this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Reddit Migration

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### About Community Tracking and helping #redditmigration to Kbin and the Fediverse. Say hello to the decentralized and open future. To see latest reeddit blackout info, see here: https://reddark.untone.uk/

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Edit: archived link, (alternative)

Copy pasted his post below for people who don't want to give Reddit traffic:

I wanted to address Reddit's continued, provably false statements, as well as answer some questions from the community, and also just say thanks.

(Before beginning, to the uninitiated, "the Reddit API" is just how apps and tools talk with Reddit to get posts in a subreddit, comments on a post, upvote, reply, etc.)

Reddit: "Developers don't want to pay"

Steve Huffman on June 15th: "These people who are mad, they’re mad because they used to get something for free, and now it’s going to be not free. And that free comes at the expense of our other users and our business. That’s what this is about. It can’t be free."

This is the false argument Steve Huffman keeps repeating the most. Developers are very happy to pay. Why? Reddit has many APIs (like voting in polls, Reddit Chat, view counts, etc.) that they haven't made available to developers, and a more formal relationship with Reddit has the opportunity to create a better API experience with more features available. I expressed this willingness to pay many times throughout phone calls and emails, for instance here's one on literally the very first phone call:

"I'm honestly looking forward to the pricing and the stuff you're rolling out provided it's enough to keep me with a job. You guys seem nothing but reasonable, so I'm looking to finding out more."

What developers do have issue with, is the unreasonably high pricing that you originally claimed would be "based in reality", as well as the incredibly short 30 days you've given developers from when you announced pricing to when developers start incurring massive charges. Charging developers 29x higher than your average revenue per user is not "based in reality".

Reddit: "We're happy to work with those who want to work with us."

No, you are not.

I outlined numerous suggestions that would lead to Apollo being able to survive, even settling on the most basic: just give me a bit more time. At that point, a week passed without Reddit even answering my email, not even so much as a "We hear you on the timeline, we're looking into it." Instead the communication they did engage in was telling internal employees, and then moderators publicly, that I was trying to blackmail them.

But was it just me who they weren't working with?

  • Many developers during Steve Huffman's AMA expressed how for several months they'd sent emails upon emails to Reddit about the API changes and received absolutely no response from Reddit (one example, another example). In what world is that "working with developers"?
  • Steve Huffman said "We have had many conversations — well, not with Reddit is Fun, he never wanted to talk to us". The Reddit is Fun developer shared emails with The Verge showing how he outlined many suggestions to Reddit, none of which were listened to. I know this as well, because I was talking with Andrew throughout all of this.

Reddit themselves promised they would listen on our call:

"I just want to say this again, I know that we've said it already, but like, we want to work with you to find a mutually beneficial financial arrangement here. Like, I want to really underscore this point, like, we want to find something that works for both parties. This is meant to be a conversation."

I know the other developers, we have a group chat. We've proposed so many solutions to Reddit on how this could be handled better, and they have not listened to an ounce of what we've said.

Ask yourself genuinely, has this whole process felt like a conversation where Reddit wants to work with both parties?

Reddit: "We're not trying to be like Twitter/Elon"

Twitter famously destroyed third-party apps a few months before Reddit did when Elon took over. When I asked about this, Reddit responded:

Reddit: "I think one thing that we have tried to be very, very, very intentional about is we are not Elon, we're not trying to be that. We're not trying to go down that same path, we're not trying to, you know, kind of blow anyone out of the water."

Steve Huffman showed how untrue this statement was in an interview with NBC last week:

In an interview Thursday with NBC News, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman praised Musk’s aggressive cost-cutting and layoffs at Twitter, and said he had chatted “a handful of times” with Musk on the subject of running an internet platform.

Huffman said he saw Musk’s handling of Twitter, which he purchased last year, as an example for Reddit to follow.

“Long story short, my takeaway from Twitter and Elon at Twitter is reaffirming that we can build a really good business in this space at our scale,” Huffman said.

Reddit: "The Apollo developer is threatening us"

Steve Huffman on June 7th on a call with moderators:

Steve Huffman: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million. This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."

As mentioned in the last post, thankfully I recorded the phone call and can show this to be false, to the extent that Reddit even apologized four times for misinterpreting it:

Reddit: "That's a complete misinterpretation on my end. I apologize. I apologize immediately."

(Full transcript, audio)

Despite this, Reddit and Steve Huffman still went on to repeat this potentially career-ending lie about me internally, and publicly to moderators, and have yet to apologize in any capacity, instead Steve's AMA has shown anger about the call being posted.

Steve, I genuinely ask you: if I had made potentially career-ending accusations of blackmail against you, and you had evidence to show that was completely false, would you not have defended yourself?

Reddit: "Christian has been saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally"

In Steve Huffman's AMA, a user asked why he attempted to discredit me through tales of blackmail. Rather than apologizing, Steve said:

"His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place—saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally."

I responded:

"Please feel free to give examples where I said something differently in public versus what I said to you. I give you full permission."

I genuinely have no clue what he's talking about, and as more than a week has passed once more, and Reddit continues to insist on making up stories, I think the onus is on me to show all the communication Steve Huffman and I have had, in order to show that I have been consistent throughout my communication, detailing that I simply want my app to not die, and offering simple suggestions that would help, to which they stopped responding:

https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-steve-email-conversation.txt

Reddit: "They threw in the towel and don't want to work with us"

Again, this is demonstrably false as shown above. I did not throw in the towel, you stopped communicating with me, to this day still not answering anything, and elected to spread lies about me. This forced my hand to shut down, as I only had weeks before I would start incurring massive charges, you showed zero desire to work with me, and I needed to begin to work with Apple on the process of refunding users with yearly subscriptions.

Reddit: "We don't want to kill third-party apps"

Regardless of your "intention", that is what you achieved. So you are either very inept at making plans that accomplish a goal, you're lying, or both.

Reddit: "Third-party apps don't provide value."

(Per an interview with The Verge.)

I could refute the "not providing value" part myself, but I will let Reddit argue with itself through statements they've made to me over the course of our calls:

"We think that developers have added to the Reddit user experience over the years, and I don't think that there's really any debating that they've been additive to the ecosystem on Reddit and we want to continue to acknowledge that."

Another:

"Our developer community has in many ways saved Reddit through some difficult times. I know in no small part, your work, when we did not have a functioning app. And not just you obviously, but it's been our developers that have helped us weather a lot of storms and adapt and all that."

Another:

"Just coming back to the sentiment inside of Reddit is that I think our development community has really been a huge part why we've survived as long as we have."

Reddit's hostility toward moderators

There's an overall tone from Reddit along the lines of "Moderators, get in line or we'll replace you" that I think is incredibly, incredibly disrespectful.

Other websites like Facebook pay literally hundreds of millions of dollars for moderators on their platform. Reddit is incredibly fortunate, if not exploitative, to get this labor completely free from unpaid, volunteer users.

The core thing to keep in mind is that these are not easy jobs that hundreds of people are lining up to undertake. Moderators of large subreddits have indicated the difficulty in finding quality moderators. It's a really tough job, you're moderating potentially millions upon millions of users, wherein even an incredibly small percentage could make your life hell, and wading through an absolutely gargantuan amount of content. Further, every community is different and presents unique challenges to moderate, an approach or system that works in one subreddit may not work at all in another.

Do a better job of recognizing the entirety of Reddit's value, through its content and moderators, are built on free labor. That's not to say you don't have bills to keep the lights on, or engineers to pay, but treat them with respect and recognize the fortunate situation you're in.

What a real leader would have done

At every juncture of this self-inflicted crisis, Reddit has shown poor management and decision making, and I've heard some users ask how it could have been better handled. Here are some steps I believe a competent leader would have undertaken:

  • Perform basic research. For instance: Is the official app missing incredibly basic features for moderators, like even being able to see the Moderator Log? Or, do blind people exist?
  • Work on a realistic timeline for developers. If it took you 43 days from announcing the desire to charge to even deciding what the pricing would be, perhaps 30 days is too short a period from when the pricing is announced to when developers could be start incurring literally millions of dollars in charges. Other companies like Dark Sky when deprecating their weather API literally gave 30 months. Such a length of time is not necessary in this case, but goes to show how extraordinarily and harmfully short Reddit's deadline was.
  • Talk to developers. Not responding to emails for weeks or months is not acceptable, nor is not listening to an ounce of what developers are able to communicate to you.

In the event that these are too difficult, you blunder the launch, and frustrate users, developers, and moderators alike:

  • Apologize, recognize that the process was not handled well, and pledge to do better, talking and listening to developers, moderators, and the community this time

Why can't you just charge $5 a month or something?

This is a really easy one: Reddit's prices are too high to permit this.

It may not surprise you to know, but users who are willing to pay for a service typically use it more. Apollo's existing subscription users use on average 473 requests per day. This is more than an average free user (240) because, unsurprisingly, they use the app more. Under Reddit's API pricing, those users would cost $3.52 monthly. You take out Apple's cut of the $5, and some fees of my own to keep Apollo running, and you're literally losing money every month.

And that's your average user, a large subset of those, around 20%, use between 1,000 and 2,000 requests per day, which would cost $7.50 and $15.00 per month each in fees, which no one is going to want to pay.

I'm far the only one seeing this, the Relay for Reddit developer, initially somewhat hopeful of being able to make a subscription work, ran the same calculations and found similar results to me.

By my count that is literally every single one of the most popular third-party apps having concluded this pricing is untenable.

And remember, from some basic calculations of Reddit's own disclosed numbers, Reddit appears to make on average approximately $0.12 per user per month, so you can see how charging developers $3.52 (or 29x higher) per user is not "based in reality" as they previously promised. That's why this pricing is unreasonable.

Can I use Apollo with my own API key after June 30th?

No, Reddit has said this is not allowed.

Refund process/Pixel Pals

Yearly users with time left on their subscription as of July 1st will automatically receive a pro-rated refund for the time remaining. I'm working with Apple to offer a process similar to Tweetbot/Twitterrific wherein users can decline the refund if they so choose, but that process requires some internal working but I'll have more details on that as soon as I know anything. Apple's estimates are in line with mine that the amount I'll be on the hook to refund will be about $250,000.

Not to turn this into an infomercial, but that is a lot of money, and if you appreciate my work I also have a fun separate virtual pets app called Pixel Pals that it would mean a lot to me if you checked out and supported (I've got a cool update coming out this week!). If you're looking for a more direct route, Apollo also has a tip jar at the top of Settings, and if that doesn't work for you, I also have a tipjar@apolloapp.io PayPal. Genuinely zero pressure.

Thanks

Thanks again for the support. It's been really hard to so quickly lose something that you built for nine years and allowed you to connect with hundreds of thousands of other people, but I can genuinely say it's made it a lot easier for us developers to see folks being so supportive of us, it's like a million little hugs.

- Christian

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[–] tinker_sky@kbin.social 97 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)
[–] TinyPizza@kbin.social 24 points 1 year ago

Similarly, had no 3rd party add but was so disgusted by how the company has acted that I'll never be able to use them again in good conscious. It feels like these sort of corporate moves of "eat a bag of shit or don't eat at all" have been really ramping up as of late. You do things that you know your users or customers won't like and then see how they'll react. Did a lot leave? Some did but now I know that the ones that are left will take whatever financial or TOS curveball that I can think up. I can make more money by providing less options, and shittier service, but I'll say the exact opposite. And when the thing we do brakes or charges you 5x the amount you signed up for then our customers will need to take half a day to get around every dead end automated messenger and customer call line that takes 2+ hours because of "covid."

[–] catarina@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago

I agree with your last point so much. I also used the official app and had a 12 year account, but fuck if I am going to just stand by and watch another corporate board make our world a bit more miserable for the sake of their profit. Let them have dust.

[–] Untitled9999@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is similar to me. I used Reddit's official app, so initially I wasn't bothered by 3rd party apps going away. But seeing Reddit's response, which is basically "users will bow down and do what we want, they will generate revenue for us and not complain, and we will never listen to them", is what made me not want to use Reddit again. So now I'm not using it.

[–] WTFisthisOMGreally@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As an Apollo devotee, I find it so heartwarming to hear the solidarity from folks like you.

[–] HauntedSacredCow@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

Same here. I feel so bad that Christian is having to deal with all this. He’s doing a spectacular job at defending himself from the corporate attacks but he shouldn’t have to. I really hope he gets more visibility in the media, because all the articles I’ve been seeing in the mainstream are from spez perspective and that’s a shame.

[–] skip0110@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

Between misrepresenting their conversations with app devs and mods, and trying to spin a different story in media outlets, and lumping me into a "database of human conversation"... I really don't want to contribute to or engage with a company like that in any way. None of it directly affects me but I see no reason to help assholes out with free content, ad views, or votes.

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[–] Reese@kbin.social 64 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Man, I’m really annoyed that I won’t be able to use Apollo but at the same time, this is just what I needed to cut the cord on Reddit.

I hope Christian finds a bigger and better project going forward even after pixel pals.

[–] vyvanse@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I won't lie, I've been enjoying this past week with (minimal) Reddit use!

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[–] Thaliff@kbin.social 58 points 1 year ago

What a real leader would have done

This whole paragraph is the best Fuck You to spez.

[–] feidry@midwest.social 56 points 1 year ago (3 children)

What a class act. He's really showing ol Stevey boi what an adult looks like. I wasn't an Apollo user (RiF, instead) but he makes me want to donate to support.

[–] drumdonuttea@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@feidry
I went back and checked and apparently hadn't bought the premium RiF app over the 11 years I was on reddit so I went back and bought it this week as a final thank you.

[–] Jenga@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

I just did the same. Says a lot that I never even noticed I was on the non-premium version since the base client was so excellent.

[–] MasterScootie@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

I did the same at the start of this month. I had been using RiF since High School in 2013 and had never even considered the premium version due to how good the standard version was.

[–] somniumx@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago

Never used Apollo and never had an Iphone, but i just gave a couple bucks just for the work it takes him to be this transparent about all what is happening.

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[–] Slartibartfast@kbin.social 38 points 1 year ago

It really blows my mind how good of a deal reddit has (had?) with regards to content and how determined they seem to be to blow it up.

By that I mean: they make the site, all the content is created for them for free, all the moderation, sifting through horrible porn, nazi shit etc. is done for them, also for free, people create apps to more effectively drive traffic to their site, also for free, literally all they really have to do is run ads to rake in the cash, keep the servers up and try to provide better tools for the free moderators to sort through the free content more effectively.

They only do one of those things reliably, and people still contribute endlessly for free. So really all they have to do is not directly torpedo all the free labour they rely on, and they even fucked that up.

[–] speedycat2014@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm a RIF person myself but I have so much respect for Apollo and Christian's work, even as I've never had the opportunity to use it, just from how he's handled and documented this situation. I'm sad both Apollo and RIF are being taken from us and I hope Christian and Andrew find amazing success in whatever they decide to work on next.

[–] oryx@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I'm a Sync user and I feel the same. All of these third party all developers seem like great people and they all have my full support despite whatever all I chose to use.

[–] astrsk@kbin.social 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s really difficult listening to those audio clips. Arguably defamatory territory.

[–] EvilMonkeySlayer@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

It really does make me wonder at what point the apollo dev does take Huffman to court for defamation.

[–] heliosef@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

No uncertain terms, pure transparency, with receipts to boot. Christian Selig is a legend for this.

[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

"Long story short, my takeaway from Twitter and Elon at Twitter is reaffirming that we can build a really good business in this space at our scale,” Huffman said.

Really all you need to know.

[–] demvoter@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Really good business to Elon and spez means Nazis screaming all over your timeline.

[–] Lianodel@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Twitter's a cesspit now, Musk's reputation took a hit, and Twitter's valuation is something like a third of what Elon paid for a controlling share eight months ago. What is it that Spez thinks is "good business" about all this?

I don't like calling people stupid, because it's usually reductive and lazy, but... how else can you explain it?

[–] jherazob@kbin.social 19 points 1 year ago (15 children)

I honestly don't know why Christian hasn't sued Reddit and Spez for a bunch of money, the evidence has been in the open for days

[–] Lilkev@kbin.social 30 points 1 year ago

For all we know Christian is talking to a lawyer behind the scenes, it's typically not recommended by attorneys to announce that you plan on suing someone

[–] MisterMoo@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don’t think he’s been harmed in any way that’s illegal. Defamation, perhaps, but those are hard and expensive cases to prosecute.

This situation sucks and Reddit has blown all kinds of good will, but I’m doubtful that they’ve broken any laws.

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[–] Comet_Tracer@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

Thanks for putting the text under the link!

[–] Spitfire@pawb.social 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s disgusting seeing how Reddit has treated Christian and other third-party app devs.

I’m glad that he can refute every claim Reddit has made against him with proof to back it all up.

I think Huffman is set in following Elon’s way though and I don’t see him reverting their decisions. I hope all this negative attention turns investors away though as they keep trying to go public.

[–] MisterMoo@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

I can just hear Elon on the phone to Huffman: “Stay strong, like I’m doing with the vaccine disinformation.”

[–] Crimfresh@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Banned permanently from the site for this extremely
mild comment. Anyone know how to see what I wrote? I would like to forward my story to journalists while Reddit is a hot topic.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/146ovat/comment/jnsj3w0

It's removed but it simply complained about r/politics moderators and told the story of them banning me permanently for saying, "only a fool links opinion pieces as evidence.". They banned me for "harassment.".

[–] AboveAverageJoe@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Fucking ridiculous.

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[–] Countmacula@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago

Fuck spez for this

[–] crowsby@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago

I'm really curious what rank-and-file reddit employees think about Steve Huffman and this whole affair. The guy has singlehandedly taken a match to their equity and I can't imagine that would prompt a positive response.

[–] Angry_Maple@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago

I kind of wonder if reddit may have shit the bed worse than we thought.

Could you imagine a scenario where Spez already made a deal with investors under the table and now can't give those investors what they were promised? To me, this is all very sudden. The company has come off as being panicky since the start of all this. Spez's responses remind me of someone who is really worried about something else being discovered.

Time will tell, I suppose.

[–] md5crypto@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

u/spez is a literal psychopath. If he is trying to destroy ApolloDev, who wouldn't he destroy?

[–] c4@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] rylin@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

This post is what finally drove me to delete my 15+ year old Reddit account and then delete Apollo from my phone. I was going to wait until July 1st in hopes Reddit and the 3PA devs could work something out but it's clear on Reddit's unwillingness to change or back down.

In other news, this is my first comment using Lemmy!

[–] Fingerblaster007@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I hope that fucking place burns to the ground with spez in it. That being said, someone needs to make a decent app for either lemmy or competition to reddit. Cause this isn’t really cutting it

[–] BiaThemis@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Already being done! In the mean time, Jerboa is not really that bad if you are on Android.

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[–] Srootus@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Speaking as someone who has no experience and is a professional with the law, this looks to me like a very very rare case where a defamation lawsuit might actually land.

Most defamation lawsuits fail because the acusser has to prove without a doubt the defendant lied to defame. Which with the phone call Christian has, should count as proof.

Interesting times ahead, if Christian goes through with it.

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[–] leraje@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Steve is a silly little boy trying to be Musks mini-me

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[–] Designate6361@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Makes me sad though, most Reddit users won't care and judging by some of the reactions in some subs they'll go after anyone who tries to stand up for themselves. I'm just glad I found Lemmy/Kbin

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[–] ArcSil@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

I am one of those people who have never used Apollo (I use Android), and I never could get into the rhythm of RIF when I tried it -- I prefer the OG old.reddit.com on browser as I hate the "new" Reddit. On the outside, it appears that I have no skin in this game.

That being said, I found Reddit's/Spez's/Admins' handling of the situation revolting (no pun intended). In solidarity, I tried both a Lemmy instance and kbin (I prefer kbin's UI more, but Lemmy is still pretty solid), as well as dip my feet into Mastodon once I was acquainted with the Fediverse concept. I am trying my best to reduce my time on Reddit and I am mainly using it for professional-related subreddits that have not migrated yet.

It is mind-blowing at how bad Reddit handled the situation. Instead of stepping back and negotiating with developers, they're telling them to either give a boat load of money or fuck off. And judging by the posts that I've seen from developers, it seems that even if they are able to magic into existence a boat load of money, then they still won't get access to the same API calls that Reddit's in-house (broken) app has and will continue to be second class citizens.

Yes, Reddit technically has the legal right to charge users an arm and a leg to access user-generated content in high-quality subreddits made possible by hard-working mods, but Reddit should not be surprised if the users and the mods say "fuck it" and take their ball to a ball court that is not going to charge them to access their own content.

[–] TGRush@forum.fail 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've also made sure there's an archive on https://archive.is/qD5b6

I wasn't the first one to archive here, but I still want to share for everyone interested.

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[–] coffeetest@lemmy.one 3 points 1 year ago

It is weird to me to see so many people put forward "Reddit deserves to make money" and endless plans on how to generate revenue from API, apps or whatever etc but just entirely miss that bad faith, is bad faith. There is no negotiation and this CEO will run Reddit into the ground or not but he isn't listening at all to the community as far as I can tell.

Fact is he is the one that is responsible for massively increasing expenses by nearly tripling the workforce while at the same time having no real plan (any plan?) to make money from that move.

It is sad because you know no matter how this works out he will be fine and I bet a bunch of Reddit staff lose their jobs and the community is left floundering.

Let's say no to for-profit business driven social media altogether.

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