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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

#561

Post by johnnyanmac »

donretag wrote: post #385
madeofpalk wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

The overwhelming majority of users on most social networking sites are lurkers. Those lurkers did not vote. I would assuming the majority of users do not even know about the changes or the blackout.

Lurkers also do not post content. But I imagine by this point most lurkers understand something is going on. Either because their favorite sub went dark, becasue it posts less content, or simply because news sites are making stories (while being posted back to reddit ofc).

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

#562

Post by johnnyanmac »

bombcar wrote: post #40
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…

https://old.reddit.com/r/wholesome/comments/148aw58/radvicea... - https://archive.ph/3qMMA The worm is turning and the top power-mods are going to get Caesar'd.

TBH, this really opens up the discussion of how a "head mod" should work. Even if I agree with the action, I don't like that someone can be inactive for months and then suddenly change course on a large community because they happened to be a mod earlier.

But I guess with the way things are going that may not be a problem to consider in the coming years.

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

#563

Post by johnnyanmac »

Domenic_S wrote: post #23
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'm looking for rechargeable batteries and monitor shopping right now, and my typical research process involves searching for reviews on Reddit (google: "$item review reddit") because of how many absolute garbage Amazon affiliate link-farms there are these days. It's been tough to stay off Reddit for that research. I've also decided, screw it, I'm taking an Amazon break as well (because they enable the above behavior…

>they enable the above behavior, the world is worse because Amazon retail exists, CMV

aside from financial factors like shipping costs; there are some extremely niche products or small parts of products that would be basically impossible to find without Amazon or eBay.

e.g. I had a lint trap broken on my washing machine and I could search up the product by its serial number. No store (even the manufacturer itself) had the part a la carte, but I found some eBay listing and grabbed a replacement for some $15. Maybe I was ripped off, but I wager I could have browsed through every hobby store in town and not have found that part, or had have to try and compromise with a non-perfect substitute. Maybe some would offer to order it themselves but it'd be a week just to get an estimate. $15 is worth avoiding that hassle.

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

#564

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

>He's basically tried to have an argument in public to get people to turn against Reddit.

if you weren't aware; this occurred in response to Spez basically slandering him in calls with mods, saying that Apollo was trying to blackmail Reddit. This caused dozens of mods to contact him and question his integrity.

Spez shot first here. I don't think he wanted to be the ringleader of all this, but Spez's actions caused him to defend his very character, on top of all the other headaches of all these changes.

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

#565

Post by johnnyanmac »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #338
andrewmunsell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>calling him just short of a blatant liar.

Well, if the shoe fits...

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

#566

Post by johnnyanmac »

amichail wrote: post #11

What would a highly profitable Reddit look like? Why would it be bad for redditors?

Well, look at hacker news. the content and audience is different but ultimately it lets you

1. browse topics 2. comment on topics 3. review your history of topics, like favorites, comment histories, etc.

So in an ideal world, you do that with no friction.

But inevitably, you need to introduce some friction in order to be profitable. be it ads, data mining (to sell to ad companies), or outright asking a user to pay to do the above features.

I don't know what route reddit will go, but it will inevitably need to introduce even more friction to be more profitable.

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

#567

Post by johnnyanmac »

aniforprez wrote: post #376

Is anyone else really curious what's going on at Reddit HQ right now? At the end of January they were confident that the API would never be priced and within 4 months they completely changed their minds. But what truly baffles me is that this honestly does not seem like a move to price out third party apps. They genuinely thought he would pay out. How exactly did they think that was happening? Even if the pricing was…

TBH I think it's relatively simple. Reddit had this planned for a while, and they didn't want to go on public record with this until the 11th hour. I highly doubt any accountant looked at Apollo and thought "yes, this app makes $20 million/year". Let alone thought "okay, let's ask for literally all that money ourselves. 100% platform rate". You may be right that something huge happened internally, but I don't think $20m would have solved it.

Apparently most of their money is made off ads, and instead of working with 3p's, they thought it easiest to force more ads on users. So it's easier to turn off the API switch than to slowly integrate something with 3P's.

as for NSFW: that's an issue every company with NSFW content has struggled with. It's a paradox where it's very lucrative and companies want that money, but also a huge pain in the neck to compromise with in a legal sense. when you need to pay some employees full time to fight these fights, you have to start wondering if that cash cow is even worth it? When credit card companies start to deny you based on that, that answer becomes very clear.

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

#568

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

>Apollo probably made more profit from Reddit than Reddit itself.

that's not saying much when Spez outright said reddit isn't profitable. Yes, a few devs working on an API scaper is cheaper than 2000 employees worldwide, for a company HQ'd in San Fransisco on top fo that (I still can't imagine what reddit needs with 2000 employees).

meanwhile I don't exactly think Spez is surviving paycheck to paycheck himself. If he's not already, he'll easily clear tends of millions of dollars of net worth when Reddit goes public. Or at least, that's what I would have said 4-5 months ago.

>you can't expect to generate profit from another business unilaterally forever and be shocked that they won't allow it.

on the flip side, I don't think Christian is suddenly broke either. Probably not "I can retire in prauge" levels of finances, but he's definitely made a lot of money.

But he's under no obligations to play ball with Reddit, especially when reddit is taking the ball home. I don't see this as him leeching off reddit when you take into account how many users his app brought to the business. Just like how you said RiF is your Reddit, I'm sure Apollo is others' reddit.

>As people have said countless times in other situations where people had issues with reddit; just use another platform.

I agree and am. But that's tangential to this article. Christian isn't exactly trying to kill reddit nor pitch his next Apollo app for the next big platform. He said his dream scenario is to wake up and see the API rates halved and he'll be happy and keep Apollo running. He clearly doesn't want reddit dead.

But as is: he seems more or less done.

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

#569

Post by johnnyanmac »

randomdata wrote: post #550
johnnyanmac wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You don't want to start there if you don't have to. Of course (I was laid off last month, no dev wishes other devs to be laid off). But to open up my cynical side for a bit: I also don't sympathize with these huge companies taking advantage of (what EVERYONE knew was) a temporary boon in tech and growing off of low interest rates proportions that would not be needed in 2-3 years. I as an individual saved aggressivel…

> I also don't sympathize with these huge companies taking advantage of (what EVERYONE knew was) a temporary boon in tech While perhaps there is an argument to be made that one can take advantage of another if there is information asymmetry, when you say that EVERYONE recognized the temporary nature of the engagement, to think that temporary hiring under that is taking advantage of a worker is quite silly. A worker n…

>A worker needing a guarantee of x number of years of payment had every right to demand it be written into the contract.

To be frank: if you're at that level of negotiation in your contracting, you are either a business owner yourself, or are some of the best of the industry who probably isn't financially worried about a downturn. The latter doesn't have any benefit from chaining themselves to a company. I don't even think contracted workers are safe since many contracts were broken over this.

For the other 99.99% of hourly/salary workers in the US, trying to negotiate specific terms in an at-will state will only end with you being crossed off the hire list.

>They didn't have to leave their jobs flipping burgers.

Sure they did. They were laid off from there too:

https://nypost.com/2023/04/07/mcdonalds-lays-off-hundreds-cu...

I know you were being coy, but every sector of almost every industry is doing this. There is no safe place except for already being rich and not having to worry about years of salary.

Maybe you're not from the US, but it seems you don't understand how US employment works. I'll reiterate: the US is almost all "at will states". It gives freedom in that at any time an employee can walk away (well, almost any time. Funny how that works), but employers can also fire you for any reason unrelated to being a protected class (minority, pregnant, gay, etc.). There is never any safety net guaranteed in the US.

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

#570

Post by randomdata »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #569
randomdata wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also don't sympathize with these huge companies taking advantage of (what EVERYONE knew was) a temporary boon in tech While perhaps there is an argument to be made that one can take advantage of another if there is information asymmetry, when you say that EVERYONE recognized the temporary nature of the engagement, to think that temporary hiring under that is taking advantage of a worker is quite silly. A worker n…

>A worker needing a guarantee of x number of years of payment had every right to demand it be written into the contract. To be frank: if you're at that level of negotiation in your contracting, you are either a business owner yourself, or are some of the best of the industry who probably isn't financially worried about a downturn. The latter doesn't have any benefit from chaining themselves to a company. I don't even…

> For the other 99.99% of hourly/salary workers in the US, trying to negotiate specific terms in an at-will state will only end with you being crossed off the hire list.

That's fine. You just said that anything else in the given scenario would have you being taken advantage of, so you would want the agreement to be rejected if they cannot commit to those terms.

Remember, this is, in the end, no different than the earlier suggestion that if all a company sees is a short-term hiring opportunity during a temporary boom that they should not hire at all. The long-term job you want doesn't exist either way. You haven't lost anything.

> I'll reiterate: the US is almost all "at will states".

Sure. And I'll reiterate that you can negotiate your own contractual terms. Yes, that does mean some people won't want to work with you, but that's okay because why would you want to work for someone that is taking advantage of you?

To recognize a bad deal upfront, accept it anyway, and then cry foul later is nonsensical.

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