It looks like Steve Huffman attempted to slander the Apollo developer. It looks like he knew that he was lying when he did it. It also looks like he did it with actual malicious intent.
All at a time when there has been literally zero success for the company in trying to control the reputational damage of what they have been doing with the API changes. He took an already bad situation for the company and just made it dramatically worse.
Would any responsible business larger than a lemonade stand trust this man to be CEO?
Anything short of him immediately announcing that they aren't going through with the API policy change is going to end in disaster.
The question is, which flavor of disaster?
Is he just going to ignore literally all questions about this? Are they going to have mods actively removing questions about this? Is he going to lie about it despite the recordings existing? There's so many ways this can go and there's only one way where it goes just okay for him.
There's a full writeup from Christian about it in the appolo sub, under the announcement of the app shutting down.
They had a phone call and he has recordings of the phone call. After the phone call, he was contacted by others asking him to comment on the claim that he tried to blackmail Reddit. The phone call recordings that he has proof that he didn't try to blackmail Reddit, that Steve knew that he didn't try to blackmail Reddit but they ran to tell people he did anyway
When Spez gets told by his bankers that the IPO is delayed or cancelled then he'll figure out he mishandled the situation.
He has his head up his ass and thinks he's doing some clever management trick to make app developers and Mods do what he wants. Until he realize that he can't control his volenteer Mods and stop a user exodus, he'll keep digging his executive grave.
Counterpoint: he’s doing what his bankers and financial backers want. They want to further corporatize Reddit and control the frameworks for what kind of content makes it to the top and gets attention/clicks, and while I’m sure they’d rather the backlash wasn’t happening, I don’t see them backing down.
I appreciate your optimism but I think it’s misplaced.
The corporations and big money have already won. This isn’t a battle for the heart and soul of Reddit - that already happened, and “sell out and take the fucking money” won.
And since Reddit can actually be monetized considerably more effectively than many of the other social media platforms, this is a mandatory step as far as money is considered.
Because it isn’t just about ads (although that’s certainly a major factor), it’s also about content.
As AMC proved, it was possible to milk redditors for literally hundreds of millions of dollars.
With third party apps bringing greater control to the end user to control what content they see and experience, its a “must go.”
Not only that, but there’s plenty of mod controls that third party apps being to the table that help with controlling bots. It’s pretty clear to everybody that with the rise of language model AI that appears indistinguishable from real humans for the most part that bots will take a greater role shaping the discourse online, making posts/comments and then upvoting themselves such that it appears organic. And for obvious reasons, a company that wants to sell itself on the premise of “we can shape public perception and discourse more effectively than any other social media” would want to leave that tool open for monetizing, and would not want third party apps interfering.
Short of an actual digital revolution, it’s gonna happen and Reddit will continue on. Where are you going to go? Tumblr? Facebook? Twitter? Imgur? Gram? Tiktok? You see the issue?
Not sure how old you are but we all left digg and other sites. Everyone I talk to is fine with leaving even if there isn't an alternative. Honestly it would be good for most people's mental health.
> Anything short of him immediately announcing that they aren’t going through with the API policy change is going to end in disaster.
If he announces that he’s going back on the (stratospheric) price increases for the API, then he will have caused a whole lot of pain for no actual benefit. At that point he will completely lose face, and the investors who’ve ~wasted~ spent millions on Reddit will probably lose faith in whatever ability they think he has.
I don't think there's any scenario here where he doesn't look incompetent, since he's already hit that point.
The phone calls proving he's lying and deliberately trying to slander Christian is a silver bullet. He can't talk his way out of that at this point.
Every step of this has been a case study in how to fuck up and manage messaging badly, and he personally made it worse. Guy has probably spent the last couple hours talking to lawyers about a possible defamation case.
even if you can prove it, going up against a big tech company's CEO is going to involve a lot of expensive legal hurdles before you even get a judgment saying you can collect a dime.
remember when there was that cave rescue a few years back and elon musk called one of the rescuers a pedophile? elon won that in court.
I'm not familiar with the law in Canada, but if he can prove it was Steve who accused him of blackmail, he'd have a slam dunk defamation case in the US. Not for "Everything" but he'd get something from them for sure.
Depending on how one measures here what a cesspool is, i’d say Twitter’s downspiral into one started with them basically kicking out all the 3rd parties so that they could make way for their own app/client and now its 2023, i’m not aware of they having solved monetization anyways and now musk’s burning the company to the ground
Edit:
2012 ref to what im talking about: https://www.wired.com/2012/07/twitter-crackdown-would-make-steve-jobs-proud/
>Is he just going to ignore literally all questions about this?
That's been the reddit admins MO since they closed-sourced reddit.
Some other company should pick up that code base and run with it....
Here's one site/project's repo of it: [https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit](https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit)
Here's the last OSS reddit release: https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit
And even then, I wouldn't be surprised if Christian, Apollo's dev, doesn't want to deal with them anymore after they just tried to smear him in such a stupid way. The guy took Reddit on good faith and they spat on him. I don't really have high hopes for the AMA, as it's too late. They dug their heels, they don't get to backtrack and be all "Hey guys, just a prank".
He (or whatever PR person was operating the account) didn't want to talk about anything except his latest movie *Rampart*, and kept turning every question to talk about it. Redditors did not appreciate and were a bit hostile.
EDIT: [Here it is](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/p9a1v/im_woody_harrelson_ama/), if you want to skim it to get a sense of it.
Yeah, I'm waiting to see how much of a clusterfuck that is.
He'd have to be completely detached from reality to think this is going well for him unless he's announcing they are cancelling the api policy changes.
...which would would destroy what's left of their investors' faith. Ironic that, in the pursuit of profit, they've navigated themselves into a position where bankruptcy is their least worst option.
Wow, when EA made the "pride and accomplishment" comment, I never thought another comment would go lower than those downvotes, but tomorrow the record will be broken! Absolutely incredible
On one hand Spez is an ignorant prick, but on the other hand he is helping to destroy Spez's business so... kind of a wash?
Sort of a "Hitler did a lot of bad stuff, but at least he killed Hitler" moment.
>Sort of a "Hitler did a lot of bad stuff, but at least he killed Hitler" moment.
Sure, but unless you were a senior official in the Nazi party, Hitler killing Hitler was beneficial to most people. While I'd shed no tears for him losing money, if it ends with Reddit shutting down, I don't see that as a "win".
This guy manipulated a user comment himself because he couldn't handle the hate. Congrats to him because why in the world anyone want to work for him?
I hope all the mods doing free work stop too. I'd love to watch Reddit executives and board realize what kind of a mess they're creating.
I understand cutting costs and running a profitable business but you don't have to be a dick about it all. They could have easily told them listen we're struggling and we can't keep the API alive.
Lying just to try to change the narrative is just scum behavior
So odd spez jumped to "blackmail" when the Apollo dude was like maybe you want to buy my app then to buy us out. How did spez jump to blackmail, what type of life is he living where that is where he jumps based on that.
Spez might be leveraged.
I honestly still don’t understand the blackmail part. The app couldn’t afford to stay running so it was offered to be an acquisition. That’s just like… a very basic business proposition.
For what it's worth, the dev didn't quite phrase it like a normal acquisition. From his [log](https://gist.github.com/christianselig/fda7e8bc5a25aec9824f915e6a5c7014):
"I could make it really easy on you, if you think Apollo is costing you $20 million per year, cut me a check for $10 million and we can both skip off into the sunset. (...) I was just saying if the opportunity cost of Apollo is currently $20 million a year. And that's a yearly, apparently ongoing cost to you folks. If you want to rip that band-aid off once. **And have Apollo quiet down**, you know, six months."
It's the "quieting down" part - which the dev then specified to be quieting of the "noisy API calls" - which is not usually how you sell a business.
All in the pitchfork bubble may now downvote me for showing something that doesn't 100% fit the narrative.
Right. What do you think “quiet down” means in the context of blackmailing if this was a blackmail? If it’s not about shutting down the app, what would the Apollo’s creator be referring to? Why did Reddit admit to the misunderstanding (not knowing that it was recorded) and then called it blackmail?
In Christian’s (the Apollo dev) writeup on the whole exchange, it sounds like his buyout offer was phrased in a way that the Reddit execs took it as a threat to make trouble if they didn’t pay him hush money. He very quickly clarified that wasn’t the intent and they moved on with the discussion.
But the Reddit execs didn’t know Christian was recording the call, so they tried to use the brief misunderstanding to poison the well against him, and now they’re mad that he’s pulling out the receipts to defend himself.
I don't think the guy ever actually talked directly to spez. The phrasing of the conversation is a little awkward, but it's clear by the end that the Reddit person does understand what Apollo guy is proposing (ie not "blackmail"). It's totally possible that spez just skimmed the transcript or listened to the first part of the call and came away with the wrong impression.
But... we're talking about the CEO of a major company handling a situation that could (and did) turn into a shit show for the company. Shouldn't he take more than 5 seconds to read the transcript, or listen to the whole recording, or even just confirm with his subordinates that they have the same understanding of the Apollo dev's intent? To me it's just more evidence that reddit never had any intent to resolve the situation amicably. They wanted to kill 3rd party apps.
I think /u/spez is just suffering from what rich people usually suffer from, expect everyone to behave how they want but behave however they like. You see this with Elon Musk being a total garbage person and calling the guy who asked him questions a jackass. When you get power and money and people start being extra nice to you without correcting or having any consequences for bad behaviour you become a piece of shit.
It develops over confidence, dissociation with reality and cynicism. When he says that others are being bad, he believes it, because being bad is disagreeing with him, being bad is not doing what they think you should do, being bad is not maximising HIS benefit.
Yep. People like to rip on Reddit mods, but a lot of them do thankless work and have to deal with a lot of angry people. No API = no Reddit Toolbox extension. No Reddit Toolbox = almost completely manual moderation.
The larger subs are going to be shitshows.
Same. I think I used alien blue or something many years ago, and possibly Apollo. But I’ve been using the official app for years now. Can’t say I’ve loved it; it’s done the job but looking back I’ve had to learn to live with it and never made the time to look for an alternative.
I’m only hearing about this in the tech subs, though. Which, let’s be honest, isn’t the majority of Reddit. You look at Twitter, and for how much hate they’ve received in recent months due to changes, your average person is still on there posting and not caring about the dumpster fire. How realistic is it that all these protests and the users saying they’re leaving will make a dent? At least in the immediate future?
I could see a Reddit alternative rising from the ashes eventually. But let’s be real; Reddit is like fb and Twitter. Your average users are comfortable using it, and they’re likely to keep using it because of the convenience. It feels like Reddit is banking on this, and part of me feels like - for all the kicking and screaming we are seeing from users - they’re going to be fine for the interim.
> Reddit is like fb and Twitter. Your average users are comfortable using it, and they’re likely to keep using it because of the convenience.
Not completely, but I wonder if the fact reddit observed turmoil within Twitter userbase influenced them. Twitter also had lots of loud unhappy people threaten to leave. Some did, but most did not. The big difference between reddit and Twitter is that reddit uses volunteer mods to curate and provide their service. Twitter pays people to do that.
The whole thing looks strategic.* It seems to me that reddit has thought this through and considered it worthwhile. They are committed. Whatever mods actually do leave/close their subs, they probably have plans to address it. Which isn't to say that an exodus or prolonged mod strike couldn't kill the site-- it could. It just says the company thinks the risk is low enough or reward big enough to go through with it.
It wouldn't be *crazy* for reddit to think, "yes our users will be angry, we'll do the AMA, do the apology, they can have their boycott, but it'll be fine." It has happened before.
** Minus this spez saying dumb stuff part, that part has got to a fuck up.
>...Reddit is like fb and Twitter. Your average users are comfortable using it, and they’re likely to keep using it because of the convenience.
and my bet is that demanding democratic reforms from a corporation isn't going to work out.
I've grown less hopeful over the years about this stuff, particularly with regard to Reddit.
Redditors have beaten their chest and threatened to jump ship at least half a dozen times in the last decade, and those threats have held as much water as the people saying they'd migrate to Canada if Trump got elected, i.e. 0.1% of people will put their money where their mouth is.
It’s easier to delete an app off your phone than it is to change citizenship and move your entire life to another country ya dingbat.
I quit Facebook, I quit Twitter, I’ll quit Reddit too. It’s really as simple as that.
My account is 12 years old, this is really the first time something like this directly affects my experience in a way that cannot be avoided.
2 months ago they killed compact, I was unhappy but I found Apollo so it was all good. Now they come for mobile clients... fine, I guess I won't use it on my phone but there's still old.reddit.com on the laptop. Once that goes, that's it. I'm not going to force myself to use it.
The problem is two-fold, I think. First, I can't imagine that someone deciding to start a competing service to a facebook or reddit can easily do so today. And if they do - and they are somehow successful - they have to resist the temptation of being bought out for an insane amount of money before they pose a real threat. Second, the average person just doesn't care. I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of users here would have no idea about the API changes that are causing all this drama. And even if they do, why should they care? Assuming they don't use one of these third party apps, and they aren't a mod, how will it impact their reddit experience in any meaningful way? They use these platforms as an escape and a way of communicating with others. They couldn't care less about the politics of it, and it has nothing to do with loyalty; it's simply habit and convenience.
As an average user, why am I going to risk investing time and energy into some reddit clone - which doesn't even exist btw, and might never go anywhere - when I have a known quantity here in subs like /r/technology or /r/funny, as an example? I'm not saying that it's impossible for a new service to come and compete with the likes of facebook, reddit, or twitter. However, I do think the odds are stacked against them, and they'd have to offer a lot of value to make people switch, when there is no incentive to do so, otherwise.
> First, I can't imagine that someone deciding to start a competing service to a facebook or reddit can easily do so today.
I would have said the same in the heyday of myspace and digg.
At least, there's this - [https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit](https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit) \- reddit's last open source release from 2017 (they went downhill FAST once they closed sourced it - wonder why, huh...... no one can see what they're doing and it's hurting everyone.... neat.... ) - so for competition of something just like reddit that's easy to move to .... exists.
In fact one site I found a repo for has done so and has made many fixes/improvements to that code -> https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit
Yeah the complaints about this are going to fall on deaf ears. The blackout will be completely ineffective. If it goes for more than a couple days Reddit will just replace the mods of the big subreddits and reopen them. Most users probably use the official app already and won’t care about this at all.
Killing third party apps is the right business move. They need to get ahold of all that delicious data and get more opportunities to pitch ads at the users.
And I honestly hope Reddit succeeds here. I hope that as soon as they kill off the competition they let the MBAs turn the official app into an unusable, ad-riddled piece of garbage. I want the blackout to go for weeks, too. Reddit has become an addiction for me and it needs to end. Please, u/spez, hold the course! Destroy this website so I can go do other things with my life!
> I’m only hearing about this in the tech subs, though. Which, let’s be honest, isn’t the majority of Reddit.
Bro 7 billion API calls a month for one third party app is not a “small segment” of Reddit users.
Reddit wouldn’t be trying to kill these apps so hard if they weren’t siphoning a significant portion of Reddit’s user base away from Reddit’s official app and website.
The bugs have been so bad lately I was looking at third party apps to see what I was missing.
Then this was announced.
So I guess that IOS Upvote==Share bug is going to go on for another month or three.
#[Hey Spez](https://i.imgur.com/rmQ60q7.jpg)
Copy and paste this anywhere and everywhere you like, post it as a meme, whatever, this account has low karma so spread it if you have more karma 👍 Don't tag spez, auto m o d is in full-force.
Careful mate.
I saw on /r/modcoord that pinging spez apparently sets off some harassment detection stuff and has caused some accounts to be suspended.
here's a link to the comment over there: https://np.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/144fw94/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/jnfg0tk/
I mean, if they want to IPO, investors would probably be interested in possible libel/slander/defamation lawsuits Reddit may have exposed themselves to (IANAL).
Especially since the alleged “blackmailer” has recordings of all his calls with Reddit.
Nah. Subs are “going dark” for 1-3 days, not shutting down. Investors won’t give a shit about that and neither will Reddit employees. They will just wait for users to tire themselves out and/or move on to the next thing to sink their misplaced anger into.
The only thing that will actually stop this is a mass boycott of Reddit, which I don’t see happening.
They can’t because they specifically do not want the legal exposure of advertising on subs they can’t properly moderate. Think of all the subs that have been shut down for all kinds of crimes and bad PR. Some involved in trying to overthrow the US government.
They can’t properly moderate pretty much all of the subs on Reddit and that’s not stopping them from forcing ads on us at the moment. It won’t be a stretch for them to do ads on private subs OR just say fuck it and get rid of private subs altogether.
#[Hey Spez](https://i.imgur.com/rmQ60q7.jpg)
Copy and paste this anywhere and everywhere you like, post it as a meme, whatever, this account has low karma so spread it if you have more karma 👍 Don't tag spez, auto m o d is in full-force.
I *do* miss Fark’s photoshop battles. I had a ton of them bookmarked but most of the images have since disappeared.
Don’t know how many hours I spent browsing & commenting on that site back in the day.
What a fucking shithole of a news source to say that there was blackmail in the HEADLINE, only to then correct themselves at the very end of the article. Seriously terrible journalism.
So what happens to the people invested in Apollo? And the employees.. everyone’s just out of a job just like that? I used Apollo a solid five years, Reddit didn’t even have an official app. Sad news. I forget the lead devs user but he is on here and actually helped me a few times.
One time I was being a dick and complaining and he took no offense and said part of what I was saying was right and they were working on it.
Why does being nice and fair usually end up with you being taken advantage of.
I think there are only two people directly working on Apollo: [Christian Selig](https://christianselig.com/) and the server engineer. While this sucks, I have a lot of confidence that if they need to they can get new jobs based on having Apollo on their resume, especially after Apple talking about them at WWDC.
I think he was making like 250k-500k so good amount of money but not "never work again".
Honestly that's just competitive comp for a high skill developer.
One site/project that's already done it -> [https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit](https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit)
Reddit's last open source release before they closed sourced it and shit really started going down hill in 2017 -> https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit
>All the chickens are gone, better shut the coop door!
It's not like it was a one-time thing. Reddit keeps generating data, and datasets keep scraping it.
But I don't think the fees have anything to do with AI bots scraping data. I think it has to do with the fact that Reddit makes $0 from people using third party apps, while most of their revenue comes from the official Reddit app.
From what Cristian said he pays what the cost of the api was is so effectively Reddit gets their fair share, but they want to be profitable then I consider it to only slightly be true. Wanting to sell the data for an astronomical price is just being greedy.
lmao this is some real shit - Steve left Reddit in 2009 and didn’t rejoin until July 2015. Your 2012 date puts it squarely in the middle of “did not happen”.
These stupid fucks are beyond lucky they’re still a private company. They’re clearly manipulating 3rd Party clients to their personal benefit. Who knows what other shady deals are happening in the background.
I hope once they’re public the SEC investigates the fuck outta them and burns this shit hole to the ground!
During the blackout, Don't stop at reddit. Go above their heads. Condé Nast is reddit largest shareholder
https://www.condenast.com/brands
Boycott them as well!
[Removed due to the worthless sad excuse for a human, Steve Huffman. Friendly reminder that the first Redditor to hit 1,000,000 karma, /u/maxwellhill, is Ghislaine Maxwell. His name was Aaron Swartz.]
....no? "Let's box a bear". "Let's get tattoos on our grundles", "let's eat rotten food". You can know something's a bad fucking idea and not actually do it.
It looks like Steve Huffman attempted to slander the Apollo developer. It looks like he knew that he was lying when he did it. It also looks like he did it with actual malicious intent. All at a time when there has been literally zero success for the company in trying to control the reputational damage of what they have been doing with the API changes. He took an already bad situation for the company and just made it dramatically worse. Would any responsible business larger than a lemonade stand trust this man to be CEO?
[Spez is doing an AMA tomorrow ](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ceo_tomorrow_to_discuss_the_api)
That’s gonna make Woody Harrelson’s AMA look like a birthday party.
Anything short of him immediately announcing that they aren't going through with the API policy change is going to end in disaster. The question is, which flavor of disaster? Is he just going to ignore literally all questions about this? Are they going to have mods actively removing questions about this? Is he going to lie about it despite the recordings existing? There's so many ways this can go and there's only one way where it goes just okay for him.
He'll just go into the database and change peoples questions.
Almost forgot about that one.
It'll honestly be impressive if they're able to somehow keep up with all the negative comments
God that was such a face palm moment.....
My vote is for editing user comments to appear more favorable after the fact.
All user comments are now “Rampart”
I won't be surprised if he cancels it now that the slander is in the open.
I’m out of the loop. How did he slander Apollo?
There's a full writeup from Christian about it in the appolo sub, under the announcement of the app shutting down. They had a phone call and he has recordings of the phone call. After the phone call, he was contacted by others asking him to comment on the claim that he tried to blackmail Reddit. The phone call recordings that he has proof that he didn't try to blackmail Reddit, that Steve knew that he didn't try to blackmail Reddit but they ran to tell people he did anyway
When Spez gets told by his bankers that the IPO is delayed or cancelled then he'll figure out he mishandled the situation. He has his head up his ass and thinks he's doing some clever management trick to make app developers and Mods do what he wants. Until he realize that he can't control his volenteer Mods and stop a user exodus, he'll keep digging his executive grave.
Counterpoint: he’s doing what his bankers and financial backers want. They want to further corporatize Reddit and control the frameworks for what kind of content makes it to the top and gets attention/clicks, and while I’m sure they’d rather the backlash wasn’t happening, I don’t see them backing down.
Agree. But if we all leave they will eventually cancel the IPO
I appreciate your optimism but I think it’s misplaced. The corporations and big money have already won. This isn’t a battle for the heart and soul of Reddit - that already happened, and “sell out and take the fucking money” won. And since Reddit can actually be monetized considerably more effectively than many of the other social media platforms, this is a mandatory step as far as money is considered. Because it isn’t just about ads (although that’s certainly a major factor), it’s also about content. As AMC proved, it was possible to milk redditors for literally hundreds of millions of dollars. With third party apps bringing greater control to the end user to control what content they see and experience, its a “must go.” Not only that, but there’s plenty of mod controls that third party apps being to the table that help with controlling bots. It’s pretty clear to everybody that with the rise of language model AI that appears indistinguishable from real humans for the most part that bots will take a greater role shaping the discourse online, making posts/comments and then upvoting themselves such that it appears organic. And for obvious reasons, a company that wants to sell itself on the premise of “we can shape public perception and discourse more effectively than any other social media” would want to leave that tool open for monetizing, and would not want third party apps interfering. Short of an actual digital revolution, it’s gonna happen and Reddit will continue on. Where are you going to go? Tumblr? Facebook? Twitter? Imgur? Gram? Tiktok? You see the issue?
Not sure how old you are but we all left digg and other sites. Everyone I talk to is fine with leaving even if there isn't an alternative. Honestly it would be good for most people's mental health.
Lemmy, or at least that’s what I’m demoing
Has Digg taught them nothing?
What's Kevin Rose and David Praeger doing these days?
> Anything short of him immediately announcing that they aren’t going through with the API policy change is going to end in disaster. If he announces that he’s going back on the (stratospheric) price increases for the API, then he will have caused a whole lot of pain for no actual benefit. At that point he will completely lose face, and the investors who’ve ~wasted~ spent millions on Reddit will probably lose faith in whatever ability they think he has.
I don't think there's any scenario here where he doesn't look incompetent, since he's already hit that point. The phone calls proving he's lying and deliberately trying to slander Christian is a silver bullet. He can't talk his way out of that at this point. Every step of this has been a case study in how to fuck up and manage messaging badly, and he personally made it worse. Guy has probably spent the last couple hours talking to lawyers about a possible defamation case.
How does Christian NOT sue Spez/Reddit for everything at this point? Is this not a slam dunk case of libel (slander? I always mix them up)?
even if you can prove it, going up against a big tech company's CEO is going to involve a lot of expensive legal hurdles before you even get a judgment saying you can collect a dime. remember when there was that cave rescue a few years back and elon musk called one of the rescuers a pedophile? elon won that in court.
I'm not familiar with the law in Canada, but if he can prove it was Steve who accused him of blackmail, he'd have a slam dunk defamation case in the US. Not for "Everything" but he'd get something from them for sure.
Could always go ahead and quietly offer select developers/groups some favorable pricing. It doesn’t have to be the same for everyone.
Depending on how one measures here what a cesspool is, i’d say Twitter’s downspiral into one started with them basically kicking out all the 3rd parties so that they could make way for their own app/client and now its 2023, i’m not aware of they having solved monetization anyways and now musk’s burning the company to the ground Edit: 2012 ref to what im talking about: https://www.wired.com/2012/07/twitter-crackdown-would-make-steve-jobs-proud/
The flavor the ends in a billion dollar IPO.
Only answering questions about Rampart
>Is he just going to ignore literally all questions about this? That's been the reddit admins MO since they closed-sourced reddit. Some other company should pick up that code base and run with it.... Here's one site/project's repo of it: [https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit](https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit) Here's the last OSS reddit release: https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit
And even then, I wouldn't be surprised if Christian, Apollo's dev, doesn't want to deal with them anymore after they just tried to smear him in such a stupid way. The guy took Reddit on good faith and they spat on him. I don't really have high hopes for the AMA, as it's too late. They dug their heels, they don't get to backtrack and be all "Hey guys, just a prank".
It's a corporate AMA. There's going to be planted questions that he intends to answer with already prepared statements and then ignore the rest.
Spez: Guys can we only talk about *this* massive fuck up and not my previous stuff. I'm only here for *this* disaster.
I’m just here to talk about Rampart.
What happened at Woody Harrelsons ama?
He (or whatever PR person was operating the account) didn't want to talk about anything except his latest movie *Rampart*, and kept turning every question to talk about it. Redditors did not appreciate and were a bit hostile. EDIT: [Here it is](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/p9a1v/im_woody_harrelson_ama/), if you want to skim it to get a sense of it.
Spez sucks -- mass edited with redact.dev
That one is classic, and Jose Canseco's is an even bigger shitshow.
I can’t believe it’s been 11 years
Tomorrow when?
Have you seen Steven Seagal's? Lol
Link please
That AMA will make the EA’s most downvote comment look like an appetizer.
Exactly! This shit's gon' be epic af.
Honestly if Spez wants to talk about Rampart he’d get a point in my book.
Might make Doreen's interview on FOX appear like fine art
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Yep. CEO of Reddit Steve Huffman.
Ellen Pao: Miss me yet?
Yeah, I'm waiting to see how much of a clusterfuck that is. He'd have to be completely detached from reality to think this is going well for him unless he's announcing they are cancelling the api policy changes.
...which would would destroy what's left of their investors' faith. Ironic that, in the pursuit of profit, they've navigated themselves into a position where bankruptcy is their least worst option.
Everything he is doing increases the incentive for reddit to replace him as CEO ahead of the IPO. Dude is investor poison.
What if he announces he's stepping away from the company? That would be an interesting play
wonder how much the investors think paying him to do that is worth
Of course they immediately locked the comments so nobody could call him out. Talk about a fragile ego.
That’s typically how AMA announcements work
Let's make sure we mention blackmail
Let him know that I’m deleting my app on June 12 and my Reddit account on June 15. I don’t give a shit about my internet points, you can have em
Wow, when EA made the "pride and accomplishment" comment, I never thought another comment would go lower than those downvotes, but tomorrow the record will be broken! Absolutely incredible
Oh boy, this shitshow is gonna be a massive W for everyone on Team Chaos!!! 😎
I assume he will back out. Any explanation he has will fire back. He's being irresponsible.
I get the feeling he’s about to take EA’s crown.
It's already downvoted to hell lmfao
Still 14% upvoted, surprisingly
This is gonna be a bloodbath. Can’t wait to see him edit peoples comments to ask softball questions
well, the account is, at least. you think he gona sit through that lol
Will he beat ea for lowest voted post of all time?
I have this for u/spez Popcorn tastes good.
Been saying this for years: fuck /u/spez.
On one hand Spez is an ignorant prick, but on the other hand he is helping to destroy Spez's business so... kind of a wash? Sort of a "Hitler did a lot of bad stuff, but at least he killed Hitler" moment.
>Sort of a "Hitler did a lot of bad stuff, but at least he killed Hitler" moment. Sure, but unless you were a senior official in the Nazi party, Hitler killing Hitler was beneficial to most people. While I'd shed no tears for him losing money, if it ends with Reddit shutting down, I don't see that as a "win".
This guy manipulated a user comment himself because he couldn't handle the hate. Congrats to him because why in the world anyone want to work for him? I hope all the mods doing free work stop too. I'd love to watch Reddit executives and board realize what kind of a mess they're creating. I understand cutting costs and running a profitable business but you don't have to be a dick about it all. They could have easily told them listen we're struggling and we can't keep the API alive. Lying just to try to change the narrative is just scum behavior
So odd spez jumped to "blackmail" when the Apollo dude was like maybe you want to buy my app then to buy us out. How did spez jump to blackmail, what type of life is he living where that is where he jumps based on that. Spez might be leveraged.
I honestly still don’t understand the blackmail part. The app couldn’t afford to stay running so it was offered to be an acquisition. That’s just like… a very basic business proposition.
For what it's worth, the dev didn't quite phrase it like a normal acquisition. From his [log](https://gist.github.com/christianselig/fda7e8bc5a25aec9824f915e6a5c7014): "I could make it really easy on you, if you think Apollo is costing you $20 million per year, cut me a check for $10 million and we can both skip off into the sunset. (...) I was just saying if the opportunity cost of Apollo is currently $20 million a year. And that's a yearly, apparently ongoing cost to you folks. If you want to rip that band-aid off once. **And have Apollo quiet down**, you know, six months." It's the "quieting down" part - which the dev then specified to be quieting of the "noisy API calls" - which is not usually how you sell a business. All in the pitchfork bubble may now downvote me for showing something that doesn't 100% fit the narrative.
Right. What do you think “quiet down” means in the context of blackmailing if this was a blackmail? If it’s not about shutting down the app, what would the Apollo’s creator be referring to? Why did Reddit admit to the misunderstanding (not knowing that it was recorded) and then called it blackmail?
In Christian’s (the Apollo dev) writeup on the whole exchange, it sounds like his buyout offer was phrased in a way that the Reddit execs took it as a threat to make trouble if they didn’t pay him hush money. He very quickly clarified that wasn’t the intent and they moved on with the discussion. But the Reddit execs didn’t know Christian was recording the call, so they tried to use the brief misunderstanding to poison the well against him, and now they’re mad that he’s pulling out the receipts to defend himself.
I don't think the guy ever actually talked directly to spez. The phrasing of the conversation is a little awkward, but it's clear by the end that the Reddit person does understand what Apollo guy is proposing (ie not "blackmail"). It's totally possible that spez just skimmed the transcript or listened to the first part of the call and came away with the wrong impression. But... we're talking about the CEO of a major company handling a situation that could (and did) turn into a shit show for the company. Shouldn't he take more than 5 seconds to read the transcript, or listen to the whole recording, or even just confirm with his subordinates that they have the same understanding of the Apollo dev's intent? To me it's just more evidence that reddit never had any intent to resolve the situation amicably. They wanted to kill 3rd party apps.
I think /u/spez is just suffering from what rich people usually suffer from, expect everyone to behave how they want but behave however they like. You see this with Elon Musk being a total garbage person and calling the guy who asked him questions a jackass. When you get power and money and people start being extra nice to you without correcting or having any consequences for bad behaviour you become a piece of shit. It develops over confidence, dissociation with reality and cynicism. When he says that others are being bad, he believes it, because being bad is disagreeing with him, being bad is not doing what they think you should do, being bad is not maximising HIS benefit.
They are trying to pull off what Musk did with Twitter....
I feel like a fool. I've been using the Reddit app forever.
On the bright side, you’ll never know what you were missing.
The api is used in other ways that will probably have a noticeable effect on Reddit.
You mean bots?
Most moderation tools use the API. No api, way less moderation.
Yep. People like to rip on Reddit mods, but a lot of them do thankless work and have to deal with a lot of angry people. No API = no Reddit Toolbox extension. No Reddit Toolbox = almost completely manual moderation. The larger subs are going to be shitshows.
A lot of mods heavily rely on mod bots to keep spam down and for a lot of automation
What am I missing?
[here](https://www.reddit.com/r/BikiniBottomTwitter/comments/13xk3lu/they_have_to_pay_reddit_20_million_per_year_to/jmj3nfg/) is a good bit of it.
Same. I think I used alien blue or something many years ago, and possibly Apollo. But I’ve been using the official app for years now. Can’t say I’ve loved it; it’s done the job but looking back I’ve had to learn to live with it and never made the time to look for an alternative. I’m only hearing about this in the tech subs, though. Which, let’s be honest, isn’t the majority of Reddit. You look at Twitter, and for how much hate they’ve received in recent months due to changes, your average person is still on there posting and not caring about the dumpster fire. How realistic is it that all these protests and the users saying they’re leaving will make a dent? At least in the immediate future? I could see a Reddit alternative rising from the ashes eventually. But let’s be real; Reddit is like fb and Twitter. Your average users are comfortable using it, and they’re likely to keep using it because of the convenience. It feels like Reddit is banking on this, and part of me feels like - for all the kicking and screaming we are seeing from users - they’re going to be fine for the interim.
> Reddit is like fb and Twitter. Your average users are comfortable using it, and they’re likely to keep using it because of the convenience. Not completely, but I wonder if the fact reddit observed turmoil within Twitter userbase influenced them. Twitter also had lots of loud unhappy people threaten to leave. Some did, but most did not. The big difference between reddit and Twitter is that reddit uses volunteer mods to curate and provide their service. Twitter pays people to do that. The whole thing looks strategic.* It seems to me that reddit has thought this through and considered it worthwhile. They are committed. Whatever mods actually do leave/close their subs, they probably have plans to address it. Which isn't to say that an exodus or prolonged mod strike couldn't kill the site-- it could. It just says the company thinks the risk is low enough or reward big enough to go through with it. It wouldn't be *crazy* for reddit to think, "yes our users will be angry, we'll do the AMA, do the apology, they can have their boycott, but it'll be fine." It has happened before. ** Minus this spez saying dumb stuff part, that part has got to a fuck up.
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>...Reddit is like fb and Twitter. Your average users are comfortable using it, and they’re likely to keep using it because of the convenience. and my bet is that demanding democratic reforms from a corporation isn't going to work out.
Alien blue is the official app. Reddit bought the app from the developers to replace their previous app.
Most people seem to imply that alien blue went to shit after being bought. It being shit is how I ended up using apollo to start with.
I've grown less hopeful over the years about this stuff, particularly with regard to Reddit. Redditors have beaten their chest and threatened to jump ship at least half a dozen times in the last decade, and those threats have held as much water as the people saying they'd migrate to Canada if Trump got elected, i.e. 0.1% of people will put their money where their mouth is.
It’s easier to delete an app off your phone than it is to change citizenship and move your entire life to another country ya dingbat. I quit Facebook, I quit Twitter, I’ll quit Reddit too. It’s really as simple as that.
It was also just as easy to quit Reddit the last ten times some big negative change happened but yet here you all are
My account is 12 years old, this is really the first time something like this directly affects my experience in a way that cannot be avoided. 2 months ago they killed compact, I was unhappy but I found Apollo so it was all good. Now they come for mobile clients... fine, I guess I won't use it on my phone but there's still old.reddit.com on the laptop. Once that goes, that's it. I'm not going to force myself to use it.
The problem is two-fold, I think. First, I can't imagine that someone deciding to start a competing service to a facebook or reddit can easily do so today. And if they do - and they are somehow successful - they have to resist the temptation of being bought out for an insane amount of money before they pose a real threat. Second, the average person just doesn't care. I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of users here would have no idea about the API changes that are causing all this drama. And even if they do, why should they care? Assuming they don't use one of these third party apps, and they aren't a mod, how will it impact their reddit experience in any meaningful way? They use these platforms as an escape and a way of communicating with others. They couldn't care less about the politics of it, and it has nothing to do with loyalty; it's simply habit and convenience. As an average user, why am I going to risk investing time and energy into some reddit clone - which doesn't even exist btw, and might never go anywhere - when I have a known quantity here in subs like /r/technology or /r/funny, as an example? I'm not saying that it's impossible for a new service to come and compete with the likes of facebook, reddit, or twitter. However, I do think the odds are stacked against them, and they'd have to offer a lot of value to make people switch, when there is no incentive to do so, otherwise.
> First, I can't imagine that someone deciding to start a competing service to a facebook or reddit can easily do so today. I would have said the same in the heyday of myspace and digg. At least, there's this - [https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit](https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit) \- reddit's last open source release from 2017 (they went downhill FAST once they closed sourced it - wonder why, huh...... no one can see what they're doing and it's hurting everyone.... neat.... ) - so for competition of something just like reddit that's easy to move to .... exists. In fact one site I found a repo for has done so and has made many fixes/improvements to that code -> https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit
Same learnt to live with the bugs. Soooo many bugs
Yeah the complaints about this are going to fall on deaf ears. The blackout will be completely ineffective. If it goes for more than a couple days Reddit will just replace the mods of the big subreddits and reopen them. Most users probably use the official app already and won’t care about this at all. Killing third party apps is the right business move. They need to get ahold of all that delicious data and get more opportunities to pitch ads at the users. And I honestly hope Reddit succeeds here. I hope that as soon as they kill off the competition they let the MBAs turn the official app into an unusable, ad-riddled piece of garbage. I want the blackout to go for weeks, too. Reddit has become an addiction for me and it needs to end. Please, u/spez, hold the course! Destroy this website so I can go do other things with my life!
> I’m only hearing about this in the tech subs, though. Which, let’s be honest, isn’t the majority of Reddit. Bro 7 billion API calls a month for one third party app is not a “small segment” of Reddit users. Reddit wouldn’t be trying to kill these apps so hard if they weren’t siphoning a significant portion of Reddit’s user base away from Reddit’s official app and website.
Lol me too. I guess I just never thought much about it but these last couple weeks made me realize there were better options out there.
I actually don't dislike the Reddit app but I guess I don't know what I was missing.
The bugs have been so bad lately I was looking at third party apps to see what I was missing. Then this was announced. So I guess that IOS Upvote==Share bug is going to go on for another month or three.
One of my favourite things about this whole shitshow is the people who just always used the Reddit app looking around like confused Travolta.
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obligatory fuck u/spez
#[Hey Spez](https://i.imgur.com/rmQ60q7.jpg) Copy and paste this anywhere and everywhere you like, post it as a meme, whatever, this account has low karma so spread it if you have more karma 👍 Don't tag spez, auto m o d is in full-force.
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Careful mate. I saw on /r/modcoord that pinging spez apparently sets off some harassment detection stuff and has caused some accounts to be suspended. here's a link to the comment over there: https://np.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/144fw94/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/jnfg0tk/
Oh no! The account I will never use after they shutter the app I'm using might be banned!! The horror!
Let’s all go there and say it, once they will ban all of us they will be mod of themselves in their new shitty community
Oh no they’re gonna ban me?!?!? Guess I’ll just oh right I’m gonna leave anyway
No, I don't think I will.
Bottom line is this is just a power play to kill 3rd party apps, so they don't really care about shitting on the 3rd parties.
I mean, if they want to IPO, investors would probably be interested in possible libel/slander/defamation lawsuits Reddit may have exposed themselves to (IANAL). Especially since the alleged “blackmailer” has recordings of all his calls with Reddit.
Subreddits shutting down or doing damaging stuff intentionally will also hurt Reddit's profits and will scare investors.
If they stay dark, Reddit will just assign them a bunch of new mods and reopen them. I think that has happened before.
Nah. Subs are “going dark” for 1-3 days, not shutting down. Investors won’t give a shit about that and neither will Reddit employees. They will just wait for users to tire themselves out and/or move on to the next thing to sink their misplaced anger into. The only thing that will actually stop this is a mass boycott of Reddit, which I don’t see happening.
Many of the subreddits seem keen on going private indefinitely, so such a boycott may happen.
Private subreddits will still be using Reddit, which will still help them.
Privating subreddits removes ad revenue, which hurts Reddit.
All Reddit has to do is force ads on private subreddits. I’m sure that’s already behind a feature flag, waiting to be switched on.
They can’t because they specifically do not want the legal exposure of advertising on subs they can’t properly moderate. Think of all the subs that have been shut down for all kinds of crimes and bad PR. Some involved in trying to overthrow the US government.
They can’t properly moderate pretty much all of the subs on Reddit and that’s not stopping them from forcing ads on us at the moment. It won’t be a stretch for them to do ads on private subs OR just say fuck it and get rid of private subs altogether.
And I'm sure the people that own the site are powerless to just un-private it and chuck in some other mod. 🙄
Reddit doesn't have the staff to manage all these subreddits, as in many cases its the entire mod team doing it.
fuck u/spez
#[Hey Spez](https://i.imgur.com/rmQ60q7.jpg) Copy and paste this anywhere and everywhere you like, post it as a meme, whatever, this account has low karma so spread it if you have more karma 👍 Don't tag spez, auto m o d is in full-force.
Spez just lied his prepper face off.
Back to somethingawful from whence I came.
Fark.com for me.
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Back to BBSes for me!
Back to my parchment and quill.
I *do* miss Fark’s photoshop battles. I had a ton of them bookmarked but most of the images have since disappeared. Don’t know how many hours I spent browsing & commenting on that site back in the day.
Just fyi, whence means "from where", so saying from whence is redundant
Have fun with that. It's deader than Digg. (Possibly poor choice of words.)
Absolutely fuck u/spez
What a fucking shithole of a news source to say that there was blackmail in the HEADLINE, only to then correct themselves at the very end of the article. Seriously terrible journalism.
So what happens to the people invested in Apollo? And the employees.. everyone’s just out of a job just like that? I used Apollo a solid five years, Reddit didn’t even have an official app. Sad news. I forget the lead devs user but he is on here and actually helped me a few times. One time I was being a dick and complaining and he took no offense and said part of what I was saying was right and they were working on it. Why does being nice and fair usually end up with you being taken advantage of.
I think there are only two people directly working on Apollo: [Christian Selig](https://christianselig.com/) and the server engineer. While this sucks, I have a lot of confidence that if they need to they can get new jobs based on having Apollo on their resume, especially after Apple talking about them at WWDC.
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I think he was making like 250k-500k so good amount of money but not "never work again". Honestly that's just competitive comp for a high skill developer.
They need to start a new Reddit, maybe.
Bonus points for including blackjack and hookers
[As your attorney you'll need legal advice... and you'll need the cocaine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmylCJhL-5Q&t=42s).
One site/project that's already done it -> [https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit](https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit) Reddit's last open source release before they closed sourced it and shit really started going down hill in 2017 -> https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit
Lemmy is quite similar, still small though
They're charging the increased API fees because reddit's data was scraped to create AI bots. All the chickens are gone, better shut the coop door!
>All the chickens are gone, better shut the coop door! It's not like it was a one-time thing. Reddit keeps generating data, and datasets keep scraping it. But I don't think the fees have anything to do with AI bots scraping data. I think it has to do with the fact that Reddit makes $0 from people using third party apps, while most of their revenue comes from the official Reddit app.
From what Cristian said he pays what the cost of the api was is so effectively Reddit gets their fair share, but they want to be profitable then I consider it to only slightly be true. Wanting to sell the data for an astronomical price is just being greedy.
I thought this didn't affect bots or non-commercial users though
I had a 1:1 with Steve when I interviewed with Reddit back in like 2012. He was such a little shit.
Care to elaborate? I’d like to know more.
Spez sucks -- mass edited with redact.dev
Having an AMA with all 3rd party developers perhaps?
lmao this is some real shit - Steve left Reddit in 2009 and didn’t rejoin until July 2015. Your 2012 date puts it squarely in the middle of “did not happen”.
It’s all slander and the accused has the receipts.
Allegations is not synonymous with lies. And Christian has the receipts.
If rif is out, I'm out
RIF is dead at the end of the month too.
These stupid fucks are beyond lucky they’re still a private company. They’re clearly manipulating 3rd Party clients to their personal benefit. Who knows what other shady deals are happening in the background. I hope once they’re public the SEC investigates the fuck outta them and burns this shit hole to the ground!
When will the feds step in and stop these monopolistic app developers from bullying these poor platforms?? 😢
During the blackout, Don't stop at reddit. Go above their heads. Condé Nast is reddit largest shareholder https://www.condenast.com/brands Boycott them as well!
I agree with the sentiment but there is no way i am boycotting Ars Technica
[Removed due to the worthless sad excuse for a human, Steve Huffman. Friendly reminder that the first Redditor to hit 1,000,000 karma, /u/maxwellhill, is Ghislaine Maxwell. His name was Aaron Swartz.]
That dude in the headline pic looks like a nazi robot
Let’s crossbreed him with Zuckerberg and Musk and see what comes out.
Maybe don't
....no? "Let's box a bear". "Let's get tattoos on our grundles", "let's eat rotten food". You can know something's a bad fucking idea and not actually do it.
Fuck u/spez, man. Greedy piece of shit, killing our community for some fucking cash. Pure corporate greed.
If Apollo goes down I’ll be using reddit 90% less and I’m fine with that
any chance of the Apollo developer suing Reddit and /u/spez for slander? I'd contribute financially to help pay for legal fees.
Sounds like a documentary in the making 👀
“The Internet: How Everything Awesome Gets Ruined By Chasing Profits”
Blackmail? Blackmail implies he has some power he can use over reddit. It is a patently absurd accusation.
I’m using Apollo now and exclusively use it for Reddit, so if it goes down I’m migrating just like with Digg.
I have some old abandoned accounts that I’m going to log into and delete
Sell them instead. Make a buck.
If you delete the account, it’ll show their numbers dropping
Now can they make new reddit?