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

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

#81

Post by bottlepalm »

999900000999 wrote: post #35

I love Reddit, but the constant ads are getting worse. It's like they have no internal controls here. Would someone really be interested in He Gets Us and Seeking Arrangements at the same time. I'm also a bit confused as to why Reddit would target 3rd party apps like this. Most people, myself included don't bother with 3rd party apps. Unless the adds are going to get even worse soon...

You have to watch more ads to make up the the costs incurred by 3rd party api usage as well as the costs incurred by the users of those apps seeing no ads at all.

It's kind of a funny protest - poor people who watch lots of ads protesting for the rights of rich people to enjoy an ad free experience.

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

#82

Post by nemo44x »

spiderice wrote: post #16
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……

It's really easy to call someone naive once you have all the information (like you do now). But it was much less obvious a couple months ago. Especially given that Christian has worked closely with Reddit for years and they've always treated him well, and seemingly like third party apps.

I think the OP is just saying that Selig thought he was bro's with Reddit and didn't really consider that they are a for-profit corporation with a board of directors and shareholders that will abandon him the second it makes financial sense to do so because their leadership are fiduciaries, not bro's.

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

#83

Post by tmpz22 »

lacker wrote: post #65
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…

Why is this rate absurd? From the article, it says Reddit would charge Apollo $2.50 per user per month. Right now, ad-free YouTube costs $12 a month, ad-free Twitch costs $12 a month. I can't buy ad-free Twitter at any price. Is it really not worth $2.50 a month to have ad-free Reddit? Personally, I like Apollo, and I would be willing to pay to keep an ad-free Reddit experience. I'm disappointed that the two sides di…

The new rate would require Apollo to monetize its entire userbase which includes a large number of free users and life-time-membership users in addition to increasing rates for existing subscribers.

Further switching to the reddit-model would require turning their back on free users with disabilities.

So while it is practical to shell out many of the principals behind the Apollo project in order to meet Reddit's IPO stat-padding requirements, the developer has chosen to shut down.

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

#84

Post by mynameisvlad »

lacker wrote: post #65
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…

Why is this rate absurd? From the article, it says Reddit would charge Apollo $2.50 per user per month. Right now, ad-free YouTube costs $12 a month, ad-free Twitch costs $12 a month. I can't buy ad-free Twitter at any price. Is it really not worth $2.50 a month to have ad-free Reddit? Personally, I like Apollo, and I would be willing to pay to keep an ad-free Reddit experience. I'm disappointed that the two sides di…

I mean, if by “trying the hardest” you mean “saying they’re trying the hardest while not outright banning apps” then sure, I guess they tried the hardest.

They’ve made it pretty clear they’re not really trying to keep apps. Several developers in the Huffman interview pointed out that they’ve reached out for months if not years to absolute silence in return.

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

#85

Post by ahahahahah »

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…

The transcript is basically:

Christian: Oh, just give me $10 million and i'll be quiet.

Reddit: What?!? Did I hear you right?

Christian: Huh, oh I just mean the app is loudly using the api and i'll make that quiet.

Reddit: Oh, sorry, I misunderstood you to be asking us to pay you to go away.

And then Christian would go and spout off how "even reddit agreed that they misunderstood me on the call". It's so incredibly disingenuous of him.

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

#86

Post by paxys »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #72
paxys wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The apps can make whatever they charge. $2.50 is now the base cost to add to every subscription. If the users value the service they will pay.

Developers already pay Apple & Google 30% for the privilege of being in the app stores. Is it too much for the very service that is powering your entire app to ask for their own cut?

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

#87

Post by judge2020 »

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…

In one of Christian's posts, reddit agreed that the price was for the opportunity cost of serving that user without ads - since they're not going to get any ad money from these users (and are unwilling to serve ads to these 3p clients since they probably can't guarantee to advertisers the 3p app isn't doing anything shady like hiding the ad while logging an impression).

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

#89

Post by nightski »

tedivm wrote: post #60
0zemp3c wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sure, but without those moderators there's not much of a site. I don't spent a lot of time thinking about trash collection, but if all the garbage on my street stopped being collected I'd absolutely notice.

You are probably right, but at the same time there are probably plenty of people willing to step in and take their place.

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

#90

Post by redmerchant2 »

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…

Many financial sites have reported Reddit users are worthless. CNBC estimated in 2019 that FB’s ARPU monthly is $7.37 per month but Reddit’s monthly ARPU is $0.30. (Though even that number should be revised down as revenue is slower than growth of users).

Again the devs are willing to pay some multiplier on this.

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