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

#171

Post by xyst » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

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…

Agree. Before subreddit mods voluntarily blacked out, the Apollo developer stated he would pay millions of dollars per year ($20M/year?) with the increased rates. It’s insane.

Reddit C-level executives suggested Apollo was poorly optimized or something. I think if it truly costs that much to use Reddit’s API, then maybe it’s on reddit to make their backend more efficient. If that’s not the case then it’s clearly just another case of corporate greed and pumping the numbers for the IPO.

I really hope the blackout is sustained for longer than 2 days. People need a break from social media and their echo chambers. Plus only 2 days of decreased user activity is nothing to Reddit.

It will stay relevant for 1-2 news cycles. C-level executives brush it off to board as “turbulence”. Then it’s back to business of extracting as much value from the users

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

#172

Post by willis936 » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 5:06 PM UTC

joecot wrote: post #56

jarym wrote: 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…

Being blinded by hubris and taking a hard left off a cliff on a potentially profitable venture are not things I would consider "smart".

Saying it was "smart but handled poorly" is an excuse. It was a series of dumb moves because they did not see the actions they needed to take and in what order and on what timeframe to not capsize.

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

#173

Post by evandale » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 5:06 PM UTC

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.

> Sure, but without those moderators there's not much of a site.

I believe moderators on Reddit like to think that they're that important and integral to the site functioning smoothly, but I think the reality is upvoting/downvoting/reporting works perfectly fine in nearly every subreddit.

The only time it doesn't work is in places like r/AskHistorians or r/science which require high quality comments much like this place. You might argue with no moderation the subreddit would turn into a cesspool of reposts and memes - but who really cares? If that's what people want and that's what people are upvoting then let it be. There's no reason to have editorial control over subreddits when the entire point of the subreddit is to have stupid conversations, memes, and jokes. If people keep upvoting and enjoying the same stupid memes and jokes why do moderators feel like they need to step in and disrupt what the people find enjoyable?

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

#174

Post by EnragedParrot » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

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.

But now you have to subtract from the "plenty of people" those who are angered and disillusioned over Reddit's treatment of existing community mods and power users. You're whittling down the population of people who actually care about the subreddits they moderate and contribute to. So yeah, you could get them moderated, but the site would mostly go to garbage.

Reddit's triumph from the user perspective is that all of the content is driven by users, and those users are primarily made up of a small and passionate minority. The downfall of this fact from the business side is that Reddit as a company needs to appease those people because without their contributions, nobody would want to use the site.

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

#175

Post by thomascgalvin » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 5:07 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

People on Reddit vastly overestimate how closely Reddit's opinion lines up with that of the general public.

If the last US Presidential election was held on Reddit, Bernie Sanders would have won in a landslide. He obviously did not.

When Netflix announced it was cracking down on password sharing, Reddit declared that this would be the final nail in their coffin. Instead, subscriptions skyrocketed.

Reddit power users are angry at spez and claim that this will be the end of the site, but the average Reddit user has maybe heard about all of this, and mostly doesn't care.

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

#176

Post by nocoiner » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

more_corn wrote: post #50

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…

That’s not what they (Reddit) are signaling.

I know, but as it exists today, there’s real value to Apollo, the app. Doesn’t sound like it’s possible for Christian to continue to capture 100% of that value, but if I’m Reddit, I’m at least considering a low seven-digit acquisition and capturing x% of that value going forward.

That said, the Apollo business is a melting ice cube at the moment. It’s quite possible that 6/30 rolls around and Christian shuts it down and all that value is lost, but it would be rational in the meantime for Christian and Reddit to find a way to share it. Just gotta figure out that split, and this whole thing turns into a win-win.

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

#177

Post by raydev » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

jyxent wrote: post #117

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…

Reddit reported that they had 430 million monthly active users in 2019. $500 million per year / 430 million users = $1.16 per user per year $1.16 / 12 months = $0.10 per user per month.

Where do you account for opportunity cost and future growth/loss in these (also old and also imprecise) estimates?

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

#178

Post by willis936 » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

latortuga wrote: post #161

redmerchant2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think this is inconsistent at all. Bots don't look at or click on ads. Bots don't engage or create community. Bots don't buy awards. Bot querying is a drop in the ocean compared to real people.

It is inconsistent because spez has repeatedly said that 3P apps, Apollo in particular, are inefficient with their API usage which is preventing reddit from becoming profitable. It is their (thinly veiled) lie to justify the pricing because they think shutting down 3P apps and being caught lying at the same time is a better PR move than just shutting down 3P apps.

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

#179

Post by xyst » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 5:09 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…

This is nothing new. You don’t remember the Ellen Pao era?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit (see controversies section)

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

#180

Post by flutas » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #131

flutas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the solution is easy for any laywer to provide - just shut down the business. I don't really agree with that take. He's already talked about what happens now, and it includes refunds for unused subscription time. > I've been talking to my rep at Apple, and over the next few weeks my plan is to release something similar to what Tweetbot did (Paul has been incredibly helpful in all of this) where folks can decide…

I'm astounded that he was actually able to run a business pulling in $500,000 a year in subscriptions without ever having to pay the actual platform the users are "subscribing" to a dime. And he's been doing this for what? 8 years? No wonder he doesn't care about shutting it down. It was a free lunch the whole time.

I wouldn't say it was "free lunch" but it was definitely a benefit for him. He still had costs (Apple Dev Fee, Server Costs, Server Engineer Salary, Artists costs for the various icons.)