I actually pretty much agree with this statement by you, but I also find it beyond wild that some people are yelling at the people tossing change. That seems far stranger to me than some guy trying to get some cash, rich or not.
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Apollo Now Offers Option to Decline Refund Ahead of June 30 Shutdown
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It is completely normal that people who enjoy something pay for that thing. But when that thing goes away and you keep paying, that's the part that makes absolutely no sense to me.
No, leave Apollo in its developer's hands. There's a simple solution that would have made Reddit a ton of money, and kept the good will of all the users on Reddit: simply, announce with adequate lead time (like a couple months or more) that henceforth using 3rd party apps would require the user to be in possession of a individual Reddit API key, obtainable only as a benefit of a paid Reddit Premium subscription - most of the most hardcore Apollo users would have signed up for Reddit Premium, and Reddit would be getting money every month from all of them, far outweighing what they'd make from those folks as ad revenue (and Reddit Premium already includes no-ads as one of its benefits). There would have been some grumbling, to be sure, but it wouldn't have been, "oh no sire! the peasants are revolting!" (never mind that those peasants create all the content).
Translation: "We suck, so pay us, to use someone else who is better." Sounds like great business.
Maybe reddit should just design a better app and mod tools, and problem solved.
This.
Require user accounts that want to use 3rd party apps to be Reddit premium.
$2.5 per month per user straightaway, which is way more than Reddit makes on an average user.
If they are truly interested in developing revenue from third party apps it seems they‘ve missed the mark, at least in the short term.
If they don’t care about developing revenue from third party apps I wish they had just shut it down.
He was asking people to do something and you are telling people to do something. How exactly is that better? Both appear to be based on emotion.
I suppose they also create the content they are selling the advertising against? (Never mind that not putting ads on the API is solely on them)
How is it everything you say is meaningless.
Meta, not Facebook, which is a much larger corporation than Facebook… their stock has risen. Meta owns the tiny website, Instagram, and the itty bitty platform WhatsApp.
The younger generation isn’t using Facebook. RIP. Reddit will sit around for forever, they will never be profitable, and people like you will think it’s because of one single iOS dev.
Nah, reddit's going to be just fine. Also, isn't a bit weird to take a victory lap when you lost?
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You too seem a bit misinformed. Taken from reddit user policy.
Any ideas, suggestions, and feedback about Reddit or our Services that you provide to us are entirely voluntary, and you agree that Reddit may use such ideas, suggestions, and feedback without compensation or obligation to you.
Very clever playing the decline refund policy on emotions. You are not a bad person, bwahaha.
Yes, i also visit reddit without an app, why not.
Heck Reddit could have even implemented a small profit sharing with third party devs for the traffic they drive to Reddit.
Lost? I just got back a ton of time ditching Reddit.
When Reddit is filled with people like you, and everyone else has moved on, I’m sure it’ll be a joy.
Yes, lost. Everyone threw their tantrum, it affected nothing, and its back to business as usual.
When Reddit is filled with people like me, we'll be able to talk about our interests without interruption, because a bunch of people who don't understand how a business works won't be around to throw another pointless tantrum.
Affected nothing? Rofl. You are blind.
It affected nothing. Yet here you are spending all your time talking about the protest.
Someone posted the transcript of his call with Reddit - didn't he try to get $10M out of them to 'go quietly' (ie for no benefit to Reddit at all other than not trying to stir up resentment against Reddit)? That sounded suspiciously like blackmail. And further to the point, his suggestion of $10M was him cutting in half what he estimated was the economic impact of HIS APP and what it was costing Reddit in terms of free API usage. Like, what? You know you're costing us $20M a year in free API hits, but you think we should pay for half again of that amount of damage you're causing to have you not raise a stink about us stopping that damage?
Christian posted the transcript of the call, actually.
I don’t know whether it was a bad joke or a clumsy attempt to suggest that Reddit buy the app. Either way it fell flat.
That _did_ lead to Reddit management on the AMA calling him out as threatening them/blackmailing them, which led to Christian releasing the transcript of the call.
Personally, I still don’t get the blackmail thing. Blackmailing usually involves pay me money or I’ll do something you won’t want me to do; I’m not sure what it is Christian said he would do that could be interpreted as a threat.
All that was in his (Christian’s) power to do is either retire Apollo or revamp the pricing and continue with it. I don’t think either one of those qualifies as a threat and Reddit would have been OK with either outcome.
Only Christian knows what he actually meant, but I absolutely took it as a "10MM will make me quietly go away," as opposed to what he's ended up doing, which is fan flames and try to drum up support and sympathy for himself by painting reddit as the bad guy. I think that was the "or else." It definitely fell flat and he moved on quickly.
First, he made it well known that the refunds were going to be a problem for him. Maximizing $$ off a shuttering app is loathsome to me, he was playing off of people’s emotions. But at the end of the day it’s their money to spend how they choose. However, if they knew how much he made off that app I think they would feel a little different about it.
Second, when you are offering a service for a year and you take that money upfront, it is incumbent on you as a business to be able to refund the money to all users. That means, instead of spending the years worth of money in two months you systematically spend/pull that money on a monthly basis. It would be against the law for any business to not refund the money a user asks for in the event they can’t fulfill their part of the contract.
The dig about Apollo was about getting ALL the attention from the media, mostly. It plays up on people’s emotions and directs it in one direction without taking into account that he has made a lot of money on the back of Reddit. There were other apps that also went out of business because they couldn’t afford to pay the fees too, that was my main point.