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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

#351

Post by EatingWithForks »

x0x0 wrote: post #318
phire wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the plan was always to kill the 3rd party apps, but not until their own app was feature competitive with the 3rd party ones. But they ran into time limitations. They plan to IPO later this year and they want the 3rd party apps to be dead before then.

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.

I think a big chunk of this is prioritization of resources in a way Apollo doesn't have to worry about. I highly doubt reddit has like utterly mediocre/shit devs. I think it's more likely that works are being prioritized in a way that shafts mods (who don't pay money) towards the goals of the reddit company to ipo (more ads and engagement with their first-party platforms). We had stupid shit like reddit coin and reddit gold and random other small features that are primarily to make money on the first party platform. Apollo's spec is much smaller in comparison, in which the users of Apollo are effectively paying for a smoother integration with whatever Reddit already built.

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

#352

Post by bagels »

spiderice wrote: post #37
causi wrote: post #8

I would like a breakdown of Reddit's actual costs vs their proposed fees. Why isn't Reddit profitable? Is there a way to make Reddit profitable without charging for API access?

The obvious places to start are: 1. Do charge for API access. But be reasonable. Nobody is calling for free api access. Charge like 2-5x their cost of operation. Not 20x. 2. Serve ads to third party apps through the API. This is a no brainer. The fact that they aren't doing this speaks volumes about their true motives with this move.

The rational choice for Reddit is to charge at least as much per user as they lose in revenue opportunity.

Consider that the users of third party apps may skew towards higher value since they were engaged enough to install an app.

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

#353

Post by dabluecaboose »

nemo44x wrote: post #82
spiderice wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really easy to call someone naive once you have all the information (like you do now). But it was much less obvious a couple months ago. Especially given that Christian has worked closely with Reddit for years and they've always treated him well, and seemingly like third party apps.

I think the OP is just saying that Selig thought he was bro's with Reddit and didn't really consider that they are a for-profit corporation with a board of directors and shareholders that will abandon him the second it makes financial sense to do so because their leadership are fiduciaries, not bro's.

I'm commenting on the quoted text, about how Christian claimed Reddit leadership was community-focused and not prone to corporate PR-speak. Which they've absolutely been prone to over the last ~5 years.

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

#354

Post by bagels »

mcpeepants wrote: post #26
causi wrote: post #8

I would like a breakdown of Reddit's actual costs vs their proposed fees. Why isn't Reddit profitable? Is there a way to make Reddit profitable without charging for API access?

I don't see how this is a play towards profitability, when the (obvious) outcome of their absurd pricing is a massive reduction in API usage. The fact is, advertisements pay better than any amount their users or third-party developers would be willing to bear. This change appears to be more about maximizing that revenue stream (or making it more appealing to advertisers), rather creating a _new_ revenue stream in pai…

Isn't maximizing revenue and at the same time reducing costs a step in the direction of profitability?

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

#355

Post by ericbarrett »

kenhwang wrote: post #330
ericbarrett wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 time…

So basically, a native app where the publisher has full control can get metadata important to advertisers, especially enabling third-party anti-fraud processes. Makes sense, and thanks for the enlightenment.

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

#356

Post by davidgerard »

heyheyhey wrote: post #276
ink_13 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Some subs held polls, and in every one that I saw, the strike was quite broadly popular. These polls have an insane selection bias though. The ones who feel strongly for the issue will be the ones commenting and voting. It's why stickies/sidebars/etc. rarely work because most of the users simply don't care enough to view them.

So you're saying... the participants in the polls were the people who write and manage the content?

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

#358

Post by marricks »

0zemp3c wrote: post #30
tedivm wrote: post #2

It absolutely amazes me how badly reddit has handled this whole situation. From the years of broken promises to moderators, the complete lack of accessibility in their own apps, and then on top of their for their CEO to not only get caught in a major lie but for him to then double down on it. As much as reddit wants to make these developers into the bad guys, every move they've made in this mess has hurt their reputa…

99.99% of reddit users have no idea who spez is and probably wouldn't care if they learned about his shenanigans 99% of reddit users are aware that moderators do some nice volunteer work but wouldn't cross the street to save them its only Extremely Online people who care about this Insider Baseball stuff

> 99.99% of reddit users have no idea who spez is

That's why people do things like black outs and protests, so people can learn who people are and what is happening.

> probably wouldn't care if they learned about his shenanigans

That's information is associated with protests, so people can decide if they care.

I can actually understand how most wouldn't care about this. This change isn't that important to me except in that's it's another stepping stone on the death of the free and open web. Twitter API, Reddit API, real ID on Facebook, probably countless other things. What we expected to have in the 2010's is going fast.

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

#359

Post by ekanes »

joshstrange wrote: post #211
ekanes wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same as always: I love building Apollo, and if Reddit is willing to to talk I'm happy to as well. Got a source for that? He's made it clear that it's too late, and this can't be repaired. How can you trust someone that lied to make you look bad, and you have proof?

There is no source, it's a combination of a number of things Christian said in the article, a paraphrasing at best, a strawman more likely. From the article it's clear to me that Christian would come back to the table if Reddit lowered the price and/or gave app developers more time but as it stands now they haven't even replied to him in week(s). Hard to do any negotiating when the other side refuses to talk /and/ sl…

Hey, sorry. You were right. I didn't read TFA and just jumped into the comments with outdated opinions. I'm a bit surprised that he'd go back to them, honestly. Would much rather he turn his talents and Appolo towards making the Fediverse easier to use.

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

#360

Post by evandale »

ink_13 wrote: post #307
evandale wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Sounds like the real problem is that those questions were drowning out all other content. Personally I don't object to moderators setting rules that reduce noise. Or, to put it another way, moderating.

They weren't though. The bad questions stayed buried in new with 0 votes. Removing questions literally only affected people who browsed new and most people don't browse new.

Reddit has tools to hide posts you personally don't want to see without affecting the entire subreddit with silly rules. If you browse new you should be aware of these things.

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