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Comment by atraac | Hacker News Reader

> They are trying to keep the main, core userbase happy.

But there's a very simple way to do that... sit down with people, figure out a solution that doesn't involve a single dev spending 20m USD a year just to maintain an app that people like. There's multitudes of ways this whole thing could've been solved, they clearly don't wont to solve it.

Paid API is NOT going to make reddit profitable, especially at this price. It's funny to me that anyone actually even believes that. Hosting costs are not the problem, they have 2000 employees. For a site that can't get any feature fully functioning, has one of the worst ads in the business that noone wants to buy and is almost fully maintained by community for free, it's quite a lot of employees.

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100% agreement with you here. You have one of the first logical arguments for any push back.

> figure out a solution that doesn't involve a single dev spending 20m USD a year just to maintain an app that people like

Absolutely, I was hoping that would happen when I saw the first Apollo thread(s) a few weeks ago. But Christian took this very personally, and he decided to take his toys and go home. reddit is not at all innocent here. They definitely had many missteps, but I think both sides did. And now that talks have broken down, reddit has little reason to come back to the table.

> Paid API is NOT going to make reddit profitable, especially at this price. It's funny to me that anyone actually even believes that. Hosting costs are not the problem, they have 2000 employees. For a site that can't get any feature fully functioning, has one of the worst ads in the business that noone wants to buy and is almost fully maintained by community for free, it's quite a lot of employees.

This is the heart of it for me personally. reddit has much bigger problems than just the API hosting/pricing. Drawing the line in the sand about the API and profitability doesnt make a lot of sense. Having 2000 employees (why?), hosting images and videos (value?), nfts (why?) and not following through on features is their actual downfall. They pivoted away from their core competency -- content aggregation and easy to use forums. I think they will survive though.

Why shouldn't he have taken it personally? He got 30 days notice from Reddit that they will change the pricing in a way likely to kill his business? With more advance notice he could have investigated ways to adapt his business or tried to lobby politely for a different pricing model. With this short notice he basically was forced to shut down.

I do not fault Christian at all for taking it personally, Reddit handled it very poorly.

And to add insult to the injury, u/spez was caught red handed lying about the conversation and what took place, and then when that surfaced, doubled down.

> With more advance notice he could have investigated ways to adapt his business or tried to lobby politely for a different pricing model.

It seems insane on Reddit's part. If someone's referring that much traffic to you, choosing to cut them off entirely instead of negotiating monetization of that channel seems irrational.

Then to take an adversarial stance against public outcry as well...Reddit really "hates teh fans."

Tech leaders really are starting to out themselves as Nouveau Riche Narcissists instead of the visionaries they pretend to be.

> But Christian took this very personally, and he decided to take his toys and go home.

I mean wouldn't you? He's built an app that brings him a decent income, he can work on it full time, he based his career on that application. What reaction would you expect out of f.e. youtubers when youtube made it suddenly unable for them to sustain themselves? I mean basing your life/income/business on another business is never a good idea, but this is how a big chunk of the world works. I think he has all the rights to be angry about it.

Im not sure what I would do. But I do know that if I reacted similarly, by posting all of the private meetings and communications to the public web, where I knew a hornet's nest would be stirred up (his subreddit obviously), I can't expect much of a relationship with reddit to survive after the fact.

I can understand how he feels, but he had to know that this would happen.

> I think he has all the rights to be angry about it.

Yup, I totally agree, and I sympathize with him. Hes in a bad spot, but unfortunately, theres not much he can do anymore unless reddit changes their mind.

To be fair from what I understand he only posted the private conversation because Huffman was intentionally lying about him to a large audience and he was forced to defend himself. I'm not saying he's handled this amazingly but Reddit absolutely dug their own hole in this case.

I don't think even Alastair Campbell could teach them effective crisis management.

I think this definitely could have been handled much more tactfully on both sides. Im not sure which large audience you are referring to, but Christian references a call with some moderators that seems to have sparked all of this[1]. Prior to the horrendous AMA, spez hadn't posted on reddit for 11 months. Christian was definitely the one to bring it to the public eye. Either way, both sides should share some of the blame.

I think this was definitely a case of the little guy not knowing how to navigate such a volatile situation. Some people might even find it pretty unprofessional to joke about reddit buying him out for half-priced at $10mil during an important discussion. Which, btw, would have shutdown the app also, except with a large windfall. How much of that was actually a joke vs testing the waters?

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...

Christian’s one dude. And he’s a dev. Most of us here are devs (or at least have technical backgrounds) yeah? Ok now imagine any of us get on a phone call to negotiate terms and defend our work on a business call with another idiot (spez). Yeah…

So you’re right neither side handled it the best. But Reddit has no excuse. They have a team of business so-called experts and have resources to handle this correctly. At this point it’s clear that they are intentionally choosing to go this route of being hostile to 3rd party apps and alienating their users.

Considering the importance of the negotiations for Apollo’s developer he could have considered hiring a middleman for the call, that would probably have prevented some misunderstandings

> Im not sure what I would do. But I do know that if I reacted similarly, by posting all of the private meetings and communications to the public web, where I knew a hornet's nest would be stirred up (his subreddit obviously), I can't expect much of a relationship with reddit to survive after the fact.

I mean, in his message he said as much. But at that point, r/spez was slandering him anyhow, so he knew he was out either way.

Might as well set the record straight first.

> Yup, I totally agree, and I sympathize with him. Hes in a bad spot, but unfortunately, theres not much he can do anymore unless reddit changes their mind.

It's a hard lesson that's been learned over and over. If you don't control your platform, ultimately you're at the mercy of the people who do.

Something iOS and Android app creators, and Windows application developers have had to learn over the years.

> It's a hard lesson that's been learned over and over. If you don't control your platform, ultimately you're at the mercy of the people who do.

The lesson hasn't been learned at all - most of us depend on systems we do not control, and show no solidarity when one of us is debased with an arbitrary and capricious decision.

> private meetings and communications

Private meetings aren’t private after the CEO posts a completely mischaracterized version of said meeting already. Canada is also a one-party consent state, so he was fully in his right to do everything he did.

> I can't expect much of a relationship with reddit to survive after the fact.

It’s funny that this is the straw that caused you to think the relationship was over, and not the obvious and easily disproven libel that the CEO kept doubling down on.

Anyone that looked at the situation objectively could see who was clearly in the wrong, and it wasn’t Christian as you keep implying. Reddit completely torpedoed their relationship at every single turn and at this point has quadrupled down on it.

> posts a completely mischaracterized version of said meeting already

Do you have a link to that? Ive been looking. I can only find Christian's account of the events [1]

> one-party consent state, so he was fully in his right to do everything he did

And I fully support his decision to do so. Ive even done the same in Japan when I was against a very hostile CEO. But posting publicly moves into very different realms (also not illegal) outside of just recording discussions.

> as you keep implying

In fact, I dont. I keep acknowledging blame on both sides of the equation. Go back and objectively read the discussion. Ive been much more critical of reddit. Emotions are pretty high. And those are much easier to use in discussions than deferring to unknown facts. So, I understand the weird flip-flopping of down and up votes.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...

> But posting publicly moves into very different realms (also not illegal) outside of just recording discussions.

It really does not, even if it hurts spez's (and your) feelings.

> Ive been much more critical of reddit.

You literally pretend things they did didn't happen. You can say you've been critical, but you have pretty much shifted the blame entirely on Christian the whole time.

> It’s funny that this is the straw that caused you to think the relationship was over

Are you kidding? Christian posted in public to reddit about his failed negotiations. That was definitely a scorch the earth policy. reddit and/or spez had not posted about Apollo prior to that.

> Apollo

> Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million.

> Prices we released work out to one dollar a month per user; if Apollo doesn’t put effort forth, it hits three dollars per month.

> (As mentioned in Mod Tool section above) Pushshift will come back online for mod tools within a week or two.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/143sho8/admins_c...

Are you kidding? It took literal seconds to find.

Thanks for the link. That definitely adds some extra context to the situation. I don’t subscribe there; so, that’s an easy one to miss. It got buried pretty good.

But I admit it’s an important one. Unfortunately, I didn’t see it pop up on popular last week.

Not to mention he has another business which can support him. So why would he take on a massive liability risk to try to keep it going when he can afford to just walk away?

they were going to force him to pay 2million a month starting in a month. what else could he do other than "take his toys and go home" which is a very reductive statement.

they could have served ads to the api. they could have had some profit sharing agreement. any routes it could have gone but they chose the most antagonistic one.

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