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Apollo will close down on June 30th

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Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#451

Post by emilecantin »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #256
wolpoli wrote: post #29

> 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." I can't believe that CEO of Reddit was telling internal people that Apollo tried to blackmail Reddit for a $10 million payout when that didn't happen.

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…

Re-read TFA. He didn't just post a transcript, he posted an actual recording.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#452

Post by madeofpalk »

bubblethink wrote: post #423
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #182

In this situation, do you hire someone to negotiate with or for you? I'm thinking the intention here was to sell the company for $10 million and that came across as a threat because of the language that was used. You would not record the call [1] and then publish it if you actually were blackmailing them for $10 million. I'm not faulting the guy here at all, I just think it comes down to lack of experience in dealing…

>it comes down to lack of experience in dealing with negotiations of this level Yeah, the conversation is so cringe. Why is he beating around the bush so much ? He wants to sell, shut down, or whatever for a $10M payout. It sounds easy to make that proposition. Instead, he uses terrible verbiage like, "go quiet, I'm joking, opportunity cost, Bob's your uncle, yada yada". Why is he so terrible at talking ? Nothing in…

> Why is he so terrible at talking ?

He's a 20-something year old developer. This isn't his comfort zone and did not expect himself to be in this position.

I know I would be terrible if I was in his shoes.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#453

Post by fkyoureadthedoc »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #270
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #74

I'm not a user of Apollo, and honestly have been perfectly fine using old.reddit.com on both mobile and desktop. That said, while I realize it's just his side of the story, the Apollo developer comes across as imminently reasonable and rational (and he apparently has the receipts to back it up), while Reddit comes across as embodying typical corporate greed. On a related note, I think everyone should understand that,…

I'm sorry but how exactly is it being evil to shut down 3rd party clients that use your content and your bandwidth to make (huge amounts of) money off of you? Reddit owes absolutely nothing to those developers. This guy has to reimburse 250K of subscriptions, meaning he made millions, if not tens of millions, off of exploiting the API while not displaying Reddit's ads. Poor Apollo developer, he's going to have to wip…

Reddit had no mobile app for years, and yet a ton of mobile users on 3rd party apps. Their own mobile app used to be a 3rd party app that they bought out. So without even getting into other creative uses of the API, they definitely owe some of their popularity to 3rd party mobile app developers. How much? Who can really say how Reddit would have evolved if it had no public API.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#454

Post by bhtru »

VHRanger wrote: post #204
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #74

I'm not a user of Apollo, and honestly have been perfectly fine using old.reddit.com on both mobile and desktop. That said, while I realize it's just his side of the story, the Apollo developer comes across as imminently reasonable and rational (and he apparently has the receipts to back it up), while Reddit comes across as embodying typical corporate greed. On a related note, I think everyone should understand that,…

you must be aware that old.reddit.com is on the chopping block in the next few months/years, right?

Honestly, I'd rather they do it sooner so I have a greater impetus to leave Reddit; to go outside and touch the grass for once.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#456

Post by briffle »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #74

I'm not a user of Apollo, and honestly have been perfectly fine using old.reddit.com on both mobile and desktop. That said, while I realize it's just his side of the story, the Apollo developer comes across as imminently reasonable and rational (and he apparently has the receipts to back it up), while Reddit comes across as embodying typical corporate greed. On a related note, I think everyone should understand that,…

How long do you expect old.reddit.com to stick around after they force everyone to use their own app for mobile?

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#457

Post by madeofpalk »

dimgl wrote: post #331
fooey wrote: post #297

RIF has now announced they will also be shutting down on June 30th https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_wi...

This is pretty wild. I don't think I've ever seen something like this. I like it. I think Reddit needs to come down to reality.

> I don't think I've ever seen something like this

Except for what happened with Twitter a few months ago.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#458

Post by z3c0 »

jonas21 wrote: post #427
wolpoli wrote: post #29

> 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." I can't believe that CEO of Reddit was telling internal people that Apollo tried to blackmail Reddit for a $10 million payout when that didn't happen.

It sounds to me like the conversation went in a way that it could be interpreted as a threat. This is from the Apollo developer's own telling of the story: > As said, a common suggestion across the many threads on this topic was "If third-party apps are costing Reddit so much money, why don't they just buy them out like they did Alien Blue?" That was the point I brought up. If running Apollo as it stands now would co…

You might be prone to perceiving threats where there aren't any then. The only threat here was reddit's potential loss in revenue - offering to let himself be bought out for half of what they would supposedly "lose" in a year is extremely generous.

Of course, this is all a deliberate reframing by reddit. Reddit wasn't going to "lose" anything so much as "not get".

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#459

Post by IgorPartola »

dandellion wrote: post #422
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #74

I'm not a user of Apollo, and honestly have been perfectly fine using old.reddit.com on both mobile and desktop. That said, while I realize it's just his side of the story, the Apollo developer comes across as imminently reasonable and rational (and he apparently has the receipts to back it up), while Reddit comes across as embodying typical corporate greed. On a related note, I think everyone should understand that,…

I'm hoping at least we'll start to see some alternative communities to reddit pop up. I've been on the lookout for new smaller communities for a few years now, but the only interesting things I've found are a couple of Discord servers. While they are nice, Discord has a very different vibe from public anonymous forums.

There are plenty of old school forums. Example: I recently got into leatherworking. There are a couple of subreddits for it but also a large and active forum at https://leatherworker.net/forum/.

Reddit has discoverability and single sign on for a bunch of forums. It also has some fun nice to haves like a mixed feed of all your interests. But old school forums tend to be less commercial and sometimes can be a lot more tightly knit.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#460

Post by mulmen »

mpalczewski wrote: post #319
falcolas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Don't be evil" is simply impossible for large corporations I see Patagonia as the antithesis of this broadly accepted assertion. It's possible, it just takes having a goal for your company that's more than greed.

Patagonia is pushing polyester with its associated micro-plastics, instead of the renewable natural fibers that they were using before like wool. Good, evil, depends on who is counting.

Patagonia is clear about that decision though [1]. Microplastics are bad but not the whole story. They still offer natural fibers which have their own problems. I don't think this is Patagonia chasing short term profits, I think they are trying to remain true to their corporate goals.

[1]: https://www.patagonia.com/stories/an-update-on-microfiber-po...

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