13 ms·

Apollo Back end just made public

496 points by jviide 3y ago

eiiot 3y ago
Is anyone who has experience with Go able to decipher the instructions in the README?
spiderfarmer 3y ago
All this backlash is going to kill Reddit. It will take a thousand little cuts for sure, but it started the moment they announced their ludicrous pricing.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  I wonder.. The very same thing hardly seems to have hurt Twitter.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - toyg 3y ago
    Personally, when someone mentions tweets nowadays, my first impulse is to ridicule / discount it all - "what, are you seriously using a service Elon bought to promote far-right topics...?" Typically it comes out of my mouth in a more moderate stance, like "sorry, I don't use Twitter anymore. Any chance you could link a better forum?"
    - the_lonely_road 3y ago
      The most charitable reading of your comment still leads one to question what you would consider the right if Elon is far right. I am pretty sure he is a moderate leaning both ways on differing topics.
      - viraptor 3y ago
        That's not what the parent wrote though. They were Elon is promoting the far right.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - Capricorn2481 3y ago
        He is for sure far right. He's against increasing taxes on the wealthy, vowed to lobby against transgender health care, endorsed Republicans in the midterms, launched Desantis's campaign, and constantly rails against woke culture. There is not an ounce of left in this guys body. I seriously question the motives of people saying this guy is a "moderate." You cannot gaslight America into thinking the far-right is middle of the road.
      - toyg 3y ago
        I don't care what he "is" or might be; his actions objectively helped the far-right. Whether he did it to troll, to "restore" some imaginary "balance", or because he genuinely believes in far-right topics, he still very materially helped far-right speech - and he clearly did it on purpose.
  - troad 3y ago
    > The very same thing hardly seems to have hurt Twitter. It has. As somewhat of a Twitter addict, I'm finding it much easier not to log on these days, because the experience and the conversations have really hollowed out. I'm also no longer seriously considering using Twitter for promoting any projects or anything of the like going forward.
  - digdigdag 3y ago
    If Digg is of any indication, it takes a series of negligent and greed-driven actions to scuttle a social media platform, but it is possible. Reddit has been more or less re-inventing itself for their asinine IPO aspirations, and in doing so it has moved to closed source code, redesigned their interface, adjusted content policies to court advertisers, and now they're finally going after the crowd of enthusiasts who depend on features that Reddit has failed and/or declined to implement. This all reeks of venture capitalist sabotage and it's the very thing that ultimately killed off Digg.
  - pkos98 3y ago
    To generalize, Twitter relies on celebrities for traffic. Reddie relies more on genuine content and less personal brand (as you are subbed to subreddits and not public users, mostly)
    - Quarrel 3y ago
      Reddit also relies on thousands of hours a day worth of free moderation. If the moderation quality drops, then reddit will really go down hill.
  - qball 3y ago
    Maybe so, but Reddit is not Twitter; API access is far more important for Reddit because its official client is garbage and can't handle the long-form content that Reddit is known for. This will have outsized implications for the 1% of users who actually post the content the other 99% come to see in a way that Twitter (and its 280-character comment limitation) does not.
    - Semaphor 3y ago
      > can't handle the long-form content that Reddit is known for. Isn’t Reddit widely known for memes by the public?
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        I don't think so? That's more 4chan AFAIK.
    - Kiro 3y ago
      Most people have no problem with the official app. They simply don't care enough even if they acknowledge the drawbacks. We are not representative.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/10/tech/twitter-top-advertiser-decline/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/10/tech/twitter-top-advertis... : more than half their advertisers quit.
    - londons_explore 3y ago
      A quick browse around twitter shows they have plenty of adverts to show. They may be selling that ad space for pennies on the dollar... But they are managing to fill it.
      - hgsgm 3y ago
        The owners want money, not the pleasure of seeing ads.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    Twitter stats show great growth in musk related topics (space, EV's, etc), but a decline in the amount of content posted in nearly all other areas.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      Where are you seeing these stats?
      - londons_explore 3y ago
        Here, for example: https://twitter.com/stats_feed/status/1666446359619153920 https://twitter.com/stats_feed/status/1666446359619153920
        foderking 3y ago
        how does this backup what you said in anyway? all I'm seeing is follower growths for popular accounts
  - veidr 3y ago
    Umm,? Their ad revenue is down north of 50% since the 'garch took over. How are you defining 'hurt'? UPDATE: Oh I see, they did the kill-the-API-to-kill-third-party-clients thing before too, long before the current brouhaha. OK, never mind.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      No the kill the API thing came after Elon. It was one of the things he did, but indeed this specific thing does not seem to have hurt user engagement in particular. In fact it was probably one of the things that was good for their ad revenue and probably why they did it.
- gtsteve 3y ago
  I don't think it will. It'll IPO just fine, make their shareholders wealthy and become another millquetoast advertiser friendly walled garden for your average internet user while the jilted original users go and find another platform, which will in turn IPO just fine, make their shareholders wealthy and the cycle repeats forever. The average internet user by the way, is statistically not you reading this, doesn't really care too much about APIs and finds the current Reddit client just fine really and as a recent registration, doesn't understand that the developer community basically built the interest in reddit and without third-party moderation tools, clients and a community that deeply cared about their special website, flawed though it was. All platforms go through this cycle, but Reddit felt special to me and it hurts to find that wasn't true.
  - trollied 3y ago
    Money always corrupts in the end.
  - eterm 3y ago
    I think this captures how I feel, which is an odd sense of mourning. It's not that I haven't known for a long time now that reddit isn't the site it used to be, it's that this episode in particular has put that in such focus I can't ignore it. So now I feel a sense of loss for the reddit of old, even if it hasn't really been such for a long time anyway. Reddit itself will carry on fine, and perhaps get even stronger with a tighter control over content. Efforts to make a federated alternative are doomed.
  - rjh29 3y ago
    I don't think it will because there's no solid alternative. If/when there is, and the most active users - the ones contributing the content and moderating the comments - start leaving, then it will turn into an empty husk of itself and die like Digg did, even if it does have millions of readers.
    - kredd 3y ago
      My argument against parallels drawn Digg is simply current users of the internet. In 2010-2011 people were more likely to experiment with different social forums, websites, and etc. Also the age of the users were always on the younger side. Nowadays it’s fairly different, and seems like users are more sticky and will only flock to an already established websites, so unless Reddit becomes genuinely unusable (broken native client, dead infrastructure and etc.), majority of the users will stay on and contribute. It’s similar to “Twitter exodus”, which didn’t happen. Obviously things might go downhill for the company, but people go in for their quick dopamine hits, not for some dramatic battle between evil (Reddit corp) and good (Apollo). Not to sound too pessimistic, but most of the mods of the bigger subreddits aren’t going to give up either, since it’s a part of their life, and not really their battle. I really hope I am wrong though, since it’s about time we have something new and shiny.
- xwdv 3y ago
  When old.reddit.com is gone, that will be the true end.
  - mypastself 3y ago
    What are you basing this on? Do we have any data regarding the percentages of mobile/old/app users?
    - Semaphor 3y ago
      I wish I still had the graph, but someone posted something for their (150k subs) subreddit recently, and it was below 10% old. No idea what sub, or what the source was so, so take this with a pitcher of salt.
      - the_pwner224 3y ago
        It's about 5%. Not much variation by sub, even the technical ones are in that range, maybe a few % higher.
    - xwdv 3y ago
      It’s not just about users, it’s about principles.
      - mypastself 3y ago
        I have no doubt some users will leave, but I’m not sure what principles have to do with whether or not it would be the end of Reddit. Unless you mean in some subjective, personal sense.
        xwdv 3y ago
        Think of old.reddit.com as a canary. If it goes, then you know some shit is going down and Reddit will never truly be the same going forward. Even if you don’t use it, that should be the signal to leave if you haven’t already.
- acatton 3y ago
  Reddit's doom has been announced over and over again since they started raising the bar for what is an "acceptable" sub-reddit in 2011. The reality is that Reddit hasn't ceased growing since then. The same thing happened with YouTube. YouTube pushed its content to switch from filthyfrank to Jimmy Kimmel/Fallon. Advertisers are not interested in us, early-adopters, mostly young and middle-aged western males. They want kids and soccer-moms: they're less likely to install an ad-blocker, and have a much wider range of products for which they're the target audience. I think we need to understand that we were never the target audience. Reddit, like YouTube, will do more than fine. The early-adopters just won't be part of it. My hope is that we will go back to independently ran niche-community bulletin-boards, like in the 2000s with phpBB, instead of piggy-backing on some other new for-profit corporate walled-garden.
  - _thisdot 3y ago
    I have friends who fit the target audience criteria you mention. These people absolutely do not care about the client and never find the need to step outside the default client. My partner has access to Apollo Ultra through iCloud Family, yet she finds the default reddit client good enough. If these people exist and they’re the majority, why kill 3rd party apps to mess with a minority?
    - acatton 3y ago
      Because if you're a ruthless company going public, you want to avoid ways for your users to block the ads or "cheat the walled garden." Forcing them to use the official app is the way to go. And advertisers feel safe. I'm not saying I approve the practice. I'm saying that it makes sense from their perspective.
  - wincy 3y ago
    Hah it’s funny you mention Filthy Frank specifically as he himself is now Joji[0] the very serious and not funny musician. He deleted all his old videos and scrubbed the evidence of who he once was, similar (although not as egregious) to the scat video Blippi posted [1] to get internet fame before he became a beloved children’s YouTuber. [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Qzzggn--s&pp=ygUESm9qaQ%3D%3D https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Qzzggn--s&pp=ygUESm9qaQ%3D%3... [1] Seriously, I’m not actually going to post the video. Im sure you can find it if you really want to. My kids aren’t allowed to watch Blippi though.
- Sakos 3y ago
  I'd like to move away from Reddit, but I don't see any viable place to go. The best thing about Reddit is how generally casual the user base is. It's not just a self-selected number of tech-affine users. It's people who love books, people who love running, or video games, or space, or literature, or knitting, or anything and everything else. Reddit has centralized what would otherwise be hundreds (thousands?) of obscure, splintered and isolated communities and forums. What could possibly compete with that without having already reached critical mass and become an obvious competitor to Reddit?
- veidr 3y ago
  Yep, and after reading this thread (and clicking through to the reddit thread) I couldn't justify not delivering 1 little papercut of my own; I just canceled my paid account. (Although at little personal cost, since I don't normally go to reddit directly, but I paid just to stop the inline ads that I would see when I would, as often happens, end up on reddit after googling something with kagi.com or bing.com.)
  - freediver 3y ago
    > googling something with kagi.com This always makes me chuckle. Kaging something may not be mainstream yet but Kagi-fu sounds better then Google-fu!
- michaelcampbell 3y ago
  > All this backlash is going to kill Reddit. Just like it did Twitter.
cassianoleal 3y ago
Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256215
- rapnie 3y ago
  Thanks. Relates to the Github repository, which is source available. Looks like there is no license.
  - fknorangesite 3y ago
    > Looks like there is no license. No one said they were open-sourcing it. It's just published for information/transparency.
andremedeiros 3y ago
Hi all! I wrote this code, and for educational purposes, I’d be more than happy to answer any questions. A gentle reminder that the whole history is here for show. This is very vulnerable — you can see the times I was in a rush, or when I took my time. You’ll find my mistakes. Either way, all I ask is please be kind. I know there are 50 things I could have done better, but this is a product of the reality at the time — a balance between something that works and something that was cost effective for Christian.
- rovr138 3y ago
  It’s hard to put oneself out there like that. Christian is very visible in the community, but I want to say thank you to you too. Thank you for all the work you did! This made a lot of our experiences great.
  - andremedeiros 3y ago
    This right here is why I did it. To see a friend succeed, and to help make a community happier <3
    - yard2010 3y ago
      That's really wholesome which makes this incident much worse IMHO - it's the evil greedy corpo growth bs mindset vs the good will of few people that care about their community.. dystopic world
    - rovr138 3y ago
      This sentiment is what made Reddit a great community for smaller and specific subs. It’s just people talking around a topic and helping each other. Subreddit mods doing everything they can to keep their area clean for people reading. I’ve been on Reddit over for over a decade and this is the power behind it. Just wanting to help and bring good member. Thank you Andre. For your work and commitment to Christian, Apollo, and the community.
- cassianoleal 3y ago
trollied 3y ago
There's a Reddit CEO AMA later today: 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... Can't see it being anything other than a PR disaster for them, unless they change their stance.
- fron 3y ago
  It's more than likely that they'll inject their own softball questions and focus on those instead of addressing everyone's concerns in any meaningful way.
  - pwillia7 3y ago
    good test for the new AI bot accounts
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    When they removed the upvote/downvote count, it was clear reddit was fine with manipulation. Anything I read on the website has been met with extreme skepticism since it very well could be an astroturfer. It's money. Reddit wants astroturfers, it grows their platform and helps sell ads.
    - rootusrootus 3y ago
      > Anything I read on the website has been met with extreme skepticism since it very well could be an astroturfer. Good advice for any site. It's not like HN is immune to astroturfing.
      - hospitalJail 3y ago
        You have more courage than me to say that here.
    - chippiewill 3y ago
      > When they removed the upvote/downvote count, it was clear reddit was fine with manipulation I wasn't a big issue to me tbh. Vote fuzzing had always made those counts meaningless.
notRobot 3y ago
> The goal of making the code for this repo available is to show that despite statements otherwise by Reddit administrators, Apollo does not scrape anything and users purely authenticated Reddit API requests, and does a great deal of work to ensure the Reddit API rate limits are respected.
- malone 3y ago
  If this is true why does Apollo need its own server at all? Couldn't the client make requests directly to the reddit api servers instead? Then each user could use their own api key, rather than Apollo having to pay millions for a single key that accommodates everyone.
  - Veen 3y ago
    Now it's open source, you can look at the code and find out why.
  - andremedeiros 3y ago
    Theoretically it could do it all from the app, but it would have to resort to background updates, which are scheduled at iOS’ discretion. Christian was aiming for consistency, which is why this exists.
  - charrondev 3y ago
    The main reason is push notifications. A lot of the communication can be direct, but not the push notifications.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
What if all the blackout communities move to an open source, community funded, community owned and run version of Apollo? I’d be happy to try and convince my 100k community to Apollo and if the UX is similar for web and mobile then I’m not sure switching costs would be that high during the blackout. I’d help fund it but all my money is wrapped up in my trash cooperative.
- 542458 3y ago
  I haven’t seen a compelling OS alternative to Reddit yet. The ones I’ve seen have all either been big on decentralization at the expense of long load times and a lot of UI complexity, or big on 4chan-style dialogue with little moderation. Neither of those sounds like a great migration path. IMO this is the same problem “migrate off Twitter” efforts had.
  - tester457 3y ago
    Have you seen Tildes? - incredible moderation and respectful community - you can't sort by controversial - non-profit, no investors can corrupt it - beautifully simple UI, better than old.reddit on mobile - fast and not decentralized - no images just text - open source - The site is the main mobile interface, not an app - No limits to logged-out browsing - Completely functional for browsing without javascript - Zero third-party scripts/assets during normal use - Uses modern versions of simple, reliable, "boring" technology https://docs.tildes.net/philosophy/site-implementation https://docs.tildes.net/philosophy/site-implementation
    - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
      This looks interesting for sure thanks for the link
    - Goronmon 3y ago
      I want to like Tildes, but to be completely honest, it annoys me that the '~' character is used heavily. Both from a look perspective and a typing perspective. Maybe I could get used to it overtime, but we'll see if it ever becomes non-invite-only.
eterm 3y ago
Politically reddit have played a blinder. They've succeeded in killing their main competitor (in terms of ad share) and could even now walk back the api charges for any smaller operators and leave Apollo dead and avoid the biggest backlash. It's scummy as hell and I won't want to continue to contributing to reddit, but I can't help but feel they've been shrewd in getting what they wanted.
- pjc50 3y ago
  Does Apollo have any ad share?
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    It has a reasonable chunk of the most active users. Sure, it doesn't have ads in today, but it could, so there is opportunity cost.
    - Kiro 3y ago
      What's a reasonable chunk? I had never heard of Apollo before this and I visit reddit every day.
  - eterm 3y ago
    It doesn't show adverts that otherwise would be shown on the official reddit app. Sync is similar. I have a one-time purchase for "ad free" Sync. That stops me seeing adverts I would see in the official app for a fraction of the cost of reddit premium.
- aeyes 3y ago
  Why would that leave Apollo dead? If they set the API charges back to zero all third party clients, including Apollo, would be happy to continue.
  - eterm 3y ago
    I said they could walk back the charges for smaller operators, e.g. by having generous API limits that most third parties wouldn't hit.
Aachen 3y ago
Direct link to submitted content: https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend
troad 3y ago
I really love the practice of releasing the source code once a project comes to a commercial end, and I respect the devs greatly for doing so. Good job!
yosito 3y ago
GitHub repo link, in case Reddit deletes the thread: https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend Interestingly, this seems to just be a proof of concept, and the repo is archived. While the developer of the Apollo front end is getting screwed in this whole debacle, this seems to me like an opportunity. He could literally build an alternate Reddit back end (ok, pay someone to do it, if he doesn't want to do it himself), switch Apollo to use that API instead, and get an instant network of hundreds of thousands of Apollo users. A mass migration from Reddit to a new Apollo back end seems like an amazing way to start a new social news website.
- that_guy_iain 3y ago
  Realistically, it would cost more to start a new Reddit using Apollo than it would to pay Reddit for API fees. Sure the server costs for the API costs alone aren't 1.2m a month for Reddit. But when you add in all the things that need to operate. Databases, storage, data transfer, etc. It would realistically be more than 1.2m in server costs. That's without paying people to build and maintain it.
- aniforprez 3y ago
  This backend does very very little outside of continually polling the reddit API for new messages and some other sundry tasks for operating the iOS app. There's nothing here that suggests any of this could be built out to a full fledged social media backend that is similar to reddit. Not to detract from the work being done but it's for a very specific use case: supporting adding features to the app frontend
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    Yep - but the backend could be rewritten to work from a new datastore. The actual data model isn't complex. The entire public reddit database of posts, comments, and users could be imported as a starting point.
  - andremedeiros 3y ago
    This is bang on.
tiffanyh 3y ago
Dumb question: why does Apollo need their own backend API when isn’t Apollo just a different view/UX for Reddits own API? https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend
- 1023bytes 3y ago
  I believe it's mostly for push notifications
- Kalium 3y ago
  Mobile notifications is one reason that springs to mind.
- noisy_boy 3y ago
  I can take a guess - it allows you the flexibility of doing things the way you want it without having to update the app. You can make non-breaking changes to handle things/issues or implement workarounds/optimisations without the user realizing anything.
- horsawlarway 3y ago
  So I do primarily App/Extension development, and I've been doing it for about 15 years now. The short answer: You must have an interface you control, because app store review times mean there is no "hot fix". When something upstream of the client breaks - you are DAYS (assume 24 to 48 hours for review, after you fix the bug) from being able to get a new client in front of users, and several weeks out from having all of your users (all being some accepted percentage - I use ~95% for my releases) actually update to the latest version. If that "something upstream" is you - you can usually plan for it, release the updated client ahead of time, get it rolled out, then pull support for the old feature. If that "something upstream" is reddit... They break things, and they might (but probably won't) inform you ahead of time. You will have many, many more outages.
  - blint_carton 3y ago
    Saved many long outages by being able to push quick dirty fixes to upstream APIs from our middle/server layer that depended on 3rd party APIs. Also a place to pull in any access keys needed for other services if they connect to so it doesn't sit in the client code.
mkl95 3y ago
Reddit's current situation reminds a bit of Yahoo Answers in the late 2000s. Considering they were launched 5 days apart, Reddit has been incredibly resilient.
unstatusthequo 3y ago
Please change title to Apollo Backend. Gives the impression Apollo has returned “and” made public.
r0bbbo 3y ago
I've seen an increasing amount of support for 'nuking' your personal reddit history—posts and comments—in protest of the upcoming changes, taking back what Reddit are profiting from. I'm hugely in favour of it, anyone else considering it?
- paulcole 3y ago
  No. I could lie and say my time is more valuable than editing my reddit post/comment history, but it’s not. I just don’t care enough to try to “stick it” to Reddit.
- whatsu 3y ago
  I did. Edited post and comments and deleted everything. Takes like 5 minutes.
- jacobp100 3y ago
  That’s my plan if they don’t change course by 30th

496 points by jviide 3y ago

Is anyone who has experience with Go able to decipher the instructions in the README?

All this backlash is going to kill Reddit. It will take a thousand little cuts for sure, but it started the moment they announced their ludicrous pricing.

wkat4242 3y ago
I wonder.. The very same thing hardly seems to have hurt Twitter.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- toyg 3y ago
  Personally, when someone mentions tweets nowadays, my first impulse is to ridicule / discount it all - "what, are you seriously using a service Elon bought to promote far-right topics...?" Typically it comes out of my mouth in a more moderate stance, like "sorry, I don't use Twitter anymore. Any chance you could link a better forum?"
  - the_lonely_road 3y ago
    The most charitable reading of your comment still leads one to question what you would consider the right if Elon is far right. I am pretty sure he is a moderate leaning both ways on differing topics.
    - viraptor 3y ago
      That's not what the parent wrote though. They were Elon is promoting the far right.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - Capricorn2481 3y ago
      He is for sure far right. He's against increasing taxes on the wealthy, vowed to lobby against transgender health care, endorsed Republicans in the midterms, launched Desantis's campaign, and constantly rails against woke culture. There is not an ounce of left in this guys body. I seriously question the motives of people saying this guy is a "moderate." You cannot gaslight America into thinking the far-right is middle of the road.
    - toyg 3y ago
      I don't care what he "is" or might be; his actions objectively helped the far-right. Whether he did it to troll, to "restore" some imaginary "balance", or because he genuinely believes in far-right topics, he still very materially helped far-right speech - and he clearly did it on purpose.
- troad 3y ago
  > The very same thing hardly seems to have hurt Twitter. It has. As somewhat of a Twitter addict, I'm finding it much easier not to log on these days, because the experience and the conversations have really hollowed out. I'm also no longer seriously considering using Twitter for promoting any projects or anything of the like going forward.
- digdigdag 3y ago
  If Digg is of any indication, it takes a series of negligent and greed-driven actions to scuttle a social media platform, but it is possible. Reddit has been more or less re-inventing itself for their asinine IPO aspirations, and in doing so it has moved to closed source code, redesigned their interface, adjusted content policies to court advertisers, and now they're finally going after the crowd of enthusiasts who depend on features that Reddit has failed and/or declined to implement. This all reeks of venture capitalist sabotage and it's the very thing that ultimately killed off Digg.
- pkos98 3y ago
  To generalize, Twitter relies on celebrities for traffic. Reddie relies more on genuine content and less personal brand (as you are subbed to subreddits and not public users, mostly)
  - Quarrel 3y ago
    Reddit also relies on thousands of hours a day worth of free moderation. If the moderation quality drops, then reddit will really go down hill.
- qball 3y ago
  Maybe so, but Reddit is not Twitter; API access is far more important for Reddit because its official client is garbage and can't handle the long-form content that Reddit is known for. This will have outsized implications for the 1% of users who actually post the content the other 99% come to see in a way that Twitter (and its 280-character comment limitation) does not.
  - Semaphor 3y ago
    > can't handle the long-form content that Reddit is known for. Isn’t Reddit widely known for memes by the public?
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      I don't think so? That's more 4chan AFAIK.
  - Kiro 3y ago
    Most people have no problem with the official app. They simply don't care enough even if they acknowledge the drawbacks. We are not representative.
- pjc50 3y ago
  https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/10/tech/twitter-top-advertiser-decline/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/10/tech/twitter-top-advertis... : more than half their advertisers quit.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    A quick browse around twitter shows they have plenty of adverts to show. They may be selling that ad space for pennies on the dollar... But they are managing to fill it.
    - hgsgm 3y ago
      The owners want money, not the pleasure of seeing ads.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Twitter stats show great growth in musk related topics (space, EV's, etc), but a decline in the amount of content posted in nearly all other areas.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Where are you seeing these stats?
    - londons_explore 3y ago
      Here, for example: https://twitter.com/stats_feed/status/1666446359619153920 https://twitter.com/stats_feed/status/1666446359619153920
      - foderking 3y ago
        how does this backup what you said in anyway? all I'm seeing is follower growths for popular accounts
- veidr 3y ago
  Umm,? Their ad revenue is down north of 50% since the 'garch took over. How are you defining 'hurt'? UPDATE: Oh I see, they did the kill-the-API-to-kill-third-party-clients thing before too, long before the current brouhaha. OK, never mind.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    No the kill the API thing came after Elon. It was one of the things he did, but indeed this specific thing does not seem to have hurt user engagement in particular. In fact it was probably one of the things that was good for their ad revenue and probably why they did it.
gtsteve 3y ago
I don't think it will. It'll IPO just fine, make their shareholders wealthy and become another millquetoast advertiser friendly walled garden for your average internet user while the jilted original users go and find another platform, which will in turn IPO just fine, make their shareholders wealthy and the cycle repeats forever. The average internet user by the way, is statistically not you reading this, doesn't really care too much about APIs and finds the current Reddit client just fine really and as a recent registration, doesn't understand that the developer community basically built the interest in reddit and without third-party moderation tools, clients and a community that deeply cared about their special website, flawed though it was. All platforms go through this cycle, but Reddit felt special to me and it hurts to find that wasn't true.
- trollied 3y ago
  Money always corrupts in the end.
- eterm 3y ago
  I think this captures how I feel, which is an odd sense of mourning. It's not that I haven't known for a long time now that reddit isn't the site it used to be, it's that this episode in particular has put that in such focus I can't ignore it. So now I feel a sense of loss for the reddit of old, even if it hasn't really been such for a long time anyway. Reddit itself will carry on fine, and perhaps get even stronger with a tighter control over content. Efforts to make a federated alternative are doomed.
- rjh29 3y ago
  I don't think it will because there's no solid alternative. If/when there is, and the most active users - the ones contributing the content and moderating the comments - start leaving, then it will turn into an empty husk of itself and die like Digg did, even if it does have millions of readers.
  - kredd 3y ago
    My argument against parallels drawn Digg is simply current users of the internet. In 2010-2011 people were more likely to experiment with different social forums, websites, and etc. Also the age of the users were always on the younger side. Nowadays it’s fairly different, and seems like users are more sticky and will only flock to an already established websites, so unless Reddit becomes genuinely unusable (broken native client, dead infrastructure and etc.), majority of the users will stay on and contribute. It’s similar to “Twitter exodus”, which didn’t happen. Obviously things might go downhill for the company, but people go in for their quick dopamine hits, not for some dramatic battle between evil (Reddit corp) and good (Apollo). Not to sound too pessimistic, but most of the mods of the bigger subreddits aren’t going to give up either, since it’s a part of their life, and not really their battle. I really hope I am wrong though, since it’s about time we have something new and shiny.
xwdv 3y ago
When old.reddit.com is gone, that will be the true end.
- mypastself 3y ago
  What are you basing this on? Do we have any data regarding the percentages of mobile/old/app users?
  - Semaphor 3y ago
    I wish I still had the graph, but someone posted something for their (150k subs) subreddit recently, and it was below 10% old. No idea what sub, or what the source was so, so take this with a pitcher of salt.
    - the_pwner224 3y ago
      It's about 5%. Not much variation by sub, even the technical ones are in that range, maybe a few % higher.
  - xwdv 3y ago
    It’s not just about users, it’s about principles.
    - mypastself 3y ago
      I have no doubt some users will leave, but I’m not sure what principles have to do with whether or not it would be the end of Reddit. Unless you mean in some subjective, personal sense.
      - xwdv 3y ago
        Think of old.reddit.com as a canary. If it goes, then you know some shit is going down and Reddit will never truly be the same going forward. Even if you don’t use it, that should be the signal to leave if you haven’t already.
acatton 3y ago
Reddit's doom has been announced over and over again since they started raising the bar for what is an "acceptable" sub-reddit in 2011. The reality is that Reddit hasn't ceased growing since then. The same thing happened with YouTube. YouTube pushed its content to switch from filthyfrank to Jimmy Kimmel/Fallon. Advertisers are not interested in us, early-adopters, mostly young and middle-aged western males. They want kids and soccer-moms: they're less likely to install an ad-blocker, and have a much wider range of products for which they're the target audience. I think we need to understand that we were never the target audience. Reddit, like YouTube, will do more than fine. The early-adopters just won't be part of it. My hope is that we will go back to independently ran niche-community bulletin-boards, like in the 2000s with phpBB, instead of piggy-backing on some other new for-profit corporate walled-garden.
- _thisdot 3y ago
  I have friends who fit the target audience criteria you mention. These people absolutely do not care about the client and never find the need to step outside the default client. My partner has access to Apollo Ultra through iCloud Family, yet she finds the default reddit client good enough. If these people exist and they’re the majority, why kill 3rd party apps to mess with a minority?
  - acatton 3y ago
    Because if you're a ruthless company going public, you want to avoid ways for your users to block the ads or "cheat the walled garden." Forcing them to use the official app is the way to go. And advertisers feel safe. I'm not saying I approve the practice. I'm saying that it makes sense from their perspective.
- wincy 3y ago
  Hah it’s funny you mention Filthy Frank specifically as he himself is now Joji[0] the very serious and not funny musician. He deleted all his old videos and scrubbed the evidence of who he once was, similar (although not as egregious) to the scat video Blippi posted [1] to get internet fame before he became a beloved children’s YouTuber. [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Qzzggn--s&pp=ygUESm9qaQ%3D%3D https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Qzzggn--s&pp=ygUESm9qaQ%3D%3... [1] Seriously, I’m not actually going to post the video. Im sure you can find it if you really want to. My kids aren’t allowed to watch Blippi though.
Sakos 3y ago
I'd like to move away from Reddit, but I don't see any viable place to go. The best thing about Reddit is how generally casual the user base is. It's not just a self-selected number of tech-affine users. It's people who love books, people who love running, or video games, or space, or literature, or knitting, or anything and everything else. Reddit has centralized what would otherwise be hundreds (thousands?) of obscure, splintered and isolated communities and forums. What could possibly compete with that without having already reached critical mass and become an obvious competitor to Reddit?
veidr 3y ago
Yep, and after reading this thread (and clicking through to the reddit thread) I couldn't justify not delivering 1 little papercut of my own; I just canceled my paid account. (Although at little personal cost, since I don't normally go to reddit directly, but I paid just to stop the inline ads that I would see when I would, as often happens, end up on reddit after googling something with kagi.com or bing.com.)
- freediver 3y ago
  > googling something with kagi.com This always makes me chuckle. Kaging something may not be mainstream yet but Kagi-fu sounds better then Google-fu!
michaelcampbell 3y ago
> All this backlash is going to kill Reddit. Just like it did Twitter.

cassianoleal 3y ago

Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256215

rapnie 3y ago
Thanks. Relates to the Github repository, which is source available. Looks like there is no license.
- fknorangesite 3y ago
  > Looks like there is no license. No one said they were open-sourcing it. It's just published for information/transparency.

andremedeiros 3y ago

Hi all! I wrote this code, and for educational purposes, I’d be more than happy to answer any questions. A gentle reminder that the whole history is here for show. This is very vulnerable — you can see the times I was in a rush, or when I took my time. You’ll find my mistakes. Either way, all I ask is please be kind. I know there are 50 things I could have done better, but this is a product of the reality at the time — a balance between something that works and something that was cost effective for Christian.

rovr138 3y ago
It’s hard to put oneself out there like that. Christian is very visible in the community, but I want to say thank you to you too. Thank you for all the work you did! This made a lot of our experiences great.
- andremedeiros 3y ago
  This right here is why I did it. To see a friend succeed, and to help make a community happier <3
  - yard2010 3y ago
    That's really wholesome which makes this incident much worse IMHO - it's the evil greedy corpo growth bs mindset vs the good will of few people that care about their community.. dystopic world
  - rovr138 3y ago
    This sentiment is what made Reddit a great community for smaller and specific subs. It’s just people talking around a topic and helping each other. Subreddit mods doing everything they can to keep their area clean for people reading. I’ve been on Reddit over for over a decade and this is the power behind it. Just wanting to help and bring good member. Thank you Andre. For your work and commitment to Christian, Apollo, and the community.
cassianoleal 3y ago

trollied 3y ago

There's a Reddit CEO AMA later today: 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... Can't see it being anything other than a PR disaster for them, unless they change their stance.

fron 3y ago
It's more than likely that they'll inject their own softball questions and focus on those instead of addressing everyone's concerns in any meaningful way.
- pwillia7 3y ago
  good test for the new AI bot accounts
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  When they removed the upvote/downvote count, it was clear reddit was fine with manipulation. Anything I read on the website has been met with extreme skepticism since it very well could be an astroturfer. It's money. Reddit wants astroturfers, it grows their platform and helps sell ads.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    > Anything I read on the website has been met with extreme skepticism since it very well could be an astroturfer. Good advice for any site. It's not like HN is immune to astroturfing.
    - hospitalJail 3y ago
      You have more courage than me to say that here.
  - chippiewill 3y ago
    > When they removed the upvote/downvote count, it was clear reddit was fine with manipulation I wasn't a big issue to me tbh. Vote fuzzing had always made those counts meaningless.

notRobot 3y ago

> The goal of making the code for this repo available is to show that despite statements otherwise by Reddit administrators, Apollo does not scrape anything and users purely authenticated Reddit API requests, and does a great deal of work to ensure the Reddit API rate limits are respected.

malone 3y ago
If this is true why does Apollo need its own server at all? Couldn't the client make requests directly to the reddit api servers instead? Then each user could use their own api key, rather than Apollo having to pay millions for a single key that accommodates everyone.
- Veen 3y ago
  Now it's open source, you can look at the code and find out why.
- andremedeiros 3y ago
  Theoretically it could do it all from the app, but it would have to resort to background updates, which are scheduled at iOS’ discretion. Christian was aiming for consistency, which is why this exists.
- charrondev 3y ago
  The main reason is push notifications. A lot of the communication can be direct, but not the push notifications.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

What if all the blackout communities move to an open source, community funded, community owned and run version of Apollo? I’d be happy to try and convince my 100k community to Apollo and if the UX is similar for web and mobile then I’m not sure switching costs would be that high during the blackout. I’d help fund it but all my money is wrapped up in my trash cooperative.

542458 3y ago
I haven’t seen a compelling OS alternative to Reddit yet. The ones I’ve seen have all either been big on decentralization at the expense of long load times and a lot of UI complexity, or big on 4chan-style dialogue with little moderation. Neither of those sounds like a great migration path. IMO this is the same problem “migrate off Twitter” efforts had.
- tester457 3y ago
  Have you seen Tildes? - incredible moderation and respectful community - you can't sort by controversial - non-profit, no investors can corrupt it - beautifully simple UI, better than old.reddit on mobile - fast and not decentralized - no images just text - open source - The site is the main mobile interface, not an app - No limits to logged-out browsing - Completely functional for browsing without javascript - Zero third-party scripts/assets during normal use - Uses modern versions of simple, reliable, "boring" technology https://docs.tildes.net/philosophy/site-implementation https://docs.tildes.net/philosophy/site-implementation
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    This looks interesting for sure thanks for the link
  - Goronmon 3y ago
    I want to like Tildes, but to be completely honest, it annoys me that the '~' character is used heavily. Both from a look perspective and a typing perspective. Maybe I could get used to it overtime, but we'll see if it ever becomes non-invite-only.

eterm 3y ago

Politically reddit have played a blinder. They've succeeded in killing their main competitor (in terms of ad share) and could even now walk back the api charges for any smaller operators and leave Apollo dead and avoid the biggest backlash. It's scummy as hell and I won't want to continue to contributing to reddit, but I can't help but feel they've been shrewd in getting what they wanted.

pjc50 3y ago
Does Apollo have any ad share?
- londons_explore 3y ago
  It has a reasonable chunk of the most active users. Sure, it doesn't have ads in today, but it could, so there is opportunity cost.
  - Kiro 3y ago
    What's a reasonable chunk? I had never heard of Apollo before this and I visit reddit every day.
- eterm 3y ago
  It doesn't show adverts that otherwise would be shown on the official reddit app. Sync is similar. I have a one-time purchase for "ad free" Sync. That stops me seeing adverts I would see in the official app for a fraction of the cost of reddit premium.
aeyes 3y ago
Why would that leave Apollo dead? If they set the API charges back to zero all third party clients, including Apollo, would be happy to continue.
- eterm 3y ago
  I said they could walk back the charges for smaller operators, e.g. by having generous API limits that most third parties wouldn't hit.

Aachen 3y ago

Direct link to submitted content: https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend

troad 3y ago

I really love the practice of releasing the source code once a project comes to a commercial end, and I respect the devs greatly for doing so. Good job!

yosito 3y ago

GitHub repo link, in case Reddit deletes the thread: https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend Interestingly, this seems to just be a proof of concept, and the repo is archived. While the developer of the Apollo front end is getting screwed in this whole debacle, this seems to me like an opportunity. He could literally build an alternate Reddit back end (ok, pay someone to do it, if he doesn't want to do it himself), switch Apollo to use that API instead, and get an instant network of hundreds of thousands of Apollo users. A mass migration from Reddit to a new Apollo back end seems like an amazing way to start a new social news website.

that_guy_iain 3y ago
Realistically, it would cost more to start a new Reddit using Apollo than it would to pay Reddit for API fees. Sure the server costs for the API costs alone aren't 1.2m a month for Reddit. But when you add in all the things that need to operate. Databases, storage, data transfer, etc. It would realistically be more than 1.2m in server costs. That's without paying people to build and maintain it.
aniforprez 3y ago
This backend does very very little outside of continually polling the reddit API for new messages and some other sundry tasks for operating the iOS app. There's nothing here that suggests any of this could be built out to a full fledged social media backend that is similar to reddit. Not to detract from the work being done but it's for a very specific use case: supporting adding features to the app frontend
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Yep - but the backend could be rewritten to work from a new datastore. The actual data model isn't complex. The entire public reddit database of posts, comments, and users could be imported as a starting point.
- andremedeiros 3y ago
  This is bang on.

tiffanyh 3y ago

Dumb question: why does Apollo need their own backend API when isn’t Apollo just a different view/UX for Reddits own API? https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend

1023bytes 3y ago
I believe it's mostly for push notifications
Kalium 3y ago
Mobile notifications is one reason that springs to mind.
noisy_boy 3y ago
I can take a guess - it allows you the flexibility of doing things the way you want it without having to update the app. You can make non-breaking changes to handle things/issues or implement workarounds/optimisations without the user realizing anything.
horsawlarway 3y ago
So I do primarily App/Extension development, and I've been doing it for about 15 years now. The short answer: You must have an interface you control, because app store review times mean there is no "hot fix". When something upstream of the client breaks - you are DAYS (assume 24 to 48 hours for review, after you fix the bug) from being able to get a new client in front of users, and several weeks out from having all of your users (all being some accepted percentage - I use ~95% for my releases) actually update to the latest version. If that "something upstream" is you - you can usually plan for it, release the updated client ahead of time, get it rolled out, then pull support for the old feature. If that "something upstream" is reddit... They break things, and they might (but probably won't) inform you ahead of time. You will have many, many more outages.
- blint_carton 3y ago
  Saved many long outages by being able to push quick dirty fixes to upstream APIs from our middle/server layer that depended on 3rd party APIs. Also a place to pull in any access keys needed for other services if they connect to so it doesn't sit in the client code.

mkl95 3y ago

Reddit's current situation reminds a bit of Yahoo Answers in the late 2000s. Considering they were launched 5 days apart, Reddit has been incredibly resilient.

unstatusthequo 3y ago

Please change title to Apollo Backend. Gives the impression Apollo has returned “and” made public.

r0bbbo 3y ago

I've seen an increasing amount of support for 'nuking' your personal reddit history—posts and comments—in protest of the upcoming changes, taking back what Reddit are profiting from. I'm hugely in favour of it, anyone else considering it?

paulcole 3y ago
No. I could lie and say my time is more valuable than editing my reddit post/comment history, but it’s not. I just don’t care enough to try to “stick it” to Reddit.
whatsu 3y ago
I did. Edited post and comments and deleted everything. Takes like 5 minutes.
jacobp100 3y ago
That’s my plan if they don’t change course by 30th