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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

#321

Post by Applejinx »

andromeduck wrote: post #270
downWidOutaFite wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some governments go with taxation before u-turning some years later when they’ve driven away or killed whatever it is they were hoping to tax. Examples or I don't believe that happens, maybe very rarely.

Wealth taxee are the classic example. Plenty of countries have tried

Pretty sure the trick there is to just take a trickle, not try to get a flood of income out of wealth taxation.

NO amount of this is going to be acceptable to the wealthy, but there's gonna be a threshold between resentful grumbling and panicked flight, and that threshold is not at zero. And the usefulness of a wealth tax kicks in WAY closer to zero than the panic flight threshold is.

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

#322

Post by johnnyanmac »

protastus wrote: post #210
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…

> Not really mentioned was all this was changed out the blue with less than 30 days to comply. The interview touches on it but it’s insanity that a tech company think it’s reasonable for indie devs to operate under that constraint. It's unreasonable for a company of any size. The entire storyline shows Reddit sabotaging the process. Which seems idiotic, because they're throwing away a vibrant ecosystem that is #1 in…

>but it’s insanity that a tech company think it’s reasonable for indie devs to operate under that constraint.

I don't like being that pessimist "fuck capitalism" sort of user but... between the high cost, low deadlines, and unanswered responses from devs, it's pretty clear what the true intent here is. And I don't think it was a due to a lack of competence. It was very carefully planned (maybe not the scale of the reaction, but overall planned).

---

And from other devs on the AMA, It's not like devs didn't know before the public announcement. One app developer mentioned trying for 3 months to get contact:

>I am the developer of a third party app (Now for Reddit) which has been happily using the API for 10 years. I don't want to close down and have been considering using the paid API. However, I have been trying to contact Reddit over the last 3 months and have been completely ignored.

>I have sent many emails (devapps@reddit.com) and have used the online contact form which reddit themselves have asked developers to use. Each and every time I hear nothing.

>What am I supposed to do? The deadline is approaching fast, my app will be rate limited by Reddit and it will stop working. Please, reply to developers who contact you.

>I feel completely powerless to do anything right now and I want to try and save the app I've been working on for the last 10 years.

>I know I'm not the only developer who is being ignored, it's extremely unfair and a horrible way to be treated.

(yes, as you can predict, this question did not get an answer despite being the 2ns or 3rd top comment)

Now for Reddit isn't the most popular app, but 500k downloads on android alone show this wasn't just some small toy. They give a deadline of almost two months but ignore 3 months of email support. They don't want 3rd party apps.

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

#323

Post by evandale »

volkl48 wrote: post #296
evandale wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Long-time user of the site, although currently taking a break: I'd strongly disagree with that. Mods do an immense amount of work on Reddit just to keep their subreddits remotely on topic and not filled with constant reposts and spam. Also, they're the ones who actually deal with most of those reports - they don't get handled by magic or admins in most cases. Unmoderated/absentee mod subreddits are frequently overrun…

How much work does a mod of a city subreddit with 600k subscribers really do though? Is it really necessary to have rules in a city subreddit such as 1) no questions or 2) no posts about crime?

That's what I don't understand. The mods in my city subreddit love to claim they get a ton of alt-right posts and are constantly fighting spam but I've browsed new for years on it and it's _extremely_ rare I see content like that and I highly doubt the mods are acting so fast that they're seeing things I before I do with how often I sat on new auto-refreshing the page.

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

#324

Post by watwut »

nemo44x wrote: post #226
watwut wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really does not seem to me that Musk figured anything out. He is loosing both money and users at massive speed.

They have a higher user count than they’ve ever had breaking their own MAU records. Advertising will come back. There’s anti-Twitter pressure campaigns and for economic reasons ad spend slowed. It’s all coming back. He controls the worlds largest and most important megaphone. That’s priceless.

> They have a higher user count than they’ve ever had breaking their own MAU records.

Yeah, because the bots and spam area largely out of control. There is significantly much more of it them used to be. And no, ads did not went down because of pressure campaigns, but because of serious mismanagement of ad accounts.

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

#325

Post by SkyPuncher »

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…

I've felt the opposite. He's basically tried to have an argument in public to get people to turn against Reddit. His communication is no longer negotiation. It's burn everything down with me because I've given up.

I understand that Christian is in a really challenging place, but fighting with Spez in a public place is not the way to do it. It only encourages other developers to build a following that they attempt to leverage against Reddit.

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

#326

Post by watwut »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #262
watwut wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really does not seem to me that Musk figured anything out. He is loosing both money and users at massive speed.

Why would Elon Musk care if he loses money on Twitter? His Tesla stake has gone up more in the past 4 weeks than the entire amount he personally spent on Twitter

> Why would Elon Musk care if he loses money on Twitter? His Tesla stake has gone up more in the past 4 weeks than the entire amount he personally spent on Twitter

Having another income source really does not imply he does not care about a company where he is spending most of the time.

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

#327

Post by Deestan »

potatolicious wrote: post #77
gs17 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they really think it's reasonable? I presumed it was meant to kill off third party clients.

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…

> a lot of the platform's value generation isn't being captured by them

I will add that neither is it made by them. Community creation, curation, moderation, posting, discussing, styling, accessibility, usability is all done through volunteers and community members.

That "value generation" isn't 100% theirs to consume should be fair.

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

#328

Post by hartator »

Sunspark wrote: post #289
hartator wrote: post #267

Appollo main dev said he wanted 10M to “keep the app quiet”. I wouldn’t want to negotiate after that as well.

He was making a joke. If Reddit took a stressed joke attempting to defuse the situation a bit as a threat, it really makes the statement that their management or outreach team really does consist of mentally slow people who should experience a Musk-style firing. Some people make jokes when they are stressed or anxious.

Maybe or maybe not and he was dead serious.

In both cases, when you are making threats, it’s reasonable for the other side to walk away.

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

#329

Post by johnnyanmac »

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.

>Bot querying is a drop in the ocean compared to real people.

bot querying also doesn't make them any revenue, yet it is a common source of strain on the community. I imagine it also makes spam detection that much trickier. While there are some amazing bots (and ofc, automod) there are so many bots out there just to make noise. And reddit is already pretty noisy as is.

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

#330

Post by kenhwang »

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 work in ad tech, the difficulty in serving ads isn't showing the ads (which can be pretty annoying in itself for advanced ad formats), it's collecting enough metrics consistently enough across platforms to convince the advertisers that fraud and brand safety aren't a concern.

Verification metrics for basic ads are things like: when was the ad shown, how much of the ad was visible, which parts (pixels and video timeline), what content was also visible while the ad was shown, clicks, bot/script/adblock detection, and whether the ad was on-target (age/gender/location of user).

Ideally, these metrics are also independently verified, so Reddit's tracking and the advertiser's own provided/preferred tracking (like DoubleClick Verification).

Typically the video player or ad renderer needs to be customized to collect these metrics and understand VPAID/VAST/VMAP/MRAID for how/when to show the ad and what tracking is needed. Plus support for mixing content and ad encoding formats.

It's basically an arms race to compete against Facebook/Google's ad serving and tracking capabilities and I'd say even most 1st party premium ad publishers with full time ad tech teams often have difficulty consistently passing verification convincingly enough. So it's understandable that Reddit has very low confidence in single developer apps being able to pass the ad verification bar, much less over API which isn't a well worn ad serving path.

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