Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Reddit CEO: Apollo-Related Subreddit Blackouts 'Will Pass,' No Significant Revenue Impact So Far
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Ok, so he is at least pretty frank about his stance. At least we have that, better than certain CEO that always massage the narrative and avoid answering any tough questions.
As for the revenue, just like what I said in another thread, even if every single user riot and leave reddit, reddit will be fine. People forget, and people move on. All Reddit need is to spend some money to campaign a new group and Reddit is good all over again. Users have so little power nowadays no action is going to change anything. And this is not just about Reddit.
As for the revenue, just like what I said in another thread, even if every single user riot and leave reddit, reddit will be fine. People forget, and people move on. All Reddit need is to spend some money to campaign a new group and Reddit is good all over again. Users have so little power nowadays no action is going to change anything. And this is not just about Reddit.
And yet I went to research an issue someone had with a iPad Pro Logitech Combo Touch and speaker cut outs. All of the first seven posts were from Reddit posts that all went nowhere. Seems to be having an impact...
But, to those stakeholders and company owners, they care nothing about users inconvenience as long as they get their investment returns. Heck, if anything, they can just move to another platform for their personal needs. If you remember right to repair campaign, it has to get the attention of a couple US senates experiencing the issue to start supporting it. Reddit can’t reach that level so whatever happened could Just fizzle out.
If I understand US antitrust law correctly, a monopoly is defined by the harm caused to consumers, not just how much percentage market share it commands.
A more accurate term for a company like Reddit would be aggregator, similar to other platforms such as Amazon, Google, Youtube, Facebook, even Twitter. They are not a monopoly in the conventional sense in that users are not captive; there is nothing stopping you from using DDG instead of Google search, or buying an Anker charger from their website instead of Amazon. But they use these platforms because they do typically offer a better user experience, often in the form of users or convenience or (sometimes) both.
Their strength comes from having aggregated a large user base, which they then use to exert power over suppliers. Like for Youtube, that's where all the eyeballs are. Sure, you could start a Wordpress site and host your tech unboxing videos yourself, but you likely won't get much traffic. But this also gives Youtube a lot of power over YouTubers, to the point where they have to put up with unreasonable demands because there really isn't anywhere else who can offer both free hosting, a viable revenue stream and the user base. This user base also allows Youtube to sell ad spots at very profitable rates, because again, the viewership is more or less assured.
What this also means is that Google could have 80% of the search market and still not be considered a monopoly because people are choosing to use its service out of their own free will, because it's that good compared to the competition. There is no way to make people use an objectively worse service of their own volition short of actually making search worse, which would not be in users' best interests. What Google does have a monopoly in is ad revenue, but again, this is an aspect that US antitrust law cannot effectively tackle because again, where is the harm to consumers?
What Reddit offers over the forum of old is convenience. It's easier to partake in discussions in 20 different subreddits than create accounts with 20 different forums and having to visit 20 different websites every time (the average user will likely not be able to devote equal attention to all of them). The user base also means that it is easier to dabble in niche topics and locate enough users to sustain interest.
There is no way to police these platforms because there is nothing to police; they are legitimately offering a benefit that other alternatives simply don't have, but this centralisation also gives the people running the site a lot of influence and power. The only way I can think of is to hit them where it hurts the most - their pocket. In the case of sites like Reddit, Facebook and even Youtube, that would be their ad revenue. They can have all the users in the world, but not a cent to show for it.
Question is: how? How to hurt their pocket? By not visiting the site? Reddit has contents as well, provided by all users for free In the past decade or so. I fail to see a way user can do to truly hurt their pocket. Even if literally every single current reddit user stands up and riot against that behavior, idk how anything would change, not to mention not everyone is aware of the issue and will support, so traffic will largely maintain the previous level, causing no harm to reddit. When the most drastic measure (quitting using said product) a User can take is not enough to change the course, you know there’s a problem.
I don't have an answer to that. My best case scenario is that their impending IPO either doesn't materialise or raises less money than expected, the CEO steps down and someone else with a better handle on business steps in to right the ship.
The best parallel I can think of is WeWork. A failed IPO was what caused it to unravel. It's still in business today, but with a much more sane valuation and realistic business practices (given that it was always a real estate business, not a tech one). It's a shame the founder was given a golden parachute to step down, and I guess that's just the way the cookie crumbles.
Right now, I think that a lot of the shenanigans that Reddit is currently engaged in is because the CEO is trying to beautify the account books in preparation for an IPO. I really don't think that third party reddit apps are costing Reddit that much money, and that probably doesn't matter. The Reddit CEO is chasing them away because he thinks it will improve their business prospects in the eyes of potential investors.
The truth is I don't know what a successful or failed IPO might drive the CEO of Reddit to do next. It's not profitable, so I have no idea what the company would do differently with more money (I suspect the major stakeholders will just use this opportunity to unload their stock options and cash out; I believe Uber did something similar). On the flip side, the desire for more revenue might lead to Reddit shoving more ads down its users' throats, as well as pushing more clickbait content in a bid to boost engagement numbers, leading to a worse experience overall. That's the fundamental contradiction between a third party app (which needs to provide a good experience to convince users to pay for it) vs the core service (where users are the product to be served ads to).
This is a really good description. I've likened it also to Usenet News, back in the 80's/90's, where anyone could set up a newsgroup, anyone could post articles or comments in any newsgroup, and governance was largely by consensus. Reddit lost some of the good bits of Usenet (especially the grassroots distributed nature of it, something that, say, Lemmy might recapture), but it made the same task (checking in on a bunch of different niche discussion groups with niche topics) just so damned easy.
I'd love to see a more distributed non-commercial (or at least not controlled entirely by one group) replacement (something like Lemmy). And I hope that we can manage to not lose the decade+ worth of content that people have contributed to Reddit in the process (there is tons and tons of good information and insights there).
This is the scenario that the blackout is going for, I think, whether stated or not: users can't really hurt Reddit financially directly, but they can damage the public perception and thus the valuation - make it clear that the valuable part of Reddit is not the servers, it's the communities, and those communities are willing to up and leave if Reddit keeps dicking the users around.
The estimates suggest Reddit is making about 12 cents per user per month. I'd be quite willing to pay them, say, a couple dollars a month, to Reddit directly (akin to Reddit Premium), in exchange for ad-free API access for personal use - that is, use my client of choice, Apollo (with a little rejiggering so it doesn't route through Apollo's servers) with me entering either an API key or my Reddit username/password, and then my copy of Apollo talks to Reddit's servers and gives me the same Reddit experience I have with Apollo now.
Reddit would make substantially more money off me than they do now, and everyone would be happy (right?). Instead, they decided they wanted all the cake for themselves, and they've got an enormous mess on their hands. Hopefully it'll make them look much less attractive financially ("if your core asset is that volatile, we don't want to invest in you"), and they reconsider their current stance. Reddit is, of course, saying that the blackout has had zero effect on them, but... what would you expect them to be saying now, with an upcoming IPO? - true or not, of course they're going to say it isn't a problem - "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain".
I am frankly not sure how many people would be willing to pay for both reddit premium and an Apollo subscription. It may not even be financially viable for Christian to continue serving this dwindling group of users vs embarking on a different endeavour. Plus, the trust is no longer there, and I am not so sure about continuing to develop for a platform who has shown that they will just change the rules at any time, and and gaslight everyone while at it.
I have no idea how much money Christian has made from the Apollo app (he’s still potentially on the hook for a small fortune in refunds come end of June), and if he’s reading this post, I wish him all the best in whatever his next project is.
The blackout must continue indefinitely then.
Reddit _had_ an amazing source of AI training data. That data is already processed/archived.
As always, any future incremental value will come from the ongoing contributions from their community.
They do not have to block screen readers or third party clients to change their ToS to forbid screen scraping or archival usage of their API. They have already indicated they are willing to charge different rates for certain classes of apps. They could also move to have API usage be behind a legal contract with teeth, without any of the current sort of push-back due to trying to charge for usage.
I'm fairly certain the AI argument (as presented) is a justification and possibly an outright fabrication.
Possibly. The current investors are the ones who want an exit through an IPO. Externally, I can imagine a lot of advantages of them bringing someone new in. Sometimes, executives going into an IPO process kinda have their heads on the block because bringing in a new operational head or finance head with IPO and public company experience will make the company as a whole look a lot more attractive.
I don't see how they could do this without it becoming a total disaster. I do not believe Reddit has staffing to help find the appropriate "scabs" to fill moderation spots, and they certainly don't have the staffing to do it themselves.
Appropriate moderation is (for an example) part of their requirement for having an app in the Google and Apple stores. It is also a necessity for them to get high-quality advertisers to invest in the site. Relying on say NSFW filters to prevent pornography on 30+ million subscriber subreddits is playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun.
Also, a reminder that crap like this exists.
In case you are wondering where their investor money went.
In case you are wondering where their investor money went.
That CEO seems like a total tool, even by Reddit standards.
One the one hand he is right, the fake internet outrage on Reddit is generally forgotten a day later.
But obviously, the only way that the outrage doesn't go away is saying it will go away...
Someone needs to have some mercy and create a clone site of Reddit....
One the one hand he is right, the fake internet outrage on Reddit is generally forgotten a day later.
But obviously, the only way that the outrage doesn't go away is saying it will go away...
Someone needs to have some mercy and create a clone site of Reddit....
That's the business model of the "sharing" economy...
People help other people, and the app extracts value from them for allowing them to do so on a website.
Is it a good business model? Nope. Fair? Nope.
I wonder why Apollo doesn't clone the reddit backend, say on Firebase, and becomes its own independent Reddit clone, only better?
This seems like the perfect starting point to take away Reddits business - they clearly don't want it...
You can’t be serious. Nobody cares that Twitter killed tweetdeck. That was in the news cycle for about 15 minutes. Twitter is in hot water for all of its other bad decisions.
Yeah ok. I’m going to disagree with that a bunch.
Twitter did literally the same exact thing as Reddit. And you somehow are acting like it’s not relevant? Come on. Try harder.
It was absolutely a major one of their bad decisions that led to where they are now.
Nah. Irrelevant to their fall from grace. Not even in the top 5 reasons people would delete their account.
Last edited:
Not sure about how much others use Reddit but this blackout made me realise just how commoditised their service is... and how little lock in there is. Given the broken native Reddit app on 12.9" iPad Pro, I just don't have an incentive to come back to Reddit anyway if I can't use Apollo.
I do not think many people are looking properly at the issue. It is not the users of reddit that are being the outspoken ones, it is the moderators of reddit that are the outspoken ones because the 3rd party tools gives them much better access and usability of reddit's mod tools than reddit's own app does. The Apollo app in particular has allowed reddit moderators to have a seamless interaction with moderators tools and the subreddits they moderate. With Apollo and other 3rd party apps shutting down, reddit moderators will be forced to use an app that they have been complaining about for a long time that is not fit for purpose for moderators and reddit has not listened to those complaints and just left their own app as it is, flawed in so many ways. So naturally, with reddit now making moderators lives much more difficult, the moderators have naturally come out in force complaining. Those who are employed, I am sure if your boss suddenly changed your work conditions making you work harder but not giving you the tools to help you, you'd complain to your boss wouldn't you?. reddit moderators are not employed but the principle and conditions are the same, a tool that makes their jobs and lives easier is shutting down and the company they volunteer their help with refuses to provide similar tools that do the job.
Rather, I would argue that at least Twitter did not have a class of super-users (ie: moderators) who could hold the service hostage. So the fallout from people leaving the service for mastodon has been fairly contained.
No they didn't. Reddit gave the apps 30 days. Twitter gave the apps -7 days by saying they were violating TOS rules that had to be written, and gave them an explanation a week after they removed the APIs.
People should just move on and let Reddit die on the vine.
Last edited by a moderator: