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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 be

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 recording his calls with them for over a year (legally I might add). Reddit has 0 wiggle room here. EDIT: Just spitballing here but could an employee bring a shareholder lawsuit for negatively impacting financial outlook or destroying brand value? I feel like this is going to significantly reshape Reddit as moderators of large subreddits will be furious and quit if not destroy entire subreddits. Just look at how many big (millions and tens of millions of subscribers) subreddits are signed onto the blackout letter https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplete_and_growing_list_of_participating/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplet... EDIT 2: Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose his job over this? EDIT 3: Christian says in the post the refunds will cost him personally about $250,000. Does he have a claim against Reddit for that money I wonder? I'm sure lawyers are looking closely at the agreements right now. EDIT 4: #1 Reddit Android app "Reddit is Fun" is shutting down too https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_will_shut_down_on_june_30_2023_in_response_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_wi...

bluecalm 3y ago
I was using RiF myself. Reddit is unusable for me without a 3rd party up as their interface is a clusterfuck. I can't complain, I was spending too much time there anyway and it's easy to cut off now.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
Other social media companies seem far less ethical to me. Facebook still has tons of employees even though they treat users much worse than reddit. In the end reddit is a business that exists to make money. They were never going to let third party apps that undercut ad revenue exist forever.
- thx-2718 3y ago
  It's a weird balance right? You'd think letting 3rd party developed apps for your platform frees up resources you would otherwise put in to develop your own app. Individuals that use third party apps are probably power users so they're the one's submitting content and writing good comments. The very backbone to what brings people to the platform. With quality of submissions and comments going down then presumably the number of actual visiters to the site will also go down. Thus lowering potential revenue.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    The quality of Reddit comments has never been particularly high. Sure there are quality posts, but like other social media most posts are essentially spam and those that aren’t inaccurate/hyperbolic or just memes.
    - thx-2718 3y ago
      Once upon a time you could go to Reddit and skip the link because the top comment both summarized the article and gave poignant relevant commentary. Often times from someone that had professional knowledge in that field.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    The problem is their revenue per user is garbage compared to other sites. Facebook is sitting at $70 per user/year. More users who don't bring revenue doesn't actually help the company. I think they should focus more on getting their ad platform to make a reasonable CPM, but I assume they've been trying and for whatever reason just can't make it happen. Maybe forcing users onto the official app is how they plan to boost the ad numbers?
koolba 3y ago
> 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?
- robbiet480 3y ago
  Good point, I totally forgot that he was caught editing posts directly in the production DB https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev...
  - deleted 3y ago
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    - shp0ngle 3y ago
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  - Firmwarrior 3y ago
    I hate Reddit, Reddit Admins, Reddit Mods, etc more than most people. Especially how they love to gaslight you and subtly screw you over/sabotage you, as we saw with their attacks on the_donald. BUT if you take the edits in context, there was nothing wrong with them. Dozens of people were talking shit, and he responded by very lightly and very obviously trolling them. There were still a lot of old school internet users/4chan types running the show back then, so they should have been able to deal with a tiny bit of counter-trolling without losing their minds.
    - rvba 3y ago
      [flagged]
berkle4455 3y ago
Most users won’t opt for a refund from Apollo. People are on his side.
- hiddencost 3y ago
  Apple automatically grants refunds unless you opt out. Tweetbot did a big push trying to get people to opt out of the refund.
  - Hamuko 3y ago
    I uninstalled Tweetbot prior to any push, forgot about it and then got a refund like a month or two later. Whoops.
- TwoNineA 3y ago
  I would not ask for refund. This app is a jewel on iOS, extremely well polished and gave me hours and hours and hours of enjoyment.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    The smart move for the Apollo devs might be to create a back end of their own. There's no reason why their app needs to work only with Reddit, is there? Quite a few users would migrate to a new forum just to keep using the app.
    - TechBro8615 3y ago
      He addressed that in the post, saying he basically doesn't have the energy for it. Which is understandable. I really don't see why Reddit doesn't just purchase the app.
      - chimeracoder 3y ago
        > I really don't see why Reddit doesn't just purchase the app. They've all but stated openly that their goal is to kill Apollo in its current form. Why pay millions to do that when they can accomplish it for free?
deleted 3y ago
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blowski 3y ago
What kind of obligation is Reddit under to allow Apollo to continue? They’ve made a decision they think (rightly or wrongly) is in the long-term interests of the company. How long will Reddit survive if they don’t do this? I have no idea. But I do know the CEO has to deliver more than happy users.
- ezfe 3y ago
  They're not under any obligation legally - but they've been intentionally misleading at every step to try to make Apollo the bad guy
- baq 3y ago
  Yes, but he also should listen to Ru Paul and not duck it up. Or maybe not digg it.
- Jochim 3y ago
  Putting aside why Reddit's behaviour is objectionable. Reddit did this in a way that will cost them money and harm both their reputation and quality. Had they set out a reasonable timeline for the new prices, they would have had a new revenue stream. Instead they killed it and at the same time created an incentive for some of their most active users to leave.
anlaw 3y ago
[flagged]
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
>yes, turns out we are the bad guys who have been continually lying and manipulating the situation for our benefit This is *literally* what is expected of someone running a company with intitutional investors - anything other than this and investors are not interested. What more proof do we need that there is nothing more important to a small group of humans that own all the money, than them getting more money?
duxup 3y ago
> I wonder if they’ll see employees quit over this. What is the employee culture like it Reddit? I’ve never gotten the impression that people working at Reddit better care all that much about the community. It’s just not something that ever came across from the site… rather, I’ve suspected just the opposite. Statements by some admin’s make me wonder if they’ve EVER dealt with a community before … and their decisions based on personal relationships, rather than anything else.
- robotnikman 3y ago
  Considering some of the bad hiring decisions they have made in the past, I'm guessing not that great.
  - duxup 3y ago
    I don’t know of many such situations but this one was odd: https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/24/22348255/reddit-moderator-blackout-protest-aimee-knight-uk-green-party https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/24/22348255/reddit-moderator... I don’t really understand how they could make that hire or why they would have thought that person was a good choice…
- ellisv 3y ago
  I've known a couple of people who previously worked at Reddit and I can't imagine they'd quit over something like this. I think most employees don't feel any personal responsibility or sense of control for the situation and are happy to get paid a comfortable salary.
SkyPuncher 3y ago
> Christian says in the post the refunds will cost him personally about $250,000. Does he have a claim against Reddit for that money I wonder? Why would they? In fact, lots of people were already frustrated with the handling of "lifetime access" while having ads being pushed. A business, Apollo, made an offer (lifetime access) to gain marketshare. It worked as Apollo is the defacto Reddit App for iOS. Now they cannot hold true to their offer, so they're forced to refund it. This is the price of the bargain Apollo made. I feel terrible for Christian on an individual level. He must be going through hell. However, there is a business being run by Apollo and it needs to be held to it's commitments.
- robbiet480 3y ago
  I don't think lifetime access is getting refunded since that was just a one time unlock. He says the $250,000 cost is to refund all "subscriptions".
  - no_butterscotch 3y ago
    How does Apple's refunds work? I'm surprised more people don't do one-time purchases to avoid these subscription refund stories I keep hearing.
    - sco1 3y ago
      > How does Apple's refunds work? I don't know how monthly subscriptions work, but yearly subscription refunds are pro-rated. > I'm surprised more people don't do one-time purchases to avoid these subscription refund stories I keep hearing I'm not, at least not for apps like this that need consistent revenue to support regular maintenance and/or server costs in an era where customers balk when an app costs more than a few dollars. To achieve this you end up balancing whether or not to serve ads, hope you can just grow enough new users forever, charge for major updates, charge a subscription, or beg for tips. While there are some exceptions, you can probably tell that ads or subscriptions are generally winning this nowadays. One-time purchases are a tricky thing, since you've realisitcally now precluded ever charging for a major update. This is great for them, and might be for you if you've gotten your math right, but if you haven't (or it changes) then you're stuck. And, for better or for worse, they tend to be the loudest users. Marco Arment talks about this balance in general on an episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast a couple weeks ago when discussing how Casey (another host) should price an app he's writing. For context if folks aren't aware, Marco created Overcast, which is a popular 3rd party iOS podcast app. The discussion spans a couple episodes but I the post-show of [Episode 535](https://atp.fm/535 https://atp.fm/535) captures the gist.
com2kid 3y ago
Reddit should try honestly. "We are losing lots of money, we need to start making money, reddit gold isn't bringing in enough revenue to pay the bills. 3rd party apps don't show ads, which costs us a lot of money every month. Keeping the 3rd party APIs up and running also costs us money. Because Reddit needs to stop losing money, we are closing down 3rd party apps." I don't know what why it is so hard to say that...
- jsheard 3y ago
  Reddit had an easy way out for the issue of 3rd party apps not showing ads, they already have a paid subscription which removes the ads on the official clients, so they could have made the API exclusive to users with a subscription. People would have been upset, but not this upset.
  - marcolussetti 3y ago
    Honestly, I think they would have had a sizeable amount of people paying for the subscription. Now, even if they backtrack on this later on in a few months or years, they burned the good will, so I doubt developers are going invest the time to make a good Reddit client after this.
    - Alupis 3y ago
      Not at all - if anything, this opened the door for more premium Reddit apps that charge monthly - with billing being in-line with Reddit Premium.
      - Silhouette 3y ago
        It also opened the door for a more premium non-Reddit app that charges monthly and directly competes with Reddit. From everything I've seen so far there might be enough of the existing Reddit community who are upset enough with the recent direction to make that leap viable and if the reported figures are accurate then the finances might also work if enough people jump ship to establish a new community.
mustacheemperor 3y ago
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 really beyond the pale. From the IPO mindset, what questions does this raise about the risk to the business from the leadership’s lack of integrity? And not just the propensity to lie, but to get caught so blatantly. Why would even a ruthless money-over-everything Wall Street investor want to gamble on that? And kudos to Christian for doing what he did. Bullies need to learn that the truth will come out eventually, and if the revelation they can’t gaslight with impunity is a shock to them - good. Edit: not to mention Christian's full-time job has just been ended by this policy change. How especially and thoughtlessly cruel to now also make him out to be an extortionist liar, and for nothing really.
- napsterbr 3y ago
  At this point, I'm just glad Apollo's author will be able to get some indemnification (and cover his refunds) with the likely lawsuit that will come from this lie.
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    Then he might finally be able to cover the API costs for a month.
- Demmme 3y ago
  I actually believe reddit when they say the impact is small I'm using reddit for ages and never even considered anything besides their website. If the traffic to their site is primarily from the web (or web mobile or the official Reddit app), the client (3th party) users are only a loud minority. Of course I think the behavior is shitty but I don't think most people really care and reddit will not see any real impact of it either.
  - 3y ago
ajross 3y ago
> Just spitballing here but could an employee bring a shareholder lawsuit for negatively impacting financial outlook or destroying brand value? Not against a private company, no. Reddit is still owned by Conde-Nast, I believe. What to do with it is up to them. Also in general *employees* don't bring shareholder lawsuits. Even if you own significant stock, getting fired for suing your boss is usually a losing proposition.
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
Subreddits can't be destroyed, only made private, and then requested by someone else.
- az226 3y ago
  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.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    Nah. The mods would just be replaced if they tried anything like that.
- hnick 3y ago
  Can you script a mass-delete after privating (via API, while you still can)?
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    For subs you are a member of sure.
Alupis 3y ago
Folks - if you want Apollo to survive, go make it known you are willing to pay $5 a month for access. I know it's popular to hate on Reddit right now - and for good reasons, but folks, Apollo made a business decision that was unsustainable and entirely dependent on the good will of another (untrustworthy) 3rd party company. It seems foolish to just shut down out of spite. The support for Apollo seems very strong - how about you all put your money where your support is and support Apollo? How can we claim Apollo was so critical and necessary and everyone loves it - yet nobody wants to pay for a high quality app? This doesn't seem possible.
- mynameisvlad 3y ago
  Did you read the thread? It includes a section about increasing the cost and how it wouldn't really do much. > Why not just increase the price of Apollo? > One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That's $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days. > So you see, even if I increase the price for new subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000, second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users. > I hope you can recognize how that's an enormous amount of money to suddenly start incurring with 30 days notice. Even if I added 12,000 new subscribers at $5/month (an enormous feat given the short notice), after Apple's fees that would just be enough to break even. > Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work with only 30 days. That's a lot of users to migrate, plans to create, things to test, and to get through app review, and it's just not economically feasible. It's much cheaper for me to simply shut down.
  - Alupis 3y ago
anlaw 3y ago
[flagged]
- nsn90 3y ago
  they don't just claim, it's there https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-31-end.m4a https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-...
afgrant 3y ago
If employees are getting paid salary, getting health insurance, getting retirement contributions, they’re by-and-large not going to quit
bradac56 3y ago
[flagged]
- robbiet480 3y ago
  I'm aware it's a private company. Employees have been issued stock options and/or RSUs as part of their compensation package for years now which would make them shareholders.
  - chimeracoder 3y ago
    > Employees have been issued stock options and/or RSUs as part of their compensation package for years now which would make them shareholders. Well, no, options don't make them shareholders unless they're exercised. RSUs don't make them shareholders at all, because they're not actually stock (they're stock units). Reddit's cap table is probably a mess at this point, so I imagine that some current employees are also shareholders, but I don't know if all are, and RSUs don't make them shareholders.
    - angoragoats 3y ago
      > RSUs don't make them shareholders at all, because they're not actually stock (they're stock units). What? As the grandparent implied, when RSUs vest, they turn into shares of stock, which makes the employee a shareholder.
      - chimeracoder 3y ago
        > What? As the grandparent implied, when RSUs vest, they turn into shares of stock, which makes the employee a shareholder. Most RSUs for private companies (especially those issued by companies as old as Reddit) are double trigger, not single trigger. They don't turn into stock at vesting because that would be a taxable event. They turn into stock after the second trigger, which is a liquidity event (IPO or acquisition).
        angoragoats 3y ago
iLoveOncall 3y ago
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.
- skeaker 3y ago
  That money is pennies to reddit. Apollo was around long before the official app and established a majority mobile userbase which you could argue helped build reddit into what it is today. I guarantee you it 100% made reddit more money than it made the developer of the app. Reddit is the bad guy for slandering him and gaslighting their users at every turn, yes.
- Aaargh20318 3y ago
  Reddit literally only makes money of other people’s content. They contribute absolutely nothing themselves. Hypocritical much?
- burnished 3y ago
  Weird taken given that it was a resource provided for people to use that benefited Reddit to offer. Are shipping companies leeches in your worldview?
- kentm 3y ago
  > 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.
benatkin 3y ago
> Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose his job over this? He might be looking to quit, I figure. Taking care of unpopular stuff on the way out would make sense.
bityard 3y ago
It is not surprising to me that a product intended for social drama (news) aggregation has basically been steeped in drama its whole life. Like, I can't remember a time that there _hasn't_ been some sort of drama going on behind the scenes at Reddit. Really seems like one of the last places I would want to work, that's for sure.
okdood64 3y ago
> I wonder if they’ll see employees quit over this. I'm sure a few will but, I can't name any time in the last 20 years when a tech company did something bad that enough employees quit over it for it to be notable. For 95% of tech workers, it's just a job and pays money. And pays well.
- ted_dunning 3y ago
  Well, Zynga was an example. https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/zynga-to-employees-give-back-our-stock-or-youll-be-fired/ https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/zynga-to-employees-give...
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
See this response reddit posted https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/143sho8/admins_claim_apollo_threatened_them_whats_the/ 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 apps. This seems a lot more reasonable, although the API pricing is still bonkers.
- bardfinn 3y ago
  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.
- shever73 3y ago
  They still repeat the “Apollo threatened us” lie, even though Christian’s recordings prove that they apologised and accepted that misunderstanding.
hospitalJail 3y ago
>#1 Reddit Android app "Reddit is Fun" Guess no more bathroom reddit for me. 4chan still works.
- fknorangesite 3y ago
  An appropriate place to read 4chan, I suppose.
  - paradox460 3y ago
    Why do you think they call it shit posting?
dbbk 3y ago
> Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose his job over this? Oh please. Let's be honest, this is not financially going to hurt the company.
- jakkos 3y ago
  It's a large and protracted public backlash and another example of the CEO being incompetent and dishonest right before an IPO. It would definitely impact my view of the company as an investor.
- toyg 3y ago
  But it has generated enough bad PR and user bleeding to significantly push competitors, which eventually will financially hurt Reddit - or possibly even kill it. An old-school investor would be fuming right now, but VCs only care about IPOs and they probably blessed this strategy already.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    "Old school investors" haven't mattered since the Dotcom boom showed you can just make money by making up a narrative, selling, and walking away. That's been the economy in the US for two decades now.
punnerud 3y ago
Christian (the maker of Apollo) is from Norway, and if the recordings was done in Norway it’s legal as far as I know. Even a specific point in the law that specify that you can record audio without informing about it, as long as you are part of the conversation yourself. §205 : https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2005-05-20-28/KAPITTEL_2-6#KAPITTEL_2-6 https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2005-05-20-28/KAPITTEL_2-... EDIT: See now that he was in Canada when it was recorded, and they have the same kind of laws.
- kernal 3y ago
  Isn't he a citizen and current resident of Canada?
  - BizarreByte 3y ago
    Yep and it's completely legal here too as long as one participant knows and is fine with it being recorded (him in this instance).
    - gradys 3y ago
      It might be legal from Canada's perspective, but that doesn't necessarily mean legal action couldn't be taken in the US. Is there something specific to the law on recording phone calls that makes this not a problem?
      - SirensOfTitan 3y ago
        Reddit is unlikely to sue Christian for recording these calls, it would be an extension of what is already a PR nightmare for them.
      - bmitc 3y ago
        How do you launch a lawsuit in your own country against a person that lives, works, and operates in and is a citizen of another country? That would be truly bizarre.
      - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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bardfinn 3y ago
[flagged]
- Jackim 3y ago
  You need an API key to access the reddit API. There's no MITM, it's just that requests made through Apollo are tracked to Apollo. And Apollo will be charged for those requests.
- bbatsell 3y ago
  The “free” limits are per-app, not per-user. Any API call using Apollo’s OAuth client_id and client_secret is attributed to Apollo’s limits and then API usage, whether it comes directly from a user’s device or through another server. Reddit has never provided access to its ads to third-parties, and now third-party apps are banned from showing any advertising at all.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bobsmooth 3y ago
  >Hi there, I am a so-called reddit "powermod" Why?
  - dmix 3y ago
    They have nothing else going on but still want to do some form of work?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - richbell 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36197355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36197355
- riseagainst22 3y ago
  You are also a wife beater. Please leave this website, you are not tolerated here you aggressive felon.
bastardoperator 3y ago
[flagged]
- skeaker 3y ago
  Consider reading TFA. The dev in question was actively lied to by reddit about the availability of the API, and DID have a plan for this scenario, just not one that could be executed in the unreasonably short time frame of the API changes.
  - bastardoperator 3y ago
    That's one side of the story and unless an enforceable contract exists, it's completely meaningless what reddit supposedly said.
    - growthwtf 3y ago
      Agree with the commenter above, I encourage you to read the original post we are commenting on. All of the calls were recorded and transcribed. You are right that there is no agreement of course, but the way they're treating the dev sounds, in the most charitable explanation, extremely disorganized and a bit rude.
    - skeaker 3y ago
      Meaningless in a court sense, maybe. Indefensible in all other respects.
    - ChrisClark 3y ago
      But there are both sides, actual recordings of the calls.
IgorPartola 3y ago
Realistically this is the right time for the large subreddits to move onto a different platform. The moderators and the community ultimately have the power here, not Reddit. And in the sense that those communities are just forums, good old PHPbb could be the answer.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > Realistically this is the right time for the large subreddits to move onto a different platform. Like Apollo. He could build a backend himself.
MrMember 3y ago
>I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or delete themselves over this. Subreddits are run by volunteer moderators and are entirely at the whim of reddit. If any substantial subreddit tried to shut down or go dark permanently reddit would just remove the moderators responsible.
- shagie 3y ago
  ... or the community would spin up a new one with a slightly different name and a new set of moderators if the demand is there. There are lots of permanently dark/private subreddits out there that have been "lost" to some dispute or another.
deleted 3y ago
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petepete 3y ago
Sync too; the true gold standard of Reddit apps. https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/144jp3w/_/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/144jp3w/_/
sgustard 3y ago
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 3y ago
  [deleted]
what_ever 3y ago
Reddit Sync as well - https://old.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/144jp3w/sync_will_shut_down_on_june_30_2023/ https://old.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/144jp3w/sync_wi...
- flanbiscuit 3y ago
  This has been my Reddit app for ages. I've paid for the Pro version a long time ago. Sad to this go. I'm not throwing in the towel like most people are, but I will just relegate myself to viewing it only in a desktop browser. We'll see how long old.reddit.com lasts after this
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
casenmgreen 3y ago
I run a small sub, about 50 people. One day I looked at it, not logged in. Turned out there was a post, "pinned by moderators", at the top of the post list, exhorting people to join the sub lounge - that real-time chat thing Reddit was pushing. I never made that post, nor did I approve it, nor did I ever see it in the mod list of posts. I logged in, and went to the mod list of posts - and lo and behold, somehow pinned to the bottom of the list of posts, so before the oldest post, is this post. Reddit made that post, pushed it into my sub, pinned it, and hid it from me, not only by forcing it last in the list of posts, but also because when I log in as admin, the post is not shown to me! Bloody hell. At that point I knew Reddit could not be trusted.
- ryanmercer 3y ago
  >pushed it into my sub, *their sub.
  - TX81Z 3y ago
    Is a bottle of water a bottle or water? Neither right? And I’d say a sub is the same.
    - bqmjjx0kac 3y ago
      A subreddit is neither a sub nor reddit?
      - TX81Z 3y ago
        Reddit is the bottle, user content is the water. I’m not sure where you draw tbe line per se, but seems like Reddit is doing their best to find out.
ryanmercer 3y ago
>I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or delete themselves over this. It's my understanding that Apollo users make up a fraction of a percent of active users. Reddit almost certainly doesn't care. Fact is they've taken in over a billion in funding and aren't really returning a profit, charging for API access starts moving them in the right direction though.
that_guy_iain 3y ago
> 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 claim against Reddit for that money I wonder? I'm sure lawyers are looking closely at the agreements right now. What would he have a claim for? He wasn't paying for the API. He could pay for the API and continue to operate. You can't sue someone because they stopped letting you use their services for free. You sure can't sue a business for asking your for-profit company to pay expenses. Realistically, these app users would have made tens if not hundreds of thousands a month if they just added subscription model to their app and only had paying customers. These apps could still exist and be extremely profitable for a one-man apps. Simple maths $5 a month subscription $2.50 to reddit $1.50 to apple and $1 to the app developer. Say 10% of their users convert which seems very reasonable considering the reception a price increase to $6.99 seem to get on the Apollo subreddit. That would have been $100,000 a month profit. But instead, they shut it down.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  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.
  - that_guy_iain 3y ago
    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.
whyenot 3y ago
I am astounded that Steve Huffman would do this. There was the incident ~7 years ago where he silently edited a post that criticized him, but I thought he would have learned from that, and this is so much worse.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Why would he have learned from something that didn't punish him in the slightest? That edit, ellen pao, that time they tried to hire someone who I think was a known pedophile or something... None of it has stopped reddit from bringing cash and clout to the people in charge, and none of it has prevented them from getting to the point where they will most likely walk away after the IPO with plenty of millions of dollars each. This is the inevitable outcome of a human who has never been told no or punished for their misdeeds. This is what it looks like for a spoiled child to run a company. We have a lot of that lately.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> could an employee bring a shareholder lawsuit for negatively impacting financial outlook Tech employees are somewhat notorious for not enforcing their shareholder rights. Most companies, for example, ignore their books & records requirements under Delaware law, or force private sales to occur at terms favourable to management and the Board’s friends.
- clintonb 3y ago
  It all depends on the terms of the equity grant. You may get RSUs, but voting rights are retained by the founders or someone else.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > voting rights are retained by the founders or someone else Voting rights are relatively irrelevant for minority holders. It's all the other rights, granted by contract and more importantly law, that tech employees can be generally regarded on to not exercise (or bullied into not exercising by management).
jacksnipe 3y ago
What he said is definitely defamation, all other damages notwithstanding.
hunter2_ 3y ago
> Just look at how many big (millions and tens of millions of subscribers) subreddits are signed onto the blackout letter Is there a running list of subs (over a certain high number of subscribers, to keep it focused) that aren't in the blackout list? That would be interesting to see. Wouldn't be too hard to implement, at least while the API is still free...
srge 3y ago
That’s a disaster
hiram112 3y ago
What refunds will he need to provide? I paid for the app years ago - it was $5 or so and I don't expect to get anything back. That's just how the game works. I know he also had some sort of monthly subscription - it seemed quite absurd for whatever additional trivial features it provided, but then again there apparently was some sort of Apollo fanboy group who got a lot of excitement out of new app logos, which seemed to be the main updates in the last few years, even at the expense of serious bugs that lingered for months. I'd assume those subscriptions would just stop being charged going forward. So again, who is getting $250k in refunds? Furthermore, if he is refunding that much money, I wonder what kind of revenue and profits he was pulling in? I had kind of assumed he was making a very good living (deservedly - it was a good app) - maybe a few hundred thousand dollars a year, but now I'm wondering if he was making a order of magnitude more than that...
- wvenable 3y ago
  You can buy a year of Apollo Ultra in advance and 50,000 people have done just that. I bet he was making enough that he didn't need another job but not significantly more than that.
cyanydeez 3y ago
Why even wait. Id shut it down on the 12th.
cush 3y ago
Just deleted my 11 year old account. End of an era.

bluecalm 3y ago

I was using RiF myself. Reddit is unusable for me without a 3rd party up as their interface is a clusterfuck. I can't complain, I was spending too much time there anyway and it's easy to cut off now.

HDThoreaun 3y ago

Other social media companies seem far less ethical to me. Facebook still has tons of employees even though they treat users much worse than reddit. In the end reddit is a business that exists to make money. They were never going to let third party apps that undercut ad revenue exist forever.

thx-2718 3y ago
It's a weird balance right? You'd think letting 3rd party developed apps for your platform frees up resources you would otherwise put in to develop your own app. Individuals that use third party apps are probably power users so they're the one's submitting content and writing good comments. The very backbone to what brings people to the platform. With quality of submissions and comments going down then presumably the number of actual visiters to the site will also go down. Thus lowering potential revenue.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  The quality of Reddit comments has never been particularly high. Sure there are quality posts, but like other social media most posts are essentially spam and those that aren’t inaccurate/hyperbolic or just memes.
  - thx-2718 3y ago
    Once upon a time you could go to Reddit and skip the link because the top comment both summarized the article and gave poignant relevant commentary. Often times from someone that had professional knowledge in that field.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  The problem is their revenue per user is garbage compared to other sites. Facebook is sitting at $70 per user/year. More users who don't bring revenue doesn't actually help the company. I think they should focus more on getting their ad platform to make a reasonable CPM, but I assume they've been trying and for whatever reason just can't make it happen. Maybe forcing users onto the official app is how they plan to boost the ad numbers?

koolba 3y ago

> 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?

robbiet480 3y ago
Good point, I totally forgot that he was caught editing posts directly in the production DB https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
  - shp0ngle 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- Firmwarrior 3y ago
  I hate Reddit, Reddit Admins, Reddit Mods, etc more than most people. Especially how they love to gaslight you and subtly screw you over/sabotage you, as we saw with their attacks on the_donald. BUT if you take the edits in context, there was nothing wrong with them. Dozens of people were talking shit, and he responded by very lightly and very obviously trolling them. There were still a lot of old school internet users/4chan types running the show back then, so they should have been able to deal with a tiny bit of counter-trolling without losing their minds.
  - rvba 3y ago
    [flagged]

berkle4455 3y ago

Most users won’t opt for a refund from Apollo. People are on his side.

hiddencost 3y ago
Apple automatically grants refunds unless you opt out. Tweetbot did a big push trying to get people to opt out of the refund.
- Hamuko 3y ago
  I uninstalled Tweetbot prior to any push, forgot about it and then got a refund like a month or two later. Whoops.
TwoNineA 3y ago
I would not ask for refund. This app is a jewel on iOS, extremely well polished and gave me hours and hours and hours of enjoyment.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  The smart move for the Apollo devs might be to create a back end of their own. There's no reason why their app needs to work only with Reddit, is there? Quite a few users would migrate to a new forum just to keep using the app.
  - TechBro8615 3y ago
    He addressed that in the post, saying he basically doesn't have the energy for it. Which is understandable. I really don't see why Reddit doesn't just purchase the app.
    - chimeracoder 3y ago
      > I really don't see why Reddit doesn't just purchase the app. They've all but stated openly that their goal is to kill Apollo in its current form. Why pay millions to do that when they can accomplish it for free?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

blowski 3y ago

What kind of obligation is Reddit under to allow Apollo to continue? They’ve made a decision they think (rightly or wrongly) is in the long-term interests of the company. How long will Reddit survive if they don’t do this? I have no idea. But I do know the CEO has to deliver more than happy users.

ezfe 3y ago
They're not under any obligation legally - but they've been intentionally misleading at every step to try to make Apollo the bad guy
baq 3y ago
Yes, but he also should listen to Ru Paul and not duck it up. Or maybe not digg it.
Jochim 3y ago
Putting aside why Reddit's behaviour is objectionable. Reddit did this in a way that will cost them money and harm both their reputation and quality. Had they set out a reasonable timeline for the new prices, they would have had a new revenue stream. Instead they killed it and at the same time created an incentive for some of their most active users to leave.

anlaw 3y ago

[flagged]

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

>yes, turns out we are the bad guys who have been continually lying and manipulating the situation for our benefit This is *literally* what is expected of someone running a company with intitutional investors - anything other than this and investors are not interested. What more proof do we need that there is nothing more important to a small group of humans that own all the money, than them getting more money?

duxup 3y ago

> I wonder if they’ll see employees quit over this. What is the employee culture like it Reddit? I’ve never gotten the impression that people working at Reddit better care all that much about the community. It’s just not something that ever came across from the site… rather, I’ve suspected just the opposite. Statements by some admin’s make me wonder if they’ve EVER dealt with a community before … and their decisions based on personal relationships, rather than anything else.

robotnikman 3y ago
Considering some of the bad hiring decisions they have made in the past, I'm guessing not that great.
- duxup 3y ago
  I don’t know of many such situations but this one was odd: https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/24/22348255/reddit-moderator-blackout-protest-aimee-knight-uk-green-party https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/24/22348255/reddit-moderator... I don’t really understand how they could make that hire or why they would have thought that person was a good choice…
ellisv 3y ago
I've known a couple of people who previously worked at Reddit and I can't imagine they'd quit over something like this. I think most employees don't feel any personal responsibility or sense of control for the situation and are happy to get paid a comfortable salary.

SkyPuncher 3y ago

> Christian says in the post the refunds will cost him personally about $250,000. Does he have a claim against Reddit for that money I wonder? Why would they? In fact, lots of people were already frustrated with the handling of "lifetime access" while having ads being pushed. A business, Apollo, made an offer (lifetime access) to gain marketshare. It worked as Apollo is the defacto Reddit App for iOS. Now they cannot hold true to their offer, so they're forced to refund it. This is the price of the bargain Apollo made. I feel terrible for Christian on an individual level. He must be going through hell. However, there is a business being run by Apollo and it needs to be held to it's commitments.

robbiet480 3y ago
I don't think lifetime access is getting refunded since that was just a one time unlock. He says the $250,000 cost is to refund all "subscriptions".
- no_butterscotch 3y ago
  How does Apple's refunds work? I'm surprised more people don't do one-time purchases to avoid these subscription refund stories I keep hearing.
  - sco1 3y ago
    > How does Apple's refunds work? I don't know how monthly subscriptions work, but yearly subscription refunds are pro-rated. > I'm surprised more people don't do one-time purchases to avoid these subscription refund stories I keep hearing I'm not, at least not for apps like this that need consistent revenue to support regular maintenance and/or server costs in an era where customers balk when an app costs more than a few dollars. To achieve this you end up balancing whether or not to serve ads, hope you can just grow enough new users forever, charge for major updates, charge a subscription, or beg for tips. While there are some exceptions, you can probably tell that ads or subscriptions are generally winning this nowadays. One-time purchases are a tricky thing, since you've realisitcally now precluded ever charging for a major update. This is great for them, and might be for you if you've gotten your math right, but if you haven't (or it changes) then you're stuck. And, for better or for worse, they tend to be the loudest users. Marco Arment talks about this balance in general on an episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast a couple weeks ago when discussing how Casey (another host) should price an app he's writing. For context if folks aren't aware, Marco created Overcast, which is a popular 3rd party iOS podcast app. The discussion spans a couple episodes but I the post-show of [Episode 535](https://atp.fm/535 https://atp.fm/535) captures the gist.

com2kid 3y ago

Reddit should try honestly. "We are losing lots of money, we need to start making money, reddit gold isn't bringing in enough revenue to pay the bills. 3rd party apps don't show ads, which costs us a lot of money every month. Keeping the 3rd party APIs up and running also costs us money. Because Reddit needs to stop losing money, we are closing down 3rd party apps." I don't know what why it is so hard to say that...

jsheard 3y ago
Reddit had an easy way out for the issue of 3rd party apps not showing ads, they already have a paid subscription which removes the ads on the official clients, so they could have made the API exclusive to users with a subscription. People would have been upset, but not this upset.
- marcolussetti 3y ago
  Honestly, I think they would have had a sizeable amount of people paying for the subscription. Now, even if they backtrack on this later on in a few months or years, they burned the good will, so I doubt developers are going invest the time to make a good Reddit client after this.
  - Alupis 3y ago
    Not at all - if anything, this opened the door for more premium Reddit apps that charge monthly - with billing being in-line with Reddit Premium.
    - Silhouette 3y ago
      It also opened the door for a more premium non-Reddit app that charges monthly and directly competes with Reddit. From everything I've seen so far there might be enough of the existing Reddit community who are upset enough with the recent direction to make that leap viable and if the reported figures are accurate then the finances might also work if enough people jump ship to establish a new community.

mustacheemperor 3y ago

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 really beyond the pale. From the IPO mindset, what questions does this raise about the risk to the business from the leadership’s lack of integrity? And not just the propensity to lie, but to get caught so blatantly. Why would even a ruthless money-over-everything Wall Street investor want to gamble on that? And kudos to Christian for doing what he did. Bullies need to learn that the truth will come out eventually, and if the revelation they can’t gaslight with impunity is a shock to them - good. Edit: not to mention Christian's full-time job has just been ended by this policy change. How especially and thoughtlessly cruel to now also make him out to be an extortionist liar, and for nothing really.

napsterbr 3y ago
At this point, I'm just glad Apollo's author will be able to get some indemnification (and cover his refunds) with the likely lawsuit that will come from this lie.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Then he might finally be able to cover the API costs for a month.
Demmme 3y ago
I actually believe reddit when they say the impact is small I'm using reddit for ages and never even considered anything besides their website. If the traffic to their site is primarily from the web (or web mobile or the official Reddit app), the client (3th party) users are only a loud minority. Of course I think the behavior is shitty but I don't think most people really care and reddit will not see any real impact of it either.
- 3y ago

ajross 3y ago

> Just spitballing here but could an employee bring a shareholder lawsuit for negatively impacting financial outlook or destroying brand value? Not against a private company, no. Reddit is still owned by Conde-Nast, I believe. What to do with it is up to them. Also in general *employees* don't bring shareholder lawsuits. Even if you own significant stock, getting fired for suing your boss is usually a losing proposition.

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

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

az226 3y ago
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.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  Nah. The mods would just be replaced if they tried anything like that.
hnick 3y ago
Can you script a mass-delete after privating (via API, while you still can)?
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  For subs you are a member of sure.

Alupis 3y ago

Folks - if you want Apollo to survive, go make it known you are willing to pay $5 a month for access. I know it's popular to hate on Reddit right now - and for good reasons, but folks, Apollo made a business decision that was unsustainable and entirely dependent on the good will of another (untrustworthy) 3rd party company. It seems foolish to just shut down out of spite. The support for Apollo seems very strong - how about you all put your money where your support is and support Apollo? How can we claim Apollo was so critical and necessary and everyone loves it - yet nobody wants to pay for a high quality app? This doesn't seem possible.

mynameisvlad 3y ago
Did you read the thread? It includes a section about increasing the cost and how it wouldn't really do much. > Why not just increase the price of Apollo? > One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That's $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days. > So you see, even if I increase the price for new subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000, second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users. > I hope you can recognize how that's an enormous amount of money to suddenly start incurring with 30 days notice. Even if I added 12,000 new subscribers at $5/month (an enormous feat given the short notice), after Apple's fees that would just be enough to break even. > Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work with only 30 days. That's a lot of users to migrate, plans to create, things to test, and to get through app review, and it's just not economically feasible. It's much cheaper for me to simply shut down.
- Alupis 3y ago

anlaw 3y ago

[flagged]

nsn90 3y ago
they don't just claim, it's there https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-31-end.m4a https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-...

afgrant 3y ago

If employees are getting paid salary, getting health insurance, getting retirement contributions, they’re by-and-large not going to quit

bradac56 3y ago

[flagged]

robbiet480 3y ago
I'm aware it's a private company. Employees have been issued stock options and/or RSUs as part of their compensation package for years now which would make them shareholders.
- chimeracoder 3y ago
  > Employees have been issued stock options and/or RSUs as part of their compensation package for years now which would make them shareholders. Well, no, options don't make them shareholders unless they're exercised. RSUs don't make them shareholders at all, because they're not actually stock (they're stock units). Reddit's cap table is probably a mess at this point, so I imagine that some current employees are also shareholders, but I don't know if all are, and RSUs don't make them shareholders.
  - angoragoats 3y ago
    > RSUs don't make them shareholders at all, because they're not actually stock (they're stock units). What? As the grandparent implied, when RSUs vest, they turn into shares of stock, which makes the employee a shareholder.
    - chimeracoder 3y ago
      > What? As the grandparent implied, when RSUs vest, they turn into shares of stock, which makes the employee a shareholder. Most RSUs for private companies (especially those issued by companies as old as Reddit) are double trigger, not single trigger. They don't turn into stock at vesting because that would be a taxable event. They turn into stock after the second trigger, which is a liquidity event (IPO or acquisition).
      - angoragoats 3y ago

iLoveOncall 3y ago

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.

skeaker 3y ago
That money is pennies to reddit. Apollo was around long before the official app and established a majority mobile userbase which you could argue helped build reddit into what it is today. I guarantee you it 100% made reddit more money than it made the developer of the app. Reddit is the bad guy for slandering him and gaslighting their users at every turn, yes.
Aaargh20318 3y ago
Reddit literally only makes money of other people’s content. They contribute absolutely nothing themselves. Hypocritical much?
burnished 3y ago
Weird taken given that it was a resource provided for people to use that benefited Reddit to offer. Are shipping companies leeches in your worldview?
kentm 3y ago
> 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.

benatkin 3y ago

> Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose his job over this? He might be looking to quit, I figure. Taking care of unpopular stuff on the way out would make sense.

bityard 3y ago

It is not surprising to me that a product intended for social drama (news) aggregation has basically been steeped in drama its whole life. Like, I can't remember a time that there _hasn't_ been some sort of drama going on behind the scenes at Reddit. Really seems like one of the last places I would want to work, that's for sure.

okdood64 3y ago

> I wonder if they’ll see employees quit over this. I'm sure a few will but, I can't name any time in the last 20 years when a tech company did something bad that enough employees quit over it for it to be notable. For 95% of tech workers, it's just a job and pays money. And pays well.

ted_dunning 3y ago
Well, Zynga was an example. https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/zynga-to-employees-give-back-our-stock-or-youll-be-fired/ https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/zynga-to-employees-give...

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

See this response reddit posted https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/143sho8/admins_claim_apollo_threatened_them_whats_the/ 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 apps. This seems a lot more reasonable, although the API pricing is still bonkers.

bardfinn 3y ago
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.
shever73 3y ago
They still repeat the “Apollo threatened us” lie, even though Christian’s recordings prove that they apologised and accepted that misunderstanding.

hospitalJail 3y ago

>#1 Reddit Android app "Reddit is Fun" Guess no more bathroom reddit for me. 4chan still works.

fknorangesite 3y ago
An appropriate place to read 4chan, I suppose.
- paradox460 3y ago
  Why do you think they call it shit posting?

dbbk 3y ago

> Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose his job over this? Oh please. Let's be honest, this is not financially going to hurt the company.

jakkos 3y ago
It's a large and protracted public backlash and another example of the CEO being incompetent and dishonest right before an IPO. It would definitely impact my view of the company as an investor.
toyg 3y ago
But it has generated enough bad PR and user bleeding to significantly push competitors, which eventually will financially hurt Reddit - or possibly even kill it. An old-school investor would be fuming right now, but VCs only care about IPOs and they probably blessed this strategy already.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  "Old school investors" haven't mattered since the Dotcom boom showed you can just make money by making up a narrative, selling, and walking away. That's been the economy in the US for two decades now.

punnerud 3y ago

Christian (the maker of Apollo) is from Norway, and if the recordings was done in Norway it’s legal as far as I know. Even a specific point in the law that specify that you can record audio without informing about it, as long as you are part of the conversation yourself. §205 : https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2005-05-20-28/KAPITTEL_2-6#KAPITTEL_2-6 https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2005-05-20-28/KAPITTEL_2-... EDIT: See now that he was in Canada when it was recorded, and they have the same kind of laws.

kernal 3y ago
Isn't he a citizen and current resident of Canada?
- BizarreByte 3y ago
  Yep and it's completely legal here too as long as one participant knows and is fine with it being recorded (him in this instance).
  - gradys 3y ago
    It might be legal from Canada's perspective, but that doesn't necessarily mean legal action couldn't be taken in the US. Is there something specific to the law on recording phone calls that makes this not a problem?
    - SirensOfTitan 3y ago
      Reddit is unlikely to sue Christian for recording these calls, it would be an extension of what is already a PR nightmare for them.
    - bmitc 3y ago
      How do you launch a lawsuit in your own country against a person that lives, works, and operates in and is a citizen of another country? That would be truly bizarre.
    - 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bardfinn 3y ago

[flagged]

Jackim 3y ago
You need an API key to access the reddit API. There's no MITM, it's just that requests made through Apollo are tracked to Apollo. And Apollo will be charged for those requests.
bbatsell 3y ago
The “free” limits are per-app, not per-user. Any API call using Apollo’s OAuth client_id and client_secret is attributed to Apollo’s limits and then API usage, whether it comes directly from a user’s device or through another server. Reddit has never provided access to its ads to third-parties, and now third-party apps are banned from showing any advertising at all.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bobsmooth 3y ago
>Hi there, I am a so-called reddit "powermod" Why?
- dmix 3y ago
  They have nothing else going on but still want to do some form of work?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- richbell 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36197355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36197355
riseagainst22 3y ago
You are also a wife beater. Please leave this website, you are not tolerated here you aggressive felon.

bastardoperator 3y ago

[flagged]

skeaker 3y ago
Consider reading TFA. The dev in question was actively lied to by reddit about the availability of the API, and DID have a plan for this scenario, just not one that could be executed in the unreasonably short time frame of the API changes.
- bastardoperator 3y ago
  That's one side of the story and unless an enforceable contract exists, it's completely meaningless what reddit supposedly said.
  - growthwtf 3y ago
    Agree with the commenter above, I encourage you to read the original post we are commenting on. All of the calls were recorded and transcribed. You are right that there is no agreement of course, but the way they're treating the dev sounds, in the most charitable explanation, extremely disorganized and a bit rude.
  - skeaker 3y ago
    Meaningless in a court sense, maybe. Indefensible in all other respects.
  - ChrisClark 3y ago
    But there are both sides, actual recordings of the calls.

IgorPartola 3y ago

Realistically this is the right time for the large subreddits to move onto a different platform. The moderators and the community ultimately have the power here, not Reddit. And in the sense that those communities are just forums, good old PHPbb could be the answer.

nonethewiser 3y ago
> Realistically this is the right time for the large subreddits to move onto a different platform. Like Apollo. He could build a backend himself.

MrMember 3y ago

>I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or delete themselves over this. Subreddits are run by volunteer moderators and are entirely at the whim of reddit. If any substantial subreddit tried to shut down or go dark permanently reddit would just remove the moderators responsible.

shagie 3y ago
... or the community would spin up a new one with a slightly different name and a new set of moderators if the demand is there. There are lots of permanently dark/private subreddits out there that have been "lost" to some dispute or another.

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petepete 3y ago

Sync too; the true gold standard of Reddit apps. https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/144jp3w/_/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/144jp3w/_/

sgustard 3y ago

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 3y ago
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what_ever 3y ago

Reddit Sync as well - https://old.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/144jp3w/sync_will_shut_down_on_june_30_2023/ https://old.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/144jp3w/sync_wi...

flanbiscuit 3y ago
This has been my Reddit app for ages. I've paid for the Pro version a long time ago. Sad to this go. I'm not throwing in the towel like most people are, but I will just relegate myself to viewing it only in a desktop browser. We'll see how long old.reddit.com lasts after this

deleted 3y ago

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casenmgreen 3y ago

I run a small sub, about 50 people. One day I looked at it, not logged in. Turned out there was a post, "pinned by moderators", at the top of the post list, exhorting people to join the sub lounge - that real-time chat thing Reddit was pushing. I never made that post, nor did I approve it, nor did I ever see it in the mod list of posts. I logged in, and went to the mod list of posts - and lo and behold, somehow pinned to the bottom of the list of posts, so before the oldest post, is this post. Reddit made that post, pushed it into my sub, pinned it, and hid it from me, not only by forcing it last in the list of posts, but also because when I log in as admin, the post is not shown to me! Bloody hell. At that point I knew Reddit could not be trusted.

ryanmercer 3y ago
>pushed it into my sub, *their sub.
- TX81Z 3y ago
  Is a bottle of water a bottle or water? Neither right? And I’d say a sub is the same.
  - bqmjjx0kac 3y ago
    A subreddit is neither a sub nor reddit?
    - TX81Z 3y ago
      Reddit is the bottle, user content is the water. I’m not sure where you draw tbe line per se, but seems like Reddit is doing their best to find out.

ryanmercer 3y ago

>I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or delete themselves over this. It's my understanding that Apollo users make up a fraction of a percent of active users. Reddit almost certainly doesn't care. Fact is they've taken in over a billion in funding and aren't really returning a profit, charging for API access starts moving them in the right direction though.

that_guy_iain 3y ago

> 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 claim against Reddit for that money I wonder? I'm sure lawyers are looking closely at the agreements right now. What would he have a claim for? He wasn't paying for the API. He could pay for the API and continue to operate. You can't sue someone because they stopped letting you use their services for free. You sure can't sue a business for asking your for-profit company to pay expenses. Realistically, these app users would have made tens if not hundreds of thousands a month if they just added subscription model to their app and only had paying customers. These apps could still exist and be extremely profitable for a one-man apps. Simple maths $5 a month subscription $2.50 to reddit $1.50 to apple and $1 to the app developer. Say 10% of their users convert which seems very reasonable considering the reception a price increase to $6.99 seem to get on the Apollo subreddit. That would have been $100,000 a month profit. But instead, they shut it down.

sebzim4500 3y ago
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.
- that_guy_iain 3y ago
  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.

whyenot 3y ago

I am astounded that Steve Huffman would do this. There was the incident ~7 years ago where he silently edited a post that criticized him, but I thought he would have learned from that, and this is so much worse.

mrguyorama 3y ago
Why would he have learned from something that didn't punish him in the slightest? That edit, ellen pao, that time they tried to hire someone who I think was a known pedophile or something... None of it has stopped reddit from bringing cash and clout to the people in charge, and none of it has prevented them from getting to the point where they will most likely walk away after the IPO with plenty of millions of dollars each. This is the inevitable outcome of a human who has never been told no or punished for their misdeeds. This is what it looks like for a spoiled child to run a company. We have a lot of that lately.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> could an employee bring a shareholder lawsuit for negatively impacting financial outlook Tech employees are somewhat notorious for not enforcing their shareholder rights. Most companies, for example, ignore their books & records requirements under Delaware law, or force private sales to occur at terms favourable to management and the Board’s friends.

clintonb 3y ago
It all depends on the terms of the equity grant. You may get RSUs, but voting rights are retained by the founders or someone else.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > voting rights are retained by the founders or someone else Voting rights are relatively irrelevant for minority holders. It's all the other rights, granted by contract and more importantly law, that tech employees can be generally regarded on to not exercise (or bullied into not exercising by management).

jacksnipe 3y ago

What he said is definitely defamation, all other damages notwithstanding.

hunter2_ 3y ago

> Just look at how many big (millions and tens of millions of subscribers) subreddits are signed onto the blackout letter Is there a running list of subs (over a certain high number of subscribers, to keep it focused) that aren't in the blackout list? That would be interesting to see. Wouldn't be too hard to implement, at least while the API is still free...

srge 3y ago

That’s a disaster

hiram112 3y ago

What refunds will he need to provide? I paid for the app years ago - it was $5 or so and I don't expect to get anything back. That's just how the game works. I know he also had some sort of monthly subscription - it seemed quite absurd for whatever additional trivial features it provided, but then again there apparently was some sort of Apollo fanboy group who got a lot of excitement out of new app logos, which seemed to be the main updates in the last few years, even at the expense of serious bugs that lingered for months. I'd assume those subscriptions would just stop being charged going forward. So again, who is getting $250k in refunds? Furthermore, if he is refunding that much money, I wonder what kind of revenue and profits he was pulling in? I had kind of assumed he was making a very good living (deservedly - it was a good app) - maybe a few hundred thousand dollars a year, but now I'm wondering if he was making a order of magnitude more than that...

wvenable 3y ago
You can buy a year of Apollo Ultra in advance and 50,000 people have done just that. I bet he was making enough that he didn't need another job but not significantly more than that.

cyanydeez 3y ago

Why even wait. Id shut it down on the 12th.

cush 3y ago

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