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Apollo will close down on June 30th

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Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#731

Post by rightbyte »

Guest9081239812 wrote: post #557
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #182

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…

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…

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.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#732

Post by johnchristopher »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #656
mustacheemperor wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reall…

> 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…

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.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#733

Post by Jochim »

blowski wrote: post #66
robbiet480 wrote: post #14

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 recor…

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.

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.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#734

Post by mike00632 »

SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #287

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.

I think they were also considering the crawlers that were using Reddit data to train AI models.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#737

Post by not_a_shill »

wolpoli wrote: post #29

> 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.

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.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#738

Post by hunter2_ »

robbiet480 wrote: post #14

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 recor…

> 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...

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#739

Post by yakkityyak »

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.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#740

Post by sh34r »

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.

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