9 ms·
Join our CEO tomorrow to discuss the API
- ezekg 3y agoI bet he'll edit the questions and comments.
- dabluecaboose 3y agoI'm fully expecting the top comment to be asking why Spez lied about being threatened when the Apollo dev posted the recording of the phone call, and it'll either get removed or left unanswered
- ciabattabread 3y agoOr edited
- postsantum 3y agoY'all can't behave locks thread
- leetrout 3y agoFor anyone else curious the dev recorded his conversation with reddit. https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-31-end.m4a https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-... https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...
- austhrow743 3y agoIt honestly comes across as a threat to me.
- CousinMicks 3y agoSwap "go quiet" with "be quiet" or "go quietly" and it absolutely is a threat. But that's not what happened, and they clarified it in the call. Why would you consider the former threatening?
- williamcotton 3y agoYou need to take into consideration the fact that this person had already created a large amount of negative press around this API issue. This means that people at Reddit were already feeling defensive, so when someone said something very similar to a threat then it was more likely to be perceived as a threat. The reason why this is so alien to so many people is because they refuse to have empathy for a CEO. Reddit is filled to the brim with populist rhetoric about eating the rich. CEOs are profit robots, they don’t have emotional states of mind, duh. All of this makes complete sense. I couldn’t care less what happens to Reddit but it sure is interesting to watch everyone get so bent out of shape about a fucking website!
- drubio 3y agoI'm also honestly perplexed how many people didn't think it was a threat. I initially even thought the outrage at Reddit's CEO was because he got caught on tape asking for $10 mil to 'skip off into the sunset' like a mobster, only to realize it was the Apollo dev LOL
- vore 3y agoBut clearly they didn't continue to consider it as a threat after clarification, according to the transcript? Reddit: "Oh. Go quiet as in that. Okay, got it. Got it. Sorry." Reddit: "That's a complete misinterpretation on my end. I apologize. I apologize immediately."
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kotaKat 3y ago"about the latest API updates, including accessibility, mod bots, and third-party mod tools" ... buuuuut nothing about third-party clients. This is gonna be a bloodbath.
- sokoloff 3y agoI cannot conceive of any circumstance under which "Reddit CEO has AMA with Reddit community" would not become a shit-show.
- joecot 3y agoreddit wants to kill the third party apps, straight up. Third party apps hurt reddit's ad revenue. The mobile website hurts reddit's ad revenue. Given that listing, I expect he talks about how they resolved all the other issues that were brought up with their API changes -- accessibility, mod tools, etc. They're going to work to not cause problems for those use cases. But they want to kill the third party apps, and it doesn't sound like they're budging on it.
- amluto 3y ago> Third party apps hurt reddit's ad revenue. …then charge for it. But don’t charge an order of magnitude more than the lost ad revenue.
- joecot 3y agoMaking some amount of profit on it isn't enough. They want to lock down the user experience. Same reason Google started Google Talk with Jabber, then closed off their ecosystem. Same reason Facebook embraced third party apps, then shut them all down. Same reason Twitter is locking down their API currently. At a certain size companies want to decide the user experience without outside interference, and they don't want to share. If you read reddit on BaconReader or a similar app, when you pull up the app you will see 10 posts from subreddits you subscribed to. If you pull up the reddit app, you will see 2 posts, 2 ads, and 2 suggested posts you don't care about. Even if reddit charges for the API, the existence of these alternate clients that work way better makes reddit look greedy and bad, like they don't care about their users' experience. So they wanted to kill those alternative methods of using the site. In the process, they look extremely greedy and bad, and like they really don't care about their users' experience. Yet Facebook went through the same process, and they mostly kept their users. And shutting off the 3rd party systems meant they got to decide the entire user experience without having to compromise with anyone. They might end up backtracking because of the boycott, and charge a reasonable amount for the API to make a profit. That would allow the 3rd party apps to keep running while not losing money on them. But that is the compromise. The goal was to kill the apps.
- minimaxir 3y agoThe link to this post appeared as a home page banner, so they really want people to join this, which may be counterproductive for Reddit.
- wilg 3y agoIs there a Mastodon-like protocol for a distributed community platform like reddit? Smells like opportunity!
- unstatusthequo 3y agoAlso, https://kbin.social https://kbin.social
- dingusdew 3y ago[dead]
- marcolussetti 3y agoThere is! It's called Lemmy, https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/ I've seen a few subreddits talking about moving over.
- mwinatschek 3y agoYou may want to read this thread before switching: https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/144clka/warning_lemmy_federated_reddit_clone_doesnt_care/ https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/144clka/warning_le...
- CodesInChaos 3y agoSounds like this is only about public information (username, posts/comments, media). I'd expect those to be scraped and archived somewhere regardless of what the first party server does. For example in the case of reddit pushshift collected that information and published it via torrents and sites like unddit showed it.
- croutonwagon 3y agoI setup an account a few days ago. Make sure you use a bigger one I guess. The instance i chose wasnt one of the major ones, but did have traffic. Its now down...not showing on the trackers either. I am guessing its gone....dunno. Maybe it just crashed and whoever runs it hasnt fixed it or realized. Similar to why i run my own email domain (but use workspace), i considered building an instance. But have had some reservations that I talked about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36237285#36241849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36237285#36241849 If anything im more on the fence than ever.
- skeaker 3y agoThe awards on this are horribly tone-deaf. Yes, pay the man for fucking you over. I can't believe abstracting payment with goofy little icons makes people so willing to fork over their cash even in situations like this.
- zxcvbnm21 3y agoPersonally I still have credits from when they bought Alien Blue.
- BitwiseFool 3y agoRedditors often use the awards as a way to send a message that stands out from a regular replies. Reddit also gives away freebie points on occasion in order to entice users into getting into the habit of awarding posts. So it's possible a lot of those rewards are disgruntled redditors using their free rewards to send him a message.
- d1str0 3y agoAs bitwisefool mentioned, anecdotally, a lot of those awards are using free coins or whatever, not from people actually paying money to give them out.
- blowski 3y agoYou get them free with Reddit Premium which does have other (dubious) benefits.
- ezekg 3y agoI feel like, in general, awards signal astroturfing. I wouldn't put it past Reddit to astroturf their own AMA.
- karaterobot 3y agoMy assumption is that there won't be a mass exodus from Reddit, at least not one that materially affects Reddit's bottom line. People will grumble, but most of them will continue to go there as before. I'm just basing this off historical episodes of internet outrage. For comparison, when Digg 2.0 came out, people just moved to Reddit immediately, they didn't complain about it on Digg, and vow to leave eventually. They just left and never looked back. I'm generalizing; of course there are counterexamples. I think we've made an internet where there aren't a ton of viable competitors, so there is no easy path out. The choice is to either get the dopamine hit from the same place as before, or forego the dopamine hit altogether, and for a lot of people the answer is clear. I'd love to be wrong about this though.
- Solvency 3y agoThe exact same thing will happen when the IAMA girl was fired, or when the Ellen Pao controversy ignited. Overall: nothing. If all of Facebooks gaffs have failed to bring it down, this surely won't bring down Reddit.
- ctvo 3y ago> If all of Facebooks gaffs have failed to bring it down, this surely won't bring down Reddit. The gaffe here is I can't access Reddit anymore on my phone because the app is gone. It's a little different. Will those Apollo users go install the worse app, with the worse user experience to continue to use Reddit? Maybe? Maybe not. I won't be. I didn't come back to Twitter when they disabled Tweetbot either.
- aadvark69 3y agoNeither of of those examples materially affected usability or accessibility. This does.
- gigel82 3y agoThe difference is that there is no generally agreed upon alternative for the exodus, yet. Lemmy (like Mastodon for Twitter) is too big of a chore for regular people to use / understand. But FWIW, I exclusively use Reddit through the Apollo app on my phone and have no intention of installing the Reddit app. I may still end up on reddit occasionally with my desktop browser, but I expect usage to drop by 99%.
- Topfi 3y agoI can see this going only one way.[0] [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ListOfComments/wiki/downvoted/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ListOfComments/wiki/downvoted/
- abeyer 3y agoThat's a big hill to climb to beat EA... but sounds like they can do it!
- orbz 3y agoIt's clear this is damage control mode since they couldn't even be bothered to give a time frame other than TOMORROW: > Reddit CEO, u/spez, will be here tomorrow to host an AMA about the latest API updates, including accessibility, mod bots, and third-party mod tools. I'm willing to put money on them making unsubstantiated claims about abuse of the API and their interactions with app developers which may or may not have happened.
- jahlove 3y ago> A Reddit spokesperson said the AMA would likely kick off around 10:30 AM PT on Friday, June 9th. Weird they didn't put that in the post. https://www.engadget.com/reddit-ceo-will-host-an-ama-on-api-changes-as-thousands-of-subreddits-plan-to-go-dark-193423226.html https://www.engadget.com/reddit-ceo-will-host-an-ama-on-api-...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aaomidi 3y agoAre the investors of reddit not realizing the harm Spez is causing them? Do they actually think they're going to have a successful IPO now? Investors should be working on having spez removed at this point. The dude has made such a bold lie that could put the entire company in legal jeopardy.
- codsane 3y agoIf they didn’t realize it in 2016 when Spez manually edited comments that made him look bad (which was only a year after he returned to the company btw) then I don’t think they will now. Something very weird must be going on over there.
- floundy 3y agoI'm nearly certain this is all intentional, to consolidate as many users as they can under the official app. Huffman is in on it, and will be "fired" by the board shortly after which will appease many users with the drama, though the decision won't be reversed. They will then bring in some Wall Street CEO to flaunt the new metrics and possibly even reach profitability with the ad revenue from users in the official app. Redditors have the memory of a goldfish and most will have forgotten about it a few weeks later.
- endisneigh 3y agoI’m curious if there’s ever been a time the “loud internet masses” were right? As far as i know the sites that actually died did so silently - Mapquest, Friendster, MySpace, tumblr, digg. The ones people complained about seem alive and well - Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, reddit(?)
- nixass 3y agoThAtS's GrEaT qUeStIoN aNoN! > continues with shit corp talk..
- Havoc 3y agoIt'll be a minor miracle if that isn't an absolute PR trainwreck. Even with heavy filtering and planted questions it'll just be a firehose of verbal abuse
- nso 3y agoSuch a delightfully bad idea. It's like watching a train crash in slow motion.
- austhrow743 3y agoOdd that he's choosing to do this personally or at least under his personal username given his previous interactions with the community at large and general hostile sentiment they have towards him. Curious as to what's influencing that decision. Does Steve Huffman view himself as such a people person that he can calm the crowd? Does he or an advisor think his title as CEO is important rather than just an impersonal "Q&A with Reddit"?
- Exuma 3y agoYes this is what I found odd. His actions are SO clear cut with the audio, there's really quite literally nothing he could say. It's almost like saying nothing would be more beneficial than whatever he could come up with tomorrow.
- willis936 3y agoI mean a smart person would take the opportunity to eat crow, declare mea culpa, and demonstrate that they've learned a valuable lesson. I'll let others to speculate if he is the kind of person you would expect that of.
- floundy 3y agoHe might be the fall guy for this, perhaps he was ready to step down as Reddit CEO before the IPO and bring in some type who is amenable to Wall Street. The board will then "fire" Huffman to appease the users, but the decisions will not be reversed.
- djbusby 3y agoSpez should host a Twitter Spaces.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoLocked with no comments. The discussion will be about mod tools and bots, not about whether this is a good idea. They don't want community feedback. I bet it's a shitshow of <removed> through and through by the time it's over.
- wheresmyshadow 3y agoI better buy some popcorn.