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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

#251

Post by duped »

ericbarrett wrote: post #114
judge2020 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Something I've been wondering—why couldn't the API just send a batch of ads to be served with the content? Since the apps need an authorized API key, if they don't cooperate in showing the ads then Reddit could simply threaten revocation. Then users who want "premium" could pay for whatever feature Reddit-side to allow an ad-free experience, or they could even partner with the third party apps to offer it for a cut o…

I think a large part of it is about controlling the experience of reddit and providing guarantees about how ads get viewed. 3P apps have a very "old.reddit" experience where you only get things in your feed from your subs, with no suggestions. And you can force all posts to be collapsed instead of auto-expanded.

When you browse on the 1P Reddit app you no longer have a curated feed. It's filled with suggestions ("because you visited /r/place-you-dont-sub-to before posts"). And on top of that, controlling whether the view is condensed or as expanded cards does not affect ads. So you'll get a giant "he gets us" jesus ad that takes up half the screen - and if you do something like report an ad, say it's not for you (in my case, I selected something like "it's offensive"), you'll still get the same giant ad.

The Reddit experience they want me to have is not the Reddit experience I'm used to from the 3P apps, and I think that's why they're trying to kill them off. People that want a curated list of forums and a few memes/gifs aren't driving engagement as much as they'd like, so they tried to clone TikTok. And it sucks, so I'm gone after June 30th.

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

#252

Post by Sunspark »

ink_13 wrote: post #139
George83728 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Some subs held polls, and in every one that I saw, the strike was quite broadly popular. I think characterizing this as a few power mods throwing their toys out of the pram is unfair.

I was amused to see yesterday that my comments the day previous that some, but not all, reddit mods are paid had been silently deleted. I didn't get a bot message, they were just.. gone.. So, the corporation is watching, or the mod that is a reddit employee in the sub deleted them.

I was also surprised to see yesterday that this same large sub I made them in was blacked out. Virtue-signalling? Throwing a bone to volunteer co-mods in the sub? Against the API changes? Who knows. Big mess now. Tech people don't like change, but when they get mad, wheels start turning.

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

#253

Post by thepasswordis »

evandale wrote: post #228
thepasswordis wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s most subs. This is why I’m actually torn between which group I dislike the most. On the one hand, the admins are being absolute children to the mods. But that said: most (all?) if the Reddit mods I have interacted with are also overgrown children. The “mods vs admins” thing seems like two toddlers screaming at each other. It’s at a point where I kind of want both sides to lose. Something in the culture…

> Something in the culture changed 4-5 years ago where being a mod went from a job where you remove spam posts, to a role where you decide what is allowed for discussion. > On my city subreddit, for instance, they’ve gotten it to the point where practically anything which isn’t a photo of a sunset is seen as off topic and removed. Yep, this is what needs fixing. My local city subreddit decided there was too much news…

Oh my god the banning questions thing is infuriating. Just let people not answer it if they don’t want to. Linking everybody to an FAQ from 4 years ago is not helpful. We don’t need more room for pictures of sunsets, and even if we did, nobody is paying per character.

My actual hope is that what comes out of this protest is that the majority of moderation is simply removed.

Forgive me for not shedding any tears because mods wont be able to stalk users using push shift anymore. The horror.

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

#254

Post by potatolicious »

tornato7 wrote: post #182
potatolicious wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 com…

No matter how you look at it, Reddit leadership massively screwed this up. When half your site goes offline for two days and the entire front page is calling for the CEO's head, it's obvious that they have lost touch. And since they aren't reversing course on this, you can assume even more user-hostile changes are coming in the near future.

Yep, and it's not even so much about the merits of these changes - though I am personally skeptical of them, it's that management has demonstrated no ability to sell these the community.

It's a private, for-profit company in a capitalist society. It's gonna have to do some unpopular things sometimes. What raises questions about leadership isn't so much that they're doing these unpopular things, but that they're doing so very poorly.

Good PR and good community management is critical to a social media business, especially when said business is 100% reliant on an absolutely gargantuan amount of volunteer labor. Reddit's leadership has demonstrated not only a lack of ability here, but practically an impressive anti-ability on this front.

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

#255

Post by FormerBandmate »

evandale wrote: post #173
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.

> 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 pl…

Most posters use third party apps too. The people who use the official app treat it like About.com, not Instagram

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

#256

Post by klodolph »

xyst wrote: post #171
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…

> 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.

I am a bit skeptical that efficiency is part of the formula here. Reddit's running an entire company here, and I'm guessing that API call efficiency is only a small part of the cost (considering that they serve things that cost real money, like video).

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

#257

Post by chomp »

kats wrote: post #162
leokennis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems you don’t really see the power dynamics here. Reddit holds all the power: they have the API, they can shut anyone out of it, they can ask for it whatever they want, they could even re-open all closed subreddits and install new mods. All the community and Apollo has is the power to say “Reddit, if you don’t play nice, we’ll walk away”. To call that a blackmail requires some mental gymnastics.

Nope, Reddit currently has a bunch of their subreddits private. And if the Apollo dev gets paid, then he can come up with something to make the blackout go away. That's the leverage he has to ask for money. It's what he implied in the call he had recorded, and he keeps indicating he's open to an offer. If reddit goes back to normal before he has an offer then that's when he has no leverage anymore.

You are assuming that him getting paid:

1.) alleviates all concerns of the other 3rd party apps 2.) alleviates bot concerns, moderator concerns, a11y concerns

3.) he has magic words that can whisk away the above

4.) that he has any leverage in the first place

It’s also bordering on willful ignorance to call that conversation blackmail.

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

#258

Post by jordanpg »

ink_13 wrote: post #139
George83728 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Some subs held polls, and in every one that I saw, the strike was quite broadly popular. I think characterizing this as a few power mods throwing their toys out of the pram is unfair.

Yes, but the "strike" is temporary, so there's no real sacrifice. That's the main reason I think this whole thing is silly.

Like any activism that actually accomplishes anything, it must be sustained and involve real sacrifice to work. This is just "raising awareness," which I guess it has done, but it's easy enough for Reddit to just batten down the hatches and wait for it to blow over, which it will.

It's no different than when you hear about A march planned for this or that cause.

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

#259

Post by ink_13 »

mardifoufs wrote: post #163

It's so weird that this revenue generating app is the poster child for Reddit admins abusing third parties or whatever. They literally made money for years, almost completely unbothered by Reddit inc, with their own ads and subscription model. I just don't get it, this is not some open source app getting mauled by a corporate behemoth. Apollo probably made more profit from Reddit than Reddit itself. And yes I know, R…

The choices are not just "third party apps get a free lunch" or "third-party apps pay $millions". Even Selig admits there's a middle ground where API pricing is reasonable. Or maybe just restricted to Reddit Gold accounts. Or Reddit inserts must-show ads into API responses. Et cetera.

The point is there's a middle ground to be had, but rather than negotiating for an outcome both sides can live with, Reddit is just choking third-party apps (many of which provide tooling for moderating at scale or enable accessibility) to death.

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

#260

Post by duped »

paxys wrote: post #21

The part about him already selling 50K annual subscriptions to Apollo is the interesting one in the piece, and explains the decision to discontinue the app. He entered into a contract with users assuming that his API costs would be 0. He can't change that contract and start charging another fee on top, and is obligated to continue to provide the service no matter what Reddit now decides to charge him. So the solution…

He already reneged on the "contract" he had with users once before (and ignored support emails about it), so I don't believe him that this is some kind of legal requirement.
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