POE Reddit shutdown wipes decade+ of pointed discussion

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Fruz wrote:

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Pathological wrote:

There is nothing corrupt about the mods... you should really go and do some reading if this is what you believe. Reddit asked for an absolutely absurd amount of money in an impossibly short timeframe, and the changes simply do not affect only third party apps.

No they didn't, you should do some research instead of reading some third-party freeloader devs propaganda.

I agree that the timeframe is ridiculously short though, but it really does not seem to me that this Appolo guy asked reddit for more time to adapt, he went all bonkers and now here we are.


The pricing isn't "absolutely absurd" (and comparing it to imgur is silly to put it mildly, those are two very different platforms with very different kinds of traffic)

I hope that some admins (like the poe subreddit ones) will just get stripped of their privileges and more reasonable people will be put in their place, seriously.

You're entitled to your incorrect opinion.

The Apollo dev has literally provided recorded phone conversations as evidence of the specific communications between the two parties, including but not limited to asking for more time and negotiating the price. To have the position you have requires you to be willfully ignorant of the evidence provided. Reddit put him in the position of having to float literally $100,000+ for a period of 6 months or more, until his annual subscribers rolled onto new rates.

If you think that the third party devs are the freeloaders here, or that what they are claiming is propaganda despite recorded evidence substantiating it, it's you that's drinkinng the propaganda coolaid - only it's reddit's.

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Pathological wrote:

There is nothing corrupt about the mods... you should really go and do some reading if this is what you believe. Reddit asked for an absolutely absurd amount of money in an impossibly short timeframe, and the changes simply do not affect only third party apps.

What else than third-party apps does it affect though?

I mean, a large amount of API calls consumes hardware resources. Hardware costs money, so the only thing I'm surprised about reddit not killing it much sooner, because they were effectively sponsoring third-party apps, some of which are a direct competition to their own app. And seeing the amount of API calls and apps/bots mentioned in topics about it, that was not a small sponsorship.

Apparently they re opened it but want to keep "protesting" by making the subreddit filled with degenerate stuff..

I don't understand anymore.. these mods and what they are doing. I'm glad I don't use reddit in general for anything.

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Pathological wrote:

You're entitled to your incorrect opinion.

The Apollo dev has literally provided recorded phone conversations as evidence of the specific communications between the two parties, including but not limited to asking for more time and negotiating the price. To have the position you have requires you to be willfully ignorant of the evidence provided. Reddit put him in the position of having to float literally $100,000+ for a period of 6 months or more, until his annual subscribers rolled onto new rates.

If you think that the third party devs are the freeloaders here, or that what they are claiming is propaganda despite recorded evidence substantiating it, it's you that's drinkinng the propaganda coolaid - only it's reddit's.

And you're not entitled to your own (incorrect) opinion ?

(it's rhetorical)

I'm sure he at least asked the basic things, however the propaganda-like picture that was shared on the poe subreddit was really not about time, it was all about unfairly putting impossible level prices, and not even once did he acknowledge that maybe he had been spamming the reddit servers for years (which is surely did)

Yes, he has been a freeloader (which never means that he didn't work for it or anything), good for him.

I bolded a very disingenuous part that you just wrote, as he could very well limit the amount of request an implement soft and hard caps on a per account basis (being obviously "kinder" to paied account, since he is making money out of it)

so YES, the communication that was used on the poe subreddit to justify shutting it down was very much propaganda-like as it was quite disingenuous.

Now I think that it's fairly easy to see the irony of your first sentence here.

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Fruz wrote:

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Pathological wrote:

You're entitled to your incorrect opinion.

The Apollo dev has literally provided recorded phone conversations as evidence of the specific communications between the two parties, including but not limited to asking for more time and negotiating the price. To have the position you have requires you to be willfully ignorant of the evidence provided. Reddit put him in the position of having to float literally $100,000+ for a period of 6 months or more, until his annual subscribers rolled onto new rates.

If you think that the third party devs are the freeloaders here, or that what they are claiming is propaganda despite recorded evidence substantiating it, it's you that's drinkinng the propaganda coolaid - only it's reddit's.

And you're not entitled to your own (incorrect) opinion ?

(it's rhetorical)

I'm sure he at least asked the basic things, however the propaganda-like picture that was shared on the poe subreddit was really not about time, it was all about unfairly putting impossible level prices, and not even once did he acknowledge that maybe he had been spamming the reddit servers for years (which is surely did)

Yes, he has been a freeloader (which never means that he didn't work for it or anything), good for him.

Every app developer, including him, expected reddit to monetize years before they did. Did you want them to make voluntary donations? It's up to Reddit to ask for the money, not up to the developers to say "hey, let us pay you money".

Furthermore, Reddit has benefited immensely from third party app development, the relationship isn't one-way.

Characterising him as a Freeloader, in the context of developing for a platform that didn't ASK for payment, is a complete mischaracterisation of the circumstances.

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I bolded a very disingenuous part that you just wrote, as he could very well limit the amount of request an implement soft and hard caps on a per account basis (being obviously "kinder" to paied account, since he is making money out of it)

so YES, the communication that was used on the poe subreddit to justify shutting it down was very much propaganda-like as it was quite disingenuous.

Now I think that it's fairly easy to see the irony of your first sentence here.

Again; everything that he claimed was posted, in full context, in recorded phone conversation. If you are making a claim that what he said was "propagandised" in some way, you need to validate that claim.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/

Here is the information, in full, with transcripts and recordings.

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Up until a week ago, the stated Reddit API rate limits that apps were asked to operate within was 60 requests per minute per user. That works out to a total of 86,400 per day. Reddit stated that Apollo uses 345 requests per user per day on average, which is also in line with my findings. Thats 0.4% of the limit Reddit was previously imposing, which I would say is quite efficient.

If Reddit believed that Apollo was "spamming the reddit server for years", they massively failed on their own due diligence to do something at any point in those years to either directly address Apollo specifically, or to address the limits imposed as a general rule. When Reddit's rule is 86,000 API calls per day per user and an app makes 345 calls per day per user, making an argument after the fact that that constitutes spam is a blatant misrepresentation of reality. If Reddit considered the usage of Apollo to be spam, the onus was on them to update the rules, not on a specific app or apps to read their mind. He was 99.5% under the usage quota allowed, by reddit, for 8 years of operation.

What you are saying, that he could just limit requests and implement soft and hard caps per account would be directly altering the functioning of the application, for which people had paid for access. That would have led to an even higher cost, as users could and would have legitimately asked for (and been granted by Apple), full refunds for the entire period, rather than the pro-rata ones he can now offer. You cannot change the basic functioning of an app that people have already paid for access for without opening yourself to refund requests - and when people start getting blocked for even the most basic usage of reddit they absolutely would have done so.

Again; if you're going to claim that someone who has provided recorded evidence of his position of propaganda, you need to specifically point out where it is.

There is nothing ironic about my comment; it stands perfectly fine on its own. Every failing of reddit to monetize up to this point is its own doing, and nothing about the actions of the third party app dedvelopers was lecherous, abusive or "freeloading" as Reddit is trying to paint it to be. Reddit set the rules, and the third party apps worked entirely within the confines of those rules. The pricing is absolutely absurd, the timeframe is frankly nonsensical, and the move is extremely blatant in its intent. You're getting your information from a bad source.

I'm not a mod, I don't use any third party apps, I have no vested interest in the conversation in any way. The information available completely speaks for itself. If you can look at that information, see the posts, and come to the conclusion that Reddit is not utterly in the wrong, you're not really reading the information. Nobody expects Reddit not to turn a profit; that's not the problem. It's the manner in which they are doing so, at the complete expense of a huge proportion of people working within the confines they set in the first place. Nobody made Reddit create an API for third party developers to work with, or made them allow those developers to sell access to those apps, or choose not to monetize access to those apps. They did so, by choice, because it suited their needs at the time. They didn't do it out of good will. They are now selling those people up the river, for the same reason - it suits their purposes. Not because those developers did anything wrong, or failed to follow guidelines, or any other reason - because it suites their financial desires. This is wrong.

It's very easy to get annoyed because you want your Reddit back, and default to the position that suits your own personal gain, but that doesn't make it right.

Pretty obvious to some of us how serious this was, and that it wasn't some powertrip by the modding team. I don't know any of them, don't have an account on reddit, and you read many bad things about various subreddits and their mods. But I can't imagine any of them (1000+ communities) would close down the subreddit for a week (which would have been longer unless they got a knife to their throats). Anyway, I've just read the stickied post upon the reopening of the pathofexile subreddit, and many of the mods are stepping down to due this abuse of power by Reddit itself. Quote below.

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We're losing a large percentage of our long-time volunteers who have chosen to resign as part of this protest, or who just decided that this was the right time to retire. This includes our most active moderator u/Fenrils, PoEWiki.net founder u/JourneyToJah (their account is now deleted) PoE Skill Tree developer reddit.com/u/Emmitt つ ◕_◕ ༽つ TAKE ENERGY༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ , u/AlfredLoveSong, and likely others soon. u/blvcksvn has also shifted most of her efforts towards the wiki and science communities. Please send them some love, they've all contributed in huge ways to this community. We'll be recruiting new moderators in the lead-up to Exilecon to keep up with the work.

Can definitely understand it isn't quite so fun to work for free for a large corporation that treats you like that.

Will the mods over here censor this too? We shall see.

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Pathological wrote:

Every app developer, including him, expected reddit to monetize years before they did. Did you want them to make voluntary donations?

wtf is this strawman argument ?

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Fruz wrote:

Yes, he has been a freeloader (which never means that he didn't work for it or anything), good for him.

I never said that it was a bad thing, from either side ...


Some had been freeloading off reddit, good for them. it does not change the fact that they had been freeloading.

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Pathological wrote:

Furthermore, Reddit has benefited immensely from third party app development, the relationship isn't one-way.

And they gave free access / special access under the new terms to apps that they deemed were useful to them and their community.

Now, please back this "benefited immensely". The apollo dev has made millions of USD, I would definitely call this immense (especially if he is alone), on the scale of a big company which has running costs .... need more than that though.

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Pathological wrote:

Characterising him as a Freeloader, in the context of developing for a platform that didn't ASK for payment, is a complete mischaracterisation of the circumstances.

He literally used a free services to make a personal benefit, of millions of USD while not giving anything back (Apollo usebase is a marginal part of the total reddit userbase, and most of them probably would simply use the website or another app anyway). This is a prime example of freeloading. I don't know what you think the word "freeloader" means, but it definitely applies here.


Thanks for the link, the guy does not seem ill intentioned, so maybe the propaganda-like picture that was circulating (and used on the PoE reddit) was not made by him.

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Pathological wrote:

If Reddit believed that Apollo was "spamming the reddit server for years", they massively failed on their own due diligence to do something at any point in those years to either directly address Apollo specifically, or to address the limits imposed as a general rule. When Reddit's rule is 86,000 API calls per day per user and an app makes 345 calls per day per user, making an argument after the fact that that constitutes spam is a blatant misrepresentation of reality. If Reddit considered the usage of Apollo to be spam, the onus was on them to update the rules, not on a specific app or apps to read their mind. He was 99.5% under the usage quota allowed, by reddit, for 8 years of operation.

Prime example of entitlement here, reddit does not owe you anything, what they deem is sustainable/profitable/good for them is not up to you (and the previous API rules don't change that).

This is a simple, cold reality check here, that's all it is.


What Apollo could change depends on their terms of use, not what you think is a "good practise", and if refunds need to be issued ... it also is a possibility. Plus we don't know the average API usage of the Apollo paid subscribers, this crucial part (as not allowing free access could be a thing) was surprisingly left out ...

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Pathological wrote:

Every failing of reddit to monetize up to this point is its own doing

Alright, so you're openly strawmaning now, I didn't bother reading the rest of the post, and might not bother with anything following it.

I had no idea there were so many great photos of John Oliver until now. Praise the protest.

They need to gtfo and get replaced by new mods..

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ongZ wrote:

They need to gtfo and get replaced by new mods..

Many did leave.