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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

#121

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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.

> without those moderators there's not much of a site

How many of those users would notice if Reddit swapped in paid moderators for the largest subs?

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

#122

Post by koolba »

nlarew wrote: post #66
googlryas wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does there need to be a paid API, when reddit provides all of the content over a free HTTP API to user agents already? Are these apps more than just a custom user agent?

There are two Reddit APIs - the public REST API and a private GraphQL API which limits access. Third-party apps use the REST API and the Reddit website/app use GQL. For a hobby project you could maybe get away with scraping a GQL bearer token and issuing requests as if you were an official Reddit client. Or you could even request the HTML and scrape that. At the scale of these third party apps that approach just woul…

> At the scale of these third party apps that approach just wouldn't work.

Has there been any App Store apps that go with this approach?

As long as Reddit provides some API accessible to a non-logged in user on the web, there’s going to be a way to scrape it. If you push that scraping into the start of the app then it’s be distributed without any clear way of blocking it.

You could even have the app fetch “how to” updates from a a central site rather than pushing app updates so you don’t have to wait for App Store approvals to get around scraping updates.

We could call the end user’s program for accessing the site a “user agent” as it acts on behalf of the user to fetch and display the content that the user wants to see, in the manner the user wants to see it.

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

#123

Post by seydor »

mbStavola wrote: post #9

I can't say I've missed Reddit too much after I stopped using it. Twitter was a bit harder, but Mastodon filled that niche quite nicely. However, I don't even feel like checking out Lemmy or Kbin as a Reddit replacement, making me question how useful Reddit is for me personally. I wonder if anyone else is feeling the same during the blackout.

on the contrary i enjoyed a few subs.

This blackout led me to click on r/popular and .... the horror! i remembered how juvenile reddit is, it s not good

Reddit was clearly not designed as a website that would last for more than 5 years. Now it's all coming to bite them, stagnant communities, powertrippy moderators, impossible to contain etc etc. I m going to need some popcorn going forward

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

#124

Post by bottlepalm »

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's funny when I design my own public apps, I'm careful about API usage.

I can only imagine what an app is like that was designed with no API limits whatsoever.

It's kind of amazing Reddit ever allowed this sort of no limits API usage - while at the same time Apollo charged their own users while enjoying zero infrastructure costs. What a steal.

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

#125

Post by Marsymars »

judge2020 wrote: post #87
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).

The guarantee there is a hell of a lot better for 3rd party apps that have to comply with reddit’s ToS than it is for web browsers.

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

#126

Post by TillE »

ladberg wrote: post #67
googlryas wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does there need to be a paid API, when reddit provides all of the content over a free HTTP API to user agents already? Are these apps more than just a custom user agent?

The straight answer is that ads are embedded in the "HTTP API" and the vast majority of browser users don't have adblock, and Reddit can't force ads on any API users (except through the official app).

> and Reddit can't force ads on any API users

Why not though? Seems really straightforward to serve ads over the API and enforce any display guidelines on third-party apps, since there are only a handful of significant apps anyway.

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

#127

Post by ntaylor »

nightski wrote: post #89
tedivm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The truth is that there are many, many niche communities where this is simply not true. Whole sections of reddit will die off due to lack of moderation and people will be forced to go elsewhere. This may not be a killing blow for reddit, but it will be devastating to the communities that it impacts.

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

#128

Post by mynameisvlad »

George83728 wrote: post #103
mynameisvlad wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

It's impossible to know for sure how the userbase feels, but the attention has certainly made the situation known to a whole lot more than 0.01% of users. And most of the closures come with a lengthy explanation exactly why it's important and generally have comments praising the action.

The vocal dissenters certainly seem to be in the minority.

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

#129

Post by badRNG »

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

<1% of Reddit users make the content that provides value to the site. This 1% is disproportionately likely to know who spez is and care about his shenanigans. Even less perform the moderation tasks that keep the site running, and they basically all care about this change.

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

#130

Post by sgift »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #121
tedivm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> without those moderators there's not much of a site How many of those users would notice if Reddit swapped in paid moderators for the largest subs?

Reddit had years to make changes to the moderating situation. Any changes at all. Do you really think that they will start now instead of just cutting off their army of free mods and then wonder why things will go to shit even faster?
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