Reddit pulls a Twitter. Third Party Apps will cost some developers $20 MILLION/yr.

[Taf the Ghost]

43 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

This is kind of a trend I see with a lot of tech companies nowadays, especially in streaming. There seems to be great pressure to cut costs, and turn a profit, and companies do appear to be willing to become the bad guy to do it. 
 

Also, I have to wonder how dire Reddit’s finances are. Compared to Instagram, for example, Reddit (at least the site) seems to be far lighter on ads, which leads me to believe their ad revenue is fairly small. 

I suspect we're going to find out from Q2 reporting in a few months that Data Collection Sales have tanked. 

[Kisai]

20 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Or better yet, "It's open source; you write the feature you want!"

Ugh, I hate that. That's how OSS projects lose momentum and eventually die. The people with power either:

a) don't listen to any input "This is how it is, because I want it to be this way (despite that's not how any competitive software, or even similar software do it)" 

b) depend on software libraries built upon software libraries, and refuse to update them because it's too hard.

 

Like, yes, use libraries to save time, but when you app or game uses 6000 libraries to write "hello world", might want to reconsider the surface area for bugs to come out of that.

 

Software written in python, ruby, node, perl, all have this intense code-rot problem caused by depending on libraries or wrappers around C++ libraries and they are constantly "looking for maintainers", someone to basically chase the coderot the developer of the C++ library induces by needlessly changing or refactoring, or updating from C++03 to C++17, or changing to or from Boost to the C++ compiler's native STL. Writing software in C++ has become less portable over time, and since it's the foundation layer of every scripting language, so many things just get needlessly broken.

 

Maybe that's where AI "programming" can solve things. No need for maintainers, just tell the AI to upgrade the syntax to work with newer languages.

 

[Ydfhlx]

5 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Except it's about what you consider "fault".

Reddit CEO claims that Apollo dev lies, changes versions, says different things to the public than to them, and tried to blackmail them.

 

The Apollo dev released phone calls showing that it's reddit who's doing all of this, and urged reddit to show any conversation where he'd do any of what they claim. Reddit has nothing.

[wanderingfool2]

9 minutes ago, Ydfhlx said:

Reddit CEO claims that Apollo dev lies, changes versions, says different things to the public than to them, and tried to blackmail them.

 

The Apollo dev released phone calls showing that it's reddit who's doing all of this, and urged reddit to show any conversation where he'd do any of what they claim. Reddit has nothing.

From all I've seen the conversation that was posted by Apollo themselves (and the transcript part) could have sounded as a veiled threat (i.e. blackmail).

 

The tl;dr; of the portion where the "miscommunication" happened.

 

On Reddit's side it was 100% clear that the phone conversation was cutting out.

Reddit clarified that they know he was saying he was "joking", but was wanting to take everything thing said seriously (which if you haven't figured out is corporate talk of don't make jokes while we are trying to have a serious conversation).

Apollo Dev after this STILL makes reference to Reddit paying $10 mill to keep Apollo quiet.  [Whether or not the intent in somewhere else, from Reddit's side of thing]

 

Also, Reddit being in California it's 100% illegal for them to record the calls so even if there was evidence only Apollo would have it since Apollo apparently recorded all calls.  Reddit doesn't have the luxury of going back to the calls to verify what was said (or show how the cutting out of key portions can make it like that).  To say for reddit to show conversations is literally asking them to do something they cannot do legally (and if they did have those phone conversations then they would get into more legal trouble because Reddit is in a two consent party state).

 

Oh and to anyone; I don't know if it applies but PIPEDA...depends whether or not Apollo counts as an organization, if so then Apollo violated the law by not informing

[maplepants]

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Apollo Dev after this STILL makes reference to Reddit paying $10 mill to keep Apollo quiet.

That's because it puts the lie to Reddit's API pricing. If they really thought that they needed $20 million a year from Apollo in order to stay in the green, then buying him out for $10 million would be an absolute bargain that they'd jump on in a heartbeat.

 

It's also why it was clearly a joke. Reddit is on that call lying right to his face in saying that these prices come anywhere close to reflecting reality. So his offer is "mostly a joke" because there's no way they would offer, but if they were stupid enough he'd of course take it.

[Sauron]

Cringe. Oh well, just like with youtube I imagine third party apps will resort to scraping the actual site. Inefficient but effective... and free. If people actually care enough that is...

[starsmine]

8 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Also, Reddit being in California it's 100% illegal for them to record the calls so even if there was evidence only Apollo would have it since Apollo apparently recorded all calls.  Reddit doesn't have the luxury of going back to the calls to verify what was said (or show how the cutting out of key portions can make it like that).  To say for reddit to show conversations is literally asking them to do something they cannot do legally (and if they did have those phone conversations then they would get into more legal trouble because Reddit is in a two consent party state).

Apollo is Canadian. I question how much the two-party consent laws in California has applies when being used to call out Spuz for straight face lying about the content of the phone call and was international. It is hard to make those laws stick to parties that are out of state.

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

Reddit is now completely down lol. The site crapped itself

[wanderingfool2]

6 hours ago, maplepants said:

That's because it puts the lie to Reddit's API pricing. If they really thought that they needed $20 million a year from Apollo in order to stay in the green, then buying him out for $10 million would be an absolute bargain that they'd jump on in a heartbeat.

 

It's also why it was clearly a joke. Reddit is on that call lying right to his face in saying that these prices come anywhere close to reflecting reality. So his offer is "mostly a joke" because there's no way they would offer, but if they were stupid enough he'd of course take it.

No, no business person would say that Apollo must be worth $10m if it's costing Reddit in $20m without looking at the numbers.

 

To put it bluntly Apollo's app removes ads, so even if you were to buy it you'd have to now change it to have ads (which it was targeted as not having ads before).  So right there you could potentially lose revenue because you have users who wouldn't stand for a higher price to have no ads.  There is also then the burden that  you now have to keep more employees to manage/maintain an app that they think also has an equivalent to (the official reddit app).  If they truly thought that Apollo had features in the app that they wanted Reddit themselves could have just copied the app already.

 

This is what I find so wrong about the situation, that everyone assumes they know what Reddit is making and how much each user is worth.  They are not a public company,  unless if you are an investor in the company you will not know all the fine grained details to on the cost and Apollo's dev DID NOT show anything; as based on what people say is the DAU vs MAU there could be a very very wide range in how the numbers are calculated.

 

58 minutes ago, starsmine said:

Apollo is Canadian. I question how much the two-party consent laws in California has applies when being used to call out Spuz for straight face lying about the content of the phone call and was international. It is hard to make those laws stick to parties that are out of state.

Again, if you are referring to lying as part of "threats" then I 100% agree with Spuz that it did come off as lying.  You have to remember the context that there was clear audio issues between the two (and a recording from one side wouldn't prove it).

 

Also, I was talking about people saying that Reddit should offer their proof like phone calls etc...and my statement holds true California is a 2 party state.  They wouldn't have been allowed to record a phone call; so we are in the tricky situation Reddit cannot record phone calls, and legally might not be allowed releasing email chains and yet Apollo is releasing things that paint them in a better light [although again Apollo did release the transcript which to me I understand how if someone's cutting in an out it's terrible practice to make jokes].

 

It is in effect saying Apollo can record a call while Reddit is legally not allowed to and having people complain that Reddit isn't releasing calls that prove them right.

 

 

On the note of two party consent, yes you are right a one party consent overrides the two party consent in the one direction.  The question then becomes though is Canada truly a one party consent (and to what degree).

 

If Apollo is considered an organization instead of an individual (as it was being conducted as a business), then no Canada isn't an one party consent.  PIPEDA takes precedence, and you need to express what the purpose of the recording is for.

 

Even for an individual, you can record but I'm not actually sure it gives you a right to publish the phone call (there's provisions in the law in regards to the uses in which you are allowed to)

 

[linkboy]

46 minutes ago, Deadpool2onBlu-Ray said:

Reddit is now completely down lol. The site crapped itself

 

Sounds like the site couldn't handle so many subs being set to private.

[Athan Immortal]

41 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

No, no business person would say that Apollo must be worth $10m if it's costing Reddit in $20m without looking at the numbers.

Very bad take, and it's pretty obvious you haven't looked at the numbers, no other site charges this much for API access. It doesn't cost reddit $20 million a year.

[wanderingfool2]

13 hours ago, Athan Immortal said:

Very bad take, and it's pretty obvious you haven't looked at the numbers, no other site charges this much for API access. It doesn't cost reddit $20 million a year.

What's a bad take is you not trying to understand that costs aren't just associated with API calls themselves.  You are approaching it like someone who hasn't ever tried to cut costs at a business or had to look at cost opportunity.

 

It's also silly comparing to other sites, if lets say other sites aren't making money or we don't know what the cost opportunity is.  It's like saying other tech forums have too much ads and they should be able to operate with minimal ads because LTT does (without having a clue that LTT forums are effectively subsidized or doesn't really strive to make a profit).

 

And as an fyi, remember Reddit's is supposedly $12k per 50M, lets look at something like Google Maps.

 

500k = $840 (Maps static API) [or $84,000 per 50M]

500k = $2917 (Maps JS API) [or $2.9m per 50M]

 

Or you know lets look at bing's search API pricing

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/apis/pricing

1k = $15 (Bing Web Search) [$750k / 50M]

 

The trouble is people like you are blinded by what they THINK is the answer without thinking what is being said as the argument.  You are more than welcome to go look at page 2 where I clearly stated what my approximated numbers were based on what I could find of the public numbers [while stating that it's a private company so we can only guess at certain things

 

[Ydfhlx]

13 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

From all I've seen the conversation that was posted by Apollo themselves (and the transcript part) could have sounded as a veiled threat (i.e. blackmail).

Misunderstanding or not, it was clarified during the same phone call.

13 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

On Reddit's side it was 100% clear that the phone conversation was cutting out.

A multi milion dollar (likely multi bilion) international corporation doesn't do such drastic moves because "phone conversation was cutting out".

13 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Also, Reddit being in California it's 100% illegal for them to record the calls so even if there was evidence only Apollo would have it since Apollo apparently recorded all calls.

So, they could for example ask the dev to release specific phone call, since he claims to have recorded all. Because I assume they have specific phone call(s) in mind if they're not lying - the accusations were pretty serious, after all.

[Qyygle]

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

What's a bad take is you not trying to understand that costs aren't just associated with API calls themselves.  You are approaching it like someone who hasn't ever tried to cut costs at a business or had to look at cost opportunity.

 

It's also silly comparing to other sites, if lets say other sites aren't making money or we don't know what the cost opportunity is.  It's like saying other tech forums have too much ads and they should be able to operate without ads because LTT does (without having a clue that LTT forums are effectively subsidized or doesn't really strive to make a profit).

 

And as an fyi, remember Reddit's is supposedly $12k per 50M, lets look at something like Google Maps.

 

500k = $840 (Maps static API) [or $84,000 per 50M]

500k = $2917 (Maps JS API) [or $2.9m per 50M]

 

Or you know lets look at bing's search API pricing

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/apis/pricing

1k = $15 (Bing Web Search) [$750k / 50M]

 

The trouble is people like you are blinded by what they THINK is the answer without thinking what is being said as the argument.  You are more than welcome to go look at page 2 where I clearly stated what my approximated numbers were based on what I could find of the public numbers [while stating that it's a private company so we can only guess at certain things

 

You know what Reddit could do if it wanted to? Release these numbers you keep quoting.

If they look bad, because Apollo is 'lying' or 'making up numbers we peons don't have access to', the answer seems simple...

 

Tell us the true numbers then. If Apollo's blanking out Reddit's part of the conversation, then hey, release that side. We're all waiting.

And while we're waiting, we won't be on Reddit.

[LAwLz]

9 minutes ago, Qyygle said:

Tell us the true numbers then. If Apollo's blanking out Reddit's part of the conversation, then hey, release that side. We're all waiting.

See:

5 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Also, I was talking about people saying that Reddit should offer their proof like phone calls etc...and my statement holds true California is a 2 party state.  They wouldn't have been allowed to record a phone call; so we are in the tricky situation Reddit cannot record phone calls, and legally might not be allowed releasing email chains and yet Apollo is releasing things that paint them in a better light [although again Apollo did release the transcript which to me I understand how if someone's cutting in an out it's terrible practice to make jokes].

 

Sounds to me like Reddit might not have a recording because of the laws in the state they operate in.

So it might be a case where only Apollo has "evidence" and can tamper with it however much they want, and Reddit is not legally allowed to submit untampered evidence because they might not be allowed to have that evidence to begin with.

 

 

But who knows? It seems like the entire story is like 90% speculation, spoken with 100% confidence. I don't know what to believe anymore.

[Qyygle]

2 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

See:

 

This isn't about the phone call, it's about the operating cost against the API cost he's stating makes Reddit's position justifieable here.

If they wanted to earn back the public trust they've lost over the past few days, explain the API pricing. Show the receipts. Otherwise, keeping quiet is a pretty dammnable statement in itself.

[LAwLz]

Just now, Qyygle said:

This isn't about the phone call, it's about the operating cost against the API cost he's stating makes Reddit's position justifieable here.

I don't really think that would prove anything.

Even if Reddit showed their operating costs people could just say they were fake if they didn't align with their beliefs, and they would disclose corporate information they probably want to keep secret. It's a lose-lose situation.

[linkboy]

6 minutes ago, Qyygle said:

This isn't about the phone call, it's about the operating cost against the API cost he's stating makes Reddit's position justifieable here.

If they wanted to earn back the public trust they've lost over the past few days, explain the API pricing. Show the receipts. Otherwise, keeping quiet is a pretty dammnable statement in itself.

 

Not to defend Spez here, but he might not be allowed to share that information. 

 

He's a founder of the company, but he's not the owner (he's just the CEO), and sharing that information publicly could get him into legally with Reddit's parent company, Advance Publications 

[Qyygle]

3 minutes ago, linkboy said:

 

Not to defend Spez here, but he might not be allowed to share that information. 

 

He's a founder of the company, but he's not the owner (he's just the CEO), and sharing that information publicly could get him into legally with Reddit's parent company, Advance Publications 

Fair point. But if his goal was to do better than he's doing right now, it's hard to see how he could do worse.

[starsmine]

54 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

See:

 

Sounds to me like Reddit might not have a recording because of the laws in the state they operate in.

So it might be a case where only Apollo has "evidence" and can tamper with it however much they want, and Reddit is not legally allowed to submit untampered evidence because they might not be allowed to have that evidence to begin with.

 

 

But who knows? It seems like the entire story is like 90% speculation, spoken with 100% confidence. I don't know what to believe anymore.

Apollo already released the phone call. I dont see why reddit/spaz needs to release their copy. 

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, Ydfhlx said:

Misunderstanding or not, it was clarified during the same phone call.

But if there was a perceived threat, it doesn't matter if it was "walked back".  There is a tactic where you suggest something outrageous that can have multiple interpretations, then you gauge the reaction and walk it back so you can play the innocent misunderstanding.  Also you can be cordial on a call saying "oh it's okay" but internally feel that it wasn't okay.

 

1 hour ago, Ydfhlx said:

A multi milion dollar (likely multi bilion) international corporation doesn't do such drastic moves because "phone conversation was cutting out".

100% the phone conversation WAS cutting out though, as per even the transcript you can see the Reddit guy mention that it was cut out.  Phone systems aren't always that great, and signal quality isn't always the best between two parties.

 

1 hour ago, Ydfhlx said:

So, they could for example ask the dev to release specific phone call, since he claims to have recorded all. Because I assume they have specific phone call(s) in mind if they're not lying - the accusations were pretty serious, after all.

If you don't record the calls guess what, you are unlikely to remember specific calls to reference to.

 

53 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

So it might be a case where only Apollo has "evidence" and can tamper with it however much they want, and Reddit is not legally allowed to submit untampered evidence because they might not be allowed to have that evidence to begin with.

Yes, this being what could be happening.  It is guaranteed that Reddit's operated in a two party consent state, so yea if they present evidence like phone conversations they will be in for a massive lawsuit/fine.

 

I'm actually not even entirely sure if Apollo was technically allowed to release the stuff they did.  It depends if they would be considered an organization, because in Canada it's a one party consent for individuals, but organizations have to follow different rules.

 

55 minutes ago, Qyygle said:

This isn't about the phone call, it's about the operating cost against the API cost he's stating makes Reddit's position justifieable here.

If they wanted to earn back the public trust they've lost over the past few days, explain the API pricing. Show the receipts. Otherwise, keeping quiet is a pretty dammnable statement in itself.

They set their API cost, so that is what they value users as.  Also if one tries looking at Reddit, they laid off 5% of their staff...I doubt they are making tons of money if they are laying of employees like that.

 

And again, based on what I've seen in terms of the pricing depending how you interpret the released numbers it could be anywhere from that 2x "cost" to the 20x "cost".  Revenue numbers by companies have a tendency to be a closely guarded secret as well

[Erebuxy]

On 6/11/2023 at 8:23 PM, AluminiumTech said:

Iirc Reddit's CEO wants to take Reddit public on the stock market and Reddit needs to be profitable for them to do that.

 

Reddit is (probably) not profitable at the moment. We know some other social media sites like Twitter (even before Elon took over) and YouTube are also not profitable so it wouldn't be a shock to find out Reddit isn't.

 

I imagine Reddit is trying everything it can do it to make itself profitable and this probably means either effectively killing off apps that don't show Reddit ADs or encourage purchasing of Reddit Gold/Premium (very likely) or an attempt to somehow monetize the API much more than they did before (not likely).

Yep, probably their initial investors want to cash out. The means is going IPO and then selling the share.

 

Twitter had massive loss every year before Elon (probably also after). That's why most people think Elon massively over paied for Twitter.

 

From what I heard, YouTube is actually profitable recently (after YouTube Premium and jamming millions of ads).

 

They had talked about this on the WAN, what the internet wants is not sustainable. 

[Erebuxy]

On 6/11/2023 at 7:47 PM, kpluck said:

You clearly have no clue what is going on.

 

-kp

Telling people they are wrong and cannot celebrate a single bit. Wow, am I on Reddit. 

[Silentknyght]

On 6/12/2023 at 10:27 AM, wanderingfool2 said:

...

To put it bluntly Apollo's app removes ads,

...

 

No, it does not.  Reddit does not provide an API to serve the ads.

[starsmine]

2 minutes ago, Silentknyght said:

No, it does not.  Reddit does not provide an API to serve the ads.

Even if it did
Reddit with ads only makes 12 cents per active user per month of revenue. (this is a very generous estimate)

Asking apollo to pay 2.50 per user per month is 20x the cost. 
Apollo wasn't against paying for API access, apollo and other 3rd party clients were against paying 20x the revenue per user. 
Just giving allow the API to serve ads would not cover the 1/20th of cost that they are asking apollo to eat.