Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 585 posts

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

#401

Post by judge2020 »

randomdata wrote: post #239
madeofpalk wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because ads still need all the privacy-invading telemetry from the client device, which these apps wouldn't want to participate in.

Which is fine. They don't have to be participants on the network if they don't like the terms of engagement. Of course, this isn't about ads in and of themselves. It's about Reddit (and, to some degree, tech in general) having lost investor interest and Reddit being this close to bankruptcy, desperately hoping that these 3P clients will provide a stable cash infusion to keep the lights on. Ads alone aren't enough; at…

They didn't do it for the money - the money is to make it unrealistic for them to continue in any way, and push more end-users to the official reddit app to participate in their ad network. They knew no app was going to pay those astronomical rates unless it's some personal project that only gets charges a dollar a month or so.

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

#402

Post by mvdtnz »

madeofpalk wrote: post #215
haunter wrote: post #13

>users revolted tbh right now it feels like mods, and especially power-mods (who are moding several high traffic subs), are revolting. I actually enjoy this blackout because a lot of small subs became active refuge for people who doesn't really care about the whole drama. Honestly I'm curious how this will play out but I can see subs just "naturally" replacing themselves with new ones. fyi 92 of top 500 subreddits co…

A medium-ish video game reddit that I participate in held two votes on whether to participate, and whether to shutdown for 24 or 48 hours, and in both users overwhelmingly (95%) voted in favor of shutting down, and for 48 hours. There is a vocal amount of non-mods who are also participating. Also "mods" are still users of reddit. When I'm an admin of a Facebook group, I'm still a 'facebook user'.

Gamers aren't really normal. They're a group that is especially primed for having these big tantrums.

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

#403

Post by OldManRyan »

adrr wrote: post #393
x0x0 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see that. If a 1.5 person app (Apollo) is handily beating Reddit's app... what on earth is the holdup? Either the eng team is wildly incompetent, or this is by executive choice. Reddit's inability to deliver on mod tools despite a decade's worth of promises makes me think it's 40/60 wildly incompetent and needing firing vs exec choice.

Is it beating the reddit app? What percentage of users use Apollo?

I think you are reading "beating" as higher user count. I read it as better features and user experience. But even in terms of user count, enough people are using third-party clients like Apollo that reddit deemed it worthy to kill them.

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

#404

Post by raydev »

wiseowise wrote: post #218
raydev wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ok, multiply that by 5, it’s still nowhere near 2.5.

Well, guess what? Your starting point is just an estimate and its accuracy cannot be sourced, so this is all meaningless

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

#405

Post by heisenbit »

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…

Twitter is all about very short form content / isolated from context and short responses and emotional reactive retweeting. Reddit is a bit more on the longer form / contextual side which favors more web browser type navigation and interaction. Looking at Twitter‘s short term success is a horrible way to set a strategic direction for Reddit.

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

#407

Post by Sunspark »

czx4f4bd wrote: post #395
Sunspark wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 volu…

Your comments disappeared because the sub went private. Reddit won't show any comments from private subs you aren't allowed to view, even comments that you made.

I didn't know that. Thanks for the info. This seems like bad coding design that one cannot see their own history as it is disappeared externally via the actions of a sub.

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

#408

Post by kweingar »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #325
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…

> It only encourages other developers to build a following that they attempt to leverage against Reddit.

Isn't that what the app developers and their users want?

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

#409

Post by randomdata »

judge2020 wrote: post #401
randomdata wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is fine. They don't have to be participants on the network if they don't like the terms of engagement. Of course, this isn't about ads in and of themselves. It's about Reddit (and, to some degree, tech in general) having lost investor interest and Reddit being this close to bankruptcy, desperately hoping that these 3P clients will provide a stable cash infusion to keep the lights on. Ads alone aren't enough; at…

They didn't do it for the money - the money is to make it unrealistic for them to continue in any way, and push more end-users to the official reddit app to participate in their ad network. They knew no app was going to pay those astronomical rates unless it's some personal project that only gets charges a dollar a month or so.

> They knew no app was going to pay those astronomical rates

Perhaps, but they don't have much choice. If the apps paid a reasonable rate with respect to what is reasonable to app developers, Reddit would still go bankrupt. May as well go big and go bankrupt only if that fails then not try and be guaranteed to go bankrupt.

Thing is, Apollo is on board to pay the big price, but Christian has exclaimed he needs more time to make the necessary changes to support it. Problem is that Reddit doesn't have that much time. Bankruptcy is still inevitable on his needed timeline. The power company doesn't care that you plan to make money sometime in the future when developers have had time to get around to making changes to their software. They want their money when they want it and if you can't make good then and there, that's it.

Remember, they're panicking. Their old model of finding new investment every time the plug was about to be pulled is dead and they weren't expecting that. They need legitimate cashflow now and don't know where else to find it on short notice.

Next will be a massive layoff to follow the small layoff earlier this week to address the haemorrhaging on the expense side. The "everything will be okay in a few days" notice sent to employees today indicates that something "not okay" is coming.

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

#410

Post by babypuncher »

ljm wrote: post #55
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.

Even that makes little sense. Reddit has survived on volunteer moderation and their use of third party tools to manage the workload. If Reddit doesn’t want to cover the cost of that infrastructure then they’re going to incur the extra cost of hiring moderators. I imagine they’re upset that they can’t send adverts through the API (and thus third party clients) and since these companies see ads as a money printing sche…

They will probably go the Twitter route and decide moderation isn't all that important.

This of course means unsavory content like hate speech, blatant astroturfing, and conspiracy theories will flourish, scaring away big ad spenders. They will try to compensate for this by allowing more ads for online gambling and male enhancement pills.

Post reply on HN