[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
Apollo has been adding value to Reddit over the years, it has been adding users to Reddit. That was valuable to Reddit, $20m valuable over several years, per year; that's what Apollo's users were worth it for Reddit.
Assuming that after shutdown Apollo users move over to Reddit's own and mediocre app, which is what Reddit wants, in order to control the ads, then their app will take over that noise from Apollo, so it's not "quiet for free". It's only quiet if users don't ping the API, if Apollo's user base is lost, which Reddit definitely does not want to happen.
Christian has every right to "be loud" in terms of protesting this change, as do the other devs, and it's awful to see how Reddit is twisting his words when he refers to a loud API usage. While Reddit apologized for the misunderstanding, apparently they were still calling him an extortionist. They should take a close look in the mirror.
I don't get it how nobody calls this out for what it is, a rug pull on Reddit's part. Reddit could offer an API key subscription which users could add to 3rd party apps. Or they could replace their crappy app with a Reddit branded Apollo, for "peanuts", which those $10m are to them, if they were willing to shell out twice as much per year just for that single app's API access.