[This portion of call begins at 25:47]
Me: I could make it really easy on you, if you think Apollo is costing you $20 million per year, cut me a check for $10 million and we can both skip off into the sunset. Six months of use. We're good. That's mostly a joke.
Reddit: Six months of use? What do you mean? I know you said that was mostly a joke, but I want to take everything you're saying seriously just to make sure I'm not - what are you referring to?
Me: Okay, if Apollo's opportunity cost currently is $20 million dollars. At the 7 billion requests and API volume. If that's your yearly opportunity cost for Apollo, cut that in half, say for 6 months. Bob's your uncle.
Reddit: You cut out right at the end. I'm not asking you to repeat yourself for a third time, but you legit cut out right at the end. "If your opportunity cost is $10 million" and then I lost you.
Me: No, no, I'm sorry. Yeah one more time. I was just saying if the opportunity cost of Apollo is currently $20 million a year. And that's a yearly, apparently ongoing cost to you folks. If you want to rip that band-aid off once. And have Apollo quiet down, you know, six months. Beautiful deal. Again this is mostly a joke, I'm just saying if the opportunity cost is that high, and if that is something that could make it easier on you guys, that could happen too. As is, it's quite difficult.
Reddit: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you. I think it's… I don't know what you mean by quiet down. I find that to be-
Me: No, no, sorry. I didn't mean that to-
Reddit: I'm going to very straightforward to you too, it sounds like a threat. And I'm just like "Oh interesting". Because one of the things we're trying to do is say "You have been using our API free of cost for many, many years and we have absolutely sanctioned - you have not broken any rules." And now we're changing our perspective for what we're telling you - and I know you disagree with it. That hey, we want to operate on a thing that is financially, you know, footing. And so hopefully you mean something completely different from what I said when you say like "go quietly", I just want to make sure.
Me: How did you take that, sorry? Could you elaborate?
Reddit: Oh, like, because you were like, "Hey, if you want this to go away".
Me: I said "If you want Apollo to go quiet". Like in terms of- I would say it's quite loud in terms of its API usage.
Reddit: Oh, go quiet as in that. Okay, got it. Got it. Sorry.
Me: Like it's a very-
Reddit: Yeah, that's a complete misinterpretation on my end.
Me: Yeah. No, no, it's all good.
Reddit: I apologize. I apologize immediately.
Me: No, no, no, it's all good.
Reddit: Because what we're hearing in some conversations is folks are, you know, like in other- making threats, and we're like "Hey, that's not a conversation that we want to have". So I immediately apologize.
Me: Oh, no, no, it's all good. I'm sorry if it sounded like that.
Reddit: That's why I was asking you to repeat it because I thought I misheard it.
Me: No, no, that's fine. I'm a noisy API user.
Reddit: Right. Great.
Me: Like I said, I want this to be constructive as much as possible. And that would be the opposite.
Reddit: Fantastic, fantastic. Okay, I've taken up enough of your time. Thank you very much. I'm here, please email at any time and looking forward to continuing to chat.
Me: Yeah, likewise! Yep, just shoot me an email as well if you folks want to talk, I'm here.
Reddit: Great, thank you.
Me: Okay, good luck with any additional calls. Take care, bye.
Reddit: Thanks. Bye.
end of call
So funny that they responded to "buy my company for what you say are a few months of its operational costs" (whether a joke or serious) with accusations of blackmail. That would be a shockingly cheap offer that any corporation actually interested in profit would leap at while drooling. But they gave themselves away by saying that a generous buyout offer is some kind of felony (that doesn't even fit the definitely loosely). This only makes sense as a response if they know their bloated prices are grossly, outrageously inflated beyond all reason—and hence anyone responding to them as real must be up to something. They are lucky not to be in court for libel.
For the people who seem to think a billion-dollar company needs to be defended at all costs, like a battered child: this is another in a long, long string of incidents in which this company was caught in totally unnecessary lies, manipulation, and contempt for its users. Do you really need to nitpick this feeble "extortion" claim to the minutest objection, like being mean to a corporation is the worst crime (even if it wasn't a demonstrable lie in the first place)? All this petty social media invective on someone's personal github? Whose company was just ruined? Like they aren't right here? Way to kick someone when they're down. Yeesh.
And just blocking unpaid users won't work—see Christian's explanation about current subscription prices suddenly being a massive loss. (I mean it was the entire crux of the reddit post, and why he has to close). Meaning he VERY suddenly either owes subscribers hundreds of thousands, or Reddit millions. Even if he blocked all free users, he would still need massive numbers of new ones paying inflated prices that are meant as a slap in the face to developers. For someone who isn't a billionaire, that sole fact makes EVERY other consideration entirely academic. Reddit is doing that, knowingly and blithely, after telling him specifically and emphatically that they wouldn't. That is not some mistake like saying something off-color in a heated comments section; it's calculated policy, with real material human cost, a contemptuous gesture using corporate power to lash out at business allies, to satisfy spez's butthurt about his own actions.
Just insanely clumsy bungling by Reddit—outdone by someone who took them at their word, politely objected to being jerked around, and then explained it transparently. Who could have predicted that? No one spez hired, obviously.
I mean, why disingenuously try to kill the tool that most of your VOLUNTEER moderators use to keep those millions flowing? Or why not strategically make Apollo the ONE EXCEPTION, instead of enraging the tiny group of users who can actually dent your revenue by direct action, as they are currently proving. Exactly what microscopic number of users, soon forced to see ads, is worth the years of investment loss that publicity about this kind of Caligula mismanagement—right before the IPO—will entail? Meeting after meeting of investors questioning their basic soundness, instead of throwing cash at them? Who would not just write off that tiny bit to keep the service running happily (or at least without blackout protests that crash the server)? The same people who forget this exact lesson year after year.
The users are the product, the entire product, that pays for their servers and millionaire Silicon Valley lifestyles. Not some kind of leeches on a charity service they are justified to cut away or disregard like annoying children. This "protest" isn't some kind of feeble gesture by social justice warriors. Reddit has already lost this little game of maximal profit squeezing they insisted on playing soo badly. At this rate, they could have just paid the $10 million joke "extortion" price to avoid untold investment loss for responding like trolls. It would have been a bargain.
Big thanks to Christian for taking the time to explain this issue so cogently. Actually dealing with someone ruining your livelihood, while lying about the reasons to make you seem like the bad guy, is enormously stressful. Take a vacation, you deserve it!
[Given the location, I meant this as support, and to foreground some things for people who didn't even bother to read the reddit thread. Will not be checking this thread for replies, and am unsubscribed. I actually mean that, unlike people who were "done" half a dozen essays ago. GO TO REDDIT.]