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

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101–110 of 585 posts

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

#101
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://old.reddit.com/r/wholesome/comments/148aw58/radvicea... - https://archive.ph/3qMMA The worm is turning and the top power-mods are going to get Caesar'd.

Is that case really a "power-mod"? The head mod was inactive for a year and then came back and shutdown a subreddit against the wishes of the active mod team.

The first test cases are always the strongest ones; watch - it will spread.

It's an obviously choreographed play and Reddit is going to win this one.

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

#102
post #56
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the normal way to introduce pricing to free services is to make it initially super-cheap so the majority will find it reasonable. Then overtime increase prices as you get a better sense of value and market dynamics. Starting high, creating a lot of negative reactions and almost killing any real market for profitable apps on your platform seems to be the opposite of smart. It’s now some governments go with taxati…

> Starting high, creating a lot of negative reactions and almost killing any real market for profitable apps on your platform seems to be the opposite of smart It's really dumb if the point is to keep all the third party applications that made your platform popular. It's much smarter if the point is to kill them all in favor of your first party app, that you are promising your VC investors will have tremendous growth…

Ding ding ding

The real reddit app doesn’t even have an option to block a particular ad account so when they serve you evangelical right wing ads all day you just have to swallow it.

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

#103
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

Considering the amount of media attention this has gotten from even mainstream sources including places like the BBC, I’m going to go out on a limb and say the number is far higher than 99.99%. That doesn’t even count all the people that are visiting their favorite subreddits only to see them closed with a message detailing what’s happened.

> Considering the amount of media attention this has gotten from even mainstream sources including places like the BBC

Reddit moderators are uniquely privileged when it comes to making their opinions heard on reddit. The shuttering of subreddits is sensational and splashy enough to get media attention, but in itself says little about how most reddit users feel. A moderator revolt is like a strike of middle managers, revolting against upper management. They can lock the doors and keep all the common workers out, but that isn't evidence that the common workers have much investment in the strike. I think this whole thing probably follows the 90-9-1 rule; the 9 are mods and powerusers flipping out against the 1, while the 90 are probably oblivious or simply indifferent.

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

#106
post #88

If Apollo is so popular, why doesn't Reddit clone the best features for their app? I'm guessing the Apollo founder here is trying to get bought out at this point, which is pretty smart.

Apollo should clone Reddit's backend instead.

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

#107
post #74
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 w…

Christian linked the entire phone conversation on reddit. It's available, and if you listen to it, it's clear reddit misinterpret his intention, was corrected, went public with their misinterpretation after stating they understood, and accused him of "leaking" private phone calls.

It's all horse shit and they know it. I don't claim to know the reason, I can only speculate. But, what I do know after reading Christian's posts and listening to the phone call is that reddit, and Spez specifically, are being super shitty.

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

#108
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…

> a lot of small subs became active refuge for people

Uff i ve been trying to find them , and also trying to make mine more active but it doesn't seem to be workign ...

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

#109
post #80
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.

> Same as always: I love building Apollo, and if Reddit is willing to to talk I'm happy to as well.

Got a source for that? He's made it clear that it's too late, and this can't be repaired. How can you trust someone that lied to make you look bad, and you have proof?

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

#110
post #74
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 w…

I really didn't see the issue with him asking reddit about acquisition. It's a fair exchange given the power dynamics at play, and Reddit taking that personally just speaks volumes to how immature and amateurish the management team is over there. This happens every day in the broader startup world and is how many M&A discussions start.
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