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Apollo will close down on June 30th

old.reddit.com

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Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#711

Post by that_guy_iain »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #697
that_guy_iain wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EDIT 2: Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose his job over this? Why would he lose his job? Realistically, it's a smart business move to monetise their users. It's Reddit, them being pissy about having to pay is part of the course. There is a reason they're the lowest valued social media users. >EDIT 3: Christian says in the post the refunds will cost him personally about $250,000. Does he have a…

I mean, Tortious interference can apply when a service which could reasonably have been expected to charge reasonable amounts suddenly increases their prices for no reason, if it prevents a third party from being able to fulfill a contract. I have no idea if one of this is one of those cases though, I wouldn't expect so but IANAL.

Reddit lawyers would show other social networks such as Twitter and Imgur offical pricing charging more. That would make it a reasonable amount. And there is a reason, they're unprofitable. It really annoys me that people say the price is unreasonable when it's so low that a $5 a month subscription covers it and makes profit.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#712

Post by kentm »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #236
robbiet480 wrote: post #14

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…

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.

> 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.

Correct.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#713

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

falcolas wrote: post #101
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,…

> "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.

You are right, but as others have noted, I should have put a caveat on my assertion that the incentive mismatch is really there for companies with "outside owners", either in the form of a publicly traded company or large VC/PE investors.

If you keep a company private, and you don't take sizable outside funding, you can pretty much do whatever you want with your company.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#715

Post by Jaepa »

notaustinpowers wrote: post #325
iLoveOncall wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

1) Apollo exploited nothing. Reddit offered their API for free for years. 2) Sure, he made a ton of money running Apollo, doesn't make what Reddit did less scummy. 3) No requirement, but it's largely accepted as courtesy to notify developers of any changes to the API policy, especially when it comes to pricing. Giving the developer only 30 days to rework their business model, change app architecture/design/code, pass…

> 3) No requirement, but it's largely accepted as courtesy to notify developers of any changes to the API policy, especially when it comes to pricing. Giving the developer only 30 days to rework their business model, change app architecture/design/code, pass App Store Reviews with Apple/Google, migrate subscribers to a higher-priced tier to afford the increase in pricing, and more is tantamount to spitting in their face. Especially when it's a drastic change from 8+ years of more or less the same.

Doubly so if you've been repeatably telling developers you're not changing it & that developer has reach out specifically to say I know you have an IPO soon. Anything we can do on our end.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#716

Post by notatoad »

khangaroo wrote: post #376
duped wrote: post #312

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…

Probably because third-party apps aren't optimized to shove as many ads down the user's throat as possible.

nah, their apps aren't just shitty in the normal commercial way. they're shitty in the non-functional way, non-money-making way. like not being able to figure out how to play videos.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#717

Post by NotYourLawyer »

square_usual wrote: post #16

> Then yesterday, moderators told me they were on a call with CEO Steve Huffman (spez), and he said the following per their transcript: > 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." > Wow. Because my memory is that you didn't take it as a threat, and you even apologized profusely when you admitted…

[flagged]

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#718

Post by PrimeMcFly »

az226 wrote: post #675
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subreddits can't be destroyed, only made private, and then requested by someone else.

They can definitely be nerfed. Go private and no one gets invited. They can also block any new content except if on a post approved list, which could be as few as the mods. Each in effect would kill a sub.

Nah. The mods would just be replaced if they tried anything like that.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#719

Post by moralestapia »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #229
koolba wrote: post #48

Earlier 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?

This seems like an even more egregious act, it's like attempted character assassination of a developer beloved by the community. This app got shouted out in WWDC and Spez's decision shortly after is to concoct an alternate reality where Christian is a villain and present it as fact, and then get caught almost immediately. It seems apparent Spez is burdened by a serious lack of ethics, and I think that burden is now c…

>It seems apparent Spez is burdened by a serious lack of ethics [...]

10 years too late.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#720

Post by mrguyorama »

dylan604 wrote: post #529
mustacheemperor wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Bullies need to learn that the truth will come out eventually, At this point, this is just speculation and wishful thinking on your part. History has shown that this is not always the outcome. Things we try to teach kids like "winners don't cheat, and cheaters don't win", "crime doesn't pay", or any similar platitudes do not hold true in real life which adults live. If Reddit were to die tomorrow, it would affect me…

It's the same as people always saying "The winners write the history" while most of what the public took as gospel about Nazi Germany came from the very people who ran it, like autobiographies and memoirs from literal Nazi military higher ups.

The myth that Germany lost the war because of "human wave tactics" of the Soviets is exactly one of those lies from the losers.

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