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Apollo will close down on June 30th

• torartc 3y ago
  I could see this as a Digg moment for reddit. They've made no effort to put out quality software of their own and will kill some of the best experiences for using Reddit.
• Exuma 3y ago
  What did everyone think of that call? I'm not a client-facing person (a developer) so I might have been tongue in cheek myself as well. Not sure how any of that sounded threatening though...
  • replwoacause 3y ago
    Christian came off somewhat flippantly and didn’t sound particularly experienced, but overall I trust his account of things. The reddit CEO seems like a weirdo to me.
    • gigel82 3y ago
      You can hear the frustration in his voice, I recognize that tone very well :)
  • kats 3y ago
    He 1000% was threatening them. He asked for 10 million dollars to go away quietly, meaning not use his leverage on reddit (who all just took at face value that he's a poor victim). They didn't accept so now he's selectively releasing his secret phone recording and being very aggressive.
    • Exuma 3y ago
      He very clearly is being sarcastic, because he knows the 20 million claim is bullshit. He's basically friendly teasing them because if it really WERE that high, then buying Apollo for 10 million might be a good idea, but it isn't and it's all bullshit, so he knew they wouldn't. That's why he says "It's mostly just a joke"
      • kats 3y ago
        Hmm, maybe that's believable.
• revskill 3y ago
  What is Apollo ?
• fhub 3y ago
  Given Apollo made WWDC in a few places including in Vision Pro, perhaps someone at Apple might consider just acquiring Apollo and pay the yearly API fees to Reddit. Over time Apple could then perhaps make the Reddit clone.
• jacooper 3y ago
  It would be very cool if he made the app free so people can actually try it before it gets killed.
• rektide 3y ago
  Can someone please record a video of using this app? I'd love to have a record of what we are losing.
  • clessg 3y ago
    Haven't used the app myself, but the website[0] seems to have a trailer video: https://youtu.be/MKbPZVDg-Z8 https://youtu.be/MKbPZVDg-Z8 Apparently posted 5 years ago, though. [0] https://apolloapp.io/ https://apolloapp.io/
  • activiation 3y ago
    I would if it wasnt only available on iPhone
    • Aachen 3y ago
      Oh! I was wondering how I never even heard of Apollo until this debacle. It being only for lockdown platforms explains.
    • lelanthran 3y ago
      > I would if it wasnt only available on iPhone That makes sense to me. I was also wondering how come I had never heard of this app. It also changes the calculus significantly: how many users does Apollo have, and how many users does Reddit have? Reddit just might not even notice the content produced by Apollo users.
• wunderland 3y ago
  Funny that this was just demo'd in Apple's Keynote this week
  • clessg 3y ago
    That explains why WWDC was popping up while searching for 'Apollo'! Reference: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/141mdvt/apollo_on_wwdc/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/141mdvt/apollo_o... (Video with timestamp: https://youtu.be/GYkq9Rgoj8E?t=2780 https://youtu.be/GYkq9Rgoj8E?t=2780) (In other news, TIL Youtube search seemingly looks through transcripts. Nice!)
  • adiabatty 3y ago
    A lot. I've watched both the keynote and also the Platforms State of the Union and not only did I hear it by name in the keynote, I've seen its icon in the background in both the keynote and the PSotU.
• Whatarethese 3y ago
  Just unbelievable. This is just sad. I have no other words.
  • mr90210 3y ago
    Don’t be. Sometimes businesses such as Reddit must make bad decisions so that new players emerge. That’s exactly how it’s been, and people jump to alternatives when such platforms start acting out.
    • gnoop 3y ago
      One thing I've noted is that online forums have expanded and consolidated a few times over the decades. We saw expansion to start, back with BBSes, then consolidation to FidoNet, Usenet, and services like AOL. Web forums took us into expansion. Link aggregators and meme sites moved toward some consolidation. Reddit is basically Usenet 2.0. I suspect we may see another round of forum expansion again as people want to carve out their own niche communities again. We might not see Usenet 3.0 for a bit while we let people expand then let a new site come along and consolidate.
      • mr90210 3y ago
        I agree with your take, I think that the current state of traditional social media will further drive people into those new forums. I am an example of such a person.
• rvz 3y ago
  A lesson to be learned. Do not build your entire business on someone else's API. The outcome was unsurprising and it is unfortunate. But this is why third-party apps are always at a disadvantage. The same happened with Twitter and they made that clear and now so did Reddit. Like I said before in [0] "Either the API gets blocked for third-party clients, or you purchase a high price for it." [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36087219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36087219
  • smoldesu 3y ago
    > Do not build your entire business on someone else's API For iPhone apps this isn't really an option in the first place.
  • mr90210 3y ago
    Too bad you are being downvoted. You are rather accurate.
  • srvmshr 3y ago
    Maybe for Reddit and Apollo case, this is alright & makes sense. But at the risk of sounding pedantic, don't generalize it. Most of our commodity software is built & deployed by packages, APIs and frameworks we have very little control on. We just hope things don't break/change as drastically and we can modularize our projects as much as we could, to bear some shock or disruption. Unlikely anyone can build & maintain consumer grade softwares ab initio
    • heisenbit 3y ago
      The closer you are to the final customer the better is your chance to bill for the value you deliver (standing on a fragile cobbled together set of third party components). The short term rewards strongly favor relying on others. The business dynamic compounds this as it places a premium on first movers. Going against this dynamic must be carefully considered and only makes sense in isolated cases (where it is the winning move).
      • 3y ago
• nkotov 3y ago
  Bad move from Reddit's end. Apollo is one of my most used apps because I absolutely refuse to use the official app. Just like the new Reddit experience on desktop version, the mobile app is just as terrible. Clunky, slow, not user friendly. No thanks.
  • Ekaros 3y ago
    And exactly what are they losing from business perspective? Few users that generate only costs?
    • jdhendrickson 3y ago
      I'm sure Digg had the same line of thinking. Worked out great for them.
    • kstrauser 3y ago
      Power users who generate the content that makes Reddit valuable to begin with.
      • sangnoir 3y ago
        This Is the corporate equivalent of "I can't give you money, but I'll pay you with in exposure on my socials". Reddit prefers to be paid in dollars, not with content. They likely have more than enough content from non-Apollo users. Reddit's free APIs left a lot of uncaptured value on the table. This has become obvious by the sheer number of AI models trained on Reddit data. Free Reddit data goes into the machine, and piles of VC money comes out. Reddit wants in on it, but is unable to stop free API access without the consumer apps being collateral.
        • 1270018080 3y ago
          Their content is going to be porn bots and astroturfed product accounts. Maybe they want that as part of their enshittification process to extract as much value from the brand as possible during their quick death.
• Forgeties79 3y ago
  >Do I support the protest/Reddit blackout? >Abundantly. Unlike other social media companies like Facebook and Twitter who pay their moderators as employees, Reddit relies on volunteers to do the hard work for free. I completely understand that when tools they take to do their volunteer, important job are taken away, there is anger and frustration there. While I haven't personally mobilized anyone to participate in the blackout out of fear of retaliation from Reddit, the last thing I want is for that to feel like I don't support the folks speaking up. I wholeheartedly do. >It's been a horrible week, and the kindness Redditors and moderators and communities have shown Apollo and other third-party apps has genuinely made it much more bearable and I am genuinely so appreciative. >I am, admittedly, doubtful Reddit wants to listen to folks anymore so I don't see it having an effect. Man this is just a bummer to read.
  • _hypx 3y ago
    It's moves like these that will create the alternative to Reddit. It was this style of anti-consumer moves that killed Digg. History is repeating itself.
    • ptoo 3y ago
      People have tried to create alternatives to Reddit numerous times over previous controversies. It never sticks. I don't see this time being different.
      • _hypx 3y ago
        Largely because there was no need, or the experience was much worse. This is starting to change.
      • howenterprisey 3y ago
        The previous controversies have been stuff that it's pretty easy to not care about. This time, it's actually affecting a fair number of people. We'll have to see if this time is different.
        • 3y ago
• justusthane 3y ago
  Apollo is such an incredibly high quality app — in fact, it’s so good that I haven’t had it installed on my phone in a couple of years because when I have it I spend way too much time on Reddit. The features, the polish, the customizability — everything about it is really top notch.
  • nkjnlknlk 3y ago
    I agree. I'm not a mobile dev but I am a software dev and I'm continually impressed by how good an app Apollo is. It's one of the apps I use that seem like they should be the standard for quality.
  • Scarblac 3y ago
    I had never heard of it before this. Could he just make a backend for it and take his users with him?
    • d1str0 3y ago
      Might be a pretty big legal argument if he just copied Reddit backend functionality. Would probably have to redesign the front end from the ground up as well to make it clear it’s not just a rip off.
      • dustyharddrive 3y ago
        I don’t think cloning products is illegal, and can’t find any patents held by Reddit.
      • baq 3y ago
        No need for a front end, he’s got the app, that’s the whole point
      • geuis 3y ago
        I don't remember the specific case at the moment, but a few years back I think Oracle was suing Google (or some mix of big companies) about Google replicating the Java api but with a complete from-scratch backend reimplementation. Google wasn't using private Oracle source code, just building a replacement that used the publicly published api. Google won the case, and it I remember right that established public api's as non copyright or something. Again, not a lawyer and someone else probably has the details better than I do.
• robbiet480 3y ago
  I just don’t see Reddit’s response here other than “yes, turns out we are the bad guys who have been continually lying and manipulating the situation for our benefit”. I wonder if they’ll see employees quit over this. How do you trust your employer after this? I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or delete themselves over this. Just absolutely stunning turn of events, massive kudos to Christian for recording his calls with them for over a year (legally I might add). Reddit has 0 wiggle room here. EDIT: Just spitballing here but could an employee bring a shareholder lawsuit for negatively impacting financial outlook or destroying brand value? I feel like this is going to significantly reshape Reddit as moderators of large subreddits will be furious and quit if not destroy entire subreddits. Just look at how many big (millions and tens of millions of subscribers) subreddits are signed onto the blackout letter https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplete_and_growing_list_of_participating/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplet... EDIT 2: Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose his job over this? EDIT 3: Christian says in the post the refunds will cost him personally about $250,000. Does he have a claim against Reddit for that money I wonder? I'm sure lawyers are looking closely at the agreements right now. EDIT 4: #1 Reddit Android app "Reddit is Fun" is shutting down too https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_will_shut_down_on_june_30_2023_in_response_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_wi...
  • bluecalm 3y ago
    I was using RiF myself. Reddit is unusable for me without a 3rd party up as their interface is a clusterfuck. I can't complain, I was spending too much time there anyway and it's easy to cut off now.
  • HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Other social media companies seem far less ethical to me. Facebook still has tons of employees even though they treat users much worse than reddit. In the end reddit is a business that exists to make money. They were never going to let third party apps that undercut ad revenue exist forever.
    • thx-2718 3y ago
• avani 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • fumar 3y ago
    Did you read his post? He recorded the calls which were misconstrued publicly. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...
    • doublerabbit 3y ago
      aka slander. Much kudos to the guy recording the calls
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• square_usual 3y ago
  > Then yesterday, moderators told me they were on a call with CEO Steve Huffman (spez), and he said the following per their transcript: > Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us." > Wow. Because my memory is that you didn't take it as a threat, and you even apologized profusely when you admitted you misheard it. Wow, I didn't know it'd gotten that bad.
  • toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Reddit leadership desperate to dump the pig on public markets, pulling out all the stops. Literally their only path forward is to find some other greater fool to hold the bags, regardless of what they have to say to make it happen. Edit: Maybe keep an eye on what they say to catch them performing material securities fraud? Wayback early, wayback often! Edit 2: Damage control mode: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ceo_tomorrow_to_discuss_the_api/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ce... (r/reddit: Join our CEO tomorrow to discuss the API [Locked])
    • duffyjp 3y ago
      > 0 points (18% upvoted) lol
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    • crazypyro 3y ago
      Locking comments on a website built on the commenting system. Something hilarious about that.
  • timmytokyo 3y ago
    Reddit could have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat simply by purchasing Apollo and making it available as an official app. So many people would have paid a significant monthly fee for an ad-free, quality mobile reddit experience. But no, they had to go full-on maximalist destroy-all-intruders mode, and now they've got an unnecessary PR nightmare on their hands. From the perspective of fiduciary responsibility, reddit is completely deficient. What a bunch of idiots.
• minimaxir 3y ago
  The allegations of bad faith on Reddit's end will make the upcoming subreddit protest shutdowns more spicy.
• dh2022 3y ago
  I am done with Reddit.
  • fermentation 3y ago
    What’s the next thing?
    • randcraw 3y ago
      I've heard there's a terrific service out there that's a real sleeper. USENET, I think it's called.
    • chewonbananas 3y ago
      I've been using hackernews as a great alternative to reddit. When they shut off compact reddit I completely moved to HN.
      • dcow 3y ago
        But HN doesn't have communities. We need something that gives you lightweight bulletin boards (because that's what reddit replaced). I love HN, but it's really just a subreddit with its own website.
    • politelemon 3y ago
      Tildes.net is similar but not a replacement
      • jumelles 3y ago
        Do you have any invites?
    • stiltzkin 3y ago
      I think Tildes is a good secondary alternative to Reddit, It was developed by a Reddit intern and RiD developer.
      • 3y ago
• polalavik 3y ago
  can Apollo just switch to supporting Lemmy.ml? That would be nice their UI kinda sucks at the moment.
  • bdcravens 3y ago
    Probably not financially viable to do so.
    • dijit 3y ago
      Depends, could be a cart leading a horse situation. As in: Maybe Lemmy has bad UX which is why it craters adoption. Spending some resources on an Apollo version with Lemmy support sounds like a good idea assuming the dev time can be recouped. Since Apollo is a paid app I think there's a more direct path to financial relevance than number of eyes in ads. :)
  • gnoop 3y ago
    You mean Lemmy in general? Lemmy.ml is just one of many Lemmy servers. Though there's some discussion coming up on how things are going in Lemmy regarding anything surrounding any criticism of China or Russia. So far, there's been attempts to spin up new servers to mitigate issues on lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml while others are looking to Kbin which also federates with Lemmy but uses separate software.
  • minimaxir 3y ago
    Tapbots building a good app for Mastodon after Tweetbot got killed didn't suddenly push Mastodon into a top-tier social network.
    • shafyy 3y ago
      No, but great third party apps for Mastodon definitely keep me using Mastodon more than I was with the official app. I'm sure it's a similar story for many others.
  • stiltzkin 3y ago
    In the thread he said he rather let it die because he is already tired.
• retskrad 3y ago
  The Apollo app had much better performance than the official Reddit app. However, the design of the app was amateurish and hideous to look at. The official Reddit app is actually designed by designers and it shows.
  • randcraw 3y ago
    The Reddit website frequently resets itself back to the feed page when I'm scrolling up/down through posts. That amount of clueless disruption during routine use is a deal breaker for me. Goodbye Reddit.
  • minimaxir 3y ago
    Apollo's design is influenced heavily by Apple's/iOS's Human Interface Guidelines: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
  • dubcanada 3y ago
    That’s an opinion that I’m not really sure matters for the conversation at hand. It’s not about if Apollo is good, it’s about how Apollo is being treated. You are free to use what ever you want, and that’s the point. This removes everything but the Reddit app.
  • to11mtm 3y ago
    The official Reddit app, at least on Android, is a buggy mess from a UX experience. - Half the time, clicking on a push notification takes me to the front page instead of the post that was interesting enough to click on. And then the notification is gone, and I can't get to said post easily at that point - Sometimes, there's two articles that show up on the main screen that I want to read. I have to pick which one I want to read more, because there's a 50/50 shot that when I hit back, I will get a fully refreshed home page instead of being taken back to where it was. - Overall it feels less natural to navigate through than the Reddit web interface, let alone the 'classic' (old.reddit.com) user interface. - Probably not related to the design of the mobile app, but the hostile behavior of web reddit on mobile, constantly trying to force me into their subpar mobile app, is also irritating and painful.
• wolpoli 3y ago
  > Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us." I can't believe that CEO of Reddit was telling internal people that Apollo tried to blackmail Reddit for a $10 million payout when that didn't happen.
  • goles 3y ago
    Isn’t this the same guy who went and edited comments of users who were critical of him on Reddit? If someone shows you who they are believe them…
    • proxiful-wash 3y ago
      Its the same guy who has let the entire platform be exploited for years at the expense of the people just wanting to connect about subjects online.
      • SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
        He’s also got a pretty sweet panic bunker, guns, food, and fuel supplies stashed away so when the division and panic he directly benefits from comes to a flash point he can ride it out safely. Steve Huffman is not a good person.
        • fknorangesite 3y ago
          But hey - he's "a pretty good leader. [Who] will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-...
          • SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
            Amazing the tone and treatment difference because he is very liberal.
• whymauri 3y ago
  Does anyone know if Reddit has explored acquiring/hiring the Apollo team before? And/or why not?!
  • Marsymars 3y ago
    Well a) the Apollo team is two people and b) why would they? Reddit’s priority is monetization. Acquiring/hiring the Apollo team doesn’t help that goal.
    • whymauri 3y ago
      Monetization and growth go hand-in-hand. I'm an old.reddit.com user (even on MoWeb, I know I'm a psycho), but the way people talk about Apollo is like it's absolutely superior to the current Reddit app. If I were Reddit, and my users loved this third-party product _so much_, I would at least explore promoting Apollo to a first-class interface for browsing Reddit. For the scale of Reddit as a company, it's likely a trivial deal; whereas the cross-pollination of ideas and UI/UX learnings could easily be worth more than the cost of collaborating.
      • zamadatix 3y ago
        It is the vastly superior app. That said, Reddit thinks it can get significantly more profit per user itself or it wouldn't be pricing the API so high Apollo had to shut down. I think they are laughably wrong, but they clearly don't see it as worthwhile vs whatever they are planning.
  • SkyPuncher 3y ago
    I was just thinking this could all just be a ruse to buy Apollo for cheap.
  • yett 3y ago
    Back in 2017 https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/13yc62g/comment/jmno3i0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/13yc62g/comment...
• fumar 3y ago
  Apollo saved my Reddit usage years ago. It has too many nice to have features to list. I suppose off to Discord I go. Most subreddits have a discord parallel. More than ever it feels like all of the major platforms are ripe for disruption. They are filled with aggressive hostile ads, algorithms set to engagement, and closed experiences.
  • jraby3 3y ago
    Just seems like that network effect is too powerful. Look at all the attempts to create a new Twitter (or Reddit for that matter) over the past couple years.
    • evantbyrne 3y ago
      I suspect that these efforts keep failing in part because people never needed Twitter and Reddit in the first place. Leaving one social network doesn't imply that a person will join another. I didn't open accounts on similar platforms after leaving Reddit, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter over the years.
• duckfruit 3y ago
  This makes me indescribably sad. Apart from mourning the loss of a fantastic app by an awesome developer, to me it signals the end of a golden era of small indie client only apps. Since the APIs for the likes of reddit, twitter (RIP tweetbot) and others were available for free or a reasonable fee it spawned a whole cottage industry of developers who made a living selling alternate front ends for these services. These apps invented many of the conventions and designs that eventually percolated to the official clients. Sometimes these innovations even became platform wide conventions (pull to refresh anyone?). The writing was on the wall for a while, but now the door is firmly closed on that era - and we will all be poorer for it.
  • waif 3y ago
    If the web collectively swings back in the other direction, to the fediverse or some other evolution, there will be a revival of small indie clients, and a revival of a better web in general. Twitter is in freefall and Reddit is on the verge of it, so it might not be a long wait.
    • TechBro8615 3y ago
      The anti-federation argument has always been that centralized entities have the resources to make a better product. And if that's true, then Apollo is the exception to the rule. Reddit has a team with dozens of engineers, while Apollo has one developer with some part time help. So why is Apollo so much better than the official app? What the pro-centralization argument misses is that centralized apps also have incentive to monetize their app, and monetization features can harm quality. But in the case of Reddit I'm not sure it's only monetization which has ruined the first-party user experience. The engineering quality is just bad.
      • jtode 3y ago
        I left facebook towards the end of 2016, for exactly the reason you might think. I used Twitter for a while before and after that as a kind of methadone, and even stipulating that I was not looking for connection to friends and family, the interactions I had on Twitter in 2017 were, by and large, incredibly low-quality, and I was only interacting with people who ideologically agreed with me, the trolls never reached me, or if they did they were in stealth mode and ineffective. In retrospect, some of the accounts might have been intended to make the left look extra ridiculous, not sure, but I don't really believe that's true, I've seen people chase enough bad ideas en masse now that I think these were well-meaning people who believed that by participating in this infernal attention mill, they were doing things that would change the world for the better. Reddit has likewise never been even mediocre at what it's purporting to be, these are all just what happens when people approach the internet, which is one thing, as though it was a super cool television, which is a whole other thing. The illusion of participation and having a voice is really what people are buying with all their attention, because actually having a voice on the actual internet means knowing html at a minimum. Not actually a tall order for anyone who has a couple days and a willingness to do a bit of mental labour, but why bother when you can just post on whichever corporate daemon you favour. The weirdest thing of all to me, I don't even know how I found this place but it's got some of the best interactions I've had since Usenet died, and I didn't know know what ycombinator was or why it wasn't called hackernews.net or whatever. To learn just this week that the platform is just a service operated by the people behind quite a lot of this VC fuckery, I'm still integrating it, but it kinda feels like I wandered into the country club after getting lost in the woods and nobody's asked who I'm here with or why I'm not fetching them a bowl of nuts. Anyways didn't come to talk about that, came to say, been using Mastodon the last month or so, and I am also having pretty high quality interactions there. Nothing remotely like the idiocy I encountered daily in my Twitter feed. Occasionally a thing that I don't care for, like, I really don't need all the furry porn, holy crap are there ever a lot of very dedicated people servicing the furry market and I'm gonna be looking into that cause I know how to make tails move. But that filters out easy. I'm on the main instance and I'm looking around at others while I decide whether to just self-host, but I enjoy the scroll with the accounts and hashtags I follow, the quality ranges from boring to amazing, very little annoying, trollish, spammy, Mindset-infected trash comes through my feed, and like I said, the only heavy filtering I've done is the porn. Best part: I loved Facebook when I first joined and when I started to get discontented was when the default feed stopped being "what you follow in the order they post," and that has never been around since, except notably on reddit I suppose. Nothing wrong with having an algo feed available for discovery, and Mastodon has that, but your feed is just what you follow in the order they post as a default. So you scroll down till you realize you've seen it already, and you know you've seen it all for now and you move on. There is no machine trying to hold your attention, there is just what you asked for. What a concept.
• Reptur 3y ago
  I have been browsing Reddit off and on since Digg lost their minds. Apollo was the only IOS app that was good quality for a long time, and it only got better as time passed.
• frankjr 3y ago
  Looks like June 30th is also the day I'll stop using Reddit. What a coincidence!
  • petercammeraat 3y ago
    Same. I only accessed Reddit with Apollo.
  • e40 3y ago
    I decided to rip the bandaid off now. Uninstalled it earlier tonight. Honestly, I don’t want to support Reddit anymore.
• robotnikman 3y ago
  Looks like I will be quitting Reddit on the 30th then. I refuse to use their dumpster fire known as the official app.
  • berkle4455 3y ago
    You can stop now. Web 2.0 social media is dead and web3 is unrefined garbage. Time for web1 bulletin board/forums to return!
    • d1str0 3y ago
      I personally like forums better anyways rather than the multithreaded up/down vote systems. I feel like the gamification of Reddit style discussion exaggerates echo chambers.
      • berkle4455 3y ago
        Yep. Discussion boards should have a flagging mechanism for user-driven-moderation to help remove hateful/inappropriate/offensive content but that's it.
      • rewgs 3y ago
        I much prefer the multithreaded UI, but agree that the up/down vote systems aren't great. If it were simply sorted by time, I'd be happy.
      • jayknight 3y ago
        You might be right about the voting system, but reddit- (and HN-) style threading is so much better for following discussions as they naturally branch into different things. Trying to follow a certain "thread" of discussion in a traditional linear forum thread can be next to impossible when you have 10s of pages to flip through looking for any replies addressed to a comment on page 4.
    • doublerabbit 3y ago
      Can we venture back to Web0 and BBSes? I was too born too late in to this world to encounter such glory.
• LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
  Honestly, I'm surprised that spez kept his job after getting caught modifying user comments straight from the production db[0]. That's who these people are dealing with, to be clear. And now he's accusing Apollo of threatening Reddit? Give me a break. How is this the guy who's gonna lead Reddit to the promised land? 0: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev...
  • Moeancurly 3y ago
    I haven't been able to find the comment again, but I am 95% certain he admitted to editing the production DB long before this incident. I think it was an IAMA with kn0thing, where they admitted something along the lines of editing the DB to fix typos in titles. Not quite as bad, but no surprise he continued the behavior.
    • toomuchtodo 3y ago
      https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_editing_some_comments_and_creating_an/damfr71/ https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_...
      • Moeancurly 3y ago
        That's it, thanks!
  • thih9 3y ago
    > for about an hour To be fair, this doesn't seem that bad, especially in comparison to the API price hike and their handling of it.
    • mikeyouse 3y ago
      I can't believe people are pretending to be outraged about something so boring. Oh no, a forum admin trolled a user in a troll subreddit, qué horror! The thread he changed the comments in was filled with users literally accusing multiple innocent people of being pedophiles who ate children, but sure, it's a bridge too far to change the user tag of comments literally threatening him rather than e.g. banning everyone who commented there or reporting the threats to the police which would have been well within his rights!
• 19h 3y ago
  Can’t Apollo be open-sourced and the tokens of the original app be used? I’d absolutely donate on a monthly basis.
  • chomp 3y ago
    You'd likely have to enter an API agreement with Reddit, and it's unlikely they'd be willing to run you through the sales funnel and write up a contract just sell you what's effectively a $3/mo API plan. That said, open sourcing the app would be great to archive it for posterity.
    • toomuchtodo 3y ago
      If you didn't have a need to post, I would assume Apollo could be update to allow one to specify a Teddit/libreddit instance's API (which would act as a caching proxy for reddit). You'd be able to get a similar experience without relying on Reddit directly.
    • Semaphor 3y ago
      > sell you what's effectively a $3/mo API plan. For a single user, the API is free. But every user would have to apply for a key, and there is no guarantee they’d get one.
  • iscrewyou 3y ago
    He’d open sourced his Achoo app in the past. All it led to was copycats pretending they are not copycats. No attribution and the whole nine yards. If you google it, there still might be remnants of the incident. So I wouldn’t hold out hope on Apollo, rightfully so.
  • Aachen 3y ago
    Or adapted for another platform. Open source UI means you need basically the database adapter to set up a clone. Betcha a lot of current Apollo users would swing onto that new platform.
• satysin 3y ago
  It is a shame it came to this. The primary way I use Reddit is via Apollo so I guess I won’t be using Reddit as much. On the web I still use old.reddit.com but I can see them killing that off sooner or later.
• sebastialonso 3y ago
  I see two pretty distinct issues here: 1) most people's favourite app is going to die, and 2) many subreddits will be negatively affected by this move: prime example is /r/AskHistorians. Personally, 1) is not really an issue and people are enjoying the outrage train, and that's ok and valid and whatever, but it's a third party app. It's a no-brainer decision to try to kill it if it's hindering your ability to make more money. At the mid term is a great incentive for Reddit to improve their shitty app experience ("but Ads!" yeah, ads of course, you're not paying shot for using it, it's an impopular but pragmatic business model) But 2) it's the one that's really concerning. Hopefully they reverse this course for this point specifically cause this has a measurable impact on eyeballs, which ultimately means money. inb4: "Apollo dying means less eyeballs too dummy", yeah as I mentioned before the outrage is the fad. Once it passes, will see how much people actually leaves (little to none alternatives for Reddit btw). My bet is that could result in a small hump, if anything, in the long run.
  • ghostpepper 3y ago
    What is causing #2? Do the mods use Apollo exclusively or something?
    • OkayPhysicist 3y ago
      The change isn't about Apollo exclusively, Reddit is going to start charging for their API. Basically all remotely adequate (which Reddit's 1st party tools aren't) moderation tools make extensive use of said API, so Reddit has basically decided "Hey, people who do most of the work necessary to keep our platform afloat for free, mind if you start paying us for the privilege?" Cue people being understandably upset.
    • ameswarb 3y ago
      Most communities rely on third party moderation services and tools which will also be impacted by the API changes. Many have said that moderating larger communities will be untenable without them.
    • esdott 3y ago
      Yep. While I'm not 100% positive, I also think mods that have certain disabilities (like blindness) rely on the app extensively.
• bagels 3y ago
  I don't have any dogs in this race, but Apollo should be careful about recording calls. Just because he is in a one-party location doesn't mean he hasn't violated the law wherever the other party is if they are in a two-party location and he didn't have consent from the other party.
  • 3np 3y ago
    That's not how that works.
    • bagels 3y ago
      It's how it works in California, where Reddit is domiciled. kearney v. salomon smith barney
  • elbigbad 3y ago
    Just in case anyone sees this and takes it seriously: this is absolutely not now that works.
    • minimaxir 3y ago
      And even if it did in the US, I don't think anyone here is an expert on how phone consent laws work cross-country.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • ericpauley 3y ago
      California courts disagree: https://web.archive.org/web/20060823045528/http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S124739.PDF https://web.archive.org/web/20060823045528/http://www.courti... Still looking for precedent on this at the national level, and of course International is another story. I could imagine (IANAL-YMMV) it being further complicated by where Apollo (the business) is legally domiciled.
    • dragonwriter 3y ago
• add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  For what it's worth, I'm looking forward to July 1. Twitter had become a chore, but I didn't quit altogether until I was pushed out by losing the one client I found decent. It's been for the better. Like Twitter, Reddit has been on a long decline and has long since become a habit I stick to for no real reason other than that it's familiar.
  • veilrap 3y ago
    Same boat. It's going to be pretty trivial to stop browsing reddit once Apollo is gone. I'll probably still read links through google search from time to time, but it'll be a 99% reduction in usage for me.
• hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  I'm not a user of Apollo, and honestly have been perfectly fine using old.reddit.com on both mobile and desktop. That said, while I realize it's just his side of the story, the Apollo developer comes across as imminently reasonable and rational (and he apparently has the receipts to back it up), while Reddit comes across as embodying typical corporate greed. On a related note, I think everyone should understand that, in the long term, "Don't be evil" is simply impossible for large corporations - the incentives are just too strong to prioritize short/medium term revenue growth over user experience. In any case, while I don't think the people shouting "I'm done with Reddit" will make much of a dent in Reddit's overall usage numbers, I personally am deleting my account and blocking reddit on my devices. If anything I think this drama gave me a nice little push to take more control over my time that will make me happier in the long run.
  • d1str0 3y ago
    I turned on my 1Blocker app for ios to block Reddit for the first time in months after this drama. I only name drop the app because it has served me well for ad blocking and custom rules (like blocking Reddit).
  • falcolas 3y ago
    > "Don't be evil" is simply impossible for large corporations I see Patagonia as the antithesis of this broadly accepted assertion. It's possible, it just takes having a goal for your company that's more than greed.
    • Invictus0 3y ago
      Patagonia didn't take VC money, and reddit wouldn't have even survived this long if they hadn't
      • moomoo11 3y ago
        How true is that honestly? The more I talk to people the more I feel like people just like to party/waste money more than work.
• hold_and_modify 3y ago
  Welp, there goes my Reddit usage. It's been a good run.
• whalesalad 3y ago
  This is totally wild. Apollo is easily one of the best iOS apps of all time and one that I use daily. I can't imagine it just poof disappearing over something like this.
• zzixp 3y ago
  Holy shit
• adoxyz 3y ago
  And my usage of reddit will close down as well. So excited to have all that time back to be honest.
• willidiots 3y ago
  I hope Apollo's not overplaying their hand here, though it's super interesting hearing these conversations from the inside. It's clear reddit's got it out for the 3p apps, and I'm personally leaving reddit over this (longtime RIF user), but this post is a bit concerning. It focuses on the "[apollo can] quiet down [for $10M]" topic in the conversation, and the apparent misunderstanding between Apollo and Reddit, Reddit taking "quiet down" to mean "go away quietly, without a lot of public noise", as a threat. Apollo states that they meant "go dark", "reduce API usage", "reduce reddit opportunity cost". But for that position to make sense, Apollo would need some leverage here. They're using Reddit's API and platform behind the scenes - they have no leverage I can see. What am I missing?
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • zamalek 3y ago
    The angle was "buy Apollo from me": > "If third-party apps are costing Reddit so much money, why don't they just buy them out like they did Alien Blue?" That was the point I brought up. If running Apollo as it stands now would cost you $20 million yearly as you quote, I suggested you cut a check to me to end Apollo. I said I'd even do it for half that or six months worth: $10 million, what a deal! And it would have been a deal: 6 months of opportunity cost upfront to then turn into real profit. Instead they are permanently lose the [possibly] majority of that opportunity when those users lose access to Reddit.
    • s1artibartfast 3y ago
      >And it would have been a deal: 6 months of opportunity cost upfront to then turn into real profit. Instead they are permanently lose the [possibly] majority of that opportunity when those users lose access to Reddit. I dont think that is accurate. Reddit doesnt make 20M a year if they buy Apollo in this situation. If something costs 20 million/yr to operate, buying it doesnt reduce that cost. You are just out 10M upfront and then 20M/yr. The solution is not to buy it, but to make it stop.
• 1000100_1000101 3y ago
  I don't even use Apollo, so this shouldn't affect me in the slightest... but slandering folks? That's not cool. Account deleted, noted the slander as the reason.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• ellisd 3y ago
  Reddit 16-year club member here. Reddit has made the the most tone-deaf decision in their entire 17 year history. This will be a future case study on how to self-immolate your entire community.
  • baq 3y ago
    Digg: looks confused
  • ietktnz 3y ago
    How to Digg your own grave
  • davidktr 3y ago
    15-year-club here: This time it feels more being about Reddit itself than about specific persons, like with Ellen Pao. Just the vibe I'm getting. Anyway, I quit cold turkey end of last year after being a daily user for those 15 years. Definitely right move.
  • kilroy123 3y ago
    12-year here, but before that, I was a lurker. I quit using Reddit two years ago. Haven't looked back.
  • seanalltogether 3y ago
    Yeah they should have slow boiled the frog if the goal was to migrate everyone to their own app.
  • e40 3y ago
    17 ur club here. agree.
  • trebills 3y ago
    100% in my experience the people that use Reddit the most (~daily) are the folks that are more likely to be done with Reddit for their stupid decisions. I’ve only been using Reddit for an about 5.5 years, but when I first signed up I just didn’t use it because I used the website. Then I found Apollo and I became a daily user and it was my main social media.
• danpalmer 3y ago
  Well done to Christian for remaining calm, professional, and engaging with this process in an honest way, standing up for his users, but not attacking Reddit or its staff with emotion, just stating facts and holding them to account in a considered way. He comes across as a mature individual and one that I'm sure many would want to deal with in business or hire as an engineer or leader. In a way, Reddit couldn't have asked for a worse outcome, they have come out looking terrible and he has come out looking great and defining the community discussion.
  • kats 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • Operyl 3y ago
      Read the post, listen to the audio of the actual context of that comment in the call. It wasn't blackmail, and was addressed in the submission. He also lives in a country that doesn't require all parties to consent to recording, and it wasn't until Reddit accused him of blackmail that he released his evidence.. Seems reasonable and level headed to me.
      • kats 3y ago
        I thought I did??? Honestly feels like we're talking about that dress that's blue&black or white&gold. > He also lives in a country that doesn't require all parties to consent to recording Ok it's not technically illegal it's just extremely unprofessional. If a business did that people would erupt. He threatened them three times. Pay him 10 million dollars and he'll go away quietly, or else he'll send the reddit mob at them. Which is exactly what he just did when they didn't pay. He tried as hard as he could to do it. The actual audio with his tone of voice is way worse than the transcript. He told them 3 times just pay 10 million dollars and: "I could make it really easy on you", "we can both skip off into the sunset", "Bob's your uncle", "And have Apollo quiet down". Later he says Oh haha just kidding, I'm a "noisy API user".
        • 3y ago
• CharlesW 3y ago
  The end of Apollo is the end of Reddit for me. As with Twitter, I'll be taking my toys with me when I leave the sandbox. What are good tools for erasing one's Reddit history? I just learned about redact.dev (but haven't tried it yet) for example. UPDATE: react.dev seems to work well. It's deleted 1.5K+ posts as I type this at 0.65–0.85 per second.
• eiiot 3y ago
  Losing one of the best Apps on the app store is really heartbreaking. Although I'm hoping for Apollo to be open-sourced, it's probably unrealistic.
  • detourdog 3y ago
    He should just make a new service and point the app at that.
    • malermeister 3y ago
      There's already lemmy, a fediverse reddit alternative!
      • detourdog 3y ago
        he should make his GUI work with that.
• squegles 3y ago
  One the best apps on iOS. Will be sad to lose it.
• jamespo 3y ago
  It's quite simple, make API access conditional on having reddit premium. Reddit get $50 a year and the apps can continue - although the userbase would be significantly lower.
  • r00fus 3y ago
    Not a high enough tax for management, it appears.
    • dcow 3y ago
      Reddit is so unimaginative it's baffling. 10 million for Apollo is also a fucking steal. I mean fire your mobile team and buy Apollo for 10 million? WTF why is that not the obvious play here...
      • r00fus 3y ago
        The problem as other stated is that a) Reddit doesn't think Apollo moves the needle on users (I disagree but whatever) b) Apollo users wouldn't want the value extraction that management wants to implement. Yes, $10M is a fantastically low price even if they throw it away in a year.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
• r00fus 3y ago
  This sounds a lot like the whole Twitter issue where they messed with MFA, and ruined my ability to login anywhere other than a single laptop (that had an existing token). So that fixed my Twitter addition - I just stopped using it. The same will likely happen here - Reddit is going to find out that I'm happy querying for other users's content (from Google/Duck queries) but without Apollo, I'm probably not going to contribute.
• renewiltord 3y ago
  I still don't understand why the user flow can't be: 1. Download Apollo 2. Go to Reddit.com 3. Open your user settings 4. Generate a client_id and client_secret 5. Paste that into these two places in Apollo 6. There you go Sure it's not strictly to OAuth2, but it's going to work just fine, right?
  • fooey 3y ago
    Obtaining Reddit API keys is an application process, it is not automated
    • costco 3y ago
      Don't you just visit https://old.reddit.com/prefs/apps/ https://old.reddit.com/prefs/apps/ and press "create application"? I did this a few years ago and it was instant.
  • Semaphor 3y ago
    Because Reddit wants you to enter an agreement with them for the API, so you need to submit a request to get an API key for those client_ids.
    • renewiltord 3y ago
      Ah, not every user would be approved, huh? Cool, makes sense then.
      • Semaphor 3y ago
        Impossible to tell, it’s a request form on their support site where you have to answer a bunch of questions, and they’ll get back to you.
  • jhatemyjob 3y ago
    Because it would get pulled from the App Store.
• Exuma 3y ago
  Fuck reddit
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• brycewray 3y ago
  He put his email address at the end. As I told him in what I’m sure will be jillions of emails about the subject: > Have just read your amazing, sad, comprehensive Reddit post about the end of Apollo. > I was one of those long-ago paid-once users :-) and happily used Apollo for years. When I found out a few days ago what was happening to you, I actually deleted Apollo from my devices so I wouldn’t inadvertently cost you money through background stuff once Reddit’s API fees went into effect. Then, as I got really mad over what they’d done to you and the other third-party app devs, I spent hours deleting every comment and every submission I’d ever made to Reddit — because, of course, they don’t have a UI where you can do that easily — and then killed my account after seven years, just because all of this had made me no longer want any association with that platform.
  • jffry 3y ago
    For anybody who would like to mass delete their own comments and submissions: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite/ https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite/
    • scinerio 3y ago
      This seems like a much more effective protest vs. subreddits going dark.
    • zamadatix 3y ago
      Note: Reddit switched to archiving posts older than 6 months by default many years ago. Individual subreddits can opt-out of this behavior. If they have not, you will not be able to edit/remove your comments or posts there.
• cheald 3y ago
  This is gonna kill reddit. I have no desire to use their horrific official clients. I'd rather just be done with it.
• thdespou 3y ago
  I don't understand. Why not using the Reddit app?
  • scinerio 3y ago
    Less features and less user friendly.
  • replwoacause 3y ago
    Because it’s a giant bloated spy machine ad-serving trash app. And Apollo is slick with excellent UX.
    • smcin 3y ago
      > giant bloated spy machine ad-serving trash app That was an epic description. Like a Stephen Gaghan take on most (commercial) social media mobile clients.
• jszymborski 3y ago
  Missed opportunity imho... they should have made apollo its own social network, maybe even a lemmy instance with rooms with identical names to some of the reddit ones.
• WestCoastJustin 3y ago
  In this situation, do you hire someone to negotiate with or for you? I'm thinking the intention here was to sell the company for $10 million and that came across as a threat because of the language that was used. You would not record the call [1] and then publish it if you actually were blackmailing them for $10 million. I'm not faulting the guy here at all, I just think it comes down to lack of experience in dealing with negotiations of this level. He clearly has an awesome product if you look at any of the HN/Reddit comments. He probably could have walked away will at least a few million vs shutting it down if there was a small level of negotiation that took place here. I'm not sure who was on the other end of the call but strategic accounts normally get pretty seasoned sales folks assigned to them. They are used to having hard conversations around pricing and pissed off customers. That's all part of negotiation. That call was brutal to listen too. Or, is saying you're shutting down part of negotiation too? This likely took it too far if it was, in that you're making reddit look like the bad guy very publicly now. So, it's probably worth it for reddit to cut ties and force people into the reddit app. No winners here: * Apollo the company is gone. * Apollo users are gone. * Reddit has no customer paying money. * Reddit cannot reference them. * Reddit users are ticked off. This is a case study in bad negotiation tactics on both sides. Reddit tried to squeeze them pretty hard right off the bat. Should have tried a 3 year contract or something with heavy discounts. This is wild. [1] http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-31-end.m4a http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-3...
  • bogwog 3y ago
    Yeah this guy didn't handle this situation very well. I don't know if it would've been possible to save Apollo for reddit, but that call didn't help at all. Also, what's the deal with him not wanting to start a competitor? That's like his only bargaining chip in this situation, and he's just throwing it away because he feels overwhelmed and wants to make iOS widgets. I totally sympathize with him and how this situation is probably incredibly stressful, but when you have 50k+ subscribers per year + millions of happy loyal users, you gotta start bringing in outside people to help with these things. He's just letting a lot of people down. I don't mean to trash the guy, but I hope that the other third-party apps see this example and change their response to find a better outcome for their users.
• sexydev 3y ago
  Remember when FB made changes and switched to timeline views. Everyone was saying this is the death of Facebook. Then in the next earnings call, they showed average engagement and time spent more than doubled. Everyone boycotting reddit is all talk and no hat. They will still be on reddit.
  • dimgl 3y ago
    This is false equivalency. And since then Facebook has deteriorated and its usage has plummeted.
  • optimalsolver 3y ago
    Yeah, the way people stop using a platform is usually by slowly losing interest and visiting less and less. People making dramatic announcements of departure, on the other hand, are actually extremely engaged with the platform and rarely make good on their promise.
  • goolz 3y ago
    You mean the same Facebook that no one under 30 uses?
• commiepatrol 3y ago
  I'm sad about this. I use apollo daily, I really don't like the reddit app one bit. I guess I can still use the old.reddit.com for the 3-4 subreddits I still follow.
• asciimov 3y ago
  Guess I need to start winding down my time on reddit, the next 3 weeks will go by fast.
• mulmen 3y ago
  I hope someone has been working on a Reddit replacement and is close to ready. This is Reddit's Digg moment and the time is now to market yourself as a place to go.
• mnd999 3y ago
  Sounds like Apollo has a nice frontend with a proven API behind it. Reimplementing the API on a different backend couldn’t be _that_ hard, at least for a POC. Supabase anyone?
• ketchupdebugger 3y ago
  Apollo wont be the only one. This is all for Reddit's greed and trying to increase margins before attempting to IPO. Looks like I'll finally be free of my reddit addiction on July 1st.
• _yb2s 3y ago
  Do you guys really expect a for profit company to offer free API access to 3rd parties, that offer a better experience with no ads, bypassing their revenue stream, and making their own site and apps look terrible in comparison? I've always been shocked Reddit allowed this at all. No other major player that owns a platform- FB, instagram, Google, etc. offers this either. I don't like it either but it makes perfect sense. You could even make the argument that not doing this would mean Reddit employees aren't doing their jobs, and aren't looking out for the company.
  • Jackim 3y ago
    The developers aren't asking for a free API, just one that is justified based on reddit's costs.
    • jdminhbg 3y ago
      The problem is people think of this in terms of "cost to keep the server on that serves an API request" and not the opportunity cost for ad engagement that actually makes the business viable.
      • _yb2s 3y ago
        Also the opportunity cost of optics… why is the overall user experience so much better with these apps?
      • Jackim 3y ago
        Sure, but there's also the value that the users create using these apps, and drive engagement to reddit. Not to mention the insane amount of volunteer mod work, many of who use unofficial apps.
        • jdminhbg 3y ago
          > Sure, but there's also the value that the users create using these apps, and drive engagement to reddit. This is what people said about third-party Twitter apps, yet all of those power users and brands are still there, except the ones who are ideologically opposed to Elon (and were leaving anyway). It doesn't really seem to have made a difference.
• seatac76 3y ago
  spez is a comically bad CEO. This should not have been this complicated, if they wanted to kill 3P apps they could have just said that. This is a very Reddit thread () way of handling this!
• kernal 3y ago
  As the saying goes - never rely on someone else's platform for your livelihood. This was always bound to happen and it was just a matter of time. Reddit needs to eliminate all third party clients that block their ads and siphon potential ad revenue in order to be financially attractive to investors. For the Redditors that laughed and criticized Twitter when they capped user counts in third party apps and raised their API usage fees, karma was waiting with patience to return the favor. I view what Reddit did as an opportunity. Even though Mastodon was a spectacular failure, I could see a Reddit alternative that uses the federated model that Mastodon does.
• rogers18445 3y ago
  Is there a legal reason why they can't just scrape reddit and forget about API? It would be the app users doing the scraping.
  • TechBro8615 3y ago
    Or just clone whatever API the official Reddit mobile client is using. As long as it's offered for free to the official app, there's no technical way to stop another app from using the same API. The best they could do is bundle some private keys in the official app, but ultimately anything on the client can be reverse engineered and cloned by another app. The only solution Reddit has to that is complaining to Apple, who can reject the third party app from the App Store. There's precedent for this with things like "unofficial" Pokémon Go clients. Apple is usually happy to remove them. But I'm not sure it's ever gone to trial - it would certainly be interesting, given case law around APIs like with Oracle v Google, or LinkedIn v HiQ.
    • yett 3y ago
      I don't think even cloning anything would be necessary. They will still allow free tier of 100 requests/minutes if authenticated so why not let people use their own tokens? https://reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_update_enterprise_level_tier_for_large_scale/ https://reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_update_e...
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  > The information they did provide however was: we will be moving to a paid API as it's not tenable for Reddit to pay for third-party apps indefinitely (understandable, agreed), so they're looking to do equitable pricing based in reality. So far so good. Speaking facts, no opinion, no bias. > The price they gave was $0.24 for 1,000 API calls. I quickly inputted this in my app, and saw that it was not far off Twitter's outstandingly high API prices, at $12,000, and with my current usage would cost almost $2 million dollars per month, or over $20 million per year. No bulk discount? I guess it's in Reddit's best interest to have people on the official Reddit app in the first place.
• spullara 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • km3r 3y ago
    Where did you get that number from? Apollo dev's calc put it more in the range of $1.40/ YEAR not month. That makes it a 20x premium, not 2x. https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...
    • spullara 3y ago
      That would hilariously low for a social network. https://sacra.com/c/reddit/ https://sacra.com/c/reddit/
• shmde 3y ago
  I use Sync Pro on Android to browse reddit. That's going out next I guess. Just waiting for old.reddit.com to die so I can finally leave reddit all together.
• honksillet 3y ago
  Reddit’s censorship of r/the_donald was a huge moment in the splintering of political discourse into disconnected silos. It used to be you could go to the front page of Reddit and see what each side of American politics was pushing that day. People on both the left and right would be confronted with news that otherwise they might not see in their personal echo chambers. That all died when spez and co first “quarantined” (ironic jargon choice) then ultimately killed T_D. Truly a sad chain of events. PS. T_D still lives at patriots.win fwiw.
  • Panoramix 3y ago
    Indeed. I despise everything right wing, but I'm also not a fan of what Reddit has become as of late. On the larger subs there are plenty of threads where somebody asks "can somebody give their perspective on why [XX issue that usually right wing people complain about]". Followed by a storm of progressive commenters stating a variation of "because if you care about XX you're insane/you're a nazi/etc". That makes up about the top 300 top level comments. If you scroll past that, there are hundreds of comments from people that intended to actually answer the question and provide nuance, but, but those comments are all deleted by the mods. It's mostly a progressive echo chamber nowadays.
  • dimgl 3y ago
    The problem with this is that the discourse in those kinds of sites are way too extreme. People who have been kicked off of Reddit and want to _only_ engage in that topic tend to be fanatical. We need companies to embrace _both_ sides.
  • ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
    If you want a website where radical centrisim is the word, check out rdrama.net
  • rcxdude 3y ago
    No, you could see what the_donald was pushing. They were constantly manipulating things to be as over-represented on the front page as they could. This is why they got canned.
• chillbill 3y ago
  Not only does Steve Huffman need to step down and quit this whole business, the entire team of senior management at Reddit needs to just get away as far as they can from managing anything larger than a lemon stand. Impossibly stupid way of running things. Edit: Jesus Christ, that guy on the other end of the phone has just completely destroyed himself in the world of business by lying about the conversation he had with the Apollo developer: https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-31-end.m4a https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-...
• obblekk 3y ago
  It's totally unreasonable to expect you to make changes in 30 days. Consider app review time, that might not even be possible. After you shutdown, can you turn Apollo into a site-specific browser? Like request reddit html, write a custom transformer to make it less bad, render with a safari webview, and push nav changes as views on the stack?
  • SheinhardtWigCo 3y ago
    Unlikely, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn
• Firmwarrior 3y ago
  Apollo should launch its own backend IMO, with a usable old.reddit style web interface and API access to other clients
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• marcell 3y ago
  Interesting to note that /u/spez hasn't posted anything on reddit for 10 months now: https://old.reddit.com/user/spez https://old.reddit.com/user/spez
  • I_am_tiberius 3y ago
    Maybe he uses other users' accounts to express his opinions.
    • replwoacause 3y ago
      You mean the guy that manually edits posts in the Production DB that he disagrees with? Nah, no way he’d pull a stunt like that.
• I_am_tiberius 3y ago
  Just deleted my account.
• SheinhardtWigCo 3y ago
  When your landlord raises your rent from $2000 to $8000, they're not really hoping to raise your rent. They're evicting you. I think the new API pricing model was developed with a single purpose: extinguishing third-party apps to improve the official app's install/usage metrics before their upcoming IPO.
  • WeylandYutani 3y ago
    Agreed. All those 3rd party apps were blocking ads and trackers. Hell you can't even browse Reddit without an account anymore!
    • brainbag 3y ago
      They were not "blocking" ads and trackers, those features are not exposed by the API. They couldn't do it even if they wanted to, which was discussed at some point.
    • tantalor 3y ago
      Not sure what you mean by "trackers". Reddit knows exactly what you did in the 3rd party app via the API. The app tells the API who you are.
    • jjulius 3y ago
      >Hell you can't even browse Reddit without an account anymore! Yes, you can, via old.reddit.com.
      • unshavedyak 3y ago
        Which is exactly why i'm leaving Reddit. I don't imagine old.reddit will be around much longer either.
        • anton000 3y ago
          same here. once old.reddit is gone, im gone as well
• ecommerceguy 3y ago
  I'll repost this link as it seems so very strange to me with all of the complaints these days about bots and fake accounts pushing narratives that everyone seems to forget Reddit was built on fake accounts replying to each other: It's so gross. How Reddit Got Huge: Tons of Fake Accounts https://www.vice.com/en/article/z4444w/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-of-fake-accounts--2 https://www.vice.com/en/article/z4444w/how-reddit-got-huge-t...
• Jayakumark 3y ago
  Will plan my way out of reddit.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• dimgl 3y ago
  This is absolutely nuts. The only reason I was still using Reddit was because of the Apollo app. Best of luck to you in the future Christian.
• fooey 3y ago
  RIF has now announced they will also be shutting down on June 30th https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_will_shut_down_on_june_30_2023_in_response_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_wi...
  • dimgl 3y ago
    This is pretty wild. I don't think I've ever seen something like this. I like it. I think Reddit needs to come down to reality.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • madeofpalk 3y ago
      > I don't think I've ever seen something like this Except for what happened with Twitter a few months ago.
      • stronglikedan 3y ago
        But Twitter is better, leaner, and more popular than ever now, and deservedly so, now that that sinking ship was righted. Reddit doesn't deserve anything like that after this.
        • petersellers 3y ago
          > But Twitter is better, leaner, and more popular than ever now, and deservedly so, now that that sinking ship was righted. Hopefully this is sarcasm, because in reality the opposite is true (except for the leaner part). https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-sales-musk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-sal... https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-is-now-worth-a-third-of-what-musk-paid-for-it-fidelity-says-e66f61db https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-is-now-worth-a-third-of...
          • 3y ago
• duped 3y ago
  The only thing more embarrassing than Reddit's behavior is that after 18 years and hundreds of millions in funding they can't make an app or website with a better experience than what someone can do in their basement with just API access. Part of me thinks that one of the reasons they want to kill 3rd party apps is because they're embarrassed that they're all better than whatever Reddit has come up in the last decade. Maybe they should listen to mods and users instead of trying to push whatever they want down users' throats, because it's not going to last much longer.
  • khangaroo 3y ago
    Probably because third-party apps aren't optimized to shove as many ads down the user's throat as possible.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • samstave 3y ago
      This is precisely what they thought they were doing. They are thinking that there is "money on the table" without their ability to monetize their traffic... As opposed to thinking of reddit as a fucking internet UTILITY -- they are doing the same VC / MBA bullshit as every single other tech company.
      • graypegg 3y ago
        To be fair, there is a difference between a for-profit company that everyone thinks is a utility, and a public utility. However, they’ve shot themselves in the foot. For generating more ad revenue here IMO. The sort of ill-will they’re creating will probably drive away the top-posters and moderators that make the site worth visiting. Is ad space on a site that’s contracted by 1% of its users going to tank in value? No probably not. But is the 99% going to stick around when the content they came for is missing or not moderated? Ehhh… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
    • 3y ago
• symlinkk 3y ago
  Why not just pay Reddit for their APIs? If you’re making $20M a year by building an app on their platform, it seems totally fair to pay them $10M a year for access. Do you expect AWS to host your stuff for free too?
  • dimgl 3y ago
    It's unlikely the developer is making $20m+ a year. But only Reddit would know the real number.
• colinrand 3y ago
  I haven't seen much discussion in defense of Reddit protecting their content from LLM training competitors. This to me is why they have to crack down on their API, it's no longer just SEO links back, it's training someone else's models on your content and community for free. This to me is the elephant. It's horrible how they treat their app community, but this is a massive problem for them.
  • Dylan16807 3y ago
    Even if we ignore the idea of just scraping the site, how much would it cost an API user to grab most posts just once? Is it actually enough to stop anyone?
  • toyg 3y ago
    That's already happened; if that were the reason, they'd be trying to close the barn after the horses have already crossed into another state.
    • colinrand 3y ago
      it's not a one time scrape, but a continual tuning
• George83728 3y ago
  He needs to sue Steve Huffman personally for defamation. Steve has been a known lying snake for years and it's long past due that somebody make him pay for it.
• kojeovo 3y ago
  Looking at #s on the app store / play store and it looks like RIF / Apollo usage is a drop in the bucket compared to the actual reddit app. I doubt this has any meaningful impact after all is settled. Just seems like a loud vocal minority.
  • Veen 3y ago
    Yes, but all the high-value content on reddit is created by a minority of users. The people who moderate reddit are a minority of users. The issue for reddit is that these are the same people as your "loud vocal minority" who use third-party apps. You know, the ones that do the work generates Reddit's value in the first place.
    • polytely 3y ago
      I'm pessimistic that it will matter, the power users will leave, the quality of content will drop, and the vast majority of users will be perfectly happy with the low quality content-slop that is left.
    • kojeovo 3y ago
      Are you theorizing that majority of content is posted through these third party apps? I can definitely see it's plausible that the content quality/quantity could drop. But if the average user is using the official app, will they notice or care? Doubt it. As for mods, I think there will always be people that will want to mod, using whatever way is available.
• bilekas 3y ago
  > with my current usage would cost almost $2 million dollars per month, or over $20 million per year This isn't the first story like this but the prices that are being calculated are absolutely outrageous. I have a feeling Redit just figured they have cornered this market already and the AI training that's being done is definitely a good reason to start paying for the API. But there are ways to offer "genuine enrichment integrations apps" a particular license. This flat rate is just not tenable for most if not all!
• perfectstorm 3y ago
  why can't reddit just give a 1yr grace period so 3p apps can update their pricing model to account for the new API prices? i know this is what I would do to avoid pissing off a massive use base if i were a decision maker at reddit.
• generalizations 3y ago
  > Please note that I recorded all my calls with Reddit, so my statements are not based on memory, but the recorded statements by Reddit over the course of the year. One-party consent recording is legal in my country of Canada. Also I won't be naming names, that's not important and I don't want to doxx people. IMO this should be much more common practice, where it's legal. It would be cool to one day have built-in functions in our smartphones that automatically enable it when the detected location allows for it.
  • DangerousPie 3y ago
    Shit, I really hope it doesn't. Do you really want every silly thing you say be recorded, to come bite you in the ass decades down the line?
    • rchaud 3y ago
      A question Canadians don't seem to be partly perturbed by. The legality is immaterial as this isn't a court case. If someone wants to record you without notifying you, they will.
      • graypegg 3y ago
        Yep. I record every call I have with anything resembling sales or tech support. I’ll hold companies to promises they make if they can hold me to mine.
    • polytely 3y ago
      In things to do with business, yes, if you behave ethically the risk is minimal and the upsides can save your ass like in this case.
  • sorenjan 3y ago
    My Xiaomi phone records every call, it should be a standard feature, but Google doesn't seem to like it. https://karnatakastateopenuniversity.in/call-recording-on-xiaomi.html https://karnatakastateopenuniversity.in/call-recording-on-xi... https://www.androidpolice.com/google-ends-call-recording-apps-accessibility-services/ https://www.androidpolice.com/google-ends-call-recording-app...
• MWil 3y ago
  I deleted my reddit account, a 10 yr old account - saw a bunch of others doing the same. Hopefully they get the message - better yet, hope they RECEIVE the message in the form of karma.
• ZacnyLos 3y ago
  Simply join Lemmy (i.e. beehaw.org) or Kbin (kbin.social).
  • tester457 3y ago
    Both are buggy
• _jplc 3y ago
  Reddit moment
• PaulHoule 3y ago
  It’s a basic problem for platform rot that the client is usually specific to a network today. Consider the following: AOL instant messenger, ICQ, Paltalk, Tivejo, MSN Messenger, Microsoft Messenger, MSN Messenger, Skype, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, 11 different messaging apps from Google, Zoom, Go2Meeting, WebEx, Microsoft Lynq, Skype for Business, Slack, iMessage, CuSeeMe, Discord, … A user looking superficially at those applications might notice very little difference or progress between them, the one thing they have in common is they are not compatible with each other, many of them are tied into a proprietary ecosystem (AOL, Facebook, …) and a major difference is they are tied into different proprietary ecosystem. Such an app always follows a scenario like “You should install Skype and contact me, unlike Paltalk it really works these days”. You try it and you’re like “Wow! This really works!” but after a few years it becomes less reliable and buggier than it was when it started. Some new application comes along and is in a honeymoon period where it knows it has to actually work in order to add new users while the old broken app can coast because they figure nobody can disrupt their two-sided market. History shows that the old app really will deteriorate to the point where the incumbent advantage is lost and a new app will be better…. For a while. What amazes me is that everybody from users to the app makers are stuck in this cycle and seem to have very little insight into it. It’s a reason why you need a service that is separate from the client and have to have competition for both. Unfortunately users seem to violently opposed to this and open messaging platforms like XMPP have only caught on with military and law enforcement users. The “fediverse” is a light of hope in this respect, what you learn when you get involved is it is not just Mastodon but there are many different systems that are inter operating. I wish the EU would take the problem seriously and just legislate interoperation between messaging apps, I mean, you can call an Android user from an iPhone, a Verizon customer can send a text to an AT&T customer, it is long past the time when you should be able to send a Slack user a message from Facebook messenger.
  • BEEdwards 3y ago
    >Unfortunately users seem to violently opposed to this and open messaging platforms like XMPP have only caught on with military and law enforcement users. I don't think it's the protocol users have the issue with, it's that generally to get the best out of it you need to run your own server and nobody wants to run their own server. I run my own server and don't want to run a server...
• fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
  I’m curious about how this works: it Apollo is going to be unable to operate at the new prices, would it be possible to release a version of the App that takes the user’s API key instead? And then the user can pay for Reddit API access directly?
• iamawacko 3y ago
  I've found Lemmy to be a good reddit alternative. https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/
• GiorgioG 3y ago
  That IPO will go really well with potential investors knowing the CEO will be on the legal hook for making libelous statements.
• golemotron 3y ago
  > Six weeks later, they called to discuss pricing. I quickly put together a small app where I could input the prices and it would output monthly/yearly cost, cost for free users, paid users, etc. so I'd be able to process the information immediately. Spreadsheets.. (cough, cough)
• vachina 3y ago
  > 50,000 yearly subscribers at $10 per year Wow. Now I know why reddit is tightening the noose. Third party developers making bank feeding off of the firehose that is reddit API.
  • ARandumGuy 3y ago
    $10 a year doesn't cover the estimated $2.50 per user per month cost after the API changes go through (especially considering Apple's cut). That estimated cost is also substantially higher then the estimated revenue reddit gets per user. The issue isn't that third party developers now have to pay for API access. That was a long time coming, and I don't know of anyone opposed to this. The issue is the price seems completely unreasonable, and the time frame is ridiculously short.
  • hayd 3y ago
    500k a year is not "making bank". To Reddit this is the cost of a couple of devs. There is/was a Reddit ecosystem, it's not a zero sum game. It seems short-sighted.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• graeme 3y ago
  Very odd for reddit to discount that it survives based on the free labour of power users, many of whom use Apollo and similar apps. This is one of those areas where a pure cost benefit analysis doesn't work. I mod a top 1% sub and one of our moderators exclusively uses Apollo for moderation work. Official Reddit app doesn't work well, and their workflow for modding doesn't involve a computer. ....what's that worth to Reddit?
  • unstatusthequo 3y ago
    I feel like a mod blackout on all of Reddit would send a nice message. Reddit without the mods becomes 4chan. Maybe the mods should send Reddit a bill? I’d love that. Thousands and thousands of bills from mods for their time over the years. Then take them to collections and small claims court when they don’t pay. Would be entertaining if nothing else.
• switch007 3y ago
  Reading the transcript, you could tell Steve was trying to bait Christian after hearing "I could make it really easy on you". You can feel the power imbalance. Steve didn't get much but he obviously still felt like it was enough to make the accusations he did. Steve was probably recording too. Christian should have had a lawyer sit next to him on that call.
• butterisgood 3y ago
  So back to digg then?
• flanbiscuit 3y ago
  Here's a wild thought. What I would love to happen is that one of these apps (Sync or Apollo) release a version of their app where a user can enter their own API key. This would put the cost of the API usage on to the individual user instead of the app owner and the app owner can continue to focus on the app UI/features without worry. It wouldn't change how they made money off these apps either. Let's see what that would cost the average user. As mentioned in the post: $0.24 for 1,000 API calls, average 345 requests per day per user I have no idea if they prorate charges if you use less than 1000 calls so lets assume they don't, so the minimum daily cost for a user is $0.24. $0.24 per day, for a 30 days is: $7.20 Hmm, I can't see many people wanting to pay that monthly. Maybe if reddit had a lower tier (0.12 for 500 calls would be $3.60/month)
  • ARandumGuy 3y ago
    The main issue is there isn't enough time to implement such a solution. You have to develop this new system of handling API keys, communicate this change to customers, develop a process to migrate users, and figure out what to do with people who paid for an entire year of access 3 months ago. All of that is a herculean task for a small dev team to accomplish in 30 days. That's not even dealing with the fact that this process would be difficult for users to actually use, and may run afoul of Apple's app store rules. While that solution may be appealing to tech-savy end users, it's completely untenable for a popular app, especially given the tight time window required.
    • pavel_lishin 3y ago
      > All of that is a herculean task for a small dev team to accomplish in 30 days. Why 30 days? I mean, I know that Reddit announced that that's when they'll kill the API... but that's a completely arbitrary deadline.
  • scinerio 3y ago
    This is an interesting option. I'd assume the added friction for an average user will drop the Apollo user base drastically, but it would still allow it to stay alive.
  • 3y ago
• bennylava 3y ago
  [flagged]
• foxbyte 3y ago
  Sad news for Apollo users. Reddit's API pricing change hit hard. With estimated $20M annual bill, it's impossible to maintain service. Users, consider not refunding to support the developers in these trying times.
• auggierose 3y ago
  Reads to me like this Christian guy asked for 10 mill to shut down his app. Why would they want to pay him that, instead of HIM paying THEM 20 mill? They are happy with him just going away. Sounds to me like a threat without having actually anything in hand to threaten with.
  • zamadatix 3y ago
    From listening to the audio clip, my understanding was he was trying to point out the absurdity in Reddit's claim the app actually cost them $20,000,000 per year by facetiously pointing out, if it were true, they could have gotten the app permanently for a steal of half that yearly cost and both of them would have been significantly richer. It didn't seem like he was ever legitimately asking for $10,000,000 to shut down the app, he knew it didn't cost that much and wasn't worth that much. If he thought it was actually worth so much, he wouldn't be shutting it down now.
    • auggierose 3y ago
      I don't know, the argument doesn't work for me. Again, why would they pay him half the current operating cost to go away (even if that is not 20 mill)? Weird. Also weird to release audio publicly based on hear-say, the Steve guy didn't accuse him publicly of anything. I'd be very careful to be on the phone with this Christian guy, because, I might also "miss" (did he mention it at any point to the other guy?) that he is recording the conversation.
      • zamadatix 3y ago
        > Again, why would they pay him half the current operating cost to go away (even if that is not 20 mill)? Again, the insinuation was that if anything was actually costing them the absurd $20,000,000 per year for multiple years then they would have had equally absurd ways of dealing with it, like paying a ridiculous $10,000,000 for Apollo and still saving tens of millions of dollars, which would have made more sense to do than what they did (let it go for years). The most obvious interpretation of this is "So obviously it's not costing you that absurdly, and we all know it. Now stop jerking me around on this API price being 'reasonable'." not "And that's why I'm asking you to actually pay me $10,000,000 to go away". This method of pointing out how absurd the API pricing is came from a user, prior to the call: https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/comment/jme726n/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/comment/... (the "/s" means sarcasm, in case you were thinking they were being serious as well). > Also weird to release audio publicly based on hear-say, the Steve guy didn't accuse him publicly of anything. It's not just private hearsay, the two quotes attributed to Steve are from the moderation call transcript which has been shared and verified. > I'd be very careful to be on the phone with this Christian guy, because, I might also "miss" (did he mention it at any point to the other guy?) that he is recording the conversation. I'd be worried about talking to someone who feels the need to be careful when they know the call is recorded.
• meonmyphone 3y ago
  That's sad. I started using the mobile site after Reddit bought Alien Blue, and I saw how the user experience gradually deteriorated to push their mobile app. I occasionally used Apollo as an alternative, and I can understand the sentiment of the users. As a reluctant iOS user, Apollo was one of the things that kept me on the platform. Seeing the direction thar Reddit has been taking, I hope a new platform comes to take its place with the focus on discussions/community.
• Havoc 3y ago
  Feels like the beginning of the end for Reddit.
  • replwoacause 3y ago
    It sure as shit aint good for their upcoming IPO
• antonjs 3y ago
  This move by reddit is so crazy I can't help but wonder if they're lighting all this user goodwill on fire in the hopes of improving their negotiating stance with folks using reddit for other things (like OpenAI and others training models), and that they're thinking they'll be able to change API pricing for Apollo and others once they have those big contracts locked in. It seems incredibly risky upfront, and with hindsight right now, totally untenable if that's the game they're playing.
• taubek 3y ago
  Reddit CEO will have AMA tomorrow https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ceo_tomorrow_to_discuss_the_api/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ce...
  • progbits 3y ago
    Will he edit users' posts to ask the questions he likes answering? https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_editing_some_comments_and_creating_an/ https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_...
  • badwolf 3y ago
    I'm sure that will go over just swimmingly...
    • goolz 3y ago
      I for one welcome all of these tech CEOs making utter fools of themselves for us all to watch. And welcome the paradigm shift as people start seeing the technocrats for what they are. Steve, you could have walked away from it all years ago. And now you get to go down in history as a villain (hint: because you are one).
  • skeaker 3y ago
    Anyone wanna take bets on if this will take the throne as the new most downvoted thing on reddit?
    • data-ottawa 3y ago
      It’s practically a certainty. I’m going to make some popcorn and watch. There’s absolutely nothing good that can come out of this for Reddit, unless they’re going to put up some concessions which are enough to get 3rd party devs back to the table.
  • e40 3y ago
    I think it speaks volumes about his mindset that he thinks this AMA is a good idea.
• jasonjayr 3y ago
  Looks like they just announced (as of about 30 mins ago) an AMA with u/spez tomorrow ... https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ceo_tomorrow_to_discuss_the_api/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ce...
• giarc 3y ago
  >Will you sell Apollo? >Probably not. Maybe if the perfect buyer came along who thought they could turn Apollo into something cool I get that it's something he built and loves, but if someone shows up with $1m and the alternative is to shut it down and get nothing. Then take the money even if it's not the "perfect buyer" and it won't be "cool".
  • rchaud 3y ago
    No one is going to buy it, the API pricing makes it impossible to turn a profit.
    • bpye 3y ago
      Presumably if someone were to offer to buy it it's because they intend to stand up a different back-end and try and start a new platform?
    • hayd 3y ago
      There is one obvious candidate to buy it... but that was shot down as some kind of threat.
    • MostlyStable 3y ago
      I've heard these new API fees would result in monthly subscription numbers between $2 and $5/month. I'd pay $5 to keep my third party app (which isn't Apollo). I fully believe that _most_ users aren't interested in paying these fees. But I'm skeptical that there are so few that _none_ of these 3rd party apps will stay afloat. I've got to believe that if none of the current big players want to stay in, someone else will come along soon.
    • giarc 3y ago
      I wouldn't be so sure. The app has been the talk of Reddit and many tech circles for a few weeks. Many are saying that without Apollo they won't use Reddit anymore. So if someone were to buy it and say "The same Apollo you love is now $9/month" I bet they could retain a number of users, specifically because there won't be other competitors (all competitors will be in same boat wrt to API pricing and not allowing ads).
• rewgs 3y ago
  What an absolute shit show. Reddit is objectively in the wrong here. Like Christian says, I fully agree that Reddit should charge for API access. But this is ridiculous and is simply a transparent (likely successful) attempt to kill 3rd party apps and streamline the "brand." Ultimately, this is symptomatic of trying to monetize a service that either a) isn't something people want to pay for, or b) monetizing it in a way that kills the spirit of the service. A common problem with the internet, sure, but also smacks of a complete lack of creativity on the part of the suits. If this were an issue of maintaining Reddit's longevity, they could find a way to have their cake and eat it too. No, this is a clear attempt to raise their value before their IPO, so that a few suits can jump ship when the value is at its highest, as we've seen time and time again. And they're too stupid to see that their efforts fly in the face of their obvious goal. Reddit got popular for lots of reasons; a big one was that it was fun and still felt freewheeling in a way that the increasingly corporate internet wasn't. It was still anonymous (if you wanted it to be), weird, communal, much like the early internet that was seemingly disappearing before our eyes, and yet still decently mainstream albeit in a nerdy way. Something changed when people started referring to it as "social media." I've always been confused by that label. It's "social," yes, and I guess it is indeed "media," but it's not "social media." It has little in common with Myspace or Facebook or Instagram. It has much more in common with internet forums, albeit with an IMO better interface (the tiered comments design is simple and brilliant, much easier to navigate and keep parallel conversations going than your standard in-line forum). We don't call forums "social media" -- that label is quite loaded and comes with a number of connotations. But alas, they tried to monetize it via the same model that all other "social media" is monetized -- with ads, clamping down on the weird, etc. This kills the Reddit. Remember Tumblr? My prediction? Reddit is going to limp on, but as even more of shadow of its former self than it's already become. It will become the Facebook equivalent of this kind of "social media" -- a distinctly non-hip, safe, boring, corporate place, with an ever-aging user base. One day it will be sold for a comparatively measly fee to someone social media giant that doesn't even exist yet. Those who long for the Reddit of old will go off to other places. I myself already spend most of my time on HN anyways -- it's basically everything I want from Reddit and none of what I don't. It's got the "old.reddit.com" interface, doesn't require a mobile app to use on a mobile browser, is information-dense, clean, fast. Content-wise HN and the tech-related subreddits I frequent have a huge amount of overlap both in terms of content and I presume users. For everything else...meh, I can take it or leave it. The hobby subreddits are great, the /r/all comment threads for huge events are great, but all that was the cherry on top, not the cake. I'll probably just continue to mostly spend my time here, and check out, say, the various fediverse clones of Reddit. But just like Mastadon with Twitter, it'll be too fragmented to truly replace what everyone is jumping ship from. It's sad, but I suppose this is the way of all things. It's new, it's fun, it matures, it's stable, then it decays. So it goes.
• paxys 3y ago
  Fully understand his stance, but it's a shame that such a great client will be shut down. If nothing else I'm sure making it paid-only and charging like $10/mo (from the current <$1) will still be a sustainable business model.
• altairprime 3y ago
  With the evidence collected and presented, I no longer support my viewpoint in the prior Reddit conversation about this here at HN, and I'm glad to see Christian taking steps to protect himself from Reddit by shutting down and walking away.
• wlesieutre 3y ago
  It's a small thing, but if anyone would like to support accessibility, please try setting the official Reddit app's font size to as large as it can go. Then leave the app a review based on how well it compares to the system's accessibility font sizes which should go up to 310%.
• jcmontx 3y ago
  I seriously don't understand why don't they buy them out, put on some tracking/whatever feature on Apollo and keep business as usual. I'm pretty sure the guy would take a reasonable offer instead of walking out empty handed.
• stagger87 3y ago
  Maybe I missed it, but why not just increase Apollo subscription rates to match the new pricing? It sounds like Apollo has a huge following that would be willing to support it. Take advantage of the hate train, tons of people would donate through a subscription model. It also sounds like these third party apps provide much better moderation interfaces, that could a selling point for the rates. Even if your subscriptions drop, it's still profit. I'm sure someone would be willing to do this, I don't understand the reason for not wanting to sell the app either. To me it sounds like the Apollo developer is undervaluing their position.
  • mandevil 3y ago
    He says, in the FA, that the problem was that Reddit's prices kick in 1 month from now, but plenty of people have already pre-paid him for a year at the old price. So he loses 50k the first month, then 10% of his user base re-ups at the new price and month 2 he only loses 45k, then another 10% renew and he only loses 40k in month 3... not really a sustainable way to run a business.
    • stagger87 3y ago
      Yea, I read that. I think that's a negative outlook. How many of those customers are sympathetic and would re-up at a new subscription rate? How many sympathetic new subscriptions could be generated? Refund current outstanding subs, and start a new sub, never take a hit. I mean, don't get me wrong, they can do whatever they want, it just doesn't seem like the dead end they make it.
      • MostlyStable 3y ago
        Yeah, especially when he says he'll be giving pro-rated refunds when it shuts down anyways, so it's not like he can't/won't do that. I'm honestly a bit baffled by both sides' behavior in this situation.
  • mulmen 3y ago
    The developer discusses this in the post so you did indeed miss it.
• deleted 3y ago
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• davesque 3y ago
  It really feels as though all of the API pricing issues across the industry are signaling a clear ending to the rosey eyed 2nd tech boom that began with the invention of smart phones and social media. I remember when my software career started in earnest back in 2011. There was a lot of positive energy in the air. A whole generation of people was discovering the joys of engineering and sharing their efforts and creativity through various forms of open access. Now, it feels like that's all gone. The spirit of generosity and altruism in the tech industry is much diminished. It seems we have an odd combination of C-suite mental illness and activist investors to thank for that.
  • symlinkk 3y ago
    Good, anything you share now is sucked up by ChatGPT and then that knowledge is instantly shared with everyone in the world. Let’s go back to staying private if we want to keep our jobs.
• cwkoss 3y ago
  Reddit is a huge tree that casts lots of shade across the forest floor. It may or may not topple completely, but its pretty clear that in the next month at least many large branches are going to fall, opening up the canopy for new seedlings to grow. Maybe we'll finally get some reddit competitors that aren't dominated by alt right blowhards.
• bluecalm 3y ago
  One thing which is unclear to me and I would really appreciate some perspective: do you think they designed the new API pricing with intention to have developers actually using/paying it or was it just a PR way to say "we are closing the API for 3rd party devs"?
• d4nyll 3y ago
  I've quit most of the social media like Facebook, I'm not active on Twitter or LinkedIn. But I've always struggled to quit Reddit. But now, partially because of this (and partially because they've intentionally made the mobile web experience unusable over the last few years), I decided to quit Reddit a few days ago. And it feels great. I've spent the time that I would have wasted on Reddit tackling my TO-READ list of books instead. And I feel much happier for it.
• throwaway4837 3y ago
  The Reddit mobile app has a few big issues for me: 1. When I click a post, sometimes it goes to a different post's detail page. The only way to remedy this is to refresh and visit the sub directly via Reddit search function, or restart the app. 2. Video player sometimes just doesn't play the video no matter how often you click "play", similar fix as above. 3. Google search is better at searching Reddit than Reddit search. Very annoying, but I still use it and never felt the need to use Apollo. To slightly defend Reddit, Apollo is just a client, and I assume they bring nothing else to the table. Apollo team should have had the foresight to see this coming years ago. Reddit can't be blamed for trying to monetize their data. If I had to choose between Reddit and Apollo, obviously I'd choose Reddit because Reddit is where the data lives.
  • BEEdwards 3y ago
    >Apollo team should have had the foresight to see this coming years ago. Isn't this your fault for building a service reliant on someone else? To a certain extent, yes. However, I was assured this year by Reddit not even that long ago that no changes were planned to be made to the API Apollo uses, and I've made decisions about how to monetize my business based on what Reddit has said. January 26, 2023 Reddit: "So I would expect no change, certainly not in the short to medium term. And we're talking like order of years." Another portion of the call: January 26, 2023 Reddit: "There's not gonna be any change on it. There's no plans to, there's no plans to touch it right now in 2023. Me: "Fair enough." Reddit: "And if we do touch it, we're going to be improving it in some way."
• kaqvze 3y ago
  Does anyone have the least bit of business experience? This is outrageous. I have not followed this at all but how can everyone here be so biased against Steve? If you listen to the call this Christian guy literally said: "if your opportunity cost is really $20 million, you cut me a cheque for $10 million dollars and we can both skip off into the sunset" A joke, seriously? Why on earth would you say this in what was audibly a very tense, high-stakes call and negotiation for both sides? There is no excuse whatsoever. Very funny, because one week later he dishes reddit and Steve the biggest shitstorm in the entire history of the site - which it would be even without all the blackmail call drama. Hello? Costing and causing surely 10s of millions in damage. Can we appreciate that even if this Christian guy is just so genuinely ignorant, selfish and toxic without intentionally meaning any harm that at least Steve certainly was fully aware of all the implications, the seriousness and non-funny nature of the conversation? He had and has every reason and right to feel blackmailed. The only interpretation one can take away from Christian's behavior now is that Steve had better taken him up on the "joke". Clearly, the PR disaster could have been avoided by paying up instead of accepting the cost and reacting exactly as Steve did - in the call Steve rejected the offer and notion of doing any deals. The way he apologised is what you do to save the other person's face and keep the door open for the relationship. It's not what you literally think and mean. Steve was never going to go back to his team and say "silly me! I'm such an idiot for getting this idea into my head. That he's threatening us because he's about to shut down, cause maximum damage on the way out and stage a user revolt. When he was just trying to entertain us with a funny joke about us buying him out for $10 million. When we have no legal or moral obligation to do so. I love him, he's so funny, glad I apologised on the spot.". If anything, one should pay some respect to Steve, not taking up the blackmail and steering head on into this mess. Good luck!
  • replwoacause 3y ago
    The only thing I agree with you on is how Christian brought up Reddit acquiring Apollo. He didn’t give that topic the right amount of seriousness, but besides for that Steve comes off really poorly here.
  • goolz 3y ago
    Did you listen to the same call? He immediately clarified the statement. And uh, I would be arrogant too if I was doing the job of an entire team of people who had the audacity to pretend otherwise. Pay respect to Steve? Jeez man, don't simp too hard there, it might seem like you are biased or something. I see your account is an hour old . . . Steve, is that you?
• replwoacause 3y ago
  Wow… the “CEO” of reddit is a clown. I really had no idea.
• TehCorwiz 3y ago
  Spez just posted that there will be a discussion tomorrow about the API: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ceo_tomorrow_to_discuss_the_api/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ce...
• replwoacause 3y ago
  If anybody has suggestions on where those of us taking part in the mass exodus can go, I’m all ears….
• nerdchum 3y ago
  Everyone is looking for an alternative Twitter but Reddit is straight up becoming a corporate bad guy and no one is looking for an alternative Reddit.
• brokencode 3y ago
  I never thought Reddit would be so aggressive with their community after how poorly things went for Twitter. Why not roll out these changes slower and ramp up fees over time? Why not give app developers time to adapt? Apollo is written by one guy. Is it really fair to tell him to rewrite his business model and make significant changes to his app in just a month or two?
• 3327 3y ago
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• sydney6 3y ago
  A note about api pricing: I imagine many of these social networks will give themselves a reality check in terms of true value to their users, after years of everything for free. I believe there are pretty, pretty hard times ahead of FB, Twitter et al., once reality truly hits. And from what seems to be the disparity of perception in terms of api pricing/value at reddit, they too. 20 million.. lol. I mean, who will be even able to pay that? Same at Twitter's api pricing. For many, like it appears to be the case with Apollo, it is not even an viable alternative.
• moritzwarhier 3y ago
  Sad. Just bought Apollo in March. But no hard feelings. Anyway, this will probably stop my Reddit consumption altogether. Already deleted my account a while ago, because some discussions became too toxic for me. Stil enjoying to read there and Apollo made it really enjoyable, even better than rif is fun on Android. Is there a good archive of previous Reddit content until now?
  • dcow 3y ago
    Funny how a history of categorically silencing certain viewpoints on a major discussion platform ultimately leads to more toxicity. Hmm...
    • luuurker 3y ago
      Allowing toxic viewpoints wouldn't make the platform less toxic though.
• jll29 3y ago
  That's why I would not consider investing energy/money/time in developing an app/application/client of a proprietary third-party platform: they can lock you out any time, sunset the platform (seen with Google Search API) or decide to compete with you (seen with Facebook regarding games). Open standards, open-source based or decentralized platforms, or your own platform are the way to go (I'm talking here from the dev perspective, not from the end user perspective - but proprietary sites are equally annoying for end users when they get discontinued. Making a one-time exeption to my self-hosting preference, I had a blog hosted at Posterous until Twitter acquired them and they shut down).
• replwoacause 3y ago
  I’m calling it now, the Reddit devs are already hard at work ripping off all the cool shit that makes Apollo 1000% better than their crappy app. Christian better LAWYER UP.
  • MostlyStable 3y ago
    Nah. They bought and then just killed a vastly superior mobile app (to their own thing) years ago with Alien blue. If they _wanted_ to get something better, they would have done it.
  • Havoc 3y ago
    Given how terrible their ux is they either don’t want something good or are incapable of it
• dcow 3y ago
  Totally agree that Reddit are being glorious ass-munching hentais here. I fucking hate all that Reddit has become as a company and as a product. But also, dude just raise your prices. I read the whole announcement and truly don't understand why Apollo can't be $20/year. I don't know anybody who attributes a meaningful difference to $10/year and $20/year. I'm not a user but if I was faced with that type of price change and some language around needing to adjust pricing because Reddit is now charging for API access, I'd not give it a second thought. It really really seems weird to want to die on this hill when you don't need to. Maybe it is the harbinger of the end for Reddit and we're just overdue. But I see no reason the founder of a popular Reddit reader couldn't secure some temporary funding to weather the transition, or simply negotiate a longer lead time rather than spending all the time in talks and ugly back and forth.
  • flutas 3y ago
    > I don't know anybody who attributes a meaningful difference to $10/year and $20/year. You forgot to factor in other things. Base API cost: $2.52/mo (0.00024/call @ 345req/day) App Store Taxes / Fees: $1.08/mo (I doubt he qualifies for the reduced fees at this point) Just adding the appstore tax makes this $43.20 a year. That doesn't factor in any servers he has to pay for (push notifications). The app dev fee $99 per year, not a huge amount but small parts add up. Add in the cost to pay his server engineer, or any profit for him to live off (likely less users, so has to be more $ per user) of while making the app and it probably goes to something like $60/yr.
    • dcow 3y ago
      He said he could make the pricing work at half what reddit is asking, for $1.26/mo base API cost. I assume he has the best insight into his own business. I was just conservatively spitballing that doubling his revenue would mean he could manage the price Reddit is asking (since he said he could make due with half). Just looking at it from the other angle.
      • flutas 3y ago
        > He said he could make the pricing work at half what reddit is asking, for $1.26/mo base API cost. He said a much more reasonable thing would be to cut the price in half and give a 3 month transition period to make it "feasible for more developers, myself included." > However in a perfect world I think lowering the price by half and providing a three month transition period to the paid API would make the transition feasible for more developers, myself included. These concessions seem minor and reasonable in the face of the changes. What that would likely mean is removing as many API calls as possible and removing features as a result. Which means fewer users would want to pay for it. > I was just spitballing that doubling his revenue would mean he could manage the price Reddit is asking (since he said he could make due with half). Also, as a tidbit. His current subscription pricing is $5/mo for ultra. If we want to take that as his revenue for an ongoing subscription to double (since API access is going to be monthly), then the app would be $10/mo or $120/yr.
• manx 3y ago
  Maybe it's time for federated link aggregators.
• raydev 3y ago
  While I agree with services pricing their APIs in any way they like, it's worth pointing out that Reddit's current CEO Steve Huffman is the very same person responsible for editing Reddit user comments as recently as 2016, like he was just an admin on some no-name forum. [1] On the eve of an IPO, someone that irresponsible and childish should not be leading this company. I was initally on Reddit's side in this particular matter (and I still think Selig's API pricing justifications are worthless), but I was shocked to learn Huffman is still the CEO, so his offhand comments about this situation and Reddit's general bad faith interactions with Selig in the past week are now very obvious to me. Anyway, all the best to Selig. 1: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev...
  • munchler 3y ago
    Why do you think Selig’s pricing justifications are worthless?
• mrigor 3y ago
  Relay App is also shutting down https://www.reddit.com/r/RelayForReddit/comments/13wsn92/guess_this_is_also_the_death_of_relay/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RelayForReddit/comments/13wsn92/gue...
• pmoriarty 3y ago
  Can someone please explain to me why users of third-party apps like Apollo don't just use their own API keys and pay for their API calls themselves? Why is the third-party app vendor (and not the users themselves) paying for these API calls?
• mindslight 3y ago
  Why is there NEVER any talk of adversarial interoperability? Explicitly maintained and versioned APIs were a nicety, but not a necessity! Especially in this day and age of continually pushed code updates. Why just throw away Apollo's popularity and go dark, rather than simultaneously diversifying by adding support for open platforms that appreciate users (eg Mastodon) while also mitigating the damage Reddit can do by continuing to access the site like every other HTTP user agent?
• ryanmercer 3y ago
  Seems foolish to build your company to be entirely dependent on the generosity of free API access, then rage quit when you have to start paying instead of, you know, charging your customers more. Also I see no evidence that he was accused of blackmail. A linked comment in the Reddit thread states: >Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million. The linked comment is from "BuckRowdy", apparently not even an employee of Reddit and that is not "blackmail". To me that's "hey, acquihire me and my company for 10 million and then you don't have to do the work!"
• chrismsimpson 3y ago
  This guy should be done with Reddit and build his own API. Not an easy ask, I know, but if he’s got one of the preferred clients he’s not starting from zero.
• jcims 3y ago
  As a redditor from 2008 that still uses it too much every day, I kind of hope it dies and stops sucking up the attention from good ideas on how to run a similar smorgasboard of a site.
• weinzierl 3y ago
  I don't get this blackmail thing at all. What leverage would Christian have anyways. It's not that when he shuts Apollo down every of its users will quit Reddit and when it comes to bad publicity, the damage is already done.
• planetjones 3y ago
  My account was 13 years old on Reddit. I just deleted it.
• nvahalik 3y ago
  I've been getting MORE porn spam on Reddit than I ever have before... I've blocked 2 dozen accounts in as many days. It feels like Reddit is about to implode.
• e40 3y ago
  I just deleted Apollo from my phone. Rip the bandaid off now, rather than wait until the 30th. In place of the icon on my home screen I put Kindle. Seems fitting. I deleted twitter a couple of months ago. This feels like a positive move for me.
• goolz 3y ago
  I am waiting with great anticipation to see how they spin this in the AMA tomorrow. Anything short of Steve editing the posts himself and I will be disappointed /s. To the Reddit and Steve apologists, you will be on the wrong side of history.
  • data-ottawa 3y ago
    Are they doing an AMA tomorrow, and is it just for the mods? I don’t see what they have to gain by doing an AMA, no matter what they say the comments are going to be scathing and people will be sharply looking for anything misspoken to jump on.
    • goolz 3y ago
      It would seem so, but it is hard right now to parse what is fact and what is fiction so definitely look into it yourself. But I totally agree, pretty dim to think they can somehow talk their way out of this. People were upset before, the blackouts, etc. but now this has taken on another tone and I doubt it will cool off by tomorrow. Honestly, I am loving this schadenfreude!
• wahahah 3y ago
  Frankly I'd rather see the apps just launch their own backend.
• bluepod4 3y ago
  Interesting that the CEO is doing an AMA this Friday to discuss the API. It seems a bit strange to advertise this using a system-wide notification. I imagine most users don’t care.
• jdlyga 3y ago
  This is the equivalent of Firefox closing down in 2005 and everyone being forced to use Internet Explorer. Reddit has been adding nothing but annoying clutter to their official app.
• sterwill 3y ago
  I use "rif is fun golden platinum" because it's simple and fast and I don't have to look at ads. I'll gladly pay Reddit _and_ rif to keep using that combination without ads. I'm certain whatever I pay Reddit to use their API through another app will be worth more to them than any ad revenue they could get from me, because that will be $0.
  • the_doctah 3y ago
    Also shutting down.
• monksy 3y ago
  RedditSync and RIF has also made the same announcements.
• stainablesteel 3y ago
  i don't plan on buying reddit stock anymore, this is unstable leadership
• hinkley 3y ago
  Can anyone in the know illuminate us on whether the assertion that the new pay scale for the API makes all of these apps impossible to implement? Is this truly the case or is it more a matter of treating the remote server as essentially free and not working to retain all previously seen information to avoid duplicate calls? Some RSS readers pull data per user. Others aggregate across their entire userbase, so that the most popular feeds are only read once (or once per data center)
• issafram 3y ago
  Android's most popular Reddit app is called RIF (Reddit is fun). They will also be shutting down. The official app is so bad. Horrible decision by Reddit
• deleted 3y ago
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• yakkityyak 3y ago
  Ugh, this is the end of reddit for me. I didn’t think I was able to quit social media addictions, but I’ve successfully ignored Twitter since Elon took over. I’m confident I can do the same with reddit, although it will be much harder. I suppose all I really need is like some sort of curated RSS instead.
• sh34r 3y ago
  Reddit is Digging its own grave. Eternal September awaits all the old school forums that still remain. But perhaps that decentralization will be a good thing in the end. I think the network effects of Reddit are a lot easier to undo than that of Twitter. There is little core functionality that didn’t exist in forum software from the Naughties.
  • spideymans 3y ago
    I'd love to see a federated Reddit clone. Administrators should have power over their communities, nor Reddit.
    • sh34r 3y ago
      I don’t like the idea of giving Reddit mods even more power, at all. I’d much rather see users empowered to share Usenet style kill-lists and whatnot. But I have a bad feeling that my desired Goldilocks zone between 2023 Reddit’s overmoderation and 2023 Twitter’s hyper-radicalization engine is very narrow. Social media moderation might be an intractable problem at scale. I don’t know what the solution is, but I’m really rooting for Reddit to crash and burn. I miss the old internet… It’ll be interesting to see how Blue Sky shakes out, if and when it opens up to the public.
    • jeremyjh 3y ago
      You mean other than Lemmy?
  • azemetre 3y ago
    do you happen to know of general programming/computer science forums (not counting hacker news)? That's really my only interest, I enjoy TV and movies but like discussing those in person nowadays.
    • rahidz 3y ago
      Why discount HN? This is where I get most of my tech news from. ArsTechnica has forums too, though not sure how active those are.
• goolz 3y ago
  The year is 2030, Reddit is now on it's 38th iteration. Steve and team have been slaving away, year after year, trying to come up with ideas on how to make the loads quicker, memes funnier, all while also pumping in 2000 metric tonnes of adverts/second. As it dawns on them that the app is somehow even slower, they frown. But Steve notices something out of the corner of his eye (despite all of the full page ads)... what could it be? It is a notification that ad-based revenue has gone UP!!! Everyone rejoices, Reddit is saved and Steve-and-Co have once again saved the world. Hooray.
• jacksnipe 3y ago
  Wow, up until this point I thought the Reddit api drama was a bit tragic, but the inevitable endpoint of Reddit being a profit-driven corporation. This is straight-up villainy.
• goolz 3y ago
  I am tempted to make an allusion that involves us, the making of foie gras and Reddit's ad-tech supremacy. With Steve being the guy who nails the ducks to the wood, forces the funnel down their throat and. . . well ya, you get the point.
• hokkos 3y ago
  Why not provide a form in the app to enter your own reddit API token, then a user could register its own pseudo app while staying in the free quota, or use the official reddit app token ;)
• JohnFen 3y ago
  Wow. That's a real bombshell. If everything he says is accurate (I haven't listened to the recordings, of course, but I'm going to assume his characterization of them is correct), then Reddit's behavior here is beyond the pale. Particularly them accusing him of making threats. It's hard to see how Reddit can actually survive with this level of mismanagement.
• jdlyga 3y ago
  You don’t see platforms being this user hostile and staying relevant for very long. Look at what happened with Facebook, for example. People are moving away from Reddit these days anyway, with Discord being the most common place to start a new community.
• rsolva 3y ago
  So, are mods at subreddits considering a move to alternatives like Lemmy? Spreading the controll of subreddits over multiple domains and communities is probably the only insurance against ending up in a situation like we are witnessing with Reddit now.
• ml_giant 3y ago
  One thing I dislike about using Reddit (At least when accessing the main page from a browser) is that I have to be logged into an account in order to sort comments. Was this always a thing? I cannot remember if this was in the case in the past, and I don't really have a Reddit account that I actually log into ever.
• deleted 3y ago
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• ineedasername 3y ago
  I'm confused about the details, maybe someone can clarify. The OP says Reddit claims they were being blackmailed (which clearly they weren't) but it's the talk around opportunity cost that I don't understand, especially as related alleged blackmail. 1) It would cost Apollo $20m to continue operating, and somehow Apollo, not able to afford it and offering to just kind of walk away from the app constitutes Blackmail? 2) The $20m opportunity cost claims. I don't get this. The new actual cost to Apollo would be $20m, that's not an opportunity cost for Reddit. The opportunity cost for reddit is really just the resources & attention it takes them to keep the API system running, which is presumable far, far, below the sticker price they will be charging 3rd parties per 1,000 API calls. 3) In general, I don't understand how any 3rd party has leverage to threaten or blackmail Reddit. Sure some people prefer to use 3rd party apps & services, but I'm assuming (is this a bad assumption?) that if those apps and services went away that a large majority of of their users would simply switch to native reddit options rather than stop consuming & interacting with content they enjoy.
  • skeaker 3y ago
    I believe it was the phrasing of "going quietly." I think they thought he meant that he would slander(?) them if they did not pay the $10M. But of course that misunderstanding was, one sentence later, resolved, so Reddit going back and treating that like a threat is simply a lie.
    • ineedasername 3y ago
      Ah, okay. I'm still not sure why Reddit would consider it blackmail for a 3rd party developer to say "If you make it impossible for me to run my app/service I will be very angry and tell people about it and say you're bad for doing it" I mean, that's not blackmail that's just, like, normal behavior for two groups that have a dispute.
      • skeaker 3y ago
        Yeah, the whole thing really doesn't make a lot of sense at face value which is why the logical conclusion is "Reddit lied to try to justify their API decision by making him look bad."
• gameshot911 3y ago
  Is this thread being sunk by HN, or is it a natural product of the default algorithm? Because it had far, far more upvotes than any thread above it (currently ranked #20), even those they were submitted earlier than this one.
• navinag 3y ago
  Can all the 3rd party apps join hands & create an alternative. It can be open source and users could fund it with donations. Probably a non-profit following a model like signal.
• deleted 3y ago
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• isocle 3y ago
  Let us not forget that they have been "experimenting" with killing mobile browser access on users: https://old.reddit.com/r/help/comments/135tly1/helpdid_reddit_just_destroy_mobile_browser_access/jim40zg/ https://old.reddit.com/r/help/comments/135tly1/helpdid_reddi... This is the death knell of Reddit, and I hope that the blackout succeeds in getting them to revert their greedy plan.
• schappim 3y ago
  At the time of writing this post is 2505 points 5 hrs in, and it is rapidly falling down the front page. Is this normal or is it being down ranked?
• BonoboIO 3y ago
  I would never try to get a refund for Apollo. I got my money’s worth and way more.
• weare138 3y ago
  Really adds insult to injury having to read about it on reddit.
• time0ut 3y ago
  I’m done. I deleted my 13 year old reddit account. I won’t be back even if they backpedal. Mind bogglingly incompetent. Sorry to any of the good folks working there.
• deleted 3y ago
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• koobock 3y ago
  It is okay. We have nostr now. Let's move forward on a platform without a central corporate interest.
• pciexpgpu 3y ago
  I am surprised nobody has coded a HTML/JS/CSS -> API thingamagic.. Assuming the website is public, allows login using standard JS/HTML and provides results in JS/HTML/CSS: with all the hype around GPT4 etc, wouldn't it be 'easy' to catch the bullet using some converter? And keep deploying a machine to catch up with another machine that keeps changing its "API" (i.e. the look and feel of the website in this case) I am only partially joking.
• ineedasername 3y ago
  What’s the viability (I guess legally?) of creating an app that bypasses the API and just scrapes Reddit and parses it to something roughly equivalent to what these 3rd party apps were doing?
  • hbn 3y ago
    I'd hazard to guess it'd be technically feasible with the old UI, but the new UI is such dogshit it doesn't even work in a browser where it's intended to be used half the time. Factor in A/B tests and the random UI tweaks and updates I'm sure they do everyday, I'd say probably not worth the effort.
• dang 3y ago
  Ok, here are the major threads. Others? r/ProgrammerHumor will be shutting down to protest Reddit's API changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36249958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36249958 - June 2023 (233 comments) Sync will shut down on June 30 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36248234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36248234 - June 2023 (88 comments) Join our CEO tomorrow to discuss the API - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36246937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36246937 - June 2023 (73 comments) Reddit is Fun will shut down on June 30th in response to Reddit API changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36246398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36246398 - June 2023 (129 comments) Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from unpopular API pricing changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36238630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36238630 - June 2023 (115 comments) Reddit announces plan to lay off 90 workers as subreddits plan mass protest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36237285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36237285 - June 2023 (36 comments) Reddit's Recently Announced API Changes, and the future of /r/blind - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36231016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36231016 - June 2023 (288 comments) Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36225583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36225583 - June 2023 (134 comments) Reddit to lay off about 5% of its workforce - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36223466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36223466 - June 2023 (30 comments) Redditor creates working anime QR codes using Stable Diffusion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36218281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36218281 - June 2023 (100 comments) Reddit Laying Off About 90 Employees and Slowing Hiring Amid Restructuring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36218090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36218090 - June 2023 (56 comments) Reddit permanently bans account of user advocating Lemmy migration - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36215914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36215914 - June 2023 (298 comments) Reddit’s plan to kill third-party apps sparks widespread protests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36210805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36210805 - June 2023 (494 comments) Demo: Fully P2P and open source Reddit alternative - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36203610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36203610 - June 2023 (230 comments) iOS Reddit App Apollo's Developer Surprised by WWDC Callout - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36203277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36203277 - June 2023 (27 comments) We're joining the Reddit blackout from June 12th to 14th - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36202277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36202277 - June 2023 (54 comments) Ask HN: Reddit alternatives (that aren't Mastodon) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36199403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36199403 - June 2023 (30 comments) Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36196343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36196343 - June 2023 (213 comments) Tell HN: My Reddit account was banned after adding my subs to the protest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36192312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36192312 - June 2023 (218 comments) Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36187705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36187705 - June 2023 (172 comments) Don't let Reddit kill 3rd party apps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36179853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36179853 - June 2023 (260 comments) How Reddit became the enemy [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36177876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36177876 - June 2023 (154 comments) Update 3: Reddit effectively kills off third party apps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36170143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36170143 - June 2023 (23 comments) Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36166236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36166236 - June 2023 (76 comments) Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36162235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36162235 - June 2023 (416 comments) Fidelity has cut Reddit valuation by 41% since 2021 investment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36157829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36157829 - June 2023 (85 comments) Ask HN: Could Usenet get revived, to replace the soon to be unusable Reddit? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36153565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36153565 - June 2023 (149 comments) Teddit – An alternative Reddit front-end focused on privacy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36144211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36144211 - May 2023 (93 comments) Historical code from reddit.com - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36142971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36142971 - May 2023 (64 comments) Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36141083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36141083 - May 2023 (1292 comments) Reddit's API Changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36085422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36085422 - May 2023 (25 comments)
• kats 3y ago
  It's so obvious that the Apollo dev is not a good guy.
• dang 3y ago
  All: there are over 1300 comments in this thread. To read them all, you need to click More links at the bottom of the page, or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435&p=4 For other recent threads on this topic, brace yourself and go to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36251707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36251707.
• ChicagoDave 3y ago
  The big problem Reddit has is it has relied on unpaid moderators to get to their revenue streams. Piss off those people and you don’t have a business anymore.
• couchdb_ouchdb 3y ago
  "I quickly put together a small app where I could input the prices and it would output monthly/yearly cost, cost for free users, paid users, etc. so I'd be able to process the information immediately." Someone should tell this dude about Excel.
  • lIIllIIllIIllII 3y ago
    I actually prefer writing little JS apps to do stuff like this to using Excel. Which I don't even have on my personal computer now that I think about it.
  • HumblyTossed 3y ago
    Why? This is the type of thing I use Python for all the time. I'm much better at Python than I am at Excel and Python isn't even my main language.
    • satvikpendem 3y ago
      Based on him being an iOS dev, it sounded to me like he made an entire iOS app just to calculate some values, not a small command line application.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  • whatarethembits 3y ago
    Assuming his goal was to be ready with results of his calculations in real time while on a call, which may happen while you’re away from your computer, it makes sense I think. Excel is great, but on phone while away from your computer? Not so sure.
• est 3y ago
  I never used Apollo, but does it use only one single API key? Many OpenAI apps or services ask you to config your own key. Does this solves the API price problem?
• yathaid 3y ago
  A bit of a missed opportunity here. Apollo could have shown users a running total of the API bill that the respective user is incurring and exposed how much Reddit thinks each user is worth. Putting that number in front of users would cause riots IMO. And would have been a delightful goodbye kiss.
• officeplant 3y ago
  I just came here because it hit 1337 comments. Nice.
• mnsh 3y ago
  I use infinity app, might as well leave reddit from mobile :/ I sometimes use Twitter from mobile browser, the experience is ok but for Reddit, it's absolutely terrible.
• raylad 3y ago
  Why not point Apollo at a Reddit alternative, or use the open-source code for Reddit (or code like this https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit) instead of shutting it down? If Apollo's users (or a good percentage of them) moved over to an alternative platform, that would be poetic justice, at least.
  • raylad 3y ago
    To go even further, all the app devs should get together and create a new platform or pick one Reddit alternative and point all their apps at it. That way it would be even more likely to get critical mass quickly. 3 weeks should be enough time to come up with a coordinated plan. If anyone here has a connection to the app developers it could be a good thing to suggest.
• wnevets 3y ago
  Reddit claiming the Apollo dev tried to blackmail them is bizarre
• imchillyb 3y ago
  God money, I'll do anything for you ... God money, just tell me what you want me to ... God money, nail me up against the wall ... God money, don't want everything, he wants it all ... God money's not looking for the cure ... God money's not concerned about the sick among the pure ... God money, let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised ... God money's not one to choose ...
• phoen1k 3y ago
  Such a clean app. It’s the only way I’ve been using Reddit the past two years. Time to move on… I stopped using it for more than entertainment anyway.
• trebills 3y ago
  Hacker News will have to do because my Reddit experience was 99.99999% Apollo. Can’t stand the website. Never would have used it without Apollo on iOS. I know there are much serious things in the world than an app shutting down but this is truly the end of an era.
• classified 3y ago
  Never, ever, depend on other people's API for your own survival.
• annon 3y ago
  The solution seems so easy to me, just tie the API access to reddit gold. It wouldn’t be completely smooth sailing, there would still would be many upset users. At the same time though, they would pick up a massive number of subs. The users that don’t value the apollo experience enough to pay for it would switch to the reddit app, driving more ad revenue. The users that do value the Apollo experience would still keep providing their content to the platform, in addition to becoming paid, direct, subscribers. This really seems like an amateur strategy.. kill the massively popular apps with ridiculous pricing and unfair timelines, and hope that the users of this massive community organizing tool you control don’t use it against you? Cut off (and piss off) a big segment of your power users in hopes that a sizable chunk of them move to the native app?
  • x86x87 3y ago
    There are multiple solutions. This is one of them. Another one would be a bring your own api key and as a user be able to pay. Another one would be to serve ads in the feed for 3rd party api access and make it mandatory thay ads are not filtered out. Yet another one is to work w/ the 3rd party apps to display the ads. Reddit is just a dumb corpo that doesn't understand why they have success. Watch them backpedal hard.
• hakube 3y ago
  Can't he just create a new social platform based on Reddit+Apollo and poach users into that platform?
• 2143 3y ago
  > I quickly put together a small app where I could input the prices and it would output monthly/yearly cost, cost for free users, paid users, etc. so I'd be able to process the information immediately. Next time this kind of situation comes up, I highly recommend using a spreadsheet.
• kgbcia 3y ago
  More reason to use RSS and blogs rather than a centralized politicised website
• ryneandal 3y ago
  This will cause me to move on from reddit to some other form of entertainment. probably reading more books/articles/etc. I refuse to use their AWFUL first-party app.
• Nifty3929 3y ago
  How much profit does Reddit make? I asked Bard and this is what I got: Reddit has not publicly released its financial information, so it is difficult to say exactly how much profit the company earns. However, we can make some estimates based on the company's revenue and expenses. In 2021, Reddit generated $350 million in revenue, primarily from advertising. The company also has a premium membership program that generates around $17 million in revenue. Reddit's expenses are estimated to be around $200 million, which includes costs for salaries, marketing, and operations. Based on this information, we can estimate that Reddit's profit in 2021 was around $150 million. However, it is important to note that this is just an estimate, and the actual amount of profit could be higher or lower. Reddit is a growing company, and its revenue is expected to continue to grow in the coming years. This growth will likely lead to an increase in the company's profit. However, it is also possible that Reddit's expenses will increase as the company grows, which could offset some of the increase in revenue. Overall, Reddit is a profitable company, and its profit is expected to continue to grow in the coming years.
• goolz 3y ago
  Wait why is this consistently getting pushed down below things that have been up longer and way less relevance or upvotes?
  • goolz 3y ago
    Did Steve get this removed somehow from the front page? I can not find it unless I am missing something.
• mikestaub 3y ago
  https://atproto.com https://atproto.com is the future
• askiiart 3y ago
  Wow, 20th most upvoted HN post of all time! Though my excitement about that does make it sound like I'm excited about Reddit's API changes... Social interactions are hard :/
• sydrawat 3y ago
  As an avid user of Apollo, I'm going to miss the great UX. It was class apart.
• alfayokhu 3y ago
  [flagged]
• maltfield 3y ago
  Lemmy is a great (federated) reddit alternative. If anyone's looking to migrate from reddit to lemmy, this guide may help you find and subscribe-to subreddits across the lemmyverse * https://tech.michaelaltfield.net/2023/06/11/lemmy-migration-find-subreddits-communities/ https://tech.michaelaltfield.net/2023/06/11/lemmy-migration-...