29 ms·

Reddit CEO doubles down on attack on Apollo developer in drama-filled AMA

667 points by coloneltcb 3y ago

winrid 3y ago
There is no way it costs $20m to serve 2.6k requests a second. I could almost do that with a single Linode and postgres. I do wonder what optimizations are left on the table on Apollo's side, though.
skeaker 3y ago
Felt so disappointed when I read that in the AMA thread. I guess it's not unexpected, someone stupid enough to make such an obvious lie would of course be stupid enough to also double down, but it really does dispel any remaining droplets of hope that their priorities could still be in some tiny way in the right place. Here's to hoping their valuation drops like a rock.
- garbagecoder 3y ago
  If it wasn't for stuff like that I might disregard it as another negotiation in the media, but yeah that's nuts. But at the same time I think they're uncorking a lot of festering resentment about other things that are wrong with the platform.
- commandar 3y ago
  The whole AMA felt like a really ill-advised idea when it was announced given spez's track record of interacting with the community. Somehow, it managed to be worse than I was expecting. I figured there'd be non-answers; I wasn't expecting some of the incredibly tone-deaf ones.
Havoc 3y ago
>We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. It appears he has confused the reddit AMA for an IPO prep call. What a tone deaf farce... https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/comment/jnkd09c/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/comment/jnk...
- wvenable 3y ago
  Being profit-driven is a fine model for a business. However, it doesn't make business sense to alienate developers and users in service of that goal. Reddit has always struck me as a company with no creativity. They have this huge diverse community and can't seem to find a way to monetize it in any way other than the most basic advertising model. They always seem to do things in conflict with the community rather than in concert with them.
  - spondylosaurus 3y ago
    They also try to monetize the whole thing with Reddit Gold or whatever where you can pay like five bucks to put a badge on someone else's post or comment. Although I wouldn't know a whole lot about it because after a decade-plus on Reddit I've still never bought any.
    - spacemadness 3y ago
      I’m probably overly cynical about this, but the only people buying those seem to be fake accounts trying to prop up their other fake accounts.
      - janoc 3y ago
        I have never bought them but I have actually received a few silver and gold badges like that for some of my comments. So I guess that makes my account a fake then?
        spacemadness 3y ago
        Nope, it makes me overly cynical and expecting the worst from Reddit.
        hatsunearu 3y ago
        they used to give out reddit silver badge and other badges for free if you used the official app. I used that to give out a lot of badges to the community I moderate. Ironically all the badges are from memes that were born on reddit...
mduggles 3y ago
Reddit cannot go public. Its product is volunteer work by moderators and users to produce value. There’s no way to take that work and guarantee its delivery on a quarterly cycle. This is all a ridiculous self-delusion that Reddit management has engaged in that the platform is really the “value add”. It’s not. Reddit has become the shorthand for cut through ML spam and that’s based on users constantly posting up to the minute accurate data. There’s almost no historical value to that data.
- ftxbro 3y ago
  I disagree. To me this sounds like saying that a dairy farm can't go public because the ones producing the value are the cows not the farm managers.
- hiccuphippo 3y ago
  I think a place like reddit should be a non-profit foundation rather than a business. The Archive Of Our Own community was able to do it, the reddit community can do it too.
  - bradleyjg 3y ago
    We had something like that. It was called USENET. With the right reader and a decent ISP, it was great.
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      Usenet still exists though? Plus the vast vast majority of reddit content consists of mindless nonsense, or even worse, so it's probably best that USENET didn't continue growing in popularity.
      - B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago
        > mindless nonsense That's the vast majority of anything (aka Sturgeon's Law). Soon to be "improved by AI".
      - 3y ago
tigeroil 3y ago
I don't know why but I really, really hoped he'd come into the AMA with good intentions, or maybe even to announce that actually, you know what, they've reconsidered and now they're going to walk back some of the changes to the API pricing so as not to affect average users. If only.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  For whatever reason I had similar hopes, just grasping at straws not wanting to lose my addiction [1] ... Alas, I need to let go. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36123342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36123342 In retrospect, there's a lot of irony in that comment, I had no idea this was coming ... Thanks spez for ruining something I liked, and saving me.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- digitallyfree 3y ago
  Yeah as a long-time user I was really hoping for that myself, or at least have some sort of compromise. Certainly not that trainwreck of an AMA.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  I knew that wouldn't be the case when it came within 90 minutes of the Apollo announcement and was just "uh, some time tomorrow". Clearly well thought through.
superkuh 3y ago
>The response was surprising. Unlike most companies, which try to soften their blows behind corporate PR speak, Huffman answered rather plainly. I strongly disagree. The response is line with his past behavior and notice that nowhere in it does spez response address the fact that he was caught lying. That is exactly what corporate PR speak is. Deflecting away from lies and guilt and refusing to answer the question. He wants us to be mad the Apollo dev protected himself by recording the conversation.
- jongjong 3y ago
  Something similar also happened to me with my previous employer. After I quit, the founders tried to make it look like I was blackmailing them. Shortly after, they were forced to change their story (at least the one told to my ex-colleagues) because my colleagues knew why I had wanted to quit since months and they knew it didn't make any sense... Cringe. Anyway in my case, they told one story to employees and a different story to investors. Unfortunately, it's very easy for certain founders to tell 3 different stories to 3 different sets of people these days and the lies exist in parallel and never reconcile for years due to divergent incentives and class divides (and media filter bubbles).
  - walterbell 3y ago
    > founders to tell 3 different stories to 3 different sets of people these days and the lies exist in parallel and never reconcile for years due to divergent incentives and class divides (and media filter bubbles) The cost of automated detection of story arbitrage is also falling, e.g. hypothetical StoryGPT analysis of testimony to a blockchain (or paper) notary.
    - vkou 3y ago
      You're assuming that anyone cares about dishonesty.
      - walterbell 3y ago
        Investors have a financial incentive to care. Hedge funds have a financial incentive to uncover deception or incongruent claims.
vvillena 3y ago
Well, good luck trying to commoditize a mob. Reddit are not the first one who try, but they will probably be the next to fail.
hayst4ck 3y ago
This is a selfish ask, but is anyone motivated enough to read through the AMA answers and share a summary of the interesting points?
- lemming 3y ago
  Not me, but someone was: https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/145bxmi/ceo_spez_ama_overview/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/145bxmi/c...
  - hayst4ck 3y ago
    Thanks, I read that. I was essentially looking for someone to post this: Q: How do you address the concerns of users who feel that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement? Spez: We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.
- zulban 3y ago
  ChatGPT can do it. Really.
- stolen_biscuit 3y ago
  https://old.reddit.com/user/spez https://old.reddit.com/user/spez can read through his responses here and check the context of the question, he hasn't answered all that many
EscapeFromNY 3y ago
Reddit's valuation has been tanking even before this drama. https://www.businessinsider.com/fidelity-marks-down-stripe-reddit-and-instacart-valuations-2023-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/fidelity-marks-down-stripe-r... They're so eager to screw over their users, they couldn't even wait until after the IPO payday to torpedo their own business
- ren_engineer 3y ago
  that applies to basically every company, Stripe is mentioned in the article you posted as well. Rising interest rates do that to high growth companies, Reddit actually declined slightly less than Stripe in comparison
- DirectorKrennic 3y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if Elon Musk bought Reddit at this point. He would be capable of it.
  - vkou 3y ago
    Please don't give that man ideas.
    - KennyBlanken 3y ago
      I don't think he would; it's not anywhere near the echo chamber Twitter was when he bought it. He had a huge army of supporters cheering him driving the company into the ground...Reddit in the last year or two has pretty collectively come to despite the hell out of him and his "fans." I can't remember the last time I saw an /r/all comment thread where Musk was spoken of in anything approaching a positive way. /r/programmerhumor absolutely eviscerated the man almost several times a day, in threads that saw wide visibility, where programmers explained to non-programmer redditors just how dumb the stuff he was doing was.
      - yanderekko 3y ago
        >it's not anywhere near the echo chamber Twitter was when he bought it Are you really implying that the fact that Twitter (as opposed to Reddit) actually had a visible diversity of opinion on Musk as evidence that it's an echo chamber? The seething, petty hostility to Musk that is routinely on the front page of Reddit is so objectively correct to you that dissent from it must reflect echo chamber dynamics? Incredible.
RobotToaster 3y ago
Aaron Swartz must be spinning in his grave.
- kylec 3y ago
  He wasn't actually a co-founder though, his startup got merged into Reddit and he was given the "co-founder" title, but my understanding is that Reddit was created/co-founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian.
  - mattl 3y ago
    Correct but he also worked on reddit and wouldn’t have handled this situation anything like this.
  - emtel 3y ago
    This is correct, although its not unheard of for people who join a team very early to be called "founders" even if they aren't there from day 1.
- dontupvoteme 3y ago
  God rest his soul.
karaterobot 3y ago
At this point, I think he should back up his claim that Selig has acted disingenuously by saying one thing in public and another in private. I'm not sure it's legally defamatory, but it's definitely a bad look for a nominal leader. The only example I'm aware of him providing (the 'threat') was pretty soundly debunked by the audio recording. Ignoring the merits of their individual cases, Selig has been transparent, and so is capturing the public sympathy, while Huffman looks like a sweaty Joseph McCarthy, claiming to have a briefcase full of evidence he won't show anybody.
- kemayo 3y ago
  Selig's response to that private/public claim was "Please feel free to give examples where I said something differently in public versus what I said to you. I give you full permission." He's doing very well at making Reddit look like a lying bully. Context (the article mentions spez's comment doubling-down, but doesn't mention Selig's immediate reply): https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk45rr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
adoxyz 3y ago
What's the point of doing an AMA if you're not going to answer the most upvoted questions.
- AuthError 3y ago
  I think he was downvoted so hard that his answers are marked hidden, you ll have to check his profile to see his replies
  - stolen_biscuit 3y ago
    You'd still be able to see that he's replied in the thread though, it'll just be collapsed but still there
  - vdfs 3y ago
    14 replies on a 20K comments post
- mosen 3y ago
  His responses are getting downvoted - you should be able to see them if you go to /u/spez
- Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
  He's barely answered any questions. Just 14 at last count. It's not much of an "Ask Me Anything" if you miss out the "And I'll Respond" bit.
- Exuma 3y ago
  Cause he was pasting answers haha https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnkch10/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
  - adoxyz 3y ago
    Oh that's even worse. What a dumpster fire this has become.
  - 3y ago
egberts1 3y ago
So, this spez CEO is worse than a politician. Obfuscate, redirect, and blame. We all know that he is caustic, and so should the future shareholders.
- spacemadness 3y ago
  It blows my mind to think it will have any shareholders. A fool and their money.
- janoc 3y ago
  Shareholders don't care, the shareholders are the VCs that are now demanding profits and dividends for their initial investment. Why do you think the sudden push for the monetization of the API and the "lost opportunities"?
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    The only valuable things that reddit has are the free labour of the mods and the eyeballs of their community. attacking them seems counterproductive to making the website more valuable.
  - plandis 3y ago
    Wasn’t YC an early investor in Reddit? Pretty sure Steve and Alexis were in one of the early batches, right?
slg 3y ago
Why did Reddit even have an AMA for this? Everyone knew it would turn out exactly like it did. The most difficult questions went unanswered. The answers they did give were either just bland corporate speak or actively detrimental, giving their critics more ammunition including opening Reddit up to accusations of libel. The whole ordeal seems to leave them in a worse position than if they just never did the AMA.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  To control the narrative.
  - Natsu 3y ago
    This isn't exactly the first drama from Spez... https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/5emsq3/reddit_reacts_after_uspez_admits_to_editing_users/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/5emsq3/reddit_reacts...
- dogleash 3y ago
  If they don't say anything, they're incommunicative. But if talk and say effectively nothing, they might get egg on their face for people watching. However they can convince people who don't pay much attention that it's just a disagreement.
- mustacheemperor 3y ago
  At this point my theories are 1) Ego and emotion are driving decisions at reddit or 2) Reddit's leadership has run the numbers and genuinely thinks it will benefit their profitability plans if the users reacting negatively to these changes all leave. This is well past the point of just killing 3rd party apps because the API changes alone would have accomplished that. "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence." What do you do when incompetence would be unbelievable in scope and malice would be unbelievably incompetent.
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    reddit receives hundreds of millions of dollars per year of free moderating from their community. The community is the only valuable thing in reddit. The website is worth nothing, the eyeballs and free labour are everything. When the parts of their community with outsize influence start talking about abandoning the site to somewhere else it threatens both their hundreds of millions in free labour per year, and also the future of their site. Reddit exists as it does today because Digg made a series of bad decisions that led to mass movement away from Digg. The same thing can happen to Reddit.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
HL33tibCe7 3y ago
Reddit’s current situation is an interesting case study in the difference between running a sustainable, profitable business, growing naturally, vs trying to grow unnaturally quickly and trying to extract as much “value” as possible from the business at the expense of long-term stability in a frankly sickening and vampirish manner. It’s something I see repeated again and again in this industry.
- djbusby 3y ago
  Those at the top of this play all still make off with life-changing money. Who cares about business stability once you've secured your personal wealth?
no_wizard 3y ago
I for the life of me can't figure out why they are charging so much money for the API. They could do other things such as: - Mandate as part of the TOS[0] that API users must display the ads in the application unless they pay a higher fee. I get alot of people use 3rd party apps to escape ads, but this wouldn't be the end of the world, it also allows the developer some discretion on how the ads can be formatted visually which could actually be a big win for Reddit in some ways. Make all this contingent on app review and auditing of the app. - Work with the community to establish a more reasonable API fee. I'm sure everyone can find an agreement here somehow. All but the smallest players likely would find this agreeable. - Only allow premium (and therefore ad free users) to use 3rd party apps. If they aren't a premium Reddit user they need to use the official client. This seems like the most pragmatic option to me, since those users would by pass ad revenue anyway. [0]: Terms Of Service
- mostlysimilar 3y ago
  They're either entirely incompetent or they're intentionally driving away 3rd party apps. I can't see any other alternative than that.
  - ttctciyf 3y ago
    Maybe they're hoping that future LLM trainers will cough up the crazy prices?
  - jsheard 3y ago
    It's pretty obviously the latter, the decision to kill access to NSFW posts via the API while the official apps will (AFAICT) still be able to access them means that 3rd party apps will be on the back foot even if they pay, for no good reason Reddit has been able to articulate. NSFW on Reddit isn't just porn, the tag is used in the literal sense of "your boss wouldn't approve" or as a content warning for violence, heavy subjects, etc. e.g. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/search?q=nsfw%3Ayes&restrict_sr=on https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/search?q=nsfw%3Ayes&restr...
    - 3y ago
tracerbulletx 3y ago
Communication from executives is just like communication from politicians. It's designed to get the outcome they want, to manipulate, to make the strategic commitments they want, avoid those they don't, hide the things they don't want you to know yet, play to 40 different audiences etc.. On one hand I get why they do that, on the other hand it's made communicating with these people or believing them completely impossible if you just want to know what they think or what their plans are.
- parasubvert 3y ago
  s/executives/humans/g
cactusplant7374 3y ago
He didn't answer many questions. I guess he gave up.
I_am_tiberius 3y ago
Funny was that he seems to have gotten his responses from a shared document with answers that his team prepared for him. At one point he copied "A: ...", which users noticed so he removed the "A:" afterwards.
- mustacheemperor 3y ago
  To be fair to all parties, it doesn't seem unreasonable to have the CEO workshopping answers in a shared document with other team members and counsel during such an event. To also be fair to all parties, it seems unbelievable such oversight would still result in him making the comments he did.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  What'll really bake your noodle is that the question he was answering was almost certainly a plant. Extremely common "town hall" technique (see: the scandal where Clinton was fed "town hall" questions in advance by the DNC chairwoman.) Any time you see an AMA run by a major corp or media property, it's all just a dog and pony show. Listen to some interviews the same person is giving media personalities and you'll see the same topics and talking points.
  - I_am_tiberius 3y ago
    Thinking about it your theory makes absolute sense. Realistically such a shared document would otherwise just have a reference to the question and the answer without the necessity of describing the answer using "A:". Wow.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    Yup, many of the questions he did answer were from the Power Mod cabal (six moderators who control 118 of the top 500 subreddits).
- I_am_tiberius 3y ago
  Here's a link to the case: https://twitter.com/Sasa_dangon/status/1667248579910553601 https://twitter.com/Sasa_dangon/status/1667248579910553601
stolen_biscuit 3y ago
Such a shame, I've used reddit for over a decade and enjoyed it for the most part. There's a lot of value in the communities and discussions on reddit, but I think the writings on the wall for this one. Hopefully someone can build something that captures the reddit experience and pulls in the communities
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  > There's a lot of value in the communities and discussions on reddit I don't know, even the positive ones were crazy seedy.
infecto 3y ago
I know this is repeated over and over but in the case of Reddit I think it’s pretty true. They should never have taken VC money. I don’t think technically they are doing anything that is very tricky. They have surely innovated on their tech stack but even the things they have tried to do seem pretty miserable. Their media player is horrendous and while they do have scale problems, I don’t see much happening on the product side. They have not done much to make admin’s life easier. Beyond the new UI they got years back, I am not sure what they have done to improve the product. Maybe I have not paid close enough attention but Reddit feels mostly the same since forever.
- TranquilMarmot 3y ago
  It feels like there have been some desperate attempts at monetization over the past few years, with their "Coins" that you can use to "reward" comments/posts, NFTs, and paid avatar personalization. I imagine not very many users buy these, and they aren't really something that even a "whale" would end up buying a lot of because they are largely useless and don't enhance the experience of the site at all.
- rhtgrg 3y ago
  I appreciate the sentiment, but iirc, in Reddit's case: the investors told them exactly what to build in the first place. https://kickstartsidehustle.com/how-reddit-got-its-first-users/ https://kickstartsidehustle.com/how-reddit-got-its-first-use...
- callalex 3y ago
  They have tried all kinds of new offerings that have all fallen flat on their face since they keep ignoring their core product and power users. A few examples are: user profiles and following users directly instead of communities like Instagram, live chat rooms like Discord, live video streaming like Twitch, and a bunch of NFT nonsense like Trump.
drewmol 3y ago
Fwiw, if you get a call from a debt collector and would prefer not to speak to them, tell them the call will be recorded and ask for their permission. It’s been some time since I’ve had this happen but I’ve been 6 for 6 on them not giving permission and the conversation ending. (Yes, even after I consented to them recording the call)
- brookst 3y ago
  Yep, been a long time, but as I recall they usually start by saying "this call may be recorded". Back when I was young and poor in in debt collector land, choosing to interpret that statement as permission to record and responding "that's great, I'll record it as well" always ended the conversation.
  - predictabl3 3y ago
    When Capital One locked my card four times in a row in three days, left me stranded while traveling (partially my fault for not having a backup), and then didn't answer their customer support line for 12+ hours, and then lied about all of it to me, I tried to record my calls with them. I've never heard someone get so freaked out and cagey on a phone call in my life, and of course they hung up. Utterly despicable, I'm glad I'm in a place now where I don't have to even disclose.
hachiroku 3y ago
I can't stomach the thought of using reddit and being spez's useful idiot. I want to migrate to a new community but I don't know which. Where is everyone going? Mastodon seems a bit pie-in-the-sky if I may be honest.
- KronisLV 3y ago
  > I want to migrate to a new community but I don't know which. Where is everyone going? I don't think you'll find a similarly large or diverse community like Reddit has anywhere else, at least for now. The network effect is very much responsible for this, I'm fairly sure that many will still keep using Reddit until some viable alternative actually shows up. > Mastodon seems a bit pie-in-the-sky if I may be honest. Personally, I quite like Mastodon. There is some nice content to be found, it doesn't feel like it's spamming you with advertising just yet and in general it's not a hateful place. That said, Mastodon is more like Twitter than Reddit. A more apt fediverse alternative to Reddit would be something like Lemmy: https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/ Of course, while the platform is there, the content isn't. Oh well, at least the UI/UX feels fairly user friendly, a bit like using Gitea instead of GitHub.
gcdhvx 3y ago
Why does the Apollo guy see the API as his entitlement? Reddit ain’t a charity. Neither is HN.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  I don't think he does? To be honest if someone continued to spread lies about me even after I had released recordings disproving them I would be more than a little upset.
- MattGaiser 3y ago
  A lot of what makes Reddit work is charity on the part of mods, devs, etc.
- dmattia 3y ago
  "the Apollo guy" mentioned that they were willing to pay for their API usage and were in multiple discussions on pricing over a period of months with teams at Reddit. Imagine if you were willing to pay for API usage and asked a company what the costs would be, and they gave a number that was infeasible for you to the extent that it wasn't even considerable, such as $1 million per user. Obviously you wouldn't be able to pay that amount if you were making far less money per user of your app, and would feel as the Apollo creator does. If you can agree to that, then it seems like you just disagree on what a reasonable cost for this service is, which is fine, but I wouldn't call it entitlement. I agree that Reddit ain't a charity. And I agree that HN isn't either. But I'd also add that Apollo isn't.
- stale2002 3y ago
  His company isn't a charity either though. If his strategy is to cause massive PR damage to reddit, he's allowed to do that, and its currently working.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mkaic 3y ago
  He doesn't. He made it clear that he understood why Reddit would charge for their API, and that it seemed reasonable to him. He is shutting down his app because of the amount they are charging, which is outrageous. Additionally, he is shutting down his app because they have given him only 30 days to prepare for the new pricing.
nemo44x 3y ago
[flagged]
endisneigh 3y ago
I don’t even know why this guy bothered to explain. Just change the api and be done with it
_cenw 3y ago
Can anyone explain the joke to me? Why would reddit cut Apollo a $10M check? Is this just a cheeky "so you think my use of the API provides me with $20M of value" comeback at the ridiculous API pricing? It did, in part, sound like a "half serious" (as in completely serious but with plausible deniability) attempt at "give me money and I'll announce my completely unrelated retirement and stop making a stink about this", which I'd agree is a bad look.
- 542458 3y ago
  Even if it was a threat, I don’t see why that’s a problem. Reddit is a multibillion dollar business. At that scale businesses routinely threaten each other - I.e., “If you sue us over patent A we will sue you over patents B, C, and D”. Apollo saying “If you move to kill my business I will deploy my consumer goodwill against you” is a completely reasonable thing to do.
  - _cenw 3y ago
    But that's not exactly what happened here. I'm totally with you on mobilizing your users to affect change, but this was asking for hush money instead of enabling Apollo to continue operating?
    - 542458 3y ago
      “If you move to kill my business (instead of offering a reasonable exit i.e., acquiring it) I will deploy my consumer goodwill against you.”
      - Spivak 3y ago
        Which is basically just boring normal business leverage. "My customers are more loyal to my portal to your platform than your platform. You're literally putting me out of business so you can buy my app and keep running to keep those users for a price.
    - plandis 3y ago
      It wasn’t asking for hush money. The developer was asking to be acquired. It’s clear from the audio this wasn’t intended to be hush money.
jchw 3y ago
> ...calling out the developer, Christian Selig’s, “behavior and communications” as being “all over the place” and saying he couldn’t see Reddit working with the developer further. Yes, there's only one problem spez, aside from your track record, we also have basically every other major API user voicing the exact same concerns. Maybe the somewhat erratic communications have something to do with breaking over a decade of trust and giving only a few weeks notice. On another note, I definitely can't see myself working with or using Reddit in any way in the future. Reddit is another notch. They got to where they were by building goodwill. It was open source, the APIs were openly accessible, they fought against censorship and they were relatively measured in their moderation. Now? It's just another fucking ad company. There's nothing left.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  I was hoping that Spez would say something like "we're reviewing our decisions based on feedback" or similar, but no. The AMA clenched it for me, and I deleted the Apollo apps off my phone and iPad in solidarity with Selig. It was fun, Reddit. Best of luck. I'm outta here.
  - abracadaniel 3y ago
    You can delete any value you created for them by purging your comments/posts https://github.com/x89/Shreddit https://github.com/x89/Shreddit
  - danudey 3y ago
    Maybe keep the app around if you have a subscription; Selig is going to do refunds for Apollo subscriptions, and you will probably need to have the app installed to decline the refund (if you want to continue to support him rather than get your money back).
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      Great point! I bought the forever license way back when, but if I were a subscriber, I'd tell him to keep it.
next_xibalba 3y ago
This whole drama is very odd to me and feels like a (very) vocal minority of users incorrectly extrapolating their preferences to those of all Reddit users. Reddit owns its API. It has every right to price access however they see fit. It is wild to think that will spend $10s of millions to support 3rd party apps. Or to expect that they would acquire third party apps. I predict Reddit will stick to their guns and that this entire brouhaha will have little to no effect on Reddit's user and engagement metrics over the medium term. If you're outraged and highly engaged with this controversy, do you think its possible you're in a bubble?
- predictabl3 3y ago
  [flagged]
- hatsunearu 3y ago
  I'm a moderator and poweruser on reddit and I have very mixed feelings about this. I think the truth is somewhere between the middle--reddit does genuinely not want to support 3rd party apps (shucks, but that's fine), but powerusers/mods want to use third party apps because the official one sucks ass and 3rd party apps want to, well, survive. I think a compromise must be reached. Also spez is a horrible CEO and should probably step down. I care more about reddit as a resource to me as an individual than what his feelings are.
- plandis 3y ago
  The part I’m outraged about is that the CEO of Reddit was caught in a lie about how 3P app developer tried to “blackmail” them and when said developer released the audio it’s clear that never happened and now Reddit is doubling down on dragging this developers name through the mud still.
- Philip-J-Fry 3y ago
  I just don't understand why the big app devs are so against making their apps subscription based. The Apollo dev even said they'd have to charge like $2.50pm for each user. Do it then? If you lose users, you pay less for the API anyway. Maybe less users means less income and less time to spend on the app, but I'm pretty sure most Apollo users would be willing to subscribe to it. It seems like all the 3rd party apps took this stance and are now just giving up at the first hurdle instead of adapting their business plan. Reddit's own site and app is so bad that people are boycotting them over losing third party apps, and third party app devs don't think they have any way of charging for their apps? Like, are they even listening.
personjerry 3y ago
Link to the AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... The funny part is all the top questions didn't get answered... "Ask Me Anything but I won't answer it"
bionhoward 3y ago
Just throwing it out there: I love Reddit, but only via Apollo, so when Apollo shuts down, I’ll probably quit Reddit. What a dumb move for Reddit to blow their best UI like this!
dang 3y ago
Ok, let's do this CPS style. Recent and related: Addressing the community about changes to our API - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36261369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36261369 - June 2023 (320 comments) Archive your Reddit data before it's too late - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36259930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36259930 - June 2023 (341 comments) Shreddit is a Python program to remove all your Reddit comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36257981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36257981 - June 2023 (221 comments) Ask HN: Anyone else disinterested in Reddit API drama? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256545 - June 2023 (26 comments) Apollo Back end just made public - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256167 - June 2023 (229 comments) Ask HN: You are given 100M to launch a new Reddit competitor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36255767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36255767 - June 2023 (23 comments) ArchiveTeam has saved over 11.2B Reddit links - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254172 - June 2023 (150 comments) Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254086 - June 2023 (352 comments) Using unmodified third-party Reddit apps with a custom server - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36252061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36252061 - June 2023 (20 comments) Power Delete Suite for Reddit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36250785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36250785 - June 2023 (31 comments) Apollo will close down on June 30th - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435 - June 2023 (1568 comments) Continuation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36251707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36251707
- sillysaurusx 3y ago
  Thank you for this. I know people thank you a lot, and maybe it gets old to hear it, but it’s genuinely nice to see someone who’s librarian-like in the midst of drama. Organizing all of these threads is just really nice, and something that you really didn’t have to do. (If you didn’t do it, it’s not like someone else would.)
  - bombcar 3y ago
predictabl3 3y ago
I removed Relay and blocked reddit on my computers. Capitalism is one thing but Steve has shown himself to be void of any integrity. It's very obvious that it will only get worse as they ramp up for, and then after, the IPO.
gigel82 3y ago
So the AMA had 21,294 comments/questions and it included a total of 14 comments from u/spez (some duped), and a total of 21 comments from all the staff participating. LOL, why even bother with a "Ask Me Anything"?
- TranquilMarmot 3y ago
  Hey, you can ask, doesn't mean you'll get an answer. I feel like this AMA was just a way to let users vent their frustrations and concentrate the vitriol in one space instead of having it spill over throughout the entire app.
23B1 3y ago
What we're seeing here is exactly the sort of executive immaturity/arrogance that gets SO MANY startups in trouble. Young men/aspiring founders: for the love of god understand that your investors are NOT the whole picture when it comes to leadership. You need to find yourself a graybeard/executive coach and pay them out the ass to tell you about things like: - Rapport-building - Professional development - Values - Adaptability - Brand reputation/equity - Tone > message - Prioritization - Candor - Empathy - Ethics - Humility - Accepting feedback - Understanding second- and third-order effects
- BudaDude 3y ago
  That sounds a bit like Alexis Ohanian. Reddit really thrived under his leadership. Alexis approached reddit with curiosity and understanding. He was not a perfect leader, but he understood what reddit is. Everything implemented after Huffman took over has been for the worse with exception for /r/place.
- john-tells-all 3y ago
  video from PyCon about using Empathy to become a better developer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYWlfVqBQLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYWlfVqBQLc
userbinator 3y ago
"API pricing"? The absurdity of thinking that it's normal to be needing to ask permission for and even paying to essentially access a site with a different user-agent is what lead to this situation in the first place. It may not have gotten to this point had people almost all realised what was really happening to the Internet when sites started offering "API access" and rejected it. "third party app"? My browser is a "third party app". (Note: I am not actually a Reddit user --- I use the site read-only.)
- starik36 3y ago
  > I am not actually a Reddit user --- I use the site read-only That means you actually are a Reddit user.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    I mean that I do not have an account and post content there.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  The problem is the third party apps don't serve ads. Which other site allows you to bypass the entire monetization strategy the way reddit has?
dontupvoteme 3y ago
Even lowtax had more dignity, what a farce.
gravypod 3y ago
> Effective July 1, 2023, the rate limits to use the Data API free of charge are: > 100 queries per minute per OAuth client id if you are using OAuth authentication and 10 queries per minute if you are not using OAuth authentication. Am I missing something? That doesn't make any sense. What does the auth mechanism have to do with interaction rates? If I upvote 11 posts/minute would that be higher than their rate limit?
mattmaroon 3y ago
I only met Steve a couple times in passing, long ago, so I can’t say I know him at all, but he always seemed like a nice guy. I really hope he can see the folly of this API pricing before it’s too late.
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  I've heard he's a total jerkoff.
- lewisflude 3y ago
  I think it’s already too late for the API pricing situation, but there’s always the opportunity to learn from this and never make a series of mistakes of this magnitude again.
andrethegiant 3y ago
I've been a reddit user for 15 years. I paid for a subscription to support what I thought was the front page of the internet, but I've cancelled it after this debacle. It's clear that Huffman doesn't care (does he even want to be CEO anymore?)... even if he gets replaced, the damage has been done.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
yieldcrv 3y ago
> “His ‘joke’ is the least of our issues,” the CEO wrote. “His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place—saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally; recording and leaking a private phone call—to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him.” I think that can also be true. I mean he did leak a private conversation, for support to get a followup discussion at all. Then they used that action to disassociate further, but that doesn't make the actions invalid or unreasonable on its own. We already know what they are going to do with the API, this isnt more damning than before
- lewisflude 3y ago
  He “leaked” the legally recorded private conversation after being libellously accused of blackmail by the company. I think it’s a perfectly legal and morally valid defence. This, plus the fact that permission has been given to Reddit to show that there’s literally any example of him saying something different internally vs externally.
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    the legality of creating or releasing a recording has nothing to do with anything. its not a legal case, its private actors disassociating with each over, over culturally acceptable and predictable reasons to do so. we already know what they are going to do with the API, this isnt more damning than before
teaneedz 3y ago
Watch the IPO dollars. That’s what this is all about. Whoever is hitching their wagon to this IPO should be taking a serious look at management and comments made by the CEO which were clearly demonstrating immaturity and a loss of touch with both product and community. Reddit for the base is dead. What that means for the IPO will be interesting. Devaluation is in the process.
antman 3y ago
It seems ill conceived to discuss with Reddit at this point in time. It is a misunderstanding of motives that Reddit executives work in favor of Reddit. The end goal of this non profitable relationship of devs with Reddit is to bait and switch the allegiance of the userbase right before Reddot"s large IPO cash out. Moving users towards the main site and app, firing a few people, claiming to do a cleanup is just somethimg that would sound good and look good in the balooned financial projection numbers. Long term growth or even sustainability is irrelevant right before the IPO so app and devs need to understand the motives behind those actions. Devs may stop developing, users may leave, mods can stop modding, subreddits can go dark as long as the effect of those events does not have time appear in the IPO documents. Yes ofcourse Reddit execs could allow nswf, yes ofcourse Reddit execs know that the reddit app sucks, yes ofcourse Reddit execs knows the API is essential for moderator apps, yes ofcourse Reddit execs know they add work or outright screw free labor moderators, yes ofcourse Reddit could use the external apps to deliver reddit ads and get some profit. But that would make them lose control of the IPO future profitability narrative, which appears to be as a "fake it to see if we make it" narrative
crossroadsguy 3y ago
At this point it’ll be wasted momentum if a good alternative doesn’t prop up. It’ll be like WhatsApp and Twitter’s forgotten outrage.
EchoReflection 3y ago
#quitreddit
grajmanu 3y ago
Reddit or any other business that thrives on user data will eventually, at some point, will have to use their data for profit. Especially during the period of LLM training with huge dataset, I understand the API rate changes. But I don't understand why they can't have reasonable exceptions for third party apps like what they have done for accessibility apps except the opaque 30 day exception withdrawal clause. While reading everything together - blocking NSFW data, increasing API prices hastily etc seems like Reddit wanting to disallow users third party apps and limit the users to use only their first party app.
isitmadeofglass 3y ago
[dead]
ck2 3y ago
Remember when Digg was a forum? I guess Reddit is headed that way sooner or later. So weird and foolish.

667 points by coloneltcb 3y ago

There is no way it costs $20m to serve 2.6k requests a second. I could almost do that with a single Linode and postgres. I do wonder what optimizations are left on the table on Apollo's side, though.

skeaker 3y ago

Felt so disappointed when I read that in the AMA thread. I guess it's not unexpected, someone stupid enough to make such an obvious lie would of course be stupid enough to also double down, but it really does dispel any remaining droplets of hope that their priorities could still be in some tiny way in the right place. Here's to hoping their valuation drops like a rock.

garbagecoder 3y ago
If it wasn't for stuff like that I might disregard it as another negotiation in the media, but yeah that's nuts. But at the same time I think they're uncorking a lot of festering resentment about other things that are wrong with the platform.
commandar 3y ago
The whole AMA felt like a really ill-advised idea when it was announced given spez's track record of interacting with the community. Somehow, it managed to be worse than I was expecting. I figured there'd be non-answers; I wasn't expecting some of the incredibly tone-deaf ones.

Havoc 3y ago

>We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. It appears he has confused the reddit AMA for an IPO prep call. What a tone deaf farce... https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/comment/jnkd09c/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/comment/jnk...

wvenable 3y ago
Being profit-driven is a fine model for a business. However, it doesn't make business sense to alienate developers and users in service of that goal. Reddit has always struck me as a company with no creativity. They have this huge diverse community and can't seem to find a way to monetize it in any way other than the most basic advertising model. They always seem to do things in conflict with the community rather than in concert with them.
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  They also try to monetize the whole thing with Reddit Gold or whatever where you can pay like five bucks to put a badge on someone else's post or comment. Although I wouldn't know a whole lot about it because after a decade-plus on Reddit I've still never bought any.
  - spacemadness 3y ago
    I’m probably overly cynical about this, but the only people buying those seem to be fake accounts trying to prop up their other fake accounts.
    - janoc 3y ago
      I have never bought them but I have actually received a few silver and gold badges like that for some of my comments. So I guess that makes my account a fake then?
      - spacemadness 3y ago
        Nope, it makes me overly cynical and expecting the worst from Reddit.
      - hatsunearu 3y ago
        they used to give out reddit silver badge and other badges for free if you used the official app. I used that to give out a lot of badges to the community I moderate. Ironically all the badges are from memes that were born on reddit...

mduggles 3y ago

Reddit cannot go public. Its product is volunteer work by moderators and users to produce value. There’s no way to take that work and guarantee its delivery on a quarterly cycle. This is all a ridiculous self-delusion that Reddit management has engaged in that the platform is really the “value add”. It’s not. Reddit has become the shorthand for cut through ML spam and that’s based on users constantly posting up to the minute accurate data. There’s almost no historical value to that data.

ftxbro 3y ago
I disagree. To me this sounds like saying that a dairy farm can't go public because the ones producing the value are the cows not the farm managers.
hiccuphippo 3y ago
I think a place like reddit should be a non-profit foundation rather than a business. The Archive Of Our Own community was able to do it, the reddit community can do it too.
- bradleyjg 3y ago
  We had something like that. It was called USENET. With the right reader and a decent ISP, it was great.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    Usenet still exists though? Plus the vast vast majority of reddit content consists of mindless nonsense, or even worse, so it's probably best that USENET didn't continue growing in popularity.
    - B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago
      > mindless nonsense That's the vast majority of anything (aka Sturgeon's Law). Soon to be "improved by AI".
    - 3y ago

tigeroil 3y ago

I don't know why but I really, really hoped he'd come into the AMA with good intentions, or maybe even to announce that actually, you know what, they've reconsidered and now they're going to walk back some of the changes to the API pricing so as not to affect average users. If only.

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
For whatever reason I had similar hopes, just grasping at straws not wanting to lose my addiction [1] ... Alas, I need to let go. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36123342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36123342 In retrospect, there's a lot of irony in that comment, I had no idea this was coming ... Thanks spez for ruining something I liked, and saving me.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
digitallyfree 3y ago
Yeah as a long-time user I was really hoping for that myself, or at least have some sort of compromise. Certainly not that trainwreck of an AMA.
FireBeyond 3y ago
I knew that wouldn't be the case when it came within 90 minutes of the Apollo announcement and was just "uh, some time tomorrow". Clearly well thought through.

superkuh 3y ago

>The response was surprising. Unlike most companies, which try to soften their blows behind corporate PR speak, Huffman answered rather plainly. I strongly disagree. The response is line with his past behavior and notice that nowhere in it does spez response address the fact that he was caught lying. That is exactly what corporate PR speak is. Deflecting away from lies and guilt and refusing to answer the question. He wants us to be mad the Apollo dev protected himself by recording the conversation.

jongjong 3y ago
Something similar also happened to me with my previous employer. After I quit, the founders tried to make it look like I was blackmailing them. Shortly after, they were forced to change their story (at least the one told to my ex-colleagues) because my colleagues knew why I had wanted to quit since months and they knew it didn't make any sense... Cringe. Anyway in my case, they told one story to employees and a different story to investors. Unfortunately, it's very easy for certain founders to tell 3 different stories to 3 different sets of people these days and the lies exist in parallel and never reconcile for years due to divergent incentives and class divides (and media filter bubbles).
- walterbell 3y ago
  > founders to tell 3 different stories to 3 different sets of people these days and the lies exist in parallel and never reconcile for years due to divergent incentives and class divides (and media filter bubbles) The cost of automated detection of story arbitrage is also falling, e.g. hypothetical StoryGPT analysis of testimony to a blockchain (or paper) notary.
  - vkou 3y ago
    You're assuming that anyone cares about dishonesty.
    - walterbell 3y ago
      Investors have a financial incentive to care. Hedge funds have a financial incentive to uncover deception or incongruent claims.

vvillena 3y ago

Well, good luck trying to commoditize a mob. Reddit are not the first one who try, but they will probably be the next to fail.

hayst4ck 3y ago

This is a selfish ask, but is anyone motivated enough to read through the AMA answers and share a summary of the interesting points?

lemming 3y ago
Not me, but someone was: https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/145bxmi/ceo_spez_ama_overview/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/145bxmi/c...
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  Thanks, I read that. I was essentially looking for someone to post this: Q: How do you address the concerns of users who feel that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement? Spez: We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.
zulban 3y ago
ChatGPT can do it. Really.
stolen_biscuit 3y ago
https://old.reddit.com/user/spez https://old.reddit.com/user/spez can read through his responses here and check the context of the question, he hasn't answered all that many

EscapeFromNY 3y ago

Reddit's valuation has been tanking even before this drama. https://www.businessinsider.com/fidelity-marks-down-stripe-reddit-and-instacart-valuations-2023-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/fidelity-marks-down-stripe-r... They're so eager to screw over their users, they couldn't even wait until after the IPO payday to torpedo their own business

ren_engineer 3y ago
that applies to basically every company, Stripe is mentioned in the article you posted as well. Rising interest rates do that to high growth companies, Reddit actually declined slightly less than Stripe in comparison
DirectorKrennic 3y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if Elon Musk bought Reddit at this point. He would be capable of it.
- vkou 3y ago
  Please don't give that man ideas.
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    I don't think he would; it's not anywhere near the echo chamber Twitter was when he bought it. He had a huge army of supporters cheering him driving the company into the ground...Reddit in the last year or two has pretty collectively come to despite the hell out of him and his "fans." I can't remember the last time I saw an /r/all comment thread where Musk was spoken of in anything approaching a positive way. /r/programmerhumor absolutely eviscerated the man almost several times a day, in threads that saw wide visibility, where programmers explained to non-programmer redditors just how dumb the stuff he was doing was.
    - yanderekko 3y ago
      >it's not anywhere near the echo chamber Twitter was when he bought it Are you really implying that the fact that Twitter (as opposed to Reddit) actually had a visible diversity of opinion on Musk as evidence that it's an echo chamber? The seething, petty hostility to Musk that is routinely on the front page of Reddit is so objectively correct to you that dissent from it must reflect echo chamber dynamics? Incredible.

RobotToaster 3y ago

Aaron Swartz must be spinning in his grave.

kylec 3y ago
He wasn't actually a co-founder though, his startup got merged into Reddit and he was given the "co-founder" title, but my understanding is that Reddit was created/co-founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian.
- mattl 3y ago
  Correct but he also worked on reddit and wouldn’t have handled this situation anything like this.
- emtel 3y ago
  This is correct, although its not unheard of for people who join a team very early to be called "founders" even if they aren't there from day 1.
dontupvoteme 3y ago
God rest his soul.

karaterobot 3y ago

At this point, I think he should back up his claim that Selig has acted disingenuously by saying one thing in public and another in private. I'm not sure it's legally defamatory, but it's definitely a bad look for a nominal leader. The only example I'm aware of him providing (the 'threat') was pretty soundly debunked by the audio recording. Ignoring the merits of their individual cases, Selig has been transparent, and so is capturing the public sympathy, while Huffman looks like a sweaty Joseph McCarthy, claiming to have a briefcase full of evidence he won't show anybody.

kemayo 3y ago
Selig's response to that private/public claim was "Please feel free to give examples where I said something differently in public versus what I said to you. I give you full permission." He's doing very well at making Reddit look like a lying bully. Context (the article mentions spez's comment doubling-down, but doesn't mention Selig's immediate reply): https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk45rr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...

adoxyz 3y ago

What's the point of doing an AMA if you're not going to answer the most upvoted questions.

AuthError 3y ago
I think he was downvoted so hard that his answers are marked hidden, you ll have to check his profile to see his replies
- stolen_biscuit 3y ago
  You'd still be able to see that he's replied in the thread though, it'll just be collapsed but still there
- vdfs 3y ago
  14 replies on a 20K comments post
mosen 3y ago
His responses are getting downvoted - you should be able to see them if you go to /u/spez
Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
He's barely answered any questions. Just 14 at last count. It's not much of an "Ask Me Anything" if you miss out the "And I'll Respond" bit.
Exuma 3y ago
Cause he was pasting answers haha https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnkch10/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
- adoxyz 3y ago
  Oh that's even worse. What a dumpster fire this has become.
- 3y ago

egberts1 3y ago

So, this spez CEO is worse than a politician. Obfuscate, redirect, and blame. We all know that he is caustic, and so should the future shareholders.

spacemadness 3y ago
It blows my mind to think it will have any shareholders. A fool and their money.
janoc 3y ago
Shareholders don't care, the shareholders are the VCs that are now demanding profits and dividends for their initial investment. Why do you think the sudden push for the monetization of the API and the "lost opportunities"?
- LegitShady 3y ago
  The only valuable things that reddit has are the free labour of the mods and the eyeballs of their community. attacking them seems counterproductive to making the website more valuable.
- plandis 3y ago
  Wasn’t YC an early investor in Reddit? Pretty sure Steve and Alexis were in one of the early batches, right?

slg 3y ago

Why did Reddit even have an AMA for this? Everyone knew it would turn out exactly like it did. The most difficult questions went unanswered. The answers they did give were either just bland corporate speak or actively detrimental, giving their critics more ammunition including opening Reddit up to accusations of libel. The whole ordeal seems to leave them in a worse position than if they just never did the AMA.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
To control the narrative.
- Natsu 3y ago
  This isn't exactly the first drama from Spez... https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/5emsq3/reddit_reacts_after_uspez_admits_to_editing_users/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/5emsq3/reddit_reacts...
dogleash 3y ago
If they don't say anything, they're incommunicative. But if talk and say effectively nothing, they might get egg on their face for people watching. However they can convince people who don't pay much attention that it's just a disagreement.
mustacheemperor 3y ago
At this point my theories are 1) Ego and emotion are driving decisions at reddit or 2) Reddit's leadership has run the numbers and genuinely thinks it will benefit their profitability plans if the users reacting negatively to these changes all leave. This is well past the point of just killing 3rd party apps because the API changes alone would have accomplished that. "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence." What do you do when incompetence would be unbelievable in scope and malice would be unbelievably incompetent.
- LegitShady 3y ago
  reddit receives hundreds of millions of dollars per year of free moderating from their community. The community is the only valuable thing in reddit. The website is worth nothing, the eyeballs and free labour are everything. When the parts of their community with outsize influence start talking about abandoning the site to somewhere else it threatens both their hundreds of millions in free labour per year, and also the future of their site. Reddit exists as it does today because Digg made a series of bad decisions that led to mass movement away from Digg. The same thing can happen to Reddit.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

HL33tibCe7 3y ago

Reddit’s current situation is an interesting case study in the difference between running a sustainable, profitable business, growing naturally, vs trying to grow unnaturally quickly and trying to extract as much “value” as possible from the business at the expense of long-term stability in a frankly sickening and vampirish manner. It’s something I see repeated again and again in this industry.

djbusby 3y ago
Those at the top of this play all still make off with life-changing money. Who cares about business stability once you've secured your personal wealth?

no_wizard 3y ago

I for the life of me can't figure out why they are charging so much money for the API. They could do other things such as: - Mandate as part of the TOS[0] that API users must display the ads in the application unless they pay a higher fee. I get alot of people use 3rd party apps to escape ads, but this wouldn't be the end of the world, it also allows the developer some discretion on how the ads can be formatted visually which could actually be a big win for Reddit in some ways. Make all this contingent on app review and auditing of the app. - Work with the community to establish a more reasonable API fee. I'm sure everyone can find an agreement here somehow. All but the smallest players likely would find this agreeable. - Only allow premium (and therefore ad free users) to use 3rd party apps. If they aren't a premium Reddit user they need to use the official client. This seems like the most pragmatic option to me, since those users would by pass ad revenue anyway. [0]: Terms Of Service

mostlysimilar 3y ago
They're either entirely incompetent or they're intentionally driving away 3rd party apps. I can't see any other alternative than that.
- ttctciyf 3y ago
  Maybe they're hoping that future LLM trainers will cough up the crazy prices?
- jsheard 3y ago
  It's pretty obviously the latter, the decision to kill access to NSFW posts via the API while the official apps will (AFAICT) still be able to access them means that 3rd party apps will be on the back foot even if they pay, for no good reason Reddit has been able to articulate. NSFW on Reddit isn't just porn, the tag is used in the literal sense of "your boss wouldn't approve" or as a content warning for violence, heavy subjects, etc. e.g. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/search?q=nsfw%3Ayes&restrict_sr=on https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/search?q=nsfw%3Ayes&restr...
  - 3y ago

tracerbulletx 3y ago

Communication from executives is just like communication from politicians. It's designed to get the outcome they want, to manipulate, to make the strategic commitments they want, avoid those they don't, hide the things they don't want you to know yet, play to 40 different audiences etc.. On one hand I get why they do that, on the other hand it's made communicating with these people or believing them completely impossible if you just want to know what they think or what their plans are.

parasubvert 3y ago
s/executives/humans/g

cactusplant7374 3y ago

He didn't answer many questions. I guess he gave up.

I_am_tiberius 3y ago

Funny was that he seems to have gotten his responses from a shared document with answers that his team prepared for him. At one point he copied "A: ...", which users noticed so he removed the "A:" afterwards.

mustacheemperor 3y ago
To be fair to all parties, it doesn't seem unreasonable to have the CEO workshopping answers in a shared document with other team members and counsel during such an event. To also be fair to all parties, it seems unbelievable such oversight would still result in him making the comments he did.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
What'll really bake your noodle is that the question he was answering was almost certainly a plant. Extremely common "town hall" technique (see: the scandal where Clinton was fed "town hall" questions in advance by the DNC chairwoman.) Any time you see an AMA run by a major corp or media property, it's all just a dog and pony show. Listen to some interviews the same person is giving media personalities and you'll see the same topics and talking points.
- I_am_tiberius 3y ago
  Thinking about it your theory makes absolute sense. Realistically such a shared document would otherwise just have a reference to the question and the answer without the necessity of describing the answer using "A:". Wow.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  Yup, many of the questions he did answer were from the Power Mod cabal (six moderators who control 118 of the top 500 subreddits).
I_am_tiberius 3y ago
Here's a link to the case: https://twitter.com/Sasa_dangon/status/1667248579910553601 https://twitter.com/Sasa_dangon/status/1667248579910553601

stolen_biscuit 3y ago

Such a shame, I've used reddit for over a decade and enjoyed it for the most part. There's a lot of value in the communities and discussions on reddit, but I think the writings on the wall for this one. Hopefully someone can build something that captures the reddit experience and pulls in the communities

P_I_Staker 3y ago
> There's a lot of value in the communities and discussions on reddit I don't know, even the positive ones were crazy seedy.

infecto 3y ago

I know this is repeated over and over but in the case of Reddit I think it’s pretty true. They should never have taken VC money. I don’t think technically they are doing anything that is very tricky. They have surely innovated on their tech stack but even the things they have tried to do seem pretty miserable. Their media player is horrendous and while they do have scale problems, I don’t see much happening on the product side. They have not done much to make admin’s life easier. Beyond the new UI they got years back, I am not sure what they have done to improve the product. Maybe I have not paid close enough attention but Reddit feels mostly the same since forever.

TranquilMarmot 3y ago
It feels like there have been some desperate attempts at monetization over the past few years, with their "Coins" that you can use to "reward" comments/posts, NFTs, and paid avatar personalization. I imagine not very many users buy these, and they aren't really something that even a "whale" would end up buying a lot of because they are largely useless and don't enhance the experience of the site at all.
rhtgrg 3y ago
I appreciate the sentiment, but iirc, in Reddit's case: the investors told them exactly what to build in the first place. https://kickstartsidehustle.com/how-reddit-got-its-first-users/ https://kickstartsidehustle.com/how-reddit-got-its-first-use...
callalex 3y ago
They have tried all kinds of new offerings that have all fallen flat on their face since they keep ignoring their core product and power users. A few examples are: user profiles and following users directly instead of communities like Instagram, live chat rooms like Discord, live video streaming like Twitch, and a bunch of NFT nonsense like Trump.

drewmol 3y ago

Fwiw, if you get a call from a debt collector and would prefer not to speak to them, tell them the call will be recorded and ask for their permission. It’s been some time since I’ve had this happen but I’ve been 6 for 6 on them not giving permission and the conversation ending. (Yes, even after I consented to them recording the call)

brookst 3y ago
Yep, been a long time, but as I recall they usually start by saying "this call may be recorded". Back when I was young and poor in in debt collector land, choosing to interpret that statement as permission to record and responding "that's great, I'll record it as well" always ended the conversation.
- predictabl3 3y ago
  When Capital One locked my card four times in a row in three days, left me stranded while traveling (partially my fault for not having a backup), and then didn't answer their customer support line for 12+ hours, and then lied about all of it to me, I tried to record my calls with them. I've never heard someone get so freaked out and cagey on a phone call in my life, and of course they hung up. Utterly despicable, I'm glad I'm in a place now where I don't have to even disclose.

hachiroku 3y ago

I can't stomach the thought of using reddit and being spez's useful idiot. I want to migrate to a new community but I don't know which. Where is everyone going? Mastodon seems a bit pie-in-the-sky if I may be honest.

KronisLV 3y ago
> I want to migrate to a new community but I don't know which. Where is everyone going? I don't think you'll find a similarly large or diverse community like Reddit has anywhere else, at least for now. The network effect is very much responsible for this, I'm fairly sure that many will still keep using Reddit until some viable alternative actually shows up. > Mastodon seems a bit pie-in-the-sky if I may be honest. Personally, I quite like Mastodon. There is some nice content to be found, it doesn't feel like it's spamming you with advertising just yet and in general it's not a hateful place. That said, Mastodon is more like Twitter than Reddit. A more apt fediverse alternative to Reddit would be something like Lemmy: https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/ Of course, while the platform is there, the content isn't. Oh well, at least the UI/UX feels fairly user friendly, a bit like using Gitea instead of GitHub.

gcdhvx 3y ago

Why does the Apollo guy see the API as his entitlement? Reddit ain’t a charity. Neither is HN.

sebzim4500 3y ago
I don't think he does? To be honest if someone continued to spread lies about me even after I had released recordings disproving them I would be more than a little upset.
MattGaiser 3y ago
A lot of what makes Reddit work is charity on the part of mods, devs, etc.
dmattia 3y ago
"the Apollo guy" mentioned that they were willing to pay for their API usage and were in multiple discussions on pricing over a period of months with teams at Reddit. Imagine if you were willing to pay for API usage and asked a company what the costs would be, and they gave a number that was infeasible for you to the extent that it wasn't even considerable, such as $1 million per user. Obviously you wouldn't be able to pay that amount if you were making far less money per user of your app, and would feel as the Apollo creator does. If you can agree to that, then it seems like you just disagree on what a reasonable cost for this service is, which is fine, but I wouldn't call it entitlement. I agree that Reddit ain't a charity. And I agree that HN isn't either. But I'd also add that Apollo isn't.
stale2002 3y ago
His company isn't a charity either though. If his strategy is to cause massive PR damage to reddit, he's allowed to do that, and its currently working.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mkaic 3y ago
He doesn't. He made it clear that he understood why Reddit would charge for their API, and that it seemed reasonable to him. He is shutting down his app because of the amount they are charging, which is outrageous. Additionally, he is shutting down his app because they have given him only 30 days to prepare for the new pricing.

nemo44x 3y ago

[flagged]

endisneigh 3y ago

I don’t even know why this guy bothered to explain. Just change the api and be done with it

_cenw 3y ago

Can anyone explain the joke to me? Why would reddit cut Apollo a $10M check? Is this just a cheeky "so you think my use of the API provides me with $20M of value" comeback at the ridiculous API pricing? It did, in part, sound like a "half serious" (as in completely serious but with plausible deniability) attempt at "give me money and I'll announce my completely unrelated retirement and stop making a stink about this", which I'd agree is a bad look.

542458 3y ago
Even if it was a threat, I don’t see why that’s a problem. Reddit is a multibillion dollar business. At that scale businesses routinely threaten each other - I.e., “If you sue us over patent A we will sue you over patents B, C, and D”. Apollo saying “If you move to kill my business I will deploy my consumer goodwill against you” is a completely reasonable thing to do.
- _cenw 3y ago
  But that's not exactly what happened here. I'm totally with you on mobilizing your users to affect change, but this was asking for hush money instead of enabling Apollo to continue operating?
  - 542458 3y ago
    “If you move to kill my business (instead of offering a reasonable exit i.e., acquiring it) I will deploy my consumer goodwill against you.”
    - Spivak 3y ago
      Which is basically just boring normal business leverage. "My customers are more loyal to my portal to your platform than your platform. You're literally putting me out of business so you can buy my app and keep running to keep those users for a price.
  - plandis 3y ago
    It wasn’t asking for hush money. The developer was asking to be acquired. It’s clear from the audio this wasn’t intended to be hush money.

jchw 3y ago

> ...calling out the developer, Christian Selig’s, “behavior and communications” as being “all over the place” and saying he couldn’t see Reddit working with the developer further. Yes, there's only one problem spez, aside from your track record, we also have basically every other major API user voicing the exact same concerns. Maybe the somewhat erratic communications have something to do with breaking over a decade of trust and giving only a few weeks notice. On another note, I definitely can't see myself working with or using Reddit in any way in the future. Reddit is another notch. They got to where they were by building goodwill. It was open source, the APIs were openly accessible, they fought against censorship and they were relatively measured in their moderation. Now? It's just another fucking ad company. There's nothing left.

kstrauser 3y ago
I was hoping that Spez would say something like "we're reviewing our decisions based on feedback" or similar, but no. The AMA clenched it for me, and I deleted the Apollo apps off my phone and iPad in solidarity with Selig. It was fun, Reddit. Best of luck. I'm outta here.
- abracadaniel 3y ago
  You can delete any value you created for them by purging your comments/posts https://github.com/x89/Shreddit https://github.com/x89/Shreddit
- danudey 3y ago
  Maybe keep the app around if you have a subscription; Selig is going to do refunds for Apollo subscriptions, and you will probably need to have the app installed to decline the refund (if you want to continue to support him rather than get your money back).
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Great point! I bought the forever license way back when, but if I were a subscriber, I'd tell him to keep it.

next_xibalba 3y ago

This whole drama is very odd to me and feels like a (very) vocal minority of users incorrectly extrapolating their preferences to those of all Reddit users. Reddit owns its API. It has every right to price access however they see fit. It is wild to think that will spend $10s of millions to support 3rd party apps. Or to expect that they would acquire third party apps. I predict Reddit will stick to their guns and that this entire brouhaha will have little to no effect on Reddit's user and engagement metrics over the medium term. If you're outraged and highly engaged with this controversy, do you think its possible you're in a bubble?

predictabl3 3y ago
[flagged]
hatsunearu 3y ago
I'm a moderator and poweruser on reddit and I have very mixed feelings about this. I think the truth is somewhere between the middle--reddit does genuinely not want to support 3rd party apps (shucks, but that's fine), but powerusers/mods want to use third party apps because the official one sucks ass and 3rd party apps want to, well, survive. I think a compromise must be reached. Also spez is a horrible CEO and should probably step down. I care more about reddit as a resource to me as an individual than what his feelings are.
plandis 3y ago
The part I’m outraged about is that the CEO of Reddit was caught in a lie about how 3P app developer tried to “blackmail” them and when said developer released the audio it’s clear that never happened and now Reddit is doubling down on dragging this developers name through the mud still.
Philip-J-Fry 3y ago
I just don't understand why the big app devs are so against making their apps subscription based. The Apollo dev even said they'd have to charge like $2.50pm for each user. Do it then? If you lose users, you pay less for the API anyway. Maybe less users means less income and less time to spend on the app, but I'm pretty sure most Apollo users would be willing to subscribe to it. It seems like all the 3rd party apps took this stance and are now just giving up at the first hurdle instead of adapting their business plan. Reddit's own site and app is so bad that people are boycotting them over losing third party apps, and third party app devs don't think they have any way of charging for their apps? Like, are they even listening.

personjerry 3y ago

Link to the AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... The funny part is all the top questions didn't get answered... "Ask Me Anything but I won't answer it"

bionhoward 3y ago

Just throwing it out there: I love Reddit, but only via Apollo, so when Apollo shuts down, I’ll probably quit Reddit. What a dumb move for Reddit to blow their best UI like this!

dang 3y ago

Ok, let's do this CPS style. Recent and related: Addressing the community about changes to our API - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36261369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36261369 - June 2023 (320 comments) Archive your Reddit data before it's too late - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36259930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36259930 - June 2023 (341 comments) Shreddit is a Python program to remove all your Reddit comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36257981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36257981 - June 2023 (221 comments) Ask HN: Anyone else disinterested in Reddit API drama? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256545 - June 2023 (26 comments) Apollo Back end just made public - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256167 - June 2023 (229 comments) Ask HN: You are given 100M to launch a new Reddit competitor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36255767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36255767 - June 2023 (23 comments) ArchiveTeam has saved over 11.2B Reddit links - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254172 - June 2023 (150 comments) Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254086 - June 2023 (352 comments) Using unmodified third-party Reddit apps with a custom server - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36252061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36252061 - June 2023 (20 comments) Power Delete Suite for Reddit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36250785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36250785 - June 2023 (31 comments) Apollo will close down on June 30th - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435 - June 2023 (1568 comments) Continuation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36251707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36251707

sillysaurusx 3y ago
Thank you for this. I know people thank you a lot, and maybe it gets old to hear it, but it’s genuinely nice to see someone who’s librarian-like in the midst of drama. Organizing all of these threads is just really nice, and something that you really didn’t have to do. (If you didn’t do it, it’s not like someone else would.)
- bombcar 3y ago

predictabl3 3y ago

I removed Relay and blocked reddit on my computers. Capitalism is one thing but Steve has shown himself to be void of any integrity. It's very obvious that it will only get worse as they ramp up for, and then after, the IPO.

gigel82 3y ago

So the AMA had 21,294 comments/questions and it included a total of 14 comments from u/spez (some duped), and a total of 21 comments from all the staff participating. LOL, why even bother with a "Ask Me Anything"?

TranquilMarmot 3y ago
Hey, you can ask, doesn't mean you'll get an answer. I feel like this AMA was just a way to let users vent their frustrations and concentrate the vitriol in one space instead of having it spill over throughout the entire app.

23B1 3y ago

What we're seeing here is exactly the sort of executive immaturity/arrogance that gets SO MANY startups in trouble. Young men/aspiring founders: for the love of god understand that your investors are NOT the whole picture when it comes to leadership. You need to find yourself a graybeard/executive coach and pay them out the ass to tell you about things like: - Rapport-building - Professional development - Values - Adaptability - Brand reputation/equity - Tone > message - Prioritization - Candor - Empathy - Ethics - Humility - Accepting feedback - Understanding second- and third-order effects

BudaDude 3y ago
That sounds a bit like Alexis Ohanian. Reddit really thrived under his leadership. Alexis approached reddit with curiosity and understanding. He was not a perfect leader, but he understood what reddit is. Everything implemented after Huffman took over has been for the worse with exception for /r/place.
john-tells-all 3y ago
video from PyCon about using Empathy to become a better developer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYWlfVqBQLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYWlfVqBQLc

userbinator 3y ago

"API pricing"? The absurdity of thinking that it's normal to be needing to ask permission for and even paying to essentially access a site with a different user-agent is what lead to this situation in the first place. It may not have gotten to this point had people almost all realised what was really happening to the Internet when sites started offering "API access" and rejected it. "third party app"? My browser is a "third party app". (Note: I am not actually a Reddit user --- I use the site read-only.)

starik36 3y ago
> I am not actually a Reddit user --- I use the site read-only That means you actually are a Reddit user.
- userbinator 3y ago
  I mean that I do not have an account and post content there.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
The problem is the third party apps don't serve ads. Which other site allows you to bypass the entire monetization strategy the way reddit has?

dontupvoteme 3y ago

Even lowtax had more dignity, what a farce.

gravypod 3y ago

> Effective July 1, 2023, the rate limits to use the Data API free of charge are: > 100 queries per minute per OAuth client id if you are using OAuth authentication and 10 queries per minute if you are not using OAuth authentication. Am I missing something? That doesn't make any sense. What does the auth mechanism have to do with interaction rates? If I upvote 11 posts/minute would that be higher than their rate limit?

mattmaroon 3y ago

I only met Steve a couple times in passing, long ago, so I can’t say I know him at all, but he always seemed like a nice guy. I really hope he can see the folly of this API pricing before it’s too late.

P_I_Staker 3y ago
I've heard he's a total jerkoff.
lewisflude 3y ago
I think it’s already too late for the API pricing situation, but there’s always the opportunity to learn from this and never make a series of mistakes of this magnitude again.

andrethegiant 3y ago

I've been a reddit user for 15 years. I paid for a subscription to support what I thought was the front page of the internet, but I've cancelled it after this debacle. It's clear that Huffman doesn't care (does he even want to be CEO anymore?)... even if he gets replaced, the damage has been done.

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

yieldcrv 3y ago

> “His ‘joke’ is the least of our issues,” the CEO wrote. “His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place—saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally; recording and leaking a private phone call—to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him.” I think that can also be true. I mean he did leak a private conversation, for support to get a followup discussion at all. Then they used that action to disassociate further, but that doesn't make the actions invalid or unreasonable on its own. We already know what they are going to do with the API, this isnt more damning than before

lewisflude 3y ago
He “leaked” the legally recorded private conversation after being libellously accused of blackmail by the company. I think it’s a perfectly legal and morally valid defence. This, plus the fact that permission has been given to Reddit to show that there’s literally any example of him saying something different internally vs externally.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  the legality of creating or releasing a recording has nothing to do with anything. its not a legal case, its private actors disassociating with each over, over culturally acceptable and predictable reasons to do so. we already know what they are going to do with the API, this isnt more damning than before

teaneedz 3y ago

Watch the IPO dollars. That’s what this is all about. Whoever is hitching their wagon to this IPO should be taking a serious look at management and comments made by the CEO which were clearly demonstrating immaturity and a loss of touch with both product and community. Reddit for the base is dead. What that means for the IPO will be interesting. Devaluation is in the process.

antman 3y ago

It seems ill conceived to discuss with Reddit at this point in time. It is a misunderstanding of motives that Reddit executives work in favor of Reddit. The end goal of this non profitable relationship of devs with Reddit is to bait and switch the allegiance of the userbase right before Reddot"s large IPO cash out. Moving users towards the main site and app, firing a few people, claiming to do a cleanup is just somethimg that would sound good and look good in the balooned financial projection numbers. Long term growth or even sustainability is irrelevant right before the IPO so app and devs need to understand the motives behind those actions. Devs may stop developing, users may leave, mods can stop modding, subreddits can go dark as long as the effect of those events does not have time appear in the IPO documents. Yes ofcourse Reddit execs could allow nswf, yes ofcourse Reddit execs know that the reddit app sucks, yes ofcourse Reddit execs knows the API is essential for moderator apps, yes ofcourse Reddit execs know they add work or outright screw free labor moderators, yes ofcourse Reddit could use the external apps to deliver reddit ads and get some profit. But that would make them lose control of the IPO future profitability narrative, which appears to be as a "fake it to see if we make it" narrative

crossroadsguy 3y ago

At this point it’ll be wasted momentum if a good alternative doesn’t prop up. It’ll be like WhatsApp and Twitter’s forgotten outrage.

EchoReflection 3y ago

#quitreddit

grajmanu 3y ago

Reddit or any other business that thrives on user data will eventually, at some point, will have to use their data for profit. Especially during the period of LLM training with huge dataset, I understand the API rate changes. But I don't understand why they can't have reasonable exceptions for third party apps like what they have done for accessibility apps except the opaque 30 day exception withdrawal clause. While reading everything together - blocking NSFW data, increasing API prices hastily etc seems like Reddit wanting to disallow users third party apps and limit the users to use only their first party app.

isitmadeofglass 3y ago

[dead]

ck2 3y ago

Remember when Digg was a forum? I guess Reddit is headed that way sooner or later. So weird and foolish.