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Christian Selig: I want to debunk Reddit's claims, and talk about their unwillingness to work with developers, moderators, and the larger community, as well as say thank you for all the support
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- iamthatis
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- 2416 words
The thing that stood out to me the most over all this mess was that huffman kept going specifically after the apollo dev, to the point of straight up lying about "blackmail", and when presented with evidence to the contrary, instead of backing down, just got pissed that it was recorded.
This whole back and forth is absurd. Christian lays everything out with receipts and then Reddit just does interviews with press shouting I can’t hear you!!! Why don’t journalists call Reddit out more?
The current theory I have is Christian has made more on Apollo than spez has on Reddit and he’s mad about it.
This is what one commenter alluded to last week on The Verge (on one of their dozen posts last week), that reddit and spez learned that all these third party apps were not only making money, but making decent money and paying employees to work on these apps, while reddit was burning through investors' money, all while not being able to figure out how to make money off of its users. In other words, other people figure out how to make money off reddit while reddit management couldn't figure out a way to make money off of reddit.
And it never once ocurred to Huffman that the reason third party apps actually make money is because they don't suck.
If the Reddit app was every bit as good as Apollo, people would probably be happy to give their money to Reddit instead of Christian. But it isn't. The Reddit app stinks, even if you pay for Reddit Premium.
All these capitalists like to drone on about the benefits of competition in free markets, but they balk at the idea of actually having to participate in the competition part. They feel entitled to victory.
He monetized the very users that are considered hard to monetize by gasp giving them an app that worked and applying user feedback. They’re also disproportionally heavy users of Reddit. I was one of them, I paid for lifetime ultra and was happy to do so.
I got lifetime ultra a few years ago for $30, incredible value and I was happy to support Selig for his hard work. I’m sad to see it gone.
Me too Hailo, I’d even tip when a new icon or feature dropped. Reddit is really messing up on this one.
I paid for lifetime ultra like maybe 2 months ago. Barely even got to use it :(.
I could be missing something, but Reddit itself would presumably be more costly to run than an app that serves up Reddit content, right?
I feel like it's reasonable to an extent that they would want to get a bigger share of the pie, assuming they're footing more of the cost. Correct me I'm wrong though.
Either way, they've blown their chance at any good will by being total dicks in how they've approached it.
Probably, the financials aren't public so we're guessing based on what we know of AWS pricing. It's completely reasonable to charge for access or do some kind of revenue share, something so the apps pay for what resources they use, I don't think anyone's disputing that. It's the way they've gone about it which is designed to kill 3PA altogether that has people unhappy.
Which is laughable as Christian explicitly gave multiple ways how Reddit could have made big buck on this whole ordeal. But I think it is quite clear that they had no intention going there, the only goal was to kill third-parties and at the point it had been communicated to third-party developers the decision was already made.
What's equally mysterious for me is why are these third parties not using their own (open source) backend and insist on using reddit?
For eg, apollo can easily fork the old reddit which is open source and then migrate their users there? They won't have to ever deal with reddit pricing then and this turf war will be over.
The only value in a social network is its users and content. While some third-parties definitely have quite a lot of users, Reddit is/was just something else in terms of size, where even very tiny communities could form. "The front page of the internet" is really true of it.
Though at the same time, if I'm not mistaken RIF's creator did "bet" on Tildes?
Yes, he's working on a tildes app that should be out for alpha testing sometime late this year. He's "matching" other people's donations to tildes with his time on the project - i.e. the more people donate to tildes itself, the faster he's committing to releasing that first alpha build for people to test out. You can read more here!
As a longtime RIF user, I'm looking forward to @talklittle's Tildes app. While I don't currently have the ability to donate to Tildes (law school is expensive), I'm more than willing to help alpha/beta test, especially on my older/niche Android instance (BlackBerry KeyOne BBB100-1, Android 8.1).
I'm especially looking forward to keyboard scrolling working again (like in RIF), as it no longer works in Firefox Android (my system browser, despite an issue filed years ago on Bugzilla.
One specific example but Apollo could never get the same userbase because it's Apple only not suitable for android's. Not a third party user so I genuinely don't know but it wouldn't surprise me if many of those apps focused on one platform only. Reddits app does both.
Well Reddit has the disadvantage of having to host both the infrastructure and the content, while third party apps are generally just a front-end. And Reddit also has it's own (multiple!) front-ends to host. Reddit could make a lot of money off of its users and still not break even. Third party apps can start in the black.
Of course I don't think this will actually help Reddit get any better at monetising their users, in fact it seems like a terrible reaction when they could just have vampired some of the profits from these apps. I don't actually trust Reddit to capture near all of the lost opportunity cost here.
Indeed, the worst he has said about any of the others was that RIF refused to work with them (which was another lie). I think he's just jealous of Apollo's success
My understanding is that talklittle had an agreement with reddit over the use of the term "reddit" in their app, signed by former CEO Yishan Wong. Spez invalidated this agreement when he took over, so talklittle won't play ball because Spez already took it home.
I really really hope Christian is speaking with his attorneys and discussing defamation/libel/slander and torts against Reddit and Huffman. I know it's across two countries, but it could be very interesting caselaw to follow. I would definitely be following that legal battle (because I work with lawyers and would be discussing it at work every day).
I’m honestly tired of the Reddit drama. I just want Reddit to go away and die a slow death already.
BUT the thing that has pissed me off the most about this whole thing is how Reddit, a multi-billion dollar company, has singled out an individual developer with their attacks. They tried to turn him into the villain of the story by casting him as a greedy developer.
They attacked him, he refuted their claims and then they tried to deflect and lodge new attacks against him.
A less savvy person might have gotten caught in their trap and it would just be his word against the company’s. But he has receipts and he consistently provides proof that Reddit management (more specifically the CEO) are lying and trying to smear him.
It’s a bad look for the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company to outright lie, get caught in said lie, double down on said lie, get called out again with demonstrable proof that he’s lying and then continue to keep attacking a person.
It makes Reddit (and Spez) look thin skinned and, honestly, amateurish. Not the kind of person you want running your company. He should be running the company, not going around slandering an individual developer. Spez should really stop being a fucking baby and apologize for being such a massive asshole.
It’s abundantly clear by now that Christian (and other developers) are being extremely reasonable and trying to find a middle ground that works for both sides, while Reddit is just completely unwilling to budge.
It's going to get worse for the next two weeks. Maybe in a month it'll die down if history serves. But there were a few times where the coals kept getting racked. I'll take the time remind old and new users that you can always filter out certain tags to avoid stories (a feature I desperately wanted on my Reddit days. Closest I could get was the Enhancement suite filters/ignore on certain keywords, but tags avoid a lot of false negatives).
On topic, I agree. I detest but can understand the ulterior motive behind strong arming the API. Among the reasons related to ads, I heard other perspectives on how it may prevent ChatGPT type models from taxing the API for mass amounts of easy data.
But the treatment of a billion dollar company over a dev who likely brought millions to the site is the kick that made me seriously start to use the alternatives I've found and discovered over the years. Fortunately I don't seem to be alone and am seeing more activity, even on existing communities.
I just hope some people stay once the rage calms down.
To be clear, I wasn’t talking about Tildes having a flurry of posts about Reddit, but rather the web in general. I make liberal use of filters here (one of my favorite features). Every site I visit that isn’t something like CNN or the New York Times has some post about Reddit on their front page.
I can also understand the motives behind changing the pricing of the API. But why not have different prices for different uses?
Want to train your LLM using Reddit’s data? We know that you’re going to be willing to pay way more for that since our data is extremely valuable for that kind of thing. Just want to make a third party app or add-on service? That’s a completely different equation when it comes to the value of the data. So we’ll charge less.
There are countless different ways they could have handled this if they actually wanted to keep third party apps or services around. The obvious motive here is monetize their data as much as possible, be it through charging AI companies for access or data mining their customers via their first party app. Drive up how much data you have (which looks good to investors), IPO and then let someone else deal with the fallout as the place crumbles over the next few years.
archived version for those who don't want to go over there or if they remove the post
Sucks so hard that Christian is out $250k. I wish him the best.
It's a little thing, but I'm excited that in the next version of iOS widgets are interactive. I'm hoping Christian updates PixelPals accordingly.
I keep seeing this and I agree it sucks, but is he himself or is his company/app? Because people in the comments in the Reddit thread are saying they want to donate to him and won't ask for a refund etc., but I'm just like... He's probably a millionaire, and his company/app is most likely thriving. He doesn't need your 5 bucks. It reminds me of people donating to Kylie Jenner lol
I mean it's basically one and the same. He either had a sole proprietorship or an LLC with a single partner (that is, himself). I guess hypothetically if he went the LLC route he could declare bankruptcy, but Apple would never let them publish something on the app store for the rest of his life if he went that route. Most likely he'll fork over the $250k.
That being said, it does imply that he made $250k in a year just from the annual subscriptions, so if he's been diligent with his expenditures it shouldn't be an issue.
I was thinking the same thing. I wish him all the best, but surely this is basically a reduction in his income?
The thing is that some of this money was paid for up to a year ago, when he probably thought Apollo was going to be thriving for years to come. I don't know that his company itself is thriving since, as far as I know, he only has the two apps (Apollo and pixel pals). I doubt pixel pals has many paying customers (seems very niche?).
I think a $250k unexpected expense, combined with the fact that he's losing his main source of income, is probably not a simple reduction in his income but who knows. I feel bad for him having to deal with this.
I feel bad for him too. But he's probably going to be perfectly fine
Not if spez manages to successfully spin the narrative that he’s blackmailing Reddit.
I don't believe there's any risk of that. Christian's doing a good job of defending himself and making himself bulletproof on that front.
He has made millions off the app, there's no question.
This bit is what really gets me. Greed is driving the thing but their attempt at providing an excuse is just that they’re inept? I’m sure they’ll go on making money but the failure in leadership/execution has to impact the IPO right?
Reddit does not and has never made money, has never demonstrated a plausible path to profitability (i.e. they lose money because their userbase is borderline unmonetizable rather than because they've been spending all their revenue and then some on projects which will plausibly deliver a return on that investment) and it is impossible for even the most inadequate of diligence to fail to apprehend this shitshow and how it highlights incompetent administration at the highest levels. (It has its own goddamn Wikipedia page, complete with obligatory picture of spez looking like the dopey assclown that he is.)
If someone forced me to bet on it, my money would be on extreme incompetence, but whatever the reason, this whole fiasco is going to badly hurt their plans to go public, or suppress the price to the point of losses for major investors if they go forward anyway.
Man, this is really sad to go through all of this. I've spent... A lot of time on Reddit over the past 12 years, made a bunch of friends, and learned a lot. I'm sure others also really value what communities it created and the information they shared. Seeing all of that in jeopardy just makes me sad. Why would they do this? The only answer I come back to is they must really be under some pressure to make money for the $1.3 billion in VC funds they've taken over the years.
It's not really how VC works. The VC partners can pressure you, in the same way your relatives can call you to talk about how they think you're making poor life choices, but as they mostly make minority equity investments, if the company is on a bad track, you're basically just out of luck. You don't really have any power to do anything, and if the company goes under you'll just get $0 for your investment. It's not a loan, where you are contractually obligated to receive $X in payments, and in fact the people who did loan money are in front of you in bankruptcies when assets get liquidated, if it gets to that point. Bonds are considered a much safer investment for that reason.
Most companies that get VC money do just go puff in smoke, and in bankruptcy court their like 30 macbooks and 20 aerons get liquidated and you get some peanuts if you invested.
What's happening is that interest rates are high, and are expected to be high, even if the fed declined to bump the rate last month. Increasing interest rates hurt equity in two ways: one, it makes bonds a more lucrative investment. Why buy stock when you can get 5% from much safer bonds? Secondly, all companies borrow money, even ones with a positive net income, to operate, for liquidity reasons.
But Reddit is not profitable and I highly doubt it has ever been profitable. So even beyond making the cost of business more expensive by adding additional friction to corporate paper, they are on a clock - once the run out of financial runway, it's game over. It's the same with many other unprofitable companies - they're quickly implementing the plans they had to get to profitability.
Thanks for the insight! That makes sense.
I'm so sure if Christian ports Apollo to any alternative it would be the real downhill of Reddit and Spez. Shame how Christian was treated and never imagined Spez would come this far.
I think he's said he's just not willing to go through all that again (it was enough work the first time and he just doesn't want start all over from scratch).
Pity, I'd love to see him do an app for this place.
At least RiF dev is already building one for Tildes, also Sync dev is considering a Lemmy's client.
I’m sad we never got the iPad app.
not a good look for reddit