Reddit CEO will have AMA tomorrow https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ce...
I think it speaks volumes about his mindset that he thinks this AMA is a good idea.
Apollo will close down on June 30th
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Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#932I'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…
1) You're correct in saying it clearly doesn't constitute Blackmail.
2) No, the opportunity cost for Reddit is the users using Apollo to browse Reddit as opposed to official channels. This prevents Reddit from effectively monetizing those users, because they cannot display them ads, track their usage habits, and all the other things social media companies do to monetize their user base. The reality is that using a user browsing via Apollo costs Reddit directly (server costs) and indirectly (missed opportunities aka opportunity cost).
3) Reddits bet is that the majority of the user base will be retained. The vocal outcry suggests they will not. Only time will tell which side is right. The other point many 3rd party advocates are making is that moderation tools, the majority of which are considered 3rd party apps, will also stop working. This will most likely significantly degrade the quality of many subreddits. People aren't necessarily angry saying "we demand our equal share", but rather "this is really short sighted and you're going to kill what we care about".
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#933Reddit is Digging its own grave. Eternal September awaits all the old school forums that still remain. But perhaps that decentralization will be a good thing in the end. I think the network effects of Reddit are a lot easier to undo than that of Twitter. There is little core functionality that didn’t exist in forum software from the Naughties.
do you happen to know of general programming/computer science forums (not counting hacker news)? That's really my only interest, I enjoy TV and movies but like discussing those in person nowadays.
Why discount HN? This is where I get most of my tech news from. ArsTechnica has forums too, though not sure how active those are.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#934Why not point Apollo at a Reddit alternative, or use the open-source code for Reddit (or code like this https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit ) instead of shutting it down? If Apollo's users (or a good percentage of them) moved over to an alternative platform, that would be poetic justice, at least.
To go even further, all the app devs should get together and create a new platform or pick one Reddit alternative and point all their apps at it.
That way it would be even more likely to get critical mass quickly.
3 weeks should be enough time to come up with a coordinated plan. If anyone here has a connection to the app developers it could be a good thing to suggest.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#935Such a clean app. It’s the only way I’ve been using Reddit the past two years. Time to move on… I stopped using it for more than entertainment anyway.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#936This makes me indescribably sad. Apart from mourning the loss of a fantastic app by an awesome developer, to me it signals the end of a golden era of small indie client only apps. Since the APIs for the likes of reddit, twitter (RIP tweetbot) and others were available for free or a reasonable fee it spawned a whole cottage industry of developers who made a living selling alternate front ends for these services. These…
My feelings exactly. We're all stuck with the official Reddit and Twitter clients now. They're not even good. We know they're not good, but they're now the only place to experience Reddit and Twitter. It's like enterprise software for a whole social network.
Decentralization doesn't seem like a bad idea now?
Only if there was a way to host websites where no central authority ever owned the data and the people who ran relays got paid in some form of cryptographically secure crypto currency. Frontend clients that made requests would need to pay in the same token to avoid abuse.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#937In 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's certainly a strange call. Hey, you want to charge me $20 million per year, so why don't we make it easy and you just pay me $10 million to go quiet? It's really confusing. He wants Reddit to pay $10 million so he isn't "loud" with API usage? He wants them to buy and takeover the app? He's wants a payment to shutdown? Is he even serious about any of this? I get the impression he lacks the confidence to ask for a…
“ Is he even serious about any of this?”
Not sure how people are misunderstanding him, he literally said he was joking… He knows it’s not a great deal for Reddit. His whole point is that the app isn’t actually worth $20 million a year, which is what they want him to pay. It’s not even worth $10 million. Not to him or Reddit or anyone else.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#938This makes me indescribably sad. Apart from mourning the loss of a fantastic app by an awesome developer, to me it signals the end of a golden era of small indie client only apps. Since the APIs for the likes of reddit, twitter (RIP tweetbot) and others were available for free or a reasonable fee it spawned a whole cottage industry of developers who made a living selling alternate front ends for these services. These…
Mastodon clients are a fun UI playground, lots of indie apps (at least on iOS). Unfortunately Mastodon feels a bit empty, there's not many people on it yet.
It depends on what sort of community you follow. The ML and tech podcasting communities have largely moved over. The politics, journalism and celebrity part of twitter hasn’t moved over. The corollary to that is that much of the vitriol and random toxicity also hasn’t moved over. I have a more vibrant and more interesting mastodon feed than I ever had on twitter. And my twitter feed now is a wasteland, stripped of the good content but still filled with all of the bad content. Twitter is dead man walking as far as I’m concerned.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#939Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's certainly a strange call. Hey, you want to charge me $20 million per year, so why don't we make it easy and you just pay me $10 million to go quiet? It's really confusing. He wants Reddit to pay $10 million so he isn't "loud" with API usage? He wants them to buy and takeover the app? He's wants a payment to shutdown? Is he even serious about any of this? I get the impression he lacks the confidence to ask for a…
My understanding is that Reddit is saying that by not charging for the API they are losing $20M per year. So he said, well you can buy me out, and instead of doing a multiple of that $20M to be like $100M, he’s only asking for half of only one year’s worth of what they would lose. Clearly they don’t want to do that deal because the $20M figure is complete bogus.
but there’s no incentive for Reddit to pay any money, they either start charging for the API and recoup the costs or the app shuts down and it starts costing Reddit absolutely nothing
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#940Hacker News will have to do because my Reddit experience was 99.99999% Apollo. Can’t stand the website. Never would have used it without Apollo on iOS. I know there are much serious things in the world than an app shutting down but this is truly the end of an era.