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0 pointssoraminazuki3y ago0 comments

It's not strange at all. At least the Reddit CEO heard and understood perfectly well what the Apollo dev said in that call and there's a recording to prove that.

Your first sentence misrepresents what the Apollo dev said. Actually, it's the exact same misrepresentation that the Reddit CEO knowingly made in public.

First off, it's abundantly clear that the Apollo dev wasn't actually demanding money. It was a pointed statement that revealed the CEO wasn't being honest about the costs.

The CEO, in contradiction with publicly available data, claimed that Apollo was costing Reddit $20 million per year in lost opportunity. So the dev jokingly offered to sell Apollo for half that price. Then Reddit would be able to recoup the cost in half a year and gain an additional $20 million yearly. What a great deal, right? Except they both knew that the $20 million price tag was complete bogus.

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7 comments · 3 top-level

Guest90812398123y ago· 2 in thread

> First off, it's abundantly clear that the Apollo dev wasn't actually demanding money. It was a pointed statement that revealed the CEO wasn't being honest about the costs.

I disagree, I think the Apollo dev would have happily taken the $10 million.

> Then Reddit would be able to recoup the cost in half a year and gain an additional $20 million yearly. What a great deal, right? Except they both knew that the $20 million price tag was complete bogus.

The $20 million price is irrelevant here. Reddit doesn't need to pay to acquire these users. They are Reddit users (they're registered there, and Reddit knows everything about them). They can close down Apollo and they'll get almost all the users back for free.

If Apollo had a standalone community, then it's easy to calculate the value of a user, and a fair price for acquisition. But, that's not the case here.

Don't take this the wrong way, I'm not siding with Reddit and I think both sides are losing here due to their poor management.

kahnclusions3y ago

> I disagree, I think the Apollo dev would have happily taken the $10 million.

That doesn't mean he was demanding money.

> If Apollo had a standalone community, then it's easy to calculate the value of a user, and a fair price for acquisition

I do agree it's difficult to calculate the value of a user in this case.

Yes, Apollo users are Reddit users, but they are specifically Reddit users who don't use Reddit's official clients. The question is how many of those users will move to Reddit's official app after June 30, and how many will look for alternative platforms that aren't so manipulative and abusive. I for one have deleted my Reddit account and won't be going back.

Guest90812398123y ago

> The question is how many of those users will move to Reddit's official app after June 30, and how many will look for alternative platforms that aren't so manipulative and abusive. I for one have deleted my Reddit account and won't be going back.

I think you're in the minority. If there was a well known Reddit alternative at the moment, I could see Reddit having their Digg moment and losing a large part of the community. Subreddits could blackout and threaten to leave to the other website. That is something that would be taken seriously. Dozens of subreddits with 1-50 million users potentially jumping ship at once. If you had the right platform, with the right attributes and reputation, the stars would be perfectly aligned to take in a mass number of Reddit users. But, no one is in the right position to catch the ball at the moment (I don't claim it's an easy position to be in). It's actually unfortunate, because these moments don't come too often and I believe it allows Reddit to make these changes with little repercussions. Fans of old.reddit.com better watch out, I bet it's on the chopping block within the next year.

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evolve2k3y ago· 1 in thread

Yeah totally agree.

Further I wouldn’t be trusting a hot take from ~100 points GuestXXXXXX at this point of the PR dumpster fire cycle.

neuronic3y ago

Given the mishaps of the past such as stealth editing comments of other users, I would not at all be surprised if these comments were made by alt accounts of u/spez.

ilikecode3y ago· 1 in thread

Source on the CEO making a claim of a threat in public?

Domenic_S3y ago

Don't know if you're being pedantic (was it the CEO himself or someone speaking for Reddit officially?), but this is the reference:

https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/143rk5p/reddit_he...

> Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse