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

Post by solveit » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 6:26 PM UTC

EatingWithForks wrote: post #351

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.

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 redd…

Post by kats » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 6:27 PM UTC

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…

Post by donretag » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 6:28 PM UTC

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'.

Post by justusthane » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 6:29 PM UTC

bagels wrote: post #308

ekanes wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you listen to the audio, it's much clearer. You can hear the dynamic / emotion etc in their voices. Christian's post: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w... Audio clip: https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-...

I'm interested in what came before that clip, but, it sounds like he's awkwardly asking for $10M in exchange for... nothing? Why would Reddit take that deal? 1) Shut Apollo down: increase ad revenues, decrease server costs (if the claim that Apollo is inefficient is true) 2) Apollo pays $20M: increase api revenues 3) Pay Apollo $10M: decreased revenue, maintain high server costs. I don't even understand how this kind…

Post by paxys » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 6:31 PM UTC

SkyPuncher wrote: post #367

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…

Apollo absolutely could do all of that. That being said, I doubt anyone would use it. $1 per 1k requests is insane. I'm not exactly sure what counts as an API call, but it has the potential to add up quickly. On initial load, new Reddit makes 209 network requests and old reddit makes 127. I doubt the API needs that many requests, but it's not a nested API. It likely requires a bunch of additional requests to grab acc…