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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

#331

Post by tschwimmer »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #294
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…

You're right on the money. It's all that, and more. Basically, Reddit going to a paid API isn't the big deal. It's the fact that, say, Apollo can pay Imgur under $200/month for all the API calls they need, but Reddit is demanding $20M/year, or ~$1.7M/month [0]. That's what tradespeople call their "fuck off" rate, i.e. the rate they'd quote someone when they don't actually want to do a job, but also don't want to come…

It says right in the first paragraph of your link that it was going to cost $20m per year, not per month.

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

#332

Post by ibero »

penguin_booze wrote: post #212

Maybe I'm missing something: why can't Apollo--or any other app--pass the API burden to the user? I get that this means the user experience via the app would effetively turn out to be paid service. But then, to match, Reddit could have also relaxed their policy to the effect that, up to n API access would be free; beyond that, Reddit would charge the user. Microsoft, for example, already do this for many of their Azu…

they could but not in under 30 days.

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

#333

Post by jarym »

downWidOutaFite wrote: post #305
andromeduck wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If plenty of countries have tried give an example where the rich fled and the country reversed the tax

https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/gerard-depardie...

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

#334

Post by SkyPuncher »

MarkMarine wrote: post #20

From what I can tell, it’s not the users that revolted. It’s their unpaid moderator workforce striking in solidarity with the workers that used Apollo to improve their experience. I’m very curious to see what the resolution will be from Reddit’s side, but heading toward IPO while you’ve got a huge chunk of unpaid labor that makes your site work striking can’t be good for the strike price. The workers have the company…

I deleted my account last week. Based on the occasional check-ins, I actually think Reddit has more control over large subs than most people think. Despite a protesting, there's still enough content being made. Much of it with high comment engagement.

I feel like there's a chance that Reddit comes out from this proving that they're actually already moderating a bunch of content and volunteer mods have no leverage.

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

#335

Post by harrelchris »

redmerchant2 wrote: post #39
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’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…

It's either meant to kill 3rd party apps, or it's an impressive failure by Steve Huffman to create another revenue stream for Reddit.

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

#336

Post by PartiallyTyped »

Rapzid wrote: post #320
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.

I end up using Reddit as much or more than Stack Overflow these days for my profession. It's the best place I've found to get peoples opinions and experiences with libraries, tools, services, and etc. Outside IT it's still prob my main method to research opinions and advice while filtering out all the Google crap.

I honestly don’t know where to go for ML topics now. If anyone has any suggestions, please send them forward.

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

#337

Post by SantalBlush »

nikole9696 wrote: post #148
skrtskrt wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The inability to block ads I personally find offensive is the #1 reason I'll use a browser with ad block over a native app. Reddit and Tumblr are my two biggest offenders that do not let me properly block particular ads - notably gambling and religion, but also those scam mobile games and other scammy nonsense. I get that they need to pay the bills, but I should have some level of control over what I see.

>The inability to block ads I personally find offensive is the #1 reason I'll use a browser with ad block over a native app.

This is the main reason why apps exist in the first place. They remove the user agency that browsers provide.

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

#338

Post by SkyPuncher »

andrewmunsell wrote: post #25
dabluecaboose wrote: post #5

I've gotta say, Christian comes across as really naive in this piece. > Well, it’s weird because prior to this, I almost always understood that Reddit as a company understood that they’re very community-focused, and they kind of didn’t do the bullshit corporate speak. And it was weird to kind of see this week, where they engaged in a lot more of that than I have historically ever seen them do. And it just went over……

I don't think he wants to badmouth Reddit and its leadership with the small chance that there's some goodwill left that would result in a compromise. He could say all the things we are thinking, but given the CEO has a history of editing posts on Reddit critical of him , it seems like a bad strategy to have any hope of negotiating with them.

He's already badmouthed Reddit's leadership. He's gotten into spats with spez a few times, calling him just short of a blatant liar.

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

#339

Post by evandale »

8organicbits wrote: post #279
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…

> reporting Wasn't reporting handled by the mods? > You might argue with no moderation the subreddit would turn into a cesspool of reposts and memes - but who really cares? Presumably the people who used the subreddit would care. It seems like you think Reddit was only for shitposting, that wasn't my experience. It was a collection of forums, each with their own norms.

> Presumably the people who used the subreddit would care.

Right, I mentioned that for r/AskHistorians and r/science. What about regional subreddits? Why in the world does a subreddit for Toronto need rules like no CN tower pictures, no questions, or no posts about crime? Why can't the only rule be the post has to do with the city?

Why do moderators want to go beyond moderating spam and insist on presenting us with a curated feed of what they feel like I should be consuming? Why can't they let upvotes, downvotes, and reports speak for themselves and use that information to make removal decisions?

Why are so many moderators of subreddits against public moderation logs?

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

#340

Post by jarym »

downWidOutaFite wrote: post #298
jarym wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're free to choose what you believe, I'm not here to convince you. But one of the older examples is the 'window tax' https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transforming...

A tax from 1696 that was replaced 154 years later? Nothing was driven away or killed so it's not even a proper example.

You asked for an example. I provided one. The result of this policy was people were bricking up windows and it was eventually undone because it didn't work. So yes, 'windows' were 'killed' and consequently the expected tax revenue that was expected from them. I would counter that it is a valid example.

A more recent example in the UK would be the pensions cap which had the unintended effect of sending people into early retirement because it became uneconomical to continue working. This impacted especially doctors in the NHS and contributed to a labour shortage. The government finally corrected the folly 2 months ago.

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