I seriously don't understand why don't they buy them out, put on some tracking/whatever feature on Apollo and keep business as usual. I'm pretty sure the guy would take a reasonable offer instead of walking out empty handed.
Apollo will close down on June 30th
491–500 of 1001 posts
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#492He put his email address at the end. As I told him in what I’m sure will be jillions of emails about the subject: > Have just read your amazing, sad, comprehensive Reddit post about the end of Apollo. > I was one of those long-ago paid-once users :-) and happily used Apollo for years. When I found out a few days ago what was happening to you, I actually deleted Apollo from my devices so I wouldn’t inadvertently cost…
For anybody who would like to mass delete their own comments and submissions: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite/
Note: Reddit switched to archiving posts older than 6 months by default many years ago. Individual subreddits can opt-out of this behavior. If they have not, you will not be able to edit/remove your comments or posts there.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#493> Please note that I recorded all my calls with Reddit, so my statements are not based on memory, but the recorded statements by Reddit over the course of the year. One-party consent recording is legal in my country of Canada. Also I won't be naming names, that's not important and I don't want to doxx people. IMO this should be much more common practice, where it's legal. It would be cool to one day have built-in fun…
Shit, I really hope it doesn't. Do you really want every silly thing you say be recorded, to come bite you in the ass decades down the line?
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#494I 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…
See this response reddit posted https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/143sho8/admins_c... Seems the threat of mods to shut down subs holds some weight after all, and they are backtracking on some things. Most third party apps will still not work, but they are supposedly going to improve mod tools in the app, and there will be plenty of API exceptions for mod bots, non-commercial apps and accessibility focused a…
Their willingness to exempt screen reader / accessibility capable or accessibility focused third party apps from API pricing is good faith IMO.
So the NSFW changes seem to be prompted by regulatory threats & Reddit getting the approaches covered, & this also seems to confirm that the API shutdown for many third party apps is because the API was a golden goose for those developers, laying golden eggs - both in user content & in giving those app developers the opportunity to run their own adverts alongside reddit content.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#495I 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…
So the bad guys are not the ones making an alternative client that makes money off of Reddit while not displaying their ads? Oh, okay. Those 3rd party apps are leeches that are playing surprised_pikachu.jpeg when the blood supply is cut. The simple fact that this guy has to reimburse 250K of subscriptions shows the insane amount of money he made off of the back of Reddit.
Reddit literally only makes money of other people’s content. They contribute absolutely nothing themselves.
Hypocritical much?
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
Fair enough. It just isn't the slam dunk that the post makes it out to be. He made some extremely vague proposition that can easily be misinterpreted and it was ultimately unproductive.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose his job over this? If spez wasn’t fired on the spot for abusing his power to manually edit posts critical of him, why would you expect them to sack him over something that actually has a legitimate business angle?
My memory on this is murky, although do I recall correctly that his reply to criticism of the production db comment edit amounted to something like “it was just a prank bro”?
It seems to me that some people have no regard for the law, the ethics, the morals, etc.. If it benefits them to break it, they will do it, as long as they know they will face no or minimal consequences if caught.
They would even feel good about it because they have managed to obtain an unfair advantage and get away with it.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#498Maybe I missed it, but why not just increase Apollo subscription rates to match the new pricing? It sounds like Apollo has a huge following that would be willing to support it. Take advantage of the hate train, tons of people would donate through a subscription model. It also sounds like these third party apps provide much better moderation interfaces, that could a selling point for the rates. Even if your subscriptions drop, it's still profit. I'm sure someone would be willing to do this, I don't understand the reason for not wanting to sell the app either. To me it sounds like the Apollo developer is undervaluing their position.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest it sounded like that to me too. It's very hard to differentiate between some honest clumsy phrasing and fishing for a payout, and the "clarification" doesn't help with that since it could also be an excuse to save face.
Maybe with text snippets, but I don't see how somebody can listen to the conversation and come away with the idea that the dev was blackmailing anyone. https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-...
I'm shocked that people are interpreting this as not fishing for a payoff, honestly. "We can both skip off into the sunset" does not mean "rewrite the app to do fewer API calls", as he tries to claim later in the call. It means it's done, over, everyone is happy. And why would he say "mostly joking" if he actually meant doing fewer API requests? Nothing about this recording or transcript makes me think Selig is an honest person.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#500I 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…
It is really astounding to see the CEO of Reddit being caught in a blatant lie denigrating a third party developer whose work has done a lot for the platform and who has the ear of a reasonably sized and loud portion of the community. I really hadn’t expected that. Corporate doublespeak is one thing, and management decisions aren’t necessarily always in the interest of their users - but such an egregious act is reall…
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