371–380 of 1001 posts
Consider the following: AOL instant messenger, ICQ, Paltalk, Tivejo, MSN Messenger, Microsoft Messenger, MSN Messenger, Skype, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, 11 different messaging apps from Google, Zoom, Go2Meeting, WebEx, Microsoft Lynq, Skype for Business, Slack, iMessage, CuSeeMe, Discord, …
A user looking superficially at those applications might notice very little difference or progress between them, the one thing they have in common is they are not compatible with each other, many of them are tied into a proprietary ecosystem (AOL, Facebook, …) and a major difference is they are tied into different proprietary ecosystem.
Such an app always follows a scenario like “You should install Skype and contact me, unlike Paltalk it really works these days”. You try it and you’re like “Wow! This really works!” but after a few years it becomes less reliable and buggier than it was when it started. Some new application comes along and is in a honeymoon period where it knows it has to actually work in order to add new users while the old broken app can coast because they figure nobody can disrupt their two-sided market. History shows that the old app really will deteriorate to the point where the incumbent advantage is lost and a new app will be better…. For a while.
What amazes me is that everybody from users to the app makers are stuck in this cycle and seem to have very little insight into it.
It’s a reason why you need a service that is separate from the client and have to have competition for both. Unfortunately users seem to violently opposed to this and open messaging platforms like XMPP have only caught on with military and law enforcement users.
The “fediverse” is a light of hope in this respect, what you learn when you get involved is it is not just Mastodon but there are many different systems that are inter operating. I wish the EU would take the problem seriously and just legislate interoperation between messaging apps, I mean, you can call an Android user from an iPhone, a Verizon customer can send a text to an AT&T customer, it is long past the time when you should be able to send a Slack user a message from Facebook messenger.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know I'm stretching really far with this, but is it at all possible that the mods made that up, or somehow misheard Steve? Maybe I'm missing it, but that claim seems unverified. Did Christian post a transcript somewhere of exactly what Steve said to the mods? It seems like this could all be a big misunderstanding... Basically, the whole post hinges on the claim that spez was telling internal employees that Christia…
> Maybe I'm missing it, but that claim seems unverified. Did Christian post a transcript somewhere of exactly what Steve said to the mods? It seems like this could all be a big misunderstanding... He posted a transcript of what Steve told moderators. He posted a transcript - and recording - of the exact conversation with Steve in which this part of the conversation takes place. Both are in the OP reddit thread here.…
The part I pasted, right?
> Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."
That's not a transcript. That's a sentence devoid of context. We're now two steps removed -- not only do we need to believe Christian, but Christian needs to believe whatever mod sent that to him. Who's the mod? Why is the mod telling Christian anything? Why was Steve talking to mods about Apollo's threat? None of this makes any sense. I don't think anyone has malicious intent here –– bet you $50 that it turns out to be some weird miscommunication. After all, there's zero benefit for Steve to be doing any of those things, and a whole lot of downside. Ins't a miscomm the more plausible theory?
Ironically, if Christian's claims are unsubstantiated, then he's slandering Steve. But Steve slandering Christian to internal employees is precisely what Christian's so angry about. But why would internal employees break ranks and go tell Christian?
There's something more going on here. I'm not sure what.
> He posted a transcript - and recording - of the exact conversation with Steve in which this part of the conversation takes place.
That's the point -- all that he's posted is a transcript where Steve says mea culpa. Then he posted some other person's two-sentence "transcript" of Steve badmouthing him. But it's not a transcript; it's weird.
I still don't understand why the user flow can't be: 1. Download Apollo 2. Go to Reddit.com 3. Open your user settings 4. Generate a client_id and client_secret 5. Paste that into these two places in Apollo 6. There you go Sure it's not strictly to OAuth2, but it's going to work just fine, right?
Obtaining Reddit API keys is an application process, it is not automated
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Yeah this guy didn't handle this situation very well. I don't know if it would've been possible to save Apollo for reddit, but that call didn't help at all. Also, what's the deal with him not wanting to start a competitor? That's like his only bargaining chip in this situation, and he's just throwing it away because he feels overwhelmed and wants to make iOS widgets. I totally sympathize with him and how this situati…
Yeah, Reddit needs to majorly up their game too. You strong arm your major customers right out of the gate. What a loss for both sides. You want the guy to pay $20 million and you just give him a call on the phone. Total amateur hour. This should have gone like, "Hey, in a few months we're rolling this out and wanted to give you a heads up so you know before anyone else, since you're a major API user. We wanted to of…
If they wanted him to pay $20 million, they'd certainly have given him much better than a brief phone call.
But that's the point. They're revealing with their actions that they don't actually want him to pay the money. What they want is to shut it down. Charging a sum of money that they know he won't pay is just an easy way to do that.
The only thing more embarrassing than Reddit's behavior is that after 18 years and hundreds of millions in funding they can't make an app or website with a better experience than what someone can do in their basement with just API access. Part of me thinks that one of the reasons they want to kill 3rd party apps is because they're embarrassed that they're all better than whatever Reddit has come up in the last decade…
I just don’t see Reddit’s response here other than “yes, turns out we are the bad guys who have been continually lying and manipulating the situation for our benefit”. I wonder if they’ll see employees quit over this. How do you trust your employer after this? I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or delete themselves over this. Just absolutely stunning turn of events, massive kudos to Christian for recor…
This makes me indescribably sad. Apart from mourning the loss of a fantastic app by an awesome developer, to me it signals the end of a golden era of small indie client only apps. Since the APIs for the likes of reddit, twitter (RIP tweetbot) and others were available for free or a reasonable fee it spawned a whole cottage industry of developers who made a living selling alternate front ends for these services. These…
Oh wow, "pull to refresh" was invented by one of these indie clients? Do you remember which one?
I just don’t see Reddit’s response here other than “yes, turns out we are the bad guys who have been continually lying and manipulating the situation for our benefit”. I wonder if they’ll see employees quit over this. How do you trust your employer after this? I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or delete themselves over this. Just absolutely stunning turn of events, massive kudos to Christian for recor…
Folks - if you want Apollo to survive, go make it known you are willing to pay $5 a month for access. I know it's popular to hate on Reddit right now - and for good reasons , but folks, Apollo made a business decision that was unsustainable and entirely dependent on the good will of another (untrustworthy) 3rd party company. It seems foolish to just shut down out of spite. The support for Apollo seems very strong - h…
If they came out with a reasonable set of conditions to do API access, people would be a lot less upset. But they didn't. And those API fees are guaranteed to go only up, up, and further up.
Time to get out of reddit when the gettin's good.
Honestly, I'm surprised that spez kept his job after getting caught modifying user comments straight from the production db[0]. That's who these people are dealing with, to be clear. And now he's accusing Apollo of threatening Reddit? Give me a break. How is this the guy who's gonna lead Reddit to the promised land? 0: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev...
I mean that was really stupid of him, but it seems like the kind of thing someone would do impulsively one time and then never again after getting reprimanded. Meanwhile, this API debacle has made me lose all respect for Reddit and its leadership — if everything the Apollo dev is saying is true, this is completely inexcusable. Reddit lied to the faces of the developers who trusted them and depended on them for their…