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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

#801

Post by willis936 »

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 think the users that will be leaving reddit are worth 100 normal reddit users in terms of content value. Drain them and the rest will swirl down quickly.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#802

Post by raywu »

wpietri wrote: post #775
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…

> 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 would like to be astounded. But Reddit has taken $1.4 billion in venture capital, meaning they are expected to make VCs well more than that. And one way that can happen is aggressiv…

Thanks for sharing these goldmines

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#803

Post by ineedasername »

I'm confused about the details, maybe someone can clarify.

The OP says Reddit claims they were being blackmailed (which clearly they weren't) but it's the talk around opportunity cost that I don't understand, especially as related alleged blackmail.

1) It would cost Apollo $20m to continue operating, and somehow Apollo, not able to afford it and offering to just kind of walk away from the app constitutes Blackmail?

2) The $20m opportunity cost claims. I don't get this. The new actual cost to Apollo would be $20m, that's not an opportunity cost for Reddit. The opportunity cost for reddit is really just the resources & attention it takes them to keep the API system running, which is presumable far, far, below the sticker price they will be charging 3rd parties per 1,000 API calls.

3) In general, I don't understand how any 3rd party has leverage to threaten or blackmail Reddit. Sure some people prefer to use 3rd party apps & services, but I'm assuming (is this a bad assumption?) that if those apps and services went away that a large majority of of their users would simply switch to native reddit options rather than stop consuming & interacting with content they enjoy.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#804

Post by [deleted] »

sgustard wrote: post #593
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…

Reddit has been mired in controversy since day one. It is also regularly touted on HN as THE ONLY trustworthy place on the web to find, for example, honest product reviews; where Google, Amazon, Yelp, Wirecutter etc are hopelessly corrupted. I'm not buying that a brief fit of bad PR will hurt them; and in the meantime Reddit thinks there's 20m of revenue on the table they will recapture when the app goes away.

[deleted]

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#805

Post by cush »

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…

Just deleted my 11 year old account. End of an era.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#806

Post by skeaker »

ineedasername wrote: post #803

I'm confused about the details, maybe someone can clarify. The OP says Reddit claims they were being blackmailed (which clearly they weren't) but it's the talk around opportunity cost that I don't understand, especially as related alleged blackmail. 1) It would cost Apollo $20m to continue operating, and somehow Apollo, not able to afford it and offering to just kind of walk away from the app constitutes Blackmail? 2…

I believe it was the phrasing of "going quietly." I think they thought he meant that he would slander(?) them if they did not pay the $10M. But of course that misunderstanding was, one sentence later, resolved, so Reddit going back and treating that like a threat is simply a lie.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#809

Post by ineedasername »

skeaker wrote: post #806
ineedasername wrote: post #803

I'm confused about the details, maybe someone can clarify. The OP says Reddit claims they were being blackmailed (which clearly they weren't) but it's the talk around opportunity cost that I don't understand, especially as related alleged blackmail. 1) It would cost Apollo $20m to continue operating, and somehow Apollo, not able to afford it and offering to just kind of walk away from the app constitutes Blackmail? 2…

I believe it was the phrasing of "going quietly." I think they thought he meant that he would slander(?) them if they did not pay the $10M. But of course that misunderstanding was, one sentence later, resolved, so Reddit going back and treating that like a threat is simply a lie.

Ah, okay. I'm still not sure why Reddit would consider it blackmail for a 3rd party developer to say "If you make it impossible for me to run my app/service I will be very angry and tell people about it and say you're bad for doing it"

I mean, that's not blackmail that's just, like, normal behavior for two groups that have a dispute.

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