It seems apparent Spez is burdened by a serious lack of ethics, and I think that burden is now compromising Reddit as well much more than before. As far as I know, going to IPO with a crook at the helm usually only works if they haven't been caught multiple times first.

Reddit makes money off of ads, and Apollo doesn’t show ads. The same was the case for Twitter and Tweetbot. In some ways, Christian is directly capturing revenue that Reddit otherwise would.

I would agree that the proposed API pricing is not a workable starting point, but I do think Apollo (and, by proxy, its users) will eventually have to pay Reddit something.

I cannot understand how anyone in his team with a sturdy ethical compass could look him in the eye after seeing that post, especially if they were party to the original conversation. I can't remember the last time I saw a corporate leader get caught in such a high profile absolute falsehood, especially directed at a single individual.

If this reflects the company's culture I have no idea how it can succeed as a public firm. How will Steve deal with criticism from public investors? What is he not willing to lie about?

Can you point to a source for this for those of us not familiar with his comments?

Additionally, someone else in the comments here linked the text of a post[0] made in /r/partnercommunities with similar accusations to what's quoted in TFA.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/143sho8/admins_c...

This is rich. The entire for-profit Reddit business is based on people contributing data for free, subsidizing their for-profit business. These guys couldn’t be any more clueless.

We owe it to the world to make sure touching the stove DOES burn you, otherwise it's just DARE all over again.

See the section titled “ Bizarre allegations by Reddit of Apollo "blackmailing" and "threatening" Reddit”

I don't use the app and I don't have any great attachment to Reddit, but I wondered if Reddit screwed themselves a bit here by not having a clearer link between the two parties. If either the Reddit employees involved or Steve entered the fray with any sort of bias/grievance, they likely misinterpreted the developer's comments.

Their best case scenario is really Twitter’s case, where they go public, have middling performance, and then get bought out by a billionaire after annoying them with bad moderation decisions lmao

Reddit is worthless without community contributions, and Reddit is very clearly telling the community (both users and developers) that they aren't valuable and should go find somewhere else to spend their time.

I get the want to simplify things, but it's already simple enough:

1. Reddit brings out absurdly priced API

2. Developers don't want to pay that much

3. Reddit then behind the scenes berates developers, claiming they are trying to blackmail millions of dollars, to the apps serving harmful ads, to posting about how the apps aren't "good citizens" and instead are scraping wildly

4. Developers push back and announce app closures

If it was about "showing ads", they would have budged on price a long time ago, added in guidelines to use the API and serve ads, etc. This is about controlling user data, tracking every bit they can, leveraging their content, and then monetizing the fuck out of it in the age of AI.

They think $X is vastly larger than the $Y they would get from third party app developers. So, goodbye to third party app developers.

>Hi Mods,

We’re providing a follow-up on the last API update we made to make sure our mods, developers, and users have clarity on changes we are (and aren’t) making.

API Free Access

This exists and continues to be available.

If usage is legal, non-commercial, and helps our mods, we won’t stand in your way. Moderators will continue to have access to their communities via the API - including sexually explicit content across Reddit. Moderators will be able to see sexually-explicit content even on subreddits they don't directly moderate.

We will ensure existing utilities, especially moderation tools, have free access to our API. We will support legal and non-commercial tools like Toolbox, Context Mod, Remind Me, and anti-spam detection bots. And if they break, we will work with you to fix them.

Developers can continue non-commercial usage of the API, free of charge within stated rates. Reddit is also covering hosting for apps via the Developer Platform, which uses the Data API.

Similarly to twitter third party api access with no ads doesn't make any sense for a business that's an ad business, it's stupid they've allowed this at all for as long as they have (and it was stupid for twitter to do the same).

If you want to build a non ad-based subscription business go ahead! I strongly prefer models that do that (e.g. substack), but if you're not going to do that then don't operate some weird half measure that's clearly counter to the company incentives. Apollo is just upset the free party is over.

I'm a little surprised they'd not just shut it all down like twitter did since that makes more sense for this model, but having the price set crazy high is effectively the same thing anyway. It makes sense they don't want to negotiate, they'd rather have no third party API access at all.

This argument doesn't mean I'm a fan of data access and control (I'm not - I work on urbit to give people a way to escape it), but I recognize the business as it is. If you're running an ad business and allow third parties to build apps on your business that prevent you from controlling users at the client level (and prevent you from showing ads) you're making stupid decisions.

Like most things it's a problem of incentives. You can't fix the behavior without fixing the incentives. You can't escape the megacorp ad world we're trapped in by just wishing the existing incentives didn't exist.

I guess the Reddit premium users just have to use Reddit apps to get it ad free?

Pretty much. Long tail of tiny-userbase clients probably doesn't matter that much, I suspect a small number of apps that can reasonably be spot-checked if it complies is the vast majority of traffic.

> I guess the Reddit premium users just have to use Reddit apps to get it ad free?

No reason third-party apps couldn't be allowed to be ad-free for premium users too. (or if the API is explicitly pushing "show ad URL X to user in this context" the API can take care of adjusting that)

Iirc, the entirety of Reddit’s user base was used for the calculation. My guess is that Apollo’s subset of users are much more active (and probably more lucrative in terms of ads and user data) than probably 99% of all Reddit users.

Within the realm of folks who are willing to pay for a Reddit skin, imagine that very few of them will just give up the site once their skin is gone.

More likely is that someone comes in and makes a similar app and charges more for it. Power users and professional users will pay, and most of them will gladly pay a premium.

Not gonna lie… I think op said he charged $10 a year. I raised my eyebrows… that should probably be the bottom option of a three-tier monthly price matrix.

I think someone should buy this app and just price it properly based on value add. Im not sure what the various user profiles of Apollo are, but my guess is that there are a few profiles that can be profitably monetized even with the new Reddit API charges. Imho, Reddit is being shortsighted, but they do have a unique and large community.

I'm so annoyed with three-tier monthly price matrices. It's honestly a red flag for me at this point.

On an aesthetic level, I agree with you. For some business, it’s just not needed.

That said…

As someone who has optimized pricing matrixes many times, I will just say that it works incredibly well. Also, for the whatever number people (like you? sort of like me?) who drop out due to “red flags”, there are legions more who allow their behavior to be shaped in an incredibly profitable way.

Is that a matter of fact? How do you know it isn't higher? Also consider that it's not just advertising, it is also about funneling users to new products Reddit may want to develop

From the post:

> Me: "Because I assume the majority of it isn't server costs. I assume the majority is the opportunity cost per user."

> Reddit: "Exactly.""

Reddit's doesn't care about the $0.12, they care about the ads that doesn't get shown.

For reference, approximate global ARPU if converted to monthly for other social networks in 2022: Pinterest: ~$0.5, Snap: ~$1, Twitter: ~$1.6, FB: ~$3.3

This says the IPO roadshow will say Reddit has potential somewhere between Twitter and Facebook, which feels like the right sales pitch to me.

I have to think there was a path here for Reddit to get its ad money without alienating so many users and mods.

Apollo will never pay, because it's shutting down. It was always an option to monetize 3PA but Reddit decided not to.

This 100% reeks of business people who don't even care to understand what Reddit is coming in and seeing the raw metrics of "% of users who aren't seeing ads" and the "lost" revenue.

10 years too late.

BUT if you take the edits in context, there was nothing wrong with them. Dozens of people were talking shit, and he responded by very lightly and very obviously trolling them. There were still a lot of old school internet users/4chan types running the show back then, so they should have been able to deal with a tiny bit of counter-trolling without losing their minds.

Now we dont even have a real r/all (that shows top posts from all subreddits). Partially due to russian bots spamming the_donald on top and then due to reddit not allowing to have a working r/all with opt outs.

You have to be quite blind to not see that it was a propaganda vehicle fuelled by bots.

I know that you do, and you have your reasons, but...well, I don't. I think people are taking reddit commenting way too seriously if heads need to roll over a comment edit.

Suppose dang edited your post to say "I like to get drunk at work", and there it is for the world to see. You never said that, but anyone looking at Hacker News would see:

"qup 10 minutes ago: I like to get drunk at work."

No, that's absolutely not OK! Now, consider that spez could just as easily edit some old Reddit comments someone wrote years ago to say something horrendous. Do you often go back to verify that all your old comments are unchanged? I certainly don't.

I have no way of knowing exactly which comments spez edited, or how significantly he changed them. And honestly, the not knowing is simply inexcusable. All we know is that he has tampered with the production database, not how often or how much.

Dang can edit my comments. (He does have to edit comments sometimes, I'm sure, but for reasons you approve of.) I would find it annoying. Until this comment thread, though, I'm not sure I would have considered that dang would get fired for it.

I don't think I nor anyone should be held accountable at work for comments made on Hacker News. If I lost my job over dang editing my post, I would think I worked for a really shit company and nobody went to bat for me. Basically, I would continue believing the interaction on the forum was totally unimportant, and I would be dumbfounded by the idiocy of my manager for elevating it to that a fireable offense, particularly after I let them know I did not make that comment.

FWIW, nobody needs to worry about me. I do not have a boss.

HN isn't partnering with the CIA to catch some Russian spy by modifying a comment so that the drop is in a monitored location. He's just going to delete the comment if it contains something it shouldn't.

> FWIW, nobody needs to worry about me. I do not have a boss.

Great, but now bring it back to real life, because a ton of people are held accountable at work for comments made on social media and do have a boss.

Bringing it back to real life: I don't fire my people for what they say on the internet.

This is the saddest thing I've read all week and my uncle just died.

Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsus_in_uno,_falsus_in_omnib...

Should he have been able to? No, that's a concerning setup for the reasons you say.

How bad is what he actually did, from what we actually know? For about an hour, comments that said "fuck spez" after he banned the pizzagate sub were changed to "fuck $the_donald_mod_name".

I just don't find that a big deal. It's not like editing your comment to say you drink at work.

If he only made those changes and solemnly vowed never to do it again, fine, shouldn't have done it but whatever. But who besides him can say for sure?

You mean changing fuck spez to fuck $mod?

> We just don't know to what degree

Well I'm not sure what auditing they have, and I know there's public databases of all Reddit comments. It's been a while and I'm not aware of other claims.

My point was more that you two were arguing at crossroads. You seemed more concerned about what could have happened, and they were talking about what has evidence.

> He played his hand that he is willing to put words in other people's mouths basically just for entertainment, so why should we believe he hasn't done it in much more important cases?

I find this logic a bit backwards. Willing to do something when the stakes and impact are low to annoy someone trolling you is very different from changing comments in important situations.

Before: I have no evidence that spez tampers with anyone's reddit comments in production

After: I have evidence that spez tampered with ONE reddit comment in production.

The new status quo does not increase the likelyhood of "I have evidence that spez may be inexplicably tampering with old reddit comments habitually" being more true.

And thinking that it does shows a poor understanding of human behaviour and nature, especially under stressful emotional circumstances.

You're generalizing the action described in the article to something that feels very different to me. Yes, his actions fall under "editing comments"; yes, your hypothetical falls under "editing comments"; yes, I think that his actions make him more likely to do something like your hypothetical; no, I don't think that we should treat his actions like your hypothetical because they are different.

> Reddit CEO Steve Huffman today admitted that he had edited Reddit user comments that criticized and insulted him, wielding his power to anonymously change references to his own username, and replace them with moderators of the pro-Donald Trump subreddit, r/the_donald.

> Huffman — who posts on the site as "spez" — admitted to the transgression after being called out by users of r/the_donald, saying he was inspired to edit the comments after a spate of insults emanating from the pro-Trump subreddit. "I messed with the “fuck u/spez” comments, replacing "spez" with r/the_donald mods for about an hour," Huffman said, indicating that the only thing he secretly altered was the target of the insults.

* Any media reporting on what’s happening within Reddit. Remember when WSB was all over the news cycles? Picture that but with some malicious mod/admin setting somebody up to take the fall for equities fraud.

* Any person or entity with legal or fincial muscle looking to protect their reputation or product. You don’t want Wizards of the Coast sending the Pinkertons to your door because they think you’re selling stolen goods.

* Anyone who values their own reputation in the internet. Imagine being an aspiring politician and having somebody insert racial slurs into your historical posts.

The issue isn’t somebody being petty, it’s that there is potential for systemic abuse of power and trust.

This isn't the old days when everything on the internet was in good fun. For a lot of people these days, internet unironically srs bsns. And a lot of those people think it's okay to harass folks over their passing thoughts on the internet.

what attacks are you specifically referring to here, other than kicking them off the site?

I don't think there is a neutral interpretation better than "the_donald was a lot of trouble for reddit as a business and social network, because they caused hostility, even by their existence, and it's not reddit's business to make humans less tribal, so why continue supporting them? Especially after they were clearly brigaiding and manipulating front page content. This front page manipulation was different from what the reddit owners wanted to be on the front page, which for the most part is benign and fun stuff that's easy to monetize."

The admins always had some new rules and some specific ways they had to be enforced, and were always happy to heap ever-increasing punishments on the subreddits capriciously

Oh, you can't say "Retard" any more, if we find any more examples of this prohibited hate speech your subreddit is going to be actioned against. Also we banned half of your most active moderators for wrongthink. We'll continue banning moderators and levying punishments until the situation is rectified.

I think we're on the same page overall here, just that I never put any faith in the sanctity of Reddit's database

They sure as fuck were not! Even to this day, /Conservative still claims the moral high ground bastion of free speech and balance while banning you for any slight question of the narrative being encouraged. Importantly, this is VERBATIM what they claim /politics does.

On the other hand, we expect some level of fairness and professionalism from Reddit and its administrators.

But Reddit is and always has pretended to be a "big name" company like Youtube, Facebook, etc.

They would even feel good about it because they have managed to obtain an unfair advantage and get away with it.

It’s merely a dick move, unbecoming of a social media giant.

An average doctor probably does more unethical or criminal things in every given month out of tiredness coupled with inattention, but that’s banal & preventable negligence.

What Spez did was, outside of any ethical considerations, a window into his understanding of his relationship with the site and its users, and his lack of any sense of obligation to them.