. It's clear from the audio this wasn't
| intended to be hush money.
| curiousgal wrote:
| The joke is that the opportunity cost is NOT 20 millions.
| Asking them to buy the app for 10 millions is supposed to
| illustrate the point. Imagine we both have a phone an you try
| to sell me yours for 20 million dollars, I would reply saying
| well you can buy mine for 10 millions, hopefully that makes it
| clear that your asking price is ridiculous.
| BoxFour wrote:
| The joke is a thinly-veiled retort, basically:
|
| > Reddit: Apollo costs us $20m a year
|
| > Apollo: Well that's a silly number that doesn't add up and
| you're basically comparing me to a DDOS, if I'm just a botnet I
| guess you can just pay me half that to shut the botnet down.
| [deleted]
| gaganyaan wrote:
| I doubt it was about making a stink, it was likely along the
| lines of "It's your site and your rules, I get that. You're
| clearly trying to kill off 3rd party apps like mine even if you
| won't admit it, so I'll make it easy for you and kill it off
| myself for some compensation."
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| Reddit's current situation is an interesting case study in the
| difference between running a sustainable, profitable business,
| growing naturally, vs trying to grow unnaturally quickly and
| trying to extract as much "value" as possible from the business
| at the expense of long-term stability in a frankly sickening and
| vampirish manner. It's something I see repeated again and again
| in this industry.
| djbusby wrote:
| Those at the top of this play all still make off with life-
| changing money. Who cares about business stability once you've
| secured your personal wealth?
| Havoc wrote:
| >We'll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive.
|
| It appears he has confused the reddit AMA for an IPO prep call.
|
| What a tone deaf farce...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/comment/jnk...
| djbusby wrote:
| Wild they haven't made profit in so long. Who's running that
| place.
| slg wrote:
| It is wild that a company that is nearly two decades old and
| seemingly has never been profitable is doing an IPO. Who is
| going to buy their stock? What would make someone think that
| Reddit will suddenly turn things around in year 19 and actually
| become profitable?
| [deleted]
| madeofpalk wrote:
| "To be fair" (not that he needs it) the question (he answered,
| out of 10 in the comment) was poor
|
| > How do you address the concerns of users who feel that Reddit
| has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on
| community engagement?
|
| Reddit is a company. It's profit driven. I don't think that's
| surprising or shameful.
| hooverd wrote:
| I think Reddit probably had a path to making a modest profit,
| but investors don't want the 2x dog. Now they're probably
| going to do the social media equivalent of selling the copper
| wiring from the walls.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| > We'll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive.
| Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.
|
| Full quote of a CEO stating that a bunch of independent
| developers are able to make a good profit while the pre-IPO
| company he's running is not.
|
| Can you short an IPO? Not sure how these financial shenanigans
| work.
| djbusby wrote:
| Not really. And the options market doesn't open until weeks
| after the IPO.
| wvenable wrote:
| Being profit-driven is a fine model for a business. However, it
| doesn't make business sense to alienate developers and users in
| service of that goal.
|
| Reddit has always struck me as a company with no creativity.
| They have this huge diverse community and can't seem to find a
| way to monetize it in any way other than the most basic
| advertising model.
|
| They always seem to do things in conflict with the community
| rather than in concert with them.
| Havoc wrote:
| > Being profit-driven is a fine model for a business.
|
| A fine business model but a bizarre damage control statement
| kstrauser wrote:
| Nearly all businesses are profit-driven. My wife owned a
| medical practice, and while she chose the profession because
| she wanted to help people, she built a company around it to
| put food on our table. There's nothing wrong with that.
|
| But optimizing for short-term profit over long-term revenue
| is just nuts. Apple didn't become a trillion dollar company
| by focusing on maximizing profit above all else every single
| quarter.
| robryan wrote:
| Maybe they need better ad tooling and promotion of it.
| Probably big improvements to be made just in getting enough
| ad inventory to show something remotely relevant to a user.
| wvenable wrote:
| Ads are Reddit are a notoriously poor investments compared
| to other social media sites. Maybe it's an intractable
| problem given the nature of the site or again maybe they
| just aren't engaging enough with the communities to target
| ads more specifically.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| They also try to monetize the whole thing with Reddit Gold or
| whatever where you can pay like five bucks to put a badge on
| someone else's post or comment.
|
| Although I wouldn't know a whole lot about it because after a
| decade-plus on Reddit I've still never bought any.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| This was such a confusing feature to me. I just looked and
| my Reddit account is 13 years old, and I've also never
| bought any of these "rewards" because they seem so empty
| and useless. The person you're giving it to gets nothing
| other than some images above their post, so I _know_ that
| if I spend the money on one it's basically just a donation
| to Reddit which I'm not keen to do if I get nothing out of
| it. They also have their "premium" subscription which seems
| even more useless.
|
| Now, if they had implemented it in a way similar to how
| Brave did their rewards where people would get some share
| of the reward (say, 5% of the money?) then I would be way
| more likely to buy it and would probably also participate a
| lot more. Imagine if some people could make a living off of
| Reddit the same way they do off of YouTube or Twitch!
| Semaphor wrote:
| I still think it was a missed opportunity to not just give
| API access for premium users only.
| spacemadness wrote:
| I'm probably overly cynical about this, but the only people
| buying those seem to be fake accounts trying to prop up
| their other fake accounts.
| munificent wrote:
| I pay for Reddit Gold. Reddit has brought a lot of value
| to my life, I don't like seeing ads, and I like the idea
| of supporting non-ad-based business models.
| janoc wrote:
| I have never bought them but I have actually received a
| few silver and gold badges like that for some of my
| comments. So I guess that makes my account a fake then?
| hatsunearu wrote:
| they used to give out reddit silver badge and other
| badges for free if you used the official app. I used that
| to give out a lot of badges to the community I moderate.
|
| Ironically all the badges are from memes that were born
| on reddit...
| spacemadness wrote:
| Nope, it makes me overly cynical and expecting the worst
| from Reddit.
| gtop3 wrote:
| > Reddit has always struck me as a company with no creativity
|
| I thought reddit was really clever for the first ~7 years of
| operations. They replaced forums, fostered communities,
| gained a reputation as a place to get real people's takes,
| and attracted people willing to have interesting
| conversations. The upvote/downvote system that is now so
| common was made popular from reddit. They brought awareness
| to important political topics surrounding net neutrality.
| They were leaders in early Web2.0, where each user saw
| content that appealed to them, because everyone could choose
| which subreddits were in their homepage. It was highly social
| and highly engaging.
|
| After a certain point in 201X the dark patterns began to
| appear. I was almost fully disengaged by the start of 2013. I
| can't remember the details, but I remember being increasing
| disappointed with reddit every time I returned for a brief
| visit.
| wvenable wrote:
| I remember when they fired Victoria Taylor who was the
| ambassador for their celebrity AMAs. At that exact time,
| AMAs were absolutely hopping with celebrities and even
| President Obama. Reddit was getting huge media coverage and
| that was likely lots of new traffic.
|
| ...and then they killed it...
|
| They still have celebrity AMAs but that was the peak and it
| immediately lost most relevance.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| There was a dedicated AMA app and it was poised to become
| an independent revenue stream. The leadership's outright
| destruction of the AMA platform in their attempt to
| monetize it looks like a microcosm of what they're doing
| to the entire site today. If they start booting
| moderators during the blackout, that will complete the
| congruence.
| TheFreim wrote:
| I don't know if it's "tone deaf" so much as honest. I wish
| companies were willing to give the real reason behind changes.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I for the life of me can't figure out why they are charging so
| much money for the API. They could do other things such as:
|
| - Mandate as part of the TOS[0] that API users _must_ display the
| ads in the application unless they pay a higher fee. I get alot
| of people use 3rd party apps to escape ads, but this wouldn 't be
| the end of the world, it also allows the developer some
| discretion on how the ads can be formatted visually which could
| actually be a big win for Reddit in some ways. Make all this
| contingent on app review and auditing of the app.
|
| - Work with the community to establish a more reasonable API fee.
| I'm sure everyone can find an agreement here somehow. All but the
| smallest players likely would find this agreeable.
|
| - Only allow premium (and therefore ad free users) to use 3rd
| party apps. If they aren't a premium Reddit user they need to use
| the official client. This seems like the most pragmatic option to
| _me_ , since those users would by pass ad revenue anyway.
|
| [0]: Terms Of Service
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| They're either entirely incompetent or they're intentionally
| driving away 3rd party apps. I can't see any other alternative
| than that.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| Maybe they're hoping that future LLM trainers will cough up
| the crazy prices?
| jsheard wrote:
| It's pretty obviously the latter, the decision to kill access
| to NSFW posts via the API while the official apps will
| (AFAICT) still be able to access them means that 3rd party
| apps will be on the back foot _even if they pay,_ for no good
| reason Reddit has been able to articulate.
|
| NSFW on Reddit isn't just porn, the tag is used in the
| literal sense of "your boss wouldn't approve" or as a content
| warning for violence, heavy subjects, etc.
|
| e.g. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/search?q=nsfw%3Ayes&r
| estr...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think people truly appreciate how valuable
| the data collected by mobile apps is for selling to
| marketers and advertising (which can't be blocked anywhere
| nearly as easily as it can be via browsers.)
|
| There's a reason everyone pushes you to install their app;
| they want all that sweet, sweet time/network/location data
| and the ability to drive traffic to whatever degree they
| want via notifications.
|
| I believe notifications also allow them to wake their app
| and collect data at that point in time, which they couldn't
| ordinarily do because iOS and Android have much more
| restrictions on background activity?
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| This explains the API changes themselves, but not the
| leadership team's behavior throughout the process. Holding
| this AMA didn't do anything productive for that objective
| but resulted in even more foot-in-mouth, now with even more
| attention than before.
|
| Reddit's leadership had the potential headline "3rd party
| developer claims tiff with reddit administration in post"
| and took it upon themselves to upgrade it to what's here.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| The two options aren't mutually exclusive, though. It's
| both, IMO.
| Alupis wrote:
| > or they're intentionally driving away 3rd party apps
|
| This doesn't seem to make sense. If Reddit wanted to kill 3rd
| party apps, they would just disable public API access
| entirely. The reaction would be basically the same it seems.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| LLMs are so valuable that these fees are must be this high to
| keep them in check.
|
| The fundamental problem is they're not differentiating pricing
| between data scrapers and user apps.
|
| Heck, they don't even need to display ads in 3rd party apps.
| Just let me subscribe to Reddits API directly. Let me pay for
| my monthly usage.
| robryan wrote:
| This seems easy, you have limits per client per user.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| Just append .json to any Reddit URL and you'll get a full
| dump of that page, we'll see if they get rid of this feature
| as well. Way easier than scraping.
| redox99 wrote:
| LLMs will just scrape the website like they do with the rest
| of the internet. For Alphabet, Microsoft and some others they
| don't even need to do that as they already have everything
| stored for search results.
| vkou wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Reddit can figure out how to sell API access
| to LLMs, and how to differentiate that from my 'API access'
| because I happen to use Reddit through a mobile app.
| indymike wrote:
| > I for the life of me can't figure out why they are charging
| so much money for the API
|
| They are discontinuing the API, except for a small number of
| customers willing (maybe) to pay their price for the API.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I don't think this materially changes anything I posited
| though.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| > allows the developer some discretion on how the ads can be
| formatted visually
|
| this is absolutely the opposite of what they would want. Brands
| have very tight control over display advertising and would have
| to approve it everywhere
| no_wizard wrote:
| I'm thinking more about how it flows in the feeds, not
| arbitrary control. The nuance is a little hard for me to
| explain, but basically I just imagine they could do a better
| job highlighting _this is an ad!_. Current Reddit default
| approach makes ads seem like they 're from a normal user or
| its a subreddit.
|
| I should've clarified
| x0x0 wrote:
| > I for the life of me can't figure out why they are charging
| so much money for the API.
|
| The claim (made by several mods) is that they are spending >
| $10m annually on the API once you include eng effort, and they
| want a return on the opportunity cost, not just the pure
| compute cost.
|
| Additionally, they've run reddit so shockingly incompetently
| that they appear to have separate, better APIs that they only
| allow their internal apps to use. So when they complain about
| the inefficiency of use of the available APIs, keep that in
| mind...
|
| Clearly, however, they just don't want other frontends. See eg
| them moving to measuring API calls on a per-app basis, rather
| than on a per-app per-user basis. It's dumb, imo, to not just
| say so.
|
| And like everything reddit does, this was done wildly
| incompetently. I'd ask how they could possibly have not thought
| through the impacts on accessible frontends, or mod tools
| (which itself demonstrates the fractal incompetence of reddit:
| why do mods have to build or buy their own tools?), but...
| well, reddit.
|
| NB: so fractally incompetent that they apparently can't even
| measure api usage and share that with API users in real or
| near-real time. Like... how. Just how.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| because they want to push people to the first party app to
| boost userbase and data collection before IPO, it's all more
| money in their pockets because they're looking at cashing out
| in the short term and don't care much about the long term
|
| in the immediacy people are still going to use reddit either
| way because there's no easy and popular alternative, just like
| twitter held on to most users despite all the noise
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| Another reason a lot of users like to use third-party apps and
| old.reddit.com is to avoid all of the "Coins"/"rewards" and NFT
| avatars that litter the page these days and make it a
| distracting experience to try and read comments and posts
| (which should be front-and-center).
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