Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted • Hacker News Board

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#71

Post by apercu » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 4:37 PM UTC

superfrank wrote: post #38

tedivm wrote: post #2

It absolutely amazes me how badly reddit has handled this whole situation. From the years of broken promises to moderators, the complete lack of accessibility in their own apps, and then on top of their for their CEO to not only get caught in a major lie but for him to then double down on it. As much as reddit wants to make these developers into the bad guys, every move they've made in this mess has hurt their reputa…

> then on top of their for their CEO to not only get caught in a major lie but for him to then double down on it. > Even spez complaining about Christian recording the calls seems hollow when those recordings are what proved that spez was lying to the community Were the calls ever posted? For the way Reddit has handled this and previous issues I definitely believe Christian over spez, but unless I missed something, r…

> Were the calls ever posted?

Yes. On Christians Reddit post about the shutdown. Transcripts and links to specific audio bits. Pretty easy to locate.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#72

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 4:38 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #49

redmerchant2 wrote: post #7

They buried the lede. The article suggests the shutdown was because of free API to paid API. Anyone uninformed who just click off at that point. Even when they ask about costs, it was just saying it’s “ But the issue is two fold. (1) all the devs support a paid API, but the rate is absurd according to basic math. It would charge devs over 20x what a user actually cost/were worth. Devs were willing to take on a higher…

> It would charge devs over 20x what a user actually cost/were worth Are you implying that a user is worth $0.125/mo to Reddit? Because that is laughably inaccurate. Mature platforms like Facebook extract up to $60 per user per quarter in advertising revenue from developed countries. Reddit itself made an estimated $500M+ from ads last year. ~$2.50/mo is already more than fair. Thinking that Reddit owes full data acc…

I think the question is how much money they apps can make from having users, not Reddit.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#73

Post by thereddaikon » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 4:38 PM UTC

dabluecaboose wrote: post #5

I've gotta say, Christian comes across as really naive in this piece. > Well, it’s weird because prior to this, I almost always understood that Reddit as a company understood that they’re very community-focused, and they kind of didn’t do the bullshit corporate speak. And it was weird to kind of see this week, where they engaged in a lot more of that than I have historically ever seen them do. And it just went over……

My read is he is just trying to present things as if Reddit are operating in good faith. They aren't, but its more diplomatic to act like they are than it is to come out with accusations that they are bad actors.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#74

Post by neilv » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 4:38 PM UTC

tedivm wrote: post #2

It absolutely amazes me how badly reddit has handled this whole situation. From the years of broken promises to moderators, the complete lack of accessibility in their own apps, and then on top of their for their CEO to not only get caught in a major lie but for him to then double down on it. As much as reddit wants to make these developers into the bad guys, every move they've made in this mess has hurt their reputa…

Devil's advocate... From the bits of transcript I saw, a plausible interpretation is that the Reddit person immediately felt like it was a shakedown, then Selig said it wasn't that (maybe true, maybe not), and then the Reddit person said words of apology but it is plausible that they still felt like it was a shakedown, and were only trying to deescalate/steer/negotiate.

If they still thought it was a shakedown, it would be honest for them to later say to their team that they thought it was a shakedown.

I don't know how much to trust Reddit, and the 30-days notice to showstopper API fees looks very bad. But I see a lot of people just repeating Tweet-sized soundbites, which leads to a dysfunctional and more easily manipulated society.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#75

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 4:38 PM UTC

haunter wrote: post #13

>users revolted tbh right now it feels like mods, and especially power-mods (who are moding several high traffic subs), are revolting. I actually enjoy this blackout because a lot of small subs became active refuge for people who doesn't really care about the whole drama. Honestly I'm curious how this will play out but I can see subs just "naturally" replacing themselves with new ones. fyi 92 of top 500 subreddits co…

[deleted]

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#76

Post by ajmurmann » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 4:39 PM UTC

0zemp3c wrote: post #30

tedivm wrote: post #2

It absolutely amazes me how badly reddit has handled this whole situation. From the years of broken promises to moderators, the complete lack of accessibility in their own apps, and then on top of their for their CEO to not only get caught in a major lie but for him to then double down on it. As much as reddit wants to make these developers into the bad guys, every move they've made in this mess has hurt their reputa…

99.99% of reddit users have no idea who spez is and probably wouldn't care if they learned about his shenanigans 99% of reddit users are aware that moderators do some nice volunteer work but wouldn't cross the street to save them its only Extremely Online people who care about this Insider Baseball stuff

Worse, in at least one huge sub I follow the mods are widely hated

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#77

Post by potatolicious » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 4:39 PM UTC

gs17 wrote: post #10

redmerchant2 wrote: post #7

They buried the lede. The article suggests the shutdown was because of free API to paid API. Anyone uninformed who just click off at that point. Even when they ask about costs, it was just saying it’s “ But the issue is two fold. (1) all the devs support a paid API, but the rate is absurd according to basic math. It would charge devs over 20x what a user actually cost/were worth. Devs were willing to take on a higher…

Do they really think it's reasonable? I presumed it was meant to kill off third party clients.

I agree with this take - this seems pretextual rather than a good-faith attempt to charge for API access. Because history rhymes I suspect Reddit's leadership was heavily inspired by Twitter's killing of third-party clients, which actually ended up working out for Twitter.

IMO Huffman's behavior in this entire saga has been extremely wanting, to the degree where one has to wonder about his suitability to lead the company. And to be clear - I'm actually someone who is sympathetic to Reddit's position, where a lot of the platform's value generation isn't being captured by them and the company is unprofitable.

I'm a very long-time Reddit user but I'm generally pretty meh about the various tempests-in-a-teapot psychodramas that emerge from there, and I remain generally cool to the popular uprising rhetoric - but Huffman's behavior is pretty egregious.

And this is why I don't really see this resolving peaceably - Huffman at this point seems personally aggrieved by Selig and one has to wonder if he's behaving in a capacity that maximizes the interests of his company vs. descending into a petty personal feud.

I may be grossly misinterpreting him here - but based on his disastrous AMA and his haughty proclamations it's not an unreasonable perception. More importantly, as a company that is 100% reliant on mass volunteer labor to even exist, the fact that this perception has been projected, reinforced, and not usefully countered in any way suggests disqualifying leadership inability.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#78

Post by George83728 » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 4:39 PM UTC

redmerchant2 wrote: post #39

gs17 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they really think it's reasonable? I presumed it was meant to kill off third party clients.

I’m just following Christian’s good faith interpretation. But it’s absolutely clear it was done to kill 3P clients. It’s hilarious that certain bots would be exempt and free from the price hike. Spez called out the Haikubot by name. Look those bots are cute. But it has to query every single sub and every single comment every few minutes to work. If Reddit truly cares about waste and inefficiency those would be the fi…

Those bots also shit up the S/N and generally disrupt conversations with useless replies nobody asked for. They're a big part of the reason I stopped using reddit.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#79

Post by 1123581321 » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 4:40 PM UTC

dabluecaboose wrote: post #5

I've gotta say, Christian comes across as really naive in this piece. > Well, it’s weird because prior to this, I almost always understood that Reddit as a company understood that they’re very community-focused, and they kind of didn’t do the bullshit corporate speak. And it was weird to kind of see this week, where they engaged in a lot more of that than I have historically ever seen them do. And it just went over……

I like his personality a lot. You could call him naive but he writes and speaks humbly and optimistically and it endears him to people. I'm sure the reddit employees who interacted with him day-to-day liked him. He posted a couple email threads as evidence recently and the tone on both sides was informal.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#80

Post by kats » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 4:40 PM UTC

nocoiner wrote: post #4

IMO, he’s doing a pretty good job negotiating this as well. I know there’s a lot of words right now about broken promises and everyone not wanting to do business with anyone else, but from the outside to this uninformed observer it looks to me like this is a high stakes showdown that’s inching toward a commercial resolution. There’s some dollar amount (representing either an exchange of value or avoided losses) where…

It's clear he is blackmailing them and the upset users are his leverage. After posting that "Apollo will close down on June 30th." he now says "Same as always: I love building Apollo, and if Reddit is willing to to talk I'm happy to as well." which of course was not what he always said. He was never joking about asking for 10 million dollars and is still hoping for an offer.