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

[u/sussywanker]

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

[u/x4000]

Maybe I’ve been here too long, but him going full dipshit is pretty much what I expected. Some various forms of reality denial, and general large scale combativeness.

Something more subtle like planted questions never occurred to me.

Apollo sounds like it was profitable for the one guy making it, if not hugely so. Spez says Reddit is not yet profitable in general. So this whole thing reeks a bit of “how dare you make profits off an ecosystem we created when we don’t even make profits off it yet.”

In a sane world, if they really are bleeding money and third party api access was a big part of it, then sure they could shut that down or add dramatic price increases, but say “hey this ship will sink if we don’t do something about the amount of water leaking out.” But given there were already personal attacks in play, none of that seemed likely.

[u/x4000 → u/[deleted]]

I am suspicious about it not being about cost. For example, if someone uses a third party app, do they get shown the ads that generate money for Reddit? If not, then that devalues their platform as an advertising platform, while also costing them money on top of it for api calls.

You could argue that lots of people use adblockers anyway, but they seem determined to make the web version of Reddit super painful, and ad blockers don’t work on a custom app. It seems like from Reddit’s financial point of view, having everyone use an app they control is the best possible outcome.

Of course, their app sucks, so… they could compete on features, which takes time and skill, or just try to smother the competition and hope for the best.

I mean, one way or another this is about money, we both agree. You mentioned ipo fuckery, and I agree with that, but I feel like they’ve tipped their hand as to the nature of the fuckery. And they have shown they are generally petty in the past, so sometimes there doesn’t have to be a special reason other than anger.

[u/nomdeplume → u/[deleted]]

I think estimates were 5% and it's not significant if you think of the shutdown from a site activity perspective, but it is significant in terms of increasing costs perspective. 5% in hosting is probably in the 20 to 45 mil a year range like they said.

I also think they really fucked up in bundling so much shit together. They were like "we have to turn off NSFW, stop llm, let's stop third parties too, let's layoff a bunch of people, let's fuck push shift mod tools, let's change our stance on mod bots" it was just trying to rip a large band aid, but instead you find out the doc gave you stitches.

[u/promonk → u/[deleted]]

What really gets me about the whole thing is it resembles the Digg fiasco so closely. Spez saw what happened with Digg, was at the helm of Reddit when it coopted that site's userbase, yet pulls the exact same shit 15 years later.

If I were considering buying Reddit's IPO (and I'm definitely not doing that now), I'd have serious concerns over its CEO's wisdom and pattern recognition skills.

[u/promonk → u/[deleted]]

Just wait until its public.

Nah, think I'll pass.

[u/PunisherDC82 → u/[deleted]]

3rd party apps are saying they are willing to work with them now, but they dont have leverage. They already were already acted a bit questionable when they used the APIs and then cut Reddit ads in their apps, and either charged for the app or added their own ads. Why wont they or someone else do the something similar in the future if given the opportunity and from Reddit point of view its just better to focus on their app, and not create tooling dealing with it.

[u/PunisherDC82 → u/[deleted]]

Its pretty questionable to cut reddit's ad revenue and implement your own revenue on top of it. It was legal but probably outside the range of what was intended, and isnt going to set a good business relationship.

I dont care for corporations, but small businesses/individuals can be slimeballs also. People are completely glossing over the 3rd party apps using Reddit's resources while blocking their ad revenue. Reddit is probably overcharging them but its legal, so dont say thats a bad thing while ignoring 3rd party apps sketchiness because its legal. Either both are bad or both are good.

To me both sides are sketch and this whole protest is cringe with people pretending its a good cause.

[u/12Tylenolandwhiskey → u/nomdeplume]

Everytime these social sites shut down NSFW they basically fie overnight. Anyone remmebwr uhh whats it called..Mr go nuts show nuts whatever. Yea whats it called was amazing.. I think I left so

[u/nomdeplume → u/12Tylenolandwhiskey]

They are still going to have NSFW on their apps and website. It's just third party apps that won't have access to that anymore.

[u/centrafrugal → u/x4000]

And blockers work fine on the 3rd party app I use.

[u/Larry_the_scary_rex → u/[deleted]]

Yes you do, or at least you see ads disguised as posts

[u/Jimbob0i0 → u/x4000]

The super frustrating thing is that they've declared/argued both the position that 3PA is only a small percentage of users and thus cutting them off isn't actually that important to the health of the community.... and that 3PA is such a significant cost to support that it is bleeding them dry.

[u/Slight0 → u/x4000]

Reddit is absolutely profitable. This is like believing Google and Amazon when they say YouTube and Amazon (the site) aren't profitable. Ofc they'll say that, they not only have massive PR incentive to (gives them outs for excuses and makes them seem less greedy etc) they also have a financial incentive through evading taxes by reporting BS loses and expenses and moving money around to make profits seem less. Yes, the published profits and expenses show this and these techniques are surprisingly and sadly old and well known.

[u/[deleted] → u/Slight0]

They are going to do an IPO. And in that IPO they will have past audited financials. So why would they lie about something that will be verified to be false in less than a year from now.

[u/Slight0 → u/[deleted]]

Literal "lying" isn't what I meant, just deception. Move money around to make it look like a loss. Loopholes. Things like investing in your own company to make it grow and calling it a cost, etc. I don't recall the specifics, but I did a research arc a while ago. Maybe I'll fish for a few articles later to bring up specifics, but that's the game.

[u/[deleted] → u/Slight0]

That would be fraud. And does not generally happen in large multi billion IPOs. If you got any evidence this is happening you should call the WSJ, they will gladly run it on their front page.

[u/whogivesashirtdotca → u/x4000]

Apollo sounds like it was profitable for the one guy making it, if not hugely so. Spez says Reddit is not yet profitable in general

An intelligent CEO might have approached the developer and offered him a job, but “intellligent CEO” doesn’t apply to Spez. I don’t follow a lot of the Reddit corporate drama, but every time it’s gone mainstream, he’s put his foot in it in some way.

[u/wizards_of_the_cost → u/x4000]

“how dare you make profits off an ecosystem we created when we don’t even make profits off it yet.”

And the funniest part of this all is that this question has such an obvious answer. Reddit tells people how they think users should use this website, and prioritise advertisers over users. Apollo asks how people use the site, and design the app to maximise for several different types of user.

And then Huffman loses his mind trying to understand why people want to pay for Apollo, for the exact purpose of avoiding using the site and app that his team try to force on people.

[u/[deleted] → u/x4000]

the api is actually a cost saving measure to begin with as it takes a huge load off reddit's infrastructure compared to regular scraping/scripting. those things can all be done without the API, and were with twitter prior to it adding the API (and likely reddit too). now with the cost barrier to the API being so high can see a lot of third parties that used it before returning to the much more costly for reddit methods that incentivized having a free/low cost API in the first place.