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

https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/09/reddit-ceo-doubles-down-on-attack-on-apollo-developer-in-drama-filled-ama/

by coloneltcb • 3 years ago

667 479 3 years ago

skeaker• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

Havoc3• 3 years 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/jnk...

wvenable4• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

gtop3• 3 years ago

Reddit has always struck me as a company with no creativity

I thought reddit was really clever for the first ~7 years of operations. They replaced forums, fostered communities, gained a reputation as a place to get real people's takes, and attracted people willing to have interesting conversations. The upvote/downvote system that is now so common was made popular from reddit. They brought awareness to important political topics surrounding net neutrality. They were leaders in early Web2.0, where each user saw content that appealed to them, because everyone could choose which subreddits were in their homepage. It was highly social and highly engaging.

After a certain point in 201X the dark patterns began to appear. I was almost fully disengaged by the start of 2013. I can't remember the details, but I remember being increasing disappointed with reddit every time I returned for a brief visit.

Havoc3• 3 years ago

Being profit-driven is a fine model for a business.

A fine business model but a bizarre damage control statement

kstrauser3• 3 years ago

Nearly all businesses are profit-driven. My wife owned a medical practice, and while she chose the profession because she wanted to help people, she built a company around it to put food on our table. There's nothing wrong with that.

But optimizing for short-term profit over long-term revenue is just nuts. Apple didn't become a trillion dollar company by focusing on maximizing profit above all else every single quarter.

robryan2• 3 years ago

Maybe they need better ad tooling and promotion of it. Probably big improvements to be made just in getting enough ad inventory to show something remotely relevant to a user.

dimmke• 3 years ago

I’ve always thought this too. Especially because I believe (I have no data to back this up) a huge amount of their traffic is from search engine results.

As search results became gamed and sites became SEO machines, finding a Reddit thread discussing the thing you want to know about is a breath of fresh air.

Nobody else has that. Reddit has a ton of really niche content that people want to read, spread out over a large amount of time. Why are they focused on becoming a place where people infinite scroll reposts of TikToks?

Instead, they went the route of introducing features that at best cannibalized other features (chat and the regular message system - it’s confusing) and at worst just seem like hasty add ons or complete stabs in the dark.

Even Discord has a system to directly monetarily sponsor servers you want to support, why on earth doesn’t that exist for Reddit? Good lord. It’s such a simple thing to add. Instead they charge money to customize your avatar like it’s a Fortnite skin. It’s insane.

_thisdot• 3 years ago

Right! My reddit comments are public and reflect my preferences and interests pretty well. Yet I’ve never ever felt like clicking a reddit ad. Instagram on the other hand had me clicking on ads occasionally

madeofpalk• 3 years ago

"To be fair" (not that he needs it) the question (he answered, out of 10 in the comment) was poor

How do you address the concerns of users who feel that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement?

Reddit is a company. It's profit driven. I don't think that's surprising or shameful.

hooverd• 3 years ago

I think Reddit probably had a path to making a modest profit, but investors don't want the 2x dog. Now they're probably going to do the social media equivalent of selling the copper wiring from the walls.

cheese_van• 3 years ago

How do you address the concerns of users who feel that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement?

Had he a modicum of awareness regarding the question, he would have also addressed the community engagement part of the question - to users, the most important part of the question.

"The community built our platform and we'll never forget that or make engagement unpleasant. We need your engagement." Had he said that, and then segued to profit, he at least would not have been betrayed by his predetermined inflexibility.

djbusby4• 3 years ago

Wild they haven't made profit in so long. Who's running that place.

slg2• 3 years ago

It is wild that a company that is nearly two decades old and seemingly has never been profitable is doing an IPO. Who is going to buy their stock? What would make someone think that Reddit will suddenly turn things around in year 19 and actually become profitable?

paulmd3• 3 years ago

anyone who wants to train an AI model on relatively authentic data and natural (for certain definitions of "normal") human interactions, I would assume

like IDK what the comps are, what is another large corpus with authentic interactions and scoring? internet archive is probably the closest (although substantially more valuable), maybe the google library project is semi analogous in scale and value (although obviously very different in nature).

maximinus_thrax2• 3 years ago

We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.

Full quote of a CEO stating that a bunch of independent developers are able to make a good profit while the pre-IPO company he's running is not.

Can you short an IPO? Not sure how these financial shenanigans work.

djbusby4• 3 years ago

Not really. And the options market doesn't open until weeks after the IPO.

danudey7• 3 years ago

Maybe they should buy Apollo for $10m, at least it would be a revenue stream based on tangible user benefits rather than whatever cosmetic meme bullshit they think of next.

TheFreim• 3 years ago

I don't know if it's "tone deaf" so much as honest. I wish companies were willing to give the real reason behind changes.

Keyframe• 3 years ago

I installed their official app and just love how direct links from wrb, like this, or within app itself, just do not work at all. Otherwise, itstnot _that_ bad but compared to RIF (which I use/d) it's bad usability.

To Apollo and RIF guys, if you read this. You got some technical chops, you got some ux skills, you got some clout and, after all, you have some cash.. why not join forces and deploy reddit's clone to be used as a backend for both of your apps? You can hijack userbase, and keep growing on top of it, just like imgur did. (Follow me for more business advice)

interestica• 3 years ago

It’s so unlikely. But the idea of RIF and Apollo joining forces to create something new is kinda captivating.

lotsoweiners3• 3 years ago

The amazing thing to me was finding out how much the data the official app was using. Granted it has been a few years since I switched to Apollo but I was using in the 10-20 GB/month from the Reddit app.

paulmd3• 3 years ago

the Apollo guy has said he's not interested in that, he's a software developer not a community manager.

bombcar7• 3 years ago

That sounds an awful lot like beatings will continue until moral improves.

imron• 3 years ago

When I first read that comment I thought it was just the GP snarking and riffing off this phrase.

Nope it’s actually what the CEO said.

mduggles• 3 years 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.

hiccuphippo• 3 years 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.

bradleyjg2• 3 years ago

We had something like that. It was called USENET. With the right reader and a decent ISP, it was great.

rjh29• 3 years ago

It's not even profitable _now_ with all their monetization. But their overhead is millions of $/year. There is precedent for non-profit sites of that size but it won't be easy.

drumhead5• 3 years ago

Thats actually the best structure for reddit because of its coopertive nature, and the difficulty of making money from it without compromising its essential nature.

jeffparsons• 3 years ago

I'd feel a lot more comfortable giving my time to "the community" under an arrangement like that, too. The fediverse has its place, for sure, but I think a centralised platform run by a non-profit has the best chance of unseating Reddit in the short term.

It could even connect to the fediverse, but with its own moderation hierarchy etc. so it has its own culture and doesn't _rely_ on the fediverse.

makin• 3 years ago

I think Archive Of Our Own (AO3) solves a much easier problem (hosting bbcode text), and even then, after many years, they are unable to get enough volunteers to implement a direct message system. It's not quite apples and oranges, but I still don't think the same model could possibly work for Reddit. Yes, Reddit users have made some amazing tools for moderation, but they are still fully dependent on preexisting, complex engineering work by the Reddit employees, including the API. Maybe a better comparison would be Wikipedia, but again, much simpler problem.

jwie• 3 years ago

The time for Reddit to have gone public was with all that other spac mania during the pandemic.

These days pesky investors are going to demand things like, a business model and a profit opportunity.

bitshiftfaced2• 3 years ago

Its product is volunteer work by moderators and users to produce value.

The way the Reddit works, moderation is a free and limitless resource. You will never run out of people volunteering for the job.

BEEdwards• 3 years ago

You will run out of the people doing it remotely well very quickly though.

The high quality modding of askhistory, anthropology and other science sub reddits are provided by actual domain experts working for free. You can find someone to replace them, but the quality will plummet and the users will leave.

adolfojp• 3 years ago

I help manage a few associated medium sized reddit communities. We share a mod team. We are joining the protest.

We talked to an admin who reviewed our logs and they were surprised by the fact that our community was modded as a team because most of the communities that they had seen and worked with were apparently modded almost exclusively by a single person.

I thought at first that this was a joke because our head mod does most of the work and because we get new mods every year and they always leave.

So when our head mod leaves the subs will die. We'll become /r/worldpolitics. And there's a good chance that he'll leave during the protest.

What I'm trying to say is that we often see moderators as interchangeable, one leaves and another joins and nothing changes, but the reality is that good mods are scarce. I don't expect an inexperienced mod to join a sub with half a million users and know what to do. Most of our team doesn't know how to use the automoderator. I'm the only one who knows how to use the custom automation bot that I wrote. And then there's the issue of understanding the culture.

So whether reddit lives or dies in my opinion won't be a matter of how fast reddit can replace moderators but a matter of how many moderators will stay and put up with the bullshit because it has become part of their lives.

protastus2• 3 years ago

The Reddit board of directors should choose a CEO with better judgement because this doesn't look good.

While I am sad for the communities, I am excited at the opportunity to short this stock if it ever goes public with such poor leadership.

mrandish• 3 years ago

They've probably tried recruiting a good CEO. The problem is no one remotely competent wants the job.

phpisthebest4• 3 years ago

This would assume that spez is not doing exactly what the Board of directors want.

I think is he, I think they think this will be better for the long term, users will be upset for a little while, but will not actually leave.

He has already said 3rd party apps make up a small amount of "traffic" and "90% fall in to the free plan" anyway.

So they are betting this is a tempest in a tea pot...

Sadly they are probably right because people are sheep and creatures of habit, for me I am going to archive my data before the 30th and purge all of my accounts. I personally am done with reddit, but I am likely the minority

shmatt3• 3 years ago

The Reddit board of directors don’t represent the founders, who have probably been long ago diluted to less than 10%

They represent investors who sunk 1.3 billion dollars into a company who was spending millions providing 3rd party apps a free api where users can’t be monetized. And is not currently profitable

If my previous experience means anything, the board wanted the price to be 100x higher or to shut down the api completely, and were talked down by spez

Dwolb• 3 years ago

Reddit might not need a CEO per se.

It might need a different governance structure.

Commercial and community interests can be in conflict.

What’s the leadership structure that recognizes this tension and delivers optimal outcomes in the long term?

drumhead5• 3 years ago

All they have to do is keep the ship afloat until it goes public, once thats done they cash out with their millions/billions and then to hell with the site. They'll resign, get fired or whatever but they wont care because they'll have their money by then.

riku_iki• 3 years ago

somehow facebook made it through..

mustacheemperor6• 3 years ago

It's going to be a fun thought experiment at the bar for years now - how would you have brought reddit to profitability starting in Q1 2023?

Maybe there was a way to lever that value for ML training - and the constantly updated nature of the "training database" - into a profit model unlike any other social media app. Not the kind of innovation this team wanted to build, clearly.

chx• 3 years ago

I am old

I remember Esther Dyson: Release 2.0

She was talking about how, for example a wine forum could make money connecting wine sellers and buyers

do it

Instead of boring ads, make it possible for communities to engage with relevant businesses. Affiliate links, coupons and such. Meaningful dialogue. I am a former mod of /r/usbchardware and we were close to this a few times, with Sanho Hyper and SlimQ. Make yourself the "house brand" of the sub by engaging in good faith and you should be rewarded.

But even just affiliate links, as a former mod of /r/usbchardware, we very often recommend this and that and if we did that with affiliate links then everyone would be better off. And you can make a reputation system here which makes it much harder to just spam garbage.

This is an off-the-cuff idea which probably needs refinement but no way, no way you can't make good money from such hypertargeted communities. Just think outside of the box a little. Corporate spam gets you booted. A company offering insight, honest good advice gets you boosted. It's ... possible. There is a way making money for everyone involved which doesn't involve dirty play.

jstarfish• 3 years ago

Easy. Sell user data to the Chinese, and sell access to (pre-moderation) ingestion streams to domestic intelligence agencies. Win-win.

intended5• 3 years ago

Not sure if it could be done. Definitely not like their competitors.

Reddit feels like /was 3 firms.

A forum, hosting firm.

A sort of platform? Ads, compliance, support

A media firm - What they had with the old AMA and an employee helping guests.

I dont see any of these hitting Platform numbers. I do see it being a titan in popular culture.

PragmaticPulp• 3 years ago

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…

I don’t understand how people can argue that Reddit is somehow not valuable and then go on to explain how Reddit is valuable.

The “work” that posters and moderators do isn’t a deliverable that investors care about in their quarterly reports. They only care about revenue, be it from ads or customers paying for features.

ftxbro• 3 years 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.

tigeroil• 3 years 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• 3 years 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

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.

digitallyfree• 3 years 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.

FireBeyond6• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years 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).

walterbell2• 3 years 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.

hutzlibu2• 3 years ago

"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)."

"These days" .. but was it better before?

The ruling class literally spoke a different language (aristocraties in europe french and the clerics latin).

That made it even easier to seperate realities and not accidently share insights to peasants what they are not supposed to hear.

sshine6• 3 years ago

I think it's more likely that investors don't mind that the CEO is a two-face liar if he can make the company profitable up to an IPO.

"Community" is such an intangible KPI.

psyklic• 3 years ago

This happened to me too. After I left our company, my business partner told new investors there was never a CTO. However, for nearly a year we had jointly agreed I was CTO -- and he routinely put it in writing.

When the new investors found out, my business partner demanded I remove CTO from my website, writing it was "technically incorrect".

djbusby4• 3 years ago

If anything, this shows the VALUE in recording conversations - especially for weaker party.

Would like to have one-party consent recording all over USA.

dotancohen• 3 years ago

  > especially for weaker party.

How often do you see the weaker party's interests enshrined in law?

nico• 3 years ago

IANAL, this is not legal advice

You can always take notes, write down things about the conversation, you can even write down the whole conversation without consent

So essentially you can have a transcription of a conversation, but not the audio recording (without consent)

SahAssar2• 3 years ago

A good "PR answer" does not raise concrete questions, it makes all questions feel equally invalid. In this case /u/spez'es answer did not calm or invalidate the questions.

Exuma3• 3 years ago

What would be a good PR answer to refute the audio recording, out of curiosity?

that_guy_iain• 3 years ago

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.

Was he though? In the audio it's clear he took it as a threat straight away. He literally said so. And the threat he understood was that the ApolloDev would create a fuss and make a lot of noise. Which the ApolloDev went on to do. The ApolloDev's response to Spez saying this was "I didn't think you took that as a threat" while posting an audio of him taking it as a threat. Then saying it's a blatant lie. While posting audio of spez saying he's taking it as a threat and using common language for moving past threats in business calls "I'll hope that's not what you meant" which is always code for "I'm going to pretend you didn't do that." You can say he was wrong but I don't think you can say someone is lying for believing something that is wrong.

openweb• 3 years ago

Yeah I think it's pretty obvious Spez took it as a threat the whole time and just wanted to save the Apollo devs face by moving on without making a fuss of it.

sillysaurusx2• 3 years ago

Spez's response is making me question the integrity of not merely Reddit, but YC as a whole. https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...

The whole point of YC was to imbue every founder with "do not be evil" in their DNA. Otherwise, it's a cartel.

This is pretty clear-cut case of Huffman not only trying to lie publicly (for no apparent reason, no less!) but then further trying to damage his reputation.

I'm unreasonably upset about this, and should probably step away from computers for a bit. I don't know if I'm getting old and just feeling like "it's the end of an era," or what. But I grew up in a 2008 that was unlike anything on display here.

I thought someone would be on the phone with Huffman trying to convince him that lying publicly about a developer is a bad idea. But if they are, they're not getting the message through.

EDIT: the replies further illustrate the disconnect. I grew up on pg’s essays. You wouldn’t say those things if you merely thought of YC as an investment vehicle.

The fact that people are saying don’t be evil isn’t a big deal is… well, if you’ve ever read I Am Legend, the book (spoiler alert) ends with the main character realizing that he’s in a world of zombies, and that they have their own culture, unique and distinct from his. The zombies aren’t even zombies; they’re people, with their own views. But the culture is so foreign and alien to him that he realizes he’s a minority of one. Am I the only one who cares about don’t be evil?

Huffman isn’t merely a YC alum. He’s the alum. There were no alums before him. And now he blatantly made up a lie, publicly, about a developer, for no apparent reason and no apparent gain. It wasn’t even theoretically going to get him any gain. There seems to be no reason for the lie at all, and it’s hard to imagine something more evil than damaging someone’s reputation like that for no reason (short of doing something to physically harm someone or take away their money/resources). Reputation is everything in hacker culture.

peyton2• 3 years ago

The whole point of YC was to imbue every founder with "do not be evil" in their DNA.

That’s not really the job of the startup investor. At best you try to screen for that. But like active ethics education… no.

rhtgrg2• 3 years ago

The whole point of YC was to imbue every founder with "do not be evil" in their DNA.

I'm sorry to say, but that's not in line with reality. Is there a specific source that has led you to believe this?

"Do not be evil" is a fairly vague tenet anyhow. The "whole point" of YC (if there ever was such a thing) at inception, was to test a thesis that pg et al had regarding startup incubation. It was actually a somewhat controversial idea at the time, so much so that YC had trouble finding investors.

Afaict, as long as you are a success, YC doesn't really care how you get there, as long as it isn't something illegal or otherwise obviously detrimental for investors. This is, of course, in part because one of the simpler proxies for "evil" is legality. Investors do often end up benefiting from legislation lagging behind tech and moral gray areas.

marcosdumay• 3 years ago

I don't know if I'm getting old and just feeling like "it's the end of an era," or what. But I grew up in a 2008 that was unlike anything on display here.

The US has been pumping money into their economy (AKA, some chosen entities in it) since the middle of the 90's, with more and more countries just copying their strategy with time.

There was a decrease on the rate of money pumping on 2000, and a reversion for a month or two in 2008 (followed by an increase by an order of magnitude). It was an era.

dontlaugh• 3 years ago

YC exists to gain a return on capital investment. I see no reason why a group of people making money from the labour of others would care about morals.

P_I_Staker3• 3 years ago

But I grew up in a 2008 that was unlike anything on display here.

Reddit in 2008 had open groups for sharing ("legal") sexually suggestive photos of underage girls. ie. they had like swimsuits and stuff on. Reddit has never been about morality.

At this point, they haven't been very successful financially and at acquiring power. Nobody cares what reddit wants... they're nobodys on the tech / business scene.

Now they're looking at all these financially successful and powerful companies and are regretting not selling out earlier. The reddit that people love probably wasn't ever going to be forever. Maybe as a non-profit like wikipedia? What's the point of continuing if you won't even get your "bastion of free speech"?

Reddit was never going to make it much further as a company with no moderation or explicit ethos (other than free exchange of ideas), with minimal advertisement and monetization. These changes have been executed poorly, but they needed to act quickly. Basically, they're trying to put the genie back into the bottle, not be "the cool" social media company, and keep things afloat.

As upset as we may be have they really failed? Have they done anything to substantially lower their standing as a company. They haven't lost users, the growth numbers don't look bad to me, especially compared to some of the better recent years.

What they haven't done is turned that into money or status. Tons of businesses are successful with the "be a dick and hope they don't care strategy". People generally don't like big sacrifice. A monthly charge isn't practical, nor would it be welcomed either. They need to be in full control of the eyes and start monetizing.

throwawaymeta01• 3 years ago

same era. same sentiment.

the era of getting good value by providing good value seems foregone.

now we focus on extracting maximal value in the short-term/for self and acting that it's naive and dewy eyed to expect anything else. which casts such behaviour as the status quo instead of being shameful. which results in an overton window where "i got mine" is all that matters.

tacticalturtle• 3 years ago

People keep saying he was caught lying - to be honest, I don’t really see where where that happened.

Reading the transcript of the conversation with the Apollo dev, it was a fairly awkward exchange, and the Apollo dev was using all these innuendos to imply that a monetary exchange would avoid a negative outcome.

I don’t think we know who it was specifically at Reddit that acknowledged the Apollo dev was not delivering a threat. The transcript notably attributed that to a general “Reddit”, not the CEO. Do we even know that the CEO was on the call? Why didn’t the Apollo dev note who was speaking?

Especially after the way he was acting on the call to try and negotiate a cash payment, I don’t entirely trust the Apollo dev’s telling of events.

FireBeyond6• 3 years ago

I didn't get that vibe whatsoever. I got much more a vibe of him calling BS on Reddit's numbers. Like, "Really? My app's API calls are costing Reddit $20M/year? Why has this never been an issue til now? You could have reached out to me, you could have limited my API calls, hell, you could have written me a check to say "please shut down this resource drain"!"

vvillena• 3 years 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.

hayst4ck2• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

Not me, but someone was: https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/145bxmi/c...

hayst4ck2• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

ChatGPT can do it. Really.

stolen_biscuit3• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

Reddit's valuation has been tanking even before this drama.

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• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if Elon Musk bought Reddit at this point. He would be capable of it.

vkou4• 3 years ago

Please don't give that man ideas.

RobotToaster• 3 years ago

Aaron Swartz must be spinning in his grave.

kylec• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

Correct but he also worked on reddit and wouldn’t have handled this situation anything like this.

emtel• 3 years 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.

dontupvoteme2• 3 years ago

God rest his soul.

karaterobot• 3 years 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.

kemayo2• 3 years 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_...

adoxyz2• 3 years ago

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

AuthError• 3 years 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_biscuit3• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

14 replies on a 20K comments post

mosen• 3 years ago

His responses are getting downvoted - you should be able to see them if you go to /u/spez

Doctor_Fegg• 3 years 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.

Exuma3• 3 years ago

Cause he was pasting answers haha https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...

adoxyz2• 3 years ago

Oh that's even worse. What a dumpster fire this has become.

mock-possum• 3 years ago

Copy and pasting and editing them after the fact when called out on it god what a mess

MBCook• 3 years ago

He just wanted to talk about Rampart.

egberts1• 3 years 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.

spacemadness3• 3 years ago

It blows my mind to think it will have any shareholders. A fool and their money.

janoc2• 3 years 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"?

LegitShady6• 3 years 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.

plandis5• 3 years ago

Wasn’t YC an early investor in Reddit? Pretty sure Steve and Alexis were in one of the early batches, right?

slg2• 3 years 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.

toomuchtodo2• 3 years ago

To control the narrative.

Natsu• 3 years ago

This isn't exactly the first drama from Spez...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/5emsq3/reddit_reacts...

dogleash• 3 years 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.

mustacheemperor6• 3 years ago

At this point my theories are

1) Ego and emotion are driving decisions at reddit

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.

LegitShady6• 3 years 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.

VWWHFSfQ3• 3 years ago

The reality is that the Reddit users that actually care about this enough to show up and rage in the AMA are also the ones that are almost completely unmonetizable. So I doubt there was ever really any risk of major loss from this.

prox• 3 years ago

A bit under the radar, but Twitch is having a similar moment with new ad directives which would kill independent streamers. It caused an upset in the community. Twitch backtracks but the damage is already done.

ilrwbwrkhv• 3 years ago

I think he knows that he will never be as respected as aaron swartz and he is an imposter.

maybelsyrup2• 3 years ago

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence."

This is a digression, but this saying has always frustrated me. It makes sense for a second, but then I wonder if whoever came up with it had any idea how much malice exists in the world. Many cases of "malice is at least as adequate an explanation as incompetence, given the facts or lack of them".

wolpoli• 3 years ago

IMO, the profitability plan involves moving everyone to official App. They expect backlash, but believe they could manage it with various tactics, which they are making it up as they go.

bravura• 3 years ago

“Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice”

low_tech_love• 3 years ago

People will leave Reddit as much as they have left Twitter, i.e. not much. The main problem is in the fact that lots of Reddit users seem to think that Reddit is some kind of “community” that “depends” on its users, when the truth is that Reddit is a company and the dependence relationship is the other way around. It’s hard to accept but Reddit is a dysfunctional colossus that is simply not feasible to replicate at this point, and as such the management can pretty much do as they please.

xtracto• 3 years ago

I feel its something like #2. Correct me if I'm wrong: reddit userbase us say, a fraction of FB or TikTok. They've made the numbers and attracting and tailoring the site to the TikTok audience is way more profitable than what they have now.

They've been doing that since the reddit redesign thing, trying to go more mainstream yet.

I think that's why they feel they can burn bridges

AbraKdabra• 3 years ago

I'm not defending Spez by no means, I've been a user of reddit since early 2010 and it has changed A LOT and I really don't like how it's now, I prefer the more anarchy reddit from that era, but 95% of the times data backs up decisions, even bad ones, and users don't know shit about them, and when something bad as the Apollo drama comes out, it becomes a hatred echo chamber. I really hope this is case because I use a 3rd party app for reddit (Relay, the best one obviously) and I would hate to see it die in favor of the mountain of shit the official app is, I don't know went through their minds when developing it, there were apps with literal a decade of experience to take example from and they did that crap.

BlackjackCF2• 3 years ago

My theory is desperation. Reddit isn’t profitable, which was fine in the past few years because they could just raise another round of funding by pointing at their user growth.

They can’t easily do that in the current financial environment. I suspect that they’re also seeing a plateau in year over year user growth. Bundle that up with everybody seeing advertising revenue decline and there’s no good story to sell to investors.

I think that they’re probably under tremendous pressure right now by their investors to at least get close to profitable so that they can IPO.

kmeisthax• 3 years ago

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

Why not both? This is the platform that literally built itself off of registering fake accounts and posting spam to make themselves look more active than they were, after all[0]. Reddit administration is a unique blend of malicious incompetence. I call it malicincompetence.

For example, spez in particular notably was caught editing the posts of /r/the_donald posters he was in a shouting match with. This is malicious, because the admins demonstrated that they're willing to fuck with historical records to defame their enemies. But it's also incompetent, because it turned a bunch of fascists[1] into martyrs. If he had just banned /r/TD then and there, or even just that poster, it would have been less malicious and less incompetent at the same time.

Going deeper, a lot of malicious behavior is itself inherently stupid. That's the idea behind the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma: betrayal is advantageous only when you don't think more than a step ahead. Once you do, then tit-for-tat[2] becomes better, possibly with some kind of forgiveness term if random or accidental betrayal is possible. None of Reddit's CxO suite[3] thinks this way. They think their users are resources to be taken for granted, except they're also really bad at doing that. And Reddit users have just gotten used to shouting down these kinds of stupid changes until the admins fold, which they usually do, because Reddit doesn't have the kind of user lock-in to make people just stick with it.

[0] Nobody noticed until the admins just outright admitted it a few years later. Although if /r/SRD and /r/de is to be believed, they're doing the same shit again in German: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/13p889x/red...

[1] Ok, I don't have citations for the victim of Spez's tomfoolery being a fascist, but /r/TD was notorious back then for banning anyone who wasn't enthusiastically riding the Trump train that hard.

[2] Do what the opponent did last round.

[3] Except maybe Ellen Pao, only because she wasn't around long enough for Reddit to rub off on her.

chaosjevil3• 3 years ago

What do you do when incompetence would be unbelievable in scope and malice would be unbelievably incompetent.

Given that incompetence is more harmful than malice, you stay pessimistic, and still blame incompetence. Simply because, if you're pessimistic, the worst that can happen tells you that you were right.

A malicious but competent person will cause damage to a few, when it's desirable for him. While an incompetent but non-malicious person will cause damage to everyone, including himself, at random intervals, regardless of his own desires.

________________

On-topic. I think that Reddit is trying to capitalise on business customers, using its platform to train its AI models with. If that's correct, then even if the users reacting negatively leave, and this puts a dent on Reddit's profit, Reddit will still profit more from those business customers.

throwawaylinux• 3 years ago

Even if that vapid saying was in any way a rule, we already know they are malicious -- this is the same person who silently edited the content of users' posts.

tinus_hn2• 3 years ago

People want a free website where they can do whatever they want, but they can’t be required to pay, it has to be financed through ads but they have to be able to block these ads. Oh, and content advertisers don’t want to be associated with has to be freely accessible.

Unsurprisingly this is not sustainable, investors are paying for the site and ultimately they want to see a return. Money talks, bs walks.

freediverx2• 3 years ago

I think a simpler explanation is one that’s missing from a lot of the conversations on this. Huffman is singularly focused on pumping up the valuation for Reddit’s upcoming IPO. All other considerations are secondary. He doesn’t care about the users. He doesn’t care about third-party developers. He doesn’t care about the long-term survival of the platform. He’s just razor focused on his big payday.

adamckay• 3 years ago

It's worthwhile pointing out his wasn't a genuine AMA - it was a "ask me anything we have a pre-written answer for" [1]. It's an obvious thing to do because the whole situation has been received badly by the community, so you'd expect some preparation of good answers to likely questions, but to copy and paste blindly the pre-written answers from the PR team is just pure laziness and a blatant disregard for the community you've built.

1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...

ASalazarMX2• 3 years ago

Such a lousy AMA, Spez only made 14 comments, and it was locked after that.

danudey7• 3 years ago

Spez made 14 comments, the others made 7 combined, all in reply to 26,000 comments or so.

Eisenstein9• 3 years ago

It isn't locked. You can still comment.

FireBeyond6• 3 years ago

The most difficult questions went unanswered.

Almost EVERY question went unanswered. He spent approximately 35 minutes replying to 14 questions, essentially all of which were from Reddit "PowerMods" (that cadre of 6 moderators that control >118 of the Top 50 subreddits), and most of those answers were single paragraph rehashes of the same point: "We'll keep talking to developers", and multiple of those questions appear to have scripted, as noted when he answered a question: "A: blah blah blah", then rapidly edited out the "A:".

donmcronald• 3 years ago

The whole idea had Bill Cosby "meme me" vibes right from the start and after he answered the blackmail question I think he'd have been better off talking about Rampart. Why would you even answer that question?

Eisenstein9• 3 years ago

Reddit "PowerMods" (that cadre of 6 moderators that control >118 of the Top 50 subreddits)

Not only is this provably untrue but your math is nonsensical.

EDIT: Provably untrue proof -- top 100 subreddit moderator list:

* https://gist.github.com/bspammer/d6059d2bfa222a0f340353ae0be...

shmatt3• 3 years ago

You’re asking why do CEOs speak out? Do q&as? Fireside chats? Of course they all speak corporate speak

Most of the top questions were childish and useless, asking to get rid of the ads, go back to the original spirit of Reddit. Comparing the pressure and decision making process of a CEO who raised 1.3 BILLION dollars to some basement dweller who’s shutting down their app out of spite (pretty sure they could sell the app for $5M today no questions asked)

After so many rounds of raising, I’m being generous if I guess that spez owns 5% of Reddit stock. Reddit is being run right now by the biggest investment firms in SV. Rigjtfully looking for ROI. It would literally make them more money to shut down Reddit than to do what everyone in the AMA is asking them to do

In terms of accessibility, I understand they have a roadmap. I don’t understand how they don’t have 400 ADA lawsuits on court right now. Every corporation I worked for had been flooded by copy paste ADA lawsuits, and an app or 3rd party apps aren’t enough, the website has to be fully accessible

ddingus6• 3 years ago

Too many sales. Too many dollars handed out today for expected value in the future.

The trouble is people showed up for what Reddit was. Let us call that the Aaron Reddit. That Reddit was sustainable and could be expressed as by users for users.

That vision picked up a ton of users who love threaded, frank, unfettered discussion. It was never going to make millions, but it would have endured for a very long time.

All that changed upon each sale. And this last one is brutal, leaving current owners holding the bag.

These changes to crank out big returns are toxic to a very high percentage of users. And they are where the content comes from too.

Someone else is going to reproduce the original Reddit vision and when they do, this one will dry up just like Digg did.

josefx2• 3 years ago

Rigjtfully looking for ROI.

Really? "Rightfully"?? I guess someone owes me money, because I did a few investments where the ROI was $0, some of them intentionally bad (family > money).

EMCymatics2• 3 years ago

I think they wanted to demonstrate their resolve.

Their messaging is probably to get all of the other apps ect to sell out to the big boys or essentially get fired from their own company.

The language model war is in full swing now the moats are starting to form.

They're betting big on continued engagement or they actually want it to fail. Time will tell.

Eisenstein9• 3 years ago

Their messaging is probably to get all of the other apps ect to sell out to the big boys or essentially get fired from their own company.

Sell out to whom? The offer of API access is a lie -- everyone who has asked to setup a billing situation has been ignored.

personjerry2• 3 years ago

My highlight from the CEO's replies:

> How do you address the concerns of users who feel that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement?
We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.

Self burn. Those are rare.

CamelCaseName• 3 years ago

I mean, that's the truth. That's the only answer I had any respect for.

sleight424• 3 years ago

Read to me as honest and petty. The 3Ps figured out how to monetize at the edges when Reddit can't.

spopejoy• 3 years ago

Beatings will continue until morale improves

SanjayMehta• 3 years ago

Hours have gone by, and many developers' questions are unanswered.

scarab92• 3 years ago

Just shouting this request into the ether, but if these reddit client developers teamed up to create a new alternate backend with a small API fee, the result could be amazing.

A combination of their power user base and a small monthly subscription fee for access could result in something that can retain a niche subreddit feel across the site.

With the possible exception of /r/science the larger subreddits are flooded in low effort posts and mostly unusable.

dada78641• 3 years ago

It's actually funny how exactly it went how everybody expected. It's like watching a movie that's setting up an incredibly obvious ending, and so the whole time you're waiting for a last minute plot twist to happen because it's just way too simplistic if they don't.

But no, it went exactly as anyone could've predicted, no notes.

1. they didn't budge an inch

2. spez is a fucking jerk as always

3. it was over after only a small handful of questions, some of which may have been preplanned

4. we learned nothing new.

It's exactly what everyone saw coming. gg.

This most definitely seems to me like it was more of a "how dare they question me" spur of the moment decision by spez than a legitimate PR effort. At the same time it just reinforces the obvious conclusion that third party app devs were lied to and set up to fail.

tim333• 3 years ago

Dunno but communication and listening to users is good?

freediverx2• 3 years ago

Yeah, that should’ve been a press release.

HL33tibCe7• 3 years 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.

djbusby4• 3 years 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_wizard3• 3 years 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

mostlysimilar2• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

Maybe they're hoping that future LLM trainers will cough up the crazy prices?

jsheard• 3 years 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&restr...

Alupis2• 3 years ago

or they're intentionally driving away 3rd party apps

This doesn't seem to make sense. If Reddit wanted to kill 3rd party apps, they would just disable public API access entirely. The reaction would be basically the same it seems.

SkyPuncher5• 3 years ago

LLMs are so valuable that these fees are must be this high to keep them in check.

The fundamental problem is they’re not differentiating pricing between data scrapers and user apps.

Heck, they don’t even need to display ads in 3rd party apps. Just let me subscribe to Reddits API directly. Let me pay for my monthly usage.

redox99• 3 years ago

LLMs will just scrape the website like they do with the rest of the internet. For Alphabet, Microsoft and some others they don't even need to do that as they already have everything stored for search results.

vkou4• 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure Reddit can figure out how to sell API access to LLMs, and how to differentiate that from my 'API access' because I happen to use Reddit through a mobile app.

robryan2• 3 years ago

This seems easy, you have limits per client per user.

eulers_secret2• 3 years ago

Just append .json to any Reddit URL and you'll get a full dump of that page, we'll see if they get rid of this feature as well. Way easier than scraping.

indymike• 3 years ago

I for the life of me can't figure out why they are charging so much money for the API

They are discontinuing the API, except for a small number of customers willing (maybe) to pay their price for the API.

no_wizard3• 3 years ago

I don't think this materially changes anything I posited though.

VWWHFSfQ3• 3 years ago

allows the developer some discretion on how the ads can be formatted visually

this is absolutely the opposite of what they would want. Brands have very tight control over display advertising and would have to approve it everywhere

no_wizard3• 3 years ago

I'm thinking more about how it flows in the feeds, not arbitrary control. The nuance is a little hard for me to explain, but basically I just imagine they could do a better job highlighting this is an ad!. Current Reddit default approach makes ads seem like they're from a normal user or its a subreddit.

I should've clarified

x0x0• 3 years ago

I for the life of me can't figure out why they are charging so much money for the API.

The claim (made by several mods) is that they are spending > $10m annually on the API once you include eng effort, and they want a return on the opportunity cost, not just the pure compute cost.

Additionally, they've run reddit so shockingly incompetently that they appear to have separate, better APIs that they only allow their internal apps to use. So when they complain about the inefficiency of use of the available APIs, keep that in mind...

Clearly, however, they just don't want other frontends. See eg them moving to measuring API calls on a per-app basis, rather than on a per-app per-user basis. It's dumb, imo, to not just say so.

And like everything reddit does, this was done wildly incompetently. I'd ask how they could possibly have not thought through the impacts on accessible frontends, or mod tools (which itself demonstrates the fractal incompetence of reddit: why do mods have to build or buy their own tools?), but... well, reddit.

NB: so fractally incompetent that they apparently can't even measure api usage and share that with API users in real or near-real time. Like... how. Just how.

micromacrofoot• 3 years ago

because they want to push people to the first party app to boost userbase and data collection before IPO, it's all more money in their pockets because they're looking at cashing out in the short term and don't care much about the long term

in the immediacy people are still going to use reddit either way because there's no easy and popular alternative, just like twitter held on to most users despite all the noise

TranquilMarmot5• 3 years ago

Another reason a lot of users like to use third-party apps and old.reddit.com is to avoid all of the "Coins"/"rewards" and NFT avatars that litter the page these days and make it a distracting experience to try and read comments and posts (which should be front-and-center).

tills13• 3 years ago

unfortunately all of these options kill the community, really.

tracerbulletx• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

s/executives/humans/g

cactusplant7374• 3 years ago

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

I_am_tiberius3• 3 years 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.

mustacheemperor6• 3 years 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.

KennyBlanken5• 3 years 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_tiberius3• 3 years 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.

FireBeyond6• 3 years 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_tiberius3• 3 years ago

Here's a link to the case: https://twitter.com/Sasa_dangon/status/1667248579910553601

stolen_biscuit3• 3 years 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_Staker3• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

TranquilMarmot5• 3 years 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.

rhtgrg2• 3 years 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-use...

callalex• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

predictabl32• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years 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/

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• 3 years ago

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

sebzim4500• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

A lot of what makes Reddit work is charity on the part of mods, devs, etc.

dmattia• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

mkaic• 3 years 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.

endisneigh• 3 years ago

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

_cenw2• 3 years 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.

5424583• 3 years 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.

_cenw2• 3 years 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?

curiousgal2• 3 years ago

The joke is that the opportunity cost is NOT 20 millions. Asking them to buy the app for 10 millions is supposed to illustrate the point. Imagine we both have a phone an you try to sell me yours for 20 million dollars, I would reply saying well you can buy mine for 10 millions, hopefully that makes it clear that your asking price is ridiculous.

yanderekko4• 3 years ago

That doesn't make sense. Reddit is (charitably) arguing that Apollo is costing them $20m/year. "Splitting the difference" and just losing $10m on a one-time basis doesn't make sense when Reddit can of course just cut off API access.

If Apollo were delivering $20m/year of incremental value to Reddit, then this would've been a sensical bargaining strategy. But the Apollo dev wasn't prepared to make this argument.

BoxFour• 3 years ago

The joke is a thinly-veiled retort, basically:

Reddit: Apollo costs us $20m a year
Apollo: Well that's a silly number that doesn't add up and you're basically comparing me to a DDOS, if I'm just a botnet I guess you can just pay me half that to shut the botnet down.

Spivak3• 3 years ago

Also Apollo doesn't cost them shit. Unless they're arguing that they lost $20m/yr in ad revenue you can't do the math like that. Reddit users cost Reddit $20m/yr.

gaganyaan• 3 years ago

I doubt it was about making a stink, it was likely along the lines of "It's your site and your rules, I get that. You're clearly trying to kill off 3rd party apps like mine even if you won't admit it, so I'll make it easy for you and kill it off myself for some compensation."

ZephyrBlu• 3 years ago

Reddit: We're losing $20M/yr in opportunity cost to Apollo.

Apollo: Ok then, buy me out for $10M. What a deal! You make your investment back in only 6mo.

jchw• 3 years 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.

kstrauser3• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

You can delete any value you created for them by purging your comments/posts https://github.com/x89/Shreddit

danudey7• 3 years 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).

d0gbread• 3 years ago

Christian also built the app out of college and is now thrust into C-level conversations? I would nominate him next CEO of Reddit if he wasn't a bit all over the place.

SkyPuncher5• 3 years ago

It’s extremely clear that Spez doesn’t know how to handle Christian.

Christian hasn’t been beaten down by years of corporate ladder climbing. He knows how to protect himself, but does it in ways that others don’t often see in the business world.

Even the whole “$10m extortion” thing feels overblown. Like I can’t believe a CEO would ever take a comment like that anymore seriously than a passing joke/jesting comment in that situation. Christian’s point is true. If Reddit is having such a hard time delivering a quality app, they can buy any third party app.

The fact that Spez seems so stuck on that seems to indicate the success of Apollo is really weighing on him.

FormerBandmate• 3 years ago

Christian would be a much better CEO than Steve Huffman, despite his clear lack of negotiation skills. Reddit is phenomenally mismanaged, it's somehow worse than both incarnations of Twitter

maximinus_thrax2• 3 years ago

Now? It's just another fucking ad company.

Good ol' enshittification.

next_xibalba• 3 years 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?

hatsunearu2• 3 years 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.

plandis5• 3 years 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-Fry4• 3 years 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.

plandis5• 3 years ago

Reddit announced the pricing with 30 days for app developers to start being charged. That’s not a realistic timeline.

yxwvut• 3 years ago

Why not make Reddit itself a paid service by that logic? This whole 'Oh we need to make strides toward profitability blah blah' corporate spiel is such bullshit when they could snap their fingers and become profitable overnight by switching from an ad model to a subscription model. Further, by doing so they wouldn't be forced to gradually ruin the site with more dilution into sponsored content.

This is the arc of American business, though. A steady money printer isn't enough. That money has to grow, and it grows by reducing the surplus utility held by the users.

TranquilMarmot5• 3 years ago

I think for a lot of people, they _want_ to see Reddit not as a "company trying to be profitable" but more as "the de-facto community message board on the internet" where everything is free, open, and equitable. Shutting down third-party APIs makes the site less open in a lot of ways, which is rubbing people the wrong way.

That being said, I do agree that they own the API and have every right to charge for it. I am going to be very disappointed that my preferred way of browsing Reddit is going to stop working, since the official app is not a great experience.

5424583• 3 years ago

Sure, Reddit can do what they want with Reddit. That’s their right. And Reddit users (or a subset of Reddit users) can complain when Reddit makes product changes that they don’t like. That’s also their right. In this case, people find it frustrating that a) products that they like will stop being usable b) devs that they like will go out of business abruptly c) that communications from Reddit about this have been not great.

Even if this is just a subset of users being mad, it appears to be the subset of users that also run many of the larger subreddits. If Reddit doesn’t want users like that to have the power to make highly visible demonstrations they should stop relying on them to do volunteer moderation.

personjerry2• 3 years ago

Link to the AMA: 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"

bionhoward2• 3 years 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• 3 years 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 - June 2023 (320 comments)

Archive your Reddit data before it's too late - 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 - June 2023 (221 comments)

Ask HN: Anyone else disinterested in Reddit API drama? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256545 - June 2023 (26 comments)

Apollo Back end just made public - 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 - June 2023 (23 comments)

ArchiveTeam has saved over 11.2B Reddit links - 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 - June 2023 (352 comments)

Using unmodified third-party Reddit apps with a custom server - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36252061 - June 2023 (20 comments)

Power Delete Suite for Reddit - 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 - June 2023 (1568 comments)

Continuation:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36251707

sillysaurusx2• 3 years 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.)

bombcar7• 3 years ago

dang is our jannie and he does not do it for free, but it’s worth what we don’t pay for. :)

jtriangle2• 3 years ago

There's also a much easier to use version of shreddit written in rust (of course)

https://github.com/andrewbanchich/shreddit

predictabl32• 3 years 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• 3 years 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"?

TranquilMarmot5• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

video from PyCon about using Empathy to become a better developer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYWlfVqBQLc

userbinator2• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

I am not actually a Reddit user --- I use the site read-only

That means you actually are a Reddit user.

userbinator2• 3 years ago

I mean that I do not have an account and post content there.

HDThoreaun3• 3 years 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?

dontupvoteme2• 3 years ago

Even lowtax had more dignity, what a farce.

gravypod• 3 years 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• 3 years 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_Staker3• 3 years ago

I've heard he's a total jerkoff.

lewisflude2• 3 years 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.

winrid• 3 years 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.

andrethegiant• 3 years 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.

yieldcrv2• 3 years 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

lewisflude2• 3 years 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.

yieldcrv2• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

EchoReflection3• 3 years ago

#quitreddit

grajmanu• 3 years 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.

ck2• 3 years ago

Remember when Digg was a forum?

I guess Reddit is headed that way sooner or later.

So weird and foolish.

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

Related Stories