14 ms·

Apollo is dead. Long live Apollo

1036 points by bears-n-beets 3y ago

I was actively using the app on my phone and it suddenly crashed at 4:10pm PDT. I thought it was just my phone acting up but then I realized that’s about 12am UTC. With the death of Apollo also goes the metaphorical death of all the best parts (IMO) of the internet: open-source, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit. Sad day. I guess I’ll go outside now. Edit: sorry, Apollo wasn’t open source. That’s what happens when I make a post while two beers deep I guess. Hopefully you get the general spirit of what I was trying to convey.

IAmGraydon 3y ago
Bye, Apollo. I kind of feel like a drug has been taken away from me. It’s is going to take a bit to adjust to not using Reddit on my phone, as I refuse to use their app.
- Exuma 3y ago
  110% agree... I have occasionally today looked at my phone like Hm....... nothing to do here, and then just stared out the window. There's always opportunities to learn instead, but I already learn for hours a day.
  - bloopernova 3y ago
    I've been reading. No clickbait. No ragebait. Just Discworld and its hilarious inhabitants.
    - pwpw 3y ago
      I stopped browsing Reddit 2 months ago and switched that time to reading Discworld too! It’s fantastic. I just started Mort. It feels like an incredibly more rewarding use of my time. Terry Pratchet really is wonderful.
      - WFNY 3y ago
        GNU Terry Pratchett
- robinsonrc 3y ago
  Lemmy with Wefwef (if you can get past the odd name) has gone a long way to smoothing the transition process for me http://wefwef.app/ http://wefwef.app/
- Mezzie 3y ago
  Woke up this morning with no Apollo to scroll through as I wake up and wait for my medication to work. It was definitely weird, but not bad.
lousken 3y ago
So where is everybody going after reddit?
- ColdAcanthaceae 3y ago
  Since the Apollo dev broke the news, I'm trying out Lemmy and it's an interesting alternative. Definitely too new to say what will happen to it, but looks promising.
- IAmGraydon 3y ago
  Back to real life.
  - unpythonic 3y ago
    I was an innkeeper, in this crazy, little town in Vermont... https://youtu.be/OwYw2i2icNg?t=430 https://youtu.be/OwYw2i2icNg?t=430
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    Oh I wish. People struggling with reddit replacements should try making new friend groups in 2023. Lot more energy for a lot more disappointing results.
- seanthemon 3y ago
  I uh.. came here?
- AndroidKitKat 3y ago
  I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I'm going to try giving up internet comment sections for a while to try and see if I can live without them. I have wasted far too much time on Reddit, Hacker News, and recently Lemmy (which I tried to use as a Reddit replacement). The articles themselves would be nice to keep around, I haven't found enough RSS feeds to make my feed reader app populated enough. I will probably make a userscript to disable comments here, use Kagi search to minimize the amount of Reddit in my search queries, and overall use a solution like Screen Time to try to limit use of other sites I spend way too much time on. I know a lot of users are going to Lemmy or Kbin, both of which are on the Fediverse.
smoldesu 3y ago
> With the death of Apollo also goes the metaphorical death of all the best parts (IMO) of the internet: open-source, Apollo was Open Source?
- bears-n-beets 3y ago
  Sorry, that was definitely the wrong phrase to use. I was reaching for a term I couldn’t find - something that conveys the concept of “freedom” on the internet - like the ability to leverage an existing tool/service and build upon it and make it better?
- albert180 3y ago
  The Backend was open sourced to counter U/spez Bullshit arguments about inefficient code creating too many API requests See here https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend
ortusdux 3y ago
Sync is also dead. They just sent out a push notification: "Sync for reddit had shutdown. Thank you for using Sync. It's been one hell of a ride."
- deelowe 3y ago
  Yep. It was fun. I'm done with reddit I guess.
- x86x87 3y ago
  apparently there is going to be a Sync for Lemmy. Hopefully we also get Apollo for Lemmy and get rid of reddit for good.
  - PestoDiRucola 3y ago
    On that note, does anyone know if there’s any decent lemmy mobile apps? I searched a bit but couldn’t find anything meaningful
    - sosodev 3y ago
      https://join-lemmy.org/apps https://join-lemmy.org/apps this page lists various Lemmy interfaces. I've just joined the mlem testflight and it's decent. It also seems to be improving quite quickly now that people are flooding to Lemmy.
    - zacte 3y ago
      For Android there's Jerboa which seems to have the most features and Liftoff which is still getting there. Personally I like Thunder which supports iOS as well, I got it off GitHub
      - neurostimulant 3y ago
        While Jerboa is an app created by the core developer of Lemmy, it's not as official app and the developer treat it as a personal project and freely blocks any instance he don't like there. I understand it's within his right to do so, but I still find it concerning due to his association with Lemmy and how many people think it's the official app.
Wherecombinator 3y ago
I pretty much only like Reddit for niche communities and fighting shit google results. The latter is a necessity but for the former there’s other communities to satiate my needs. It’s just that it’s a bit of a fragmented way of diving into my interests. Is there such a thing as a forum aggregator?
- bears-n-beets 3y ago
  Where are these other communities? I can’t find them. And no, I don’t count Discord as an acceptable replacement. Googling for old-school forums has been pretty fruitless for me thus far as Google is basically useless without appending site:reddit.com these days (the supreme irony of that…)
  - Wherecombinator 3y ago
    I guess it depends on how niche your interests are. I’m mainly into electronic music machines and synth diy. There’s enough forums for me. There’s other stuff that I frequent on Reddit but at the end of the day it’s usually just crap to distract me that I could do without.
    - bears-n-beets 3y ago
      I'm part of a lot of smaller women-centered communities on reddit - my favorite subreddits were r/MoneyDiariesACTIVE, r/FIREyFemmes, r/girlsgonewired r/adhdwomen, r/AmateurRoomPorn, r/AskWomenOver30, etc. Not all of these are explicitly for women only but they all have a majority female user base. I don't think there are equivalents in a forum-type format; I'd probably have to go to TikTok or something, but I don't care for that format so I'll probably just lose those communities for the most part.
      - VeryFinePrint 3y ago
        The big "mostly women" subreddit I'll miss, despite being a guy, is the /r/RomanceBooks subreddit. It is hands down the best book community on reddit. At least as far as community and moderation goes. It sounds like the mods don't think the alternatives are technologically mature enough.
jmclnx 3y ago
I am confused, 12:00am UTC is 8:00pm EDT. So UTC 12:00 should be 11:00 pm PDF. It is 7:40 EDT as I type this on June 30 EDIT: was in junethack while typing this, yes 5pm PDT is 12 UTC :)
- bryan0 3y ago
  confused is the expected state when thinking about timezones so you have nothing to worry about.
- mmebane 3y ago
  The author posted on Twitter ~20 minutes ago that he shut it down early, due to some change in the API causing crashes. I presume he had been expecting to shut it down at midnight in some American time zone. > Well, looks like Reddit pulled the plug a little early. Apollo started crashing, but I just manually revoked my token and it looks like it fixes the crashing, but no more Reddit access haha. Those folks are fun to the very end! > @ChristianSelig > 6:49 PM (CDT) · Jun 30, 2023 Source: https://twitter.com/ChristianSelig/status/1674928286781124611 https://twitter.com/ChristianSelig/status/167492828678112461...
  - x86x87 3y ago
    hah. if twitter wasn't such a twat we could actually read the tweet. You know what? fuck reddit and also fuck twitter.
    - soneil 3y ago
      https://mastodon.social/@christianselig/110635856662952525 https://mastodon.social/@christianselig/110635856662952525 and yes, I totally get that there's a wider point to be made in reddit and twitter both going hostile on the same day.
- bears-n-beets 3y ago
  You're right, I think I mixed up PDT vs PST
x3n0ph3n3 3y ago
Reddit is Fun is also gone.
- mongol 3y ago
  I noticed that I could use it when logged out.
- arprocter 3y ago
  The writing was on the wall, but as a user for a decade+ opening it to see "No threads here. Tap to refresh." is a little jarring
tspike 3y ago
RIP Bacon Reader. Reddit, you’ve burned so much goodwill. I’ve been an enthusiastic user for over 14 years. Now I’m planning to delete my content. At one point recently, I got excited about applying for an engineering leadership position with you, but this debacle has made me realize your senior leadership is not who I want to be reporting to.
- goda90 3y ago
  Please don't delete it without adding it to the Internet archive first
  - sentientslug 3y ago
    Putting the content somewhere else defeats the whole purpose of deleting it.
    - wardedVibe 3y ago
      not really, it'd be outside the garden wall, and thus not monetizable by reddit
      - mptest 3y ago
        Can reddit issue requests to archive or whichever site is used to do it and have them taken down ? Or worse yet, rebuild their deleted history from the archives and THEN issue takedowns? I am realizing I have no serious idea how archival of digital content works legally.
        kemayo 3y ago
        User-provided content is provided under a license between the user providing it and the site hosting it -- inherently, because otherwise the site wouldn't be allowed to do anything with it at all. Generally this takes the form of the site's ToS saying that the user gives the site a perpetual license to use the content however they want, but generally not an exclusive license. As such, and I'm not a lawyer and can't promise this is true, I suspect that reddit couldn't actually do takedowns on someone who's archiving their user-provided content. Any specific user whose content was archived without their consent could do so, however.
jdalgetty 3y ago
I guess this is how we break our addictions. Feels bad though.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Tell HN:
CivBase 3y ago
Still using Boost with the ReVanced patch[0]. No telling how long that will last though. Regardless, I'm massively scaling back my use of Reddit. [0] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wHvqQwCYdJrQg4BKlGIVDLksPN0KpOnJWniT6PbZSrI/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wHvqQwCYdJrQg4BKlGIVDLks... Edit: For those interested, the patch just lets you use your own API key. But the dev is no longer supporting the app and there's no telling whether the bring-your-own-key strategy will work in the long term, considering Reddit's recent behavior.
- Peanuts99 3y ago
  Boost is still working for me on the standard API key. I wonder how long that will last.
ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
>Edit: sorry, Apollo wasn’t open source. That’s what happens when I make a post while two beers deep I guess. Well, the server backend was recently opened: https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend
- 8note 3y ago
  I think only made available, but not licensed?
  - xeromal 3y ago
    Yeah, it was put on github as proof they weren't webscraping like spez claimed.
MBCook 3y ago
I’ve long used Apollo to hold an alt account. I just downloaded the official app and logged in. In 3 minutes I deleted it. Ignoring design issues, all of a sudden the official app grabbed ALL Reddit links and if I viewed Reddit in Safari there was an unremovable “Open in the app” banner above the Safari content that couldn’t be removed. No way. Deleted. The last year has just destroyed so much of the value I get out of the internet.
- bredren 3y ago
  Apollo had an optional safari extension that caught Reddit URLs and opened them in Apollo instead. It was great.
  - perfect-blue 3y ago
    And it worked flawlessly too. Apollo was really a cut above anything I’ve seen out there. Was holding out hope that Reddit would reverse course, but I suppose not.
    - MBCook 3y ago
      I don’t blame Christian. Spez, on a whim, decided to basically destroy his livelihood, with basically no notice. Then Spez kept doubling down and accused Christian of extortion, repeating the accusations after it was proven they were false. I would sell the app even if they reversed course. I wouldn’t trust they wouldn’t do it again. I wouldn’t trust they’d ruin me some other way. If they had said “we’re doing this in 6 months” and then listened to the community, that’s different. But Spez burnt the bridge to the ground and poured toxic waste on it.
      - shagie 3y ago
        I'm not sure how much of a whim Reddit had. A Virginia law was signed into effect on May 12th that required commercial entities that distributed "material harmful to minors" to verify the age of the users or be exposed to civil penalties. That law goes into effect in 3 hours.
goda90 3y ago
RedReader for Android, and Dystopia for iOS were both granted exemptions to the new API pricing by Reddit due to their accessibility and non-commercial nature.
- foepys 3y ago
  I'll give it 2 months at most until Reddit will claim that their own app is now accessible enough to shut down the other apps.
- dirtyid 3y ago
  Joey on Android with text to speech feature also seems to be working. The developer has been very quiet throughout ordeal, hopefully there's an exemption as well.
- ftth_finland 3y ago
  With all due respect to the developer of Dystopia, the experience compared to Apollo is subpar. I tried twice already to use Dystopia, but I can’t really force myself. Probably just for the best to give up on Reddit.
spazztastik 3y ago
I’m giving Lemmy a try using wefwef.app
voisin 3y ago
I am actually quite sad about this. I noticed the same thing re Apollo app no longer working. I used Apollo to interact with a number of communities and have tried the official app and the website (both new and old) and simply cannot use them in the same manner as I used Apollo. I am done with Reddit now and the void created by losing the communities I interacted with has left me with a feeling of loneliness. Damn you u/spez.
meepmorp 3y ago
So, will Reddit still manage to have an IPO soon? Or maybe better to ask, a successful one.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  The window is closed right now, but this at least removed one of the risks. At the same time, it exposed the moderator risk, the revenue impact isn't clear yet, and it's drama that investors might not like.
tayo42 3y ago
I'm curious what happens to reddit now. I'm guessing just auto pilot of low effort content. Don't think it'll truly die as far as numbers go.
- mandmandam 3y ago
  Sure, they've got the numbers. But there's no life. I picture the hordes of zombies in The Walking Dead, unknowingly led by a select few ghastly humans wearing zombie masks.
  - bears-n-beets 3y ago
    Yeah, I personally suspect it will be a slow death march over the course of a few years, culminating in it basically becoming 9gag.
- adrr 3y ago
  Nothing. Apollo was less than 1% of users. It would be interesting to a see a survey to see what population of Reddit was affected by these changes or cared.
  - tayo42 3y ago
    I think it's more important to know how many are content creators and posters that are effected.
  - datenyan 3y ago
    I think the bigger issue is that Apollo (and other apps such as RIF) were amazing tools for moderators, with the official app lacking a lot of features the unofficial clients had.
    - covercash 3y ago
      I recently described it to a friend as trying to get from point A to point B in ankle deep water when using 3rd party apps compared to waist deep water in the official app - sure, you can do it but it’s going to take significantly more time and effort. So if you’re constantly popping in and checking things throughout the day, that extra time and effort really adds up. By killing these user friendly apps that a large portion of power users and mods preferred, it’s Reddit showing all of these dedicated unpaid contributors that their time and effort don’t matter to the company. Steve spit directly in all of our faces repeatedly over the past month and now most of us are actively rooting against the success of an IPO. I hope he continues to be the 3rd most successful Reddit cofounder, and his name never gets mentioned in a positive light within YC/HN.
jprd 3y ago
I hear you. I only get the courage to post a comment when I'm beers deep; it doesn't always go well. I feel you did great!
- bears-n-beets 3y ago
  That's very nice, thank you :) Pros and cons of lowered inhibition I guess haha
- replwoacause 3y ago
  Same. Then I delete it 24 hours later.
extr 3y ago
I remember signing up for Reddit as a college freshman. I was a digg user and joined Reddit in the aftermath of that fiasco. I sometimes laugh looking over my post history for the past decade plus. If you read the posts linearly, you can trace my evolution from a kid arguing passionately over politics and culture (things he didn't really know much about), to a more mature young adult who rarely waded into discussions unless he had something meaningful to contribute. To me now, as a 31 year old man, who mainly posts on a few private subreddits full of likeminded people (and still occasionally gets into arguments about things he knows nothing about). Until today I had not really mentally processed that Reddit as we knew it was going away. Until a hour or two ago I started get Rate Limits on Reddit Sync. At first I thought it was some kind of bug. Then noticed the date. Like others mentioned, it will take some getting used to not having it. I've already noticed since the blackouts that "site:reddit.com" is less effective than it was even a month or two ago: some of the key subreddits I used have gone and stayed dark. I wish the owners of Reddit the best in turning their website into TikTok. But if I have need for mindless entertainment, I'll probably just use TikTok directly. The small communities of likeminded people are not as easy to replace, and will be missed.
- doublepg23 3y ago
  I can trace my earliest account to middle school. You can imagine the cringe on there...
  - SantalBlush 3y ago
    If every Reddit user was tagged with their age, it would be an eye-opening experience. "Why is this 16-year-old talking about divorce lawyers on r/relationship_advice?"
    - anthomtb 3y ago
      A 16 year old with recently divorced parents probably has some reasonable insight there.
      - 3y ago
ape4 3y ago
Is there a way to change some settings or something to make the official reddit app look more like RIF?
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  The app? No, there's no such way to control that. Your best bet is CSS configurations on the website but it'll be a pale imitation.
bibabaloo 3y ago
This is sad, but the silver lining is that the official app is horrible enough that it will more or less force me to go cold turkey on breaking my Reddit addiction.
dom96 3y ago
I am still somewhat shocked that they went through with this. I built a Reddit API[1] alternative as a form of protest, they responded by blocking my personal Reddit account. Very sad what Reddit has become. 1 - https://api.reddiw.com https://api.reddiw.com
- ztgasdf 3y ago
  Will you release the code for this?
  - dom96 3y ago
    I think so. Though it’s not nearly as sophisticated as you might think. Are you interested in hosting an instance of it?
    - Aeolun 3y ago
      What will they do if many people do. Make the site inaccessible without signing in?
      - simfree 3y ago
        Even LinkedIn has not gone quite this far, usually the first page is viewable without logging in.
    - simfree 3y ago
      Having an equivalent of Nitter and Invidious would be amazing! I would love to host an instance of this API, you should publish your code! Apps like RedReader will be impossible to modify and use in a libre manner without a replacement API implementation like this.
      - TobTobXX 3y ago
        > Having an equivalent of Nitter and Invidious would be amazing! Something like https://teddit.net/ https://teddit.net/ ?
ryanwhitney 3y ago
I tried Apollo early on and it was a bit too bare-bones. After all the news, I gave it another whirl for the past month and it’s very nice. After previously using the official app, it was a breath of fresh air to see a native video player, native share sheets, and so much more. Super nice, useful details like image counts on galleries. Such a shame that Reddit’s huge team is actively working in the opposite direction. Amazing work, Christian. Really unfortunate that Reddit has gone in this direction and truly shameful and disgusting how they’ve handled it.
- 9935c101ab17a66 3y ago
  There are so many small details that make Apollo such a well designed app. I definitely started to feel the UI could use an update / polish recently, but man, the UX was unreal. Assorted highlights: - Share post / comment as image. When sharing comment as image, you could specify how many parent comments to include in the image as well. Super useful. - The theme change shortcut (more common now, but I think apollo was one of the first apps I noticed it in) - you could change subreddit with one tap. Narwhal doesn’t have this and it’s so annoying. - unreal in-app media playback (including YouTube) - customizable swipe gestures - great comment editor - content filters - ability to hide subreddits in just a couple of taps - saved item categories I’m done with Reddit on mobile devices. I’m actually quite happy to have a good reason to stop using Reddit, but I’m sad that such a well-designed app has just disappeared.
throwaway630000 3y ago
Probably would have been interesting to relaunch the Apollo with its own backend as a direct competitor to Reddit. I think one simple push notification would've pulled millions of the most active users over to the new service
- FormerBandmate 3y ago
  Hopefully he does that later. Reddit sucks
- toyg 3y ago
  Hardly simple. Who recreates all subreddits? Re-establishes all the mods? Re-subscribes all the users? And all the while on a brand-new implementation that has to immediately scale to millions of users flawlessly. That's a lot of work.
- shagie 3y ago
  That would have required negotiating image hosting, having a significant amount of server power and storage space, dealing with laws about who can see what, and active moderation until volunteers can be found to moderate the content. Having someone to deal with DMCA requests and age verification laws. If it wasn't a subscription service (that had to front load a lot of its costs), it also involves getting advertisers for people who are demonstrably hostile to advertisements on board. This requires hiring more than a few people and investing a bit into the infrastructure needed. It isn't just "hey, gonna spin up a server that is API compatible with reddit and switch everyone over."
  - predictabl3 3y ago
    So, are we just pretending like reddit has any of that when it started out?
    - shagie 3y ago
      It was a single page link farm with votes that competed with Digg in a much simpler regulatory time. https://web.archive.org/web/20051124035428/http://reddit.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20051124035428/http://reddit.com... (edit: upon reflection, I am nostalgic for the time when that the top link there was to "The Truth About Web 2.0" at paulgraham.com shared by a user named AaronSw) If you were to try to build something today that competed with Reddit and wasn't just a "here's a bunch of links - vote on what you like (without even comments)", it would take quite a bit more investment. If you were to build reddit c. 2005 you wouldn't even need a device local app.
shagie 3y ago
This happens to coincide with the date that a new law (singed May 12th) goes into effect in Virginia requiring commercial entities that publish or distribute "material harmful to minors" to verify the age of the users. Commercial entities violating that may suffer civil penalties. https://legiscan.com/VA/text/SB1515/2023 https://legiscan.com/VA/text/SB1515/2023
- lotsoweiners 3y ago
  I don’t know law and am bad at technology too but I’m wondering if there is ways companies can get around these kinds of laws through a combination of geofencing, blocking IPs, and displaying messages that the service isn’t available in a particular state/country. I understand that it might make economic sense but just wondering if showing a certain amount of due diligence helps absolve them legally.
  - shagie 3y ago
    That's exactly what some of them do. Pornhub blocks access in Virginia over new age verification law - https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/pornhub-blocks-access-in-virginia-over-new-age-verification-law/ https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/pornhub-blocks-acces... Part of the challenge with this one is it does that "civil right of action" where it's not the state suing the entity but private citizens. That makes it more difficult for the company to defend against it. Though this gets into a "how much effort are you going to put into it" and "how much control do you have over the ways the content is distributed?" This also is about liability for the backend service - not the ISPs or other providers (3rd party apps are in a gray zone as to if it is Reddit or the 3rd party app that would be liable for showing such content... and my crystal ball says it would probably end up being that Reddit would be solely liable).
- fluidcruft 3y ago
  Sounds coincidental. It doesn't have anything to do with pricing and NSFW content is still flowing to the remaining clients (as of right now). Reddit has never mentioned that law either as far as I know.
lannisterstark 3y ago
> metaphorical death of all the best parts (IMO) of the internet: open-source, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit. That's a weird connection to make. Reddit isn't be-all-end-all of open source (given that it or most of the major apps were never open source anyway)
altano 3y ago
I'm one of the first Reddit users, joining in October 2005. My usage has gone up and down over the years, but for the first time ever for me, Reddit doesn't have a bookmark, a pinned app, or any way for me to get to it other than typing in the URL. I don't care about all of the API drama beyond the fact that I was paying for a Reddit premium subscription AND Apollo to have a good experience using Reddit and, now that that isn't an option, I am stepping away for the time being. Reddit will forever have a special place in my heart.
RheingoldRiver 3y ago
There will be a spiritual successor though, for kbin/Lemmy, called Artemis: https://kbin.social/m/ArtemisApp https://kbin.social/m/ArtemisApp Right now it's in a closed beta, and the size of the closed beta is increasing slowly through the end of the month. The goal is for it to be public around the start of August. That kbin magazine has a link to a signup sheet for the closed beta. (disclosure? I was an alpha tester for it, and so far it looks AMAZING. The dev is awesome, it's a really friendly community, and the amount of progress in just 2 weeks of development is really impressive.)
- Shawnj2 3y ago
  Memmy is also similar to Apollo
  - morisy 3y ago
    Been using Memmy — a few weeks ago, it felt like a very impressive beta app, and since then it's gone to just feeling like a great app. Seems to have taken a lot of good lessons from Apollo in terms of responsiveness and speed. Planted the seed of wanting to even host my own Lemmy instance.
  - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
    There are also Mlem, Liftoff and Wefwef
- toyg 3y ago
  There is also Jerboa. A bit rough but does the job.
- the_lucifer 3y ago
  > What is Artemis using for building its user interface? > The Artemis UI is built with React Native + Typescript Sorry, this is DoA for me. This is not a spiritual successor. Biggest USP of Apollo was its clean, native and thoughtful UI, not cross platform UI bloatware
  - 3y ago
foogazi 3y ago
[flagged]
lucb1e 3y ago
Oh that's dumb. I forgot to check my inbox before midnight. I had offered Tildes invites and don't have the password to that account (but have been logged in since years, can access the auth token, etc., but reddit doesn't want you to recover from this scenario, so that's gone forever). Well... anyone here needs a Tildes invite?
- codeslave13 3y ago
  Would love a tildes invite
  - lucb1e 3y ago
    No contact info on your profile, not sure how you want me to send an invite without someone else snatching it...
    - neonnomad 3y ago
      Would love one for myself if you don't mind.
    - gremlinsinc 3y ago
      I'll take one, if you don't mind.
- BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
  I'd love one; Hope you don't mind if I send you an email in lieu of posting mine here?
  - lucb1e 3y ago
    For the record: That's fine! Contact info is on my profile for a reason :). As you'll have seen, I have replied to the email!
- istjohn 3y ago
  I'll take one, please.
coufu 3y ago
Thank you Apollo for all the fun times. You made it way too easy to use Reddit. While you will be missed, I’m glad this is giving me time back in my life. I’ve already finished two books since the new API pricing was revealed, and I am NOT a book reader (having read less than 10 books in my lifetime, and I’m turning 40 this year). But I’m happy to be becoming one. Bye Reddit. I hope one day your corporate leaders will look back and realize the error of their ways and how they single-handedly destroyed countless online communities practically overnight.
exploringfalse 3y ago
I can honestly say that I have no intention to continue using reddit on any mobile device without apps like Apollo, Sync etc. A real shame, because I found reddit communities made over hobbies to be such a good source of anecdotal information.
paulcole 3y ago
Narwhal (a 3rd-party iOS Reddit app) is still going and it turns out not biting the hand that feeds you works pretty well. Respect to the Apollo guy for having the confidence that he could get Reddit to back down through a well-organized PR campaign. But he could’ve had a decent business if he’d just backed down, given in a little, and not tried to make Spez look like a bigger idiot/liar than he already did. I love a good risky David v. Goliath gamble and would’ve liked to see him win, but sometimes you lose it all.
- transcriptase 3y ago
  >Well-organized PR campaign. Sure, if you call simply posting his experiences on his own subreddit for his own app a PR campaign. He certainly did a better job than Reddit did, blatantly lying about their conversation, timelines, and motivations for killing 3rd party apps. Reddit is trying to pivot to the TikTok and YouTube comment section population of the internet, while the HN commenter types were simply costing them money. We’ll see how it plays out.
  - paulcole 3y ago
    > Sure, if you call simply posting his experiences on his own subreddit for his own app a PR campaign. Yes, this and the organized blackout and anti-Reddit posts among the biggest subreddits is a coordinated PR campaign. Remember that the headline narrative they were pushing was “Reddit is killing 3rd-party apps.” It was buried in walls of text that in fact Reddit was making 3rd-party apps pay more than they wanted to pay. If Reddit was in fact killing 3rd-party apps why does Narwhal still work? And yes, I understand that you are quite bright and understood exactly what was going on. But the whole point of the campaign was to appeal to people not like you and get them on the side of the developers. Although admittedly getting Redditors to post “fuck /u/spez” is only marginally harder than shooting fish in a barrel. I’m not throwing shade. Respect to them for shooting their shot. But see it for what it was: an attempt to control a narrative, get the public on their side, and achieve a desired outcome. If that’s not PR, what is?
    - robertoandred 3y ago
sedatk 3y ago
For some reason, Narwhal, which is another nice app, is still working.
- vachina 3y ago
  App developer is playing ball with Reddit. Is going to charge users for API usage and complying with all terms of usage e.g. no nsfw content
  - sedatk 3y ago
    I wasn't asked for payment yet. I wonder when that will kick in.
GoofballJones 3y ago
So many sites and companies have turned on the users that put them on the map. Twitter, Red Hat, Reddit. It's like they're saying "we don't need the users anymore."
- klardotsh 3y ago
  They're all panicking for money. Modern capitalism demands not just stable businesses, not just profit, but quarterly increasing profits for all of eternity. This is obviously-to-anyone-who-isn't-a-grifter impossible and company after company will die being forced to chase it.
  - pierat 3y ago
    hn sez 30x plz?
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Official post as shared over here earlier (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36541886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36541886) https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14nb5qs/today_is_apollo_for_reddits_last_day_and_i_just/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14nb5qs/today_is...
zmmmmm 3y ago
If you care about this stuff, please at least give the fediverse a try. Yes it's inadequate right now in all kinds of ways. But the main reason is that not enough people are there. It needs critical mass. Pick whatever you want - kbin, lemmy, mastodon. Go there, find your community (it will probably look very sad compared to Reddit). And contribute something positive - comment, post, whatever. If everybody just did that, we would kickstart something durable that couldn't be destroyed and take back the internet that everybody is pining for.
- kaibee 3y ago
  I tried to make a lemmy account on my phone in between errands. Couldn't figure it out. I'll give it a shot on desktop, and I want a reddit replacement, but I wonder how many other people are gonna go to the same effort. Maybe that's a feature though, an escape from eternal September.
  - GuestHNUser 3y ago
    I joined kbin.social and have been pleasantly suprised with it. Everything I'm subscribed to there is slow moving at the moment, but frankly I find that pace refreshing. I've seen threads remain active for several days, which doesn't seem to happen anywhere else.
    - esperent 3y ago
      I tried to make a kbin.social account several times, and also lemmy.world, lemmy.social. They all take several minutes work to fill out the form, and then another few minutes waiting. Then they hang with no error message. It's tedious and I've given up trying to sign up for any of these new fedi-reddits. EDIT: ok, after reading some more of this thread I decided to have one more try. Sign up on squabbles.io took 2 minutes. Yay! EDIT 2: information density is so low on squabbles. Also, they already block all NSFW content - I'm not looking for porn, but I am looking for a community where people are free to share whatever kinds of content they like, including stuff that I don't like. There needs to be strong boundaries - nothing illegal, no racism etc. But the boundaries should be as broad as possible. Besides, NSFW means a lot more than just porn. Are we allowed to share dirty jokes there? Or important but horrible videos exposing war crimes? A community that decides to block all of this from the very beginning is not what I want. Although I can understand their reasoning and honestly if I was running the site I might we'll make the same decision.
goolz 3y ago
When I was younger and in college I remember Spez coming to my city to visit friends and gave a small talk, detailing how they got started. I was enraptured by Reddit, tech and coding at the time so I really looked up to him and what they were doing. I am sorely disappointed in how things have turned out. Tech as we know it has become this sick, twisted battle for clicks and eye-balls and exits. Not to discount those that are doing great work, but where did all the integrity go? Edit: remember when Google had the audacity to have the catchphrase “don’t be evil”? Bahahaha. Good stuff.
damontal 3y ago
narwhal is still available.
mgdev 3y ago
I deleted my Reddit account of over ten years over this. No going back.
- ClassyJacket 3y ago
  They already deleted mine because I refused to buy into their gender ideology BS. Haven't used it since. Good riddance.
- deely3 3y ago
  Do you still read article from Reddit when you search for information?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jahlove 3y ago
AlienBlue (the original 3rd party app) is still working.
- cheshire137 3y ago
  Interesting, when I go to my purchases in the app store, I see Alien Blue, but consistently when I tap it to try and re-download it, I get a "failed to connect to App Store" error.
codazoda 3y ago
I’ve only really used Apollo on Reddit. The official app never stuck for me and I don’t have it installed. It’s one of the few apps I only really use on my phone, so I don’t have it bookmarked or anything. At this point, I’m burned and so I’ll take my ball and go home. I bought the screensavers though. Thanks for all the good times Apollo.
samrjack 3y ago
The last two weeks I noticed an onset depression in my life and I think it was because I basically stopped using Reddit since the blackout started and I have no intent to go back. I swear it was an addiction withdrawal. I’ve been feeling better the past 2 days but I do miss having a place that helps me keep in touch with the parts of the world I cared about.
kypro 3y ago
> the death of Apollo also goes the metaphorical death of all the best parts (IMO) of the internet: open-source, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit. It died years ago for me. I don't want go get too nostalgic, but it depresses how amazing the early internet was compared to what it is today. The early years of web 2.0 (2002 - 2007ish) were the golden age imo. Then Facebook and the smart phone came along... From that point on the internet was no longer a place for geeks on their desktop computers to chat on forums and build cool stuff for other geeks. It became mainstream. Boomers got online. Children got online. Then the corporations monetised everything. Everything happening to Reddit today is a result of boomers, children and corporations going online. Edgey content gets banned or boomers complain. Everything gets age-gated or censored because, "think of the kids". And all you're left with is sterile advertiser friendly content served next to half a dozen ads.
- pierat 3y ago
  I mean, you cant just have Pepsi being advertised in a r/wtf deadly bus crash with people wearing coca cola, now can you? I mean, think of the chil... advertisers!
- n42 3y ago
  boomers built the internet, my dude
usaar333 3y ago
The official Reddit app is quite bad compared to say Sync (this is on Android). Like.. doesn't even seem to have a rich text editor?
btw0 3y ago
Reddit Migration Directory https://redditmigration.com https://redditmigration.com
mellik 3y ago
Honestly I’m not sure if I’ll use Reddit on mobile anymore since Apollo is gone. The native Reddit app is horrible
88913527 3y ago
Goodbye, Reddit. 127.0.0.1 www.reddit.com
paulmd 3y ago
Yup, same thing, wasn't sure what timezone it was gonna happen in, then all of a sudden it did. Screenshotted a couple pages of my (cached) home page for the memories.
gleenn 3y ago
The Apollo author should put up a page that says "Reddit has moved to Mastadon, click here to sign in"
- goykasi 3y ago
  Why would he post a dishonest statement?
  - Graffur 3y ago
    These apps developers were trying to piggyback off the reddit api, so are you surprised?
sagarpatil 3y ago
I’m curious. Do you guys use some app to access hackernews? I still use the browser like a caveman.
- iOsiris 3y ago
  Harmonic on Android
- bears-n-beets 3y ago
  I use Octal for iOS
- amrangaye 3y ago
  Hack is great.
- cheshire137 3y ago
  I'm enjoying Octal on iOS.
- replwoacause 3y ago
  Octal on iOS and Hack on MacOS for me.
whalesalad 3y ago
Sad day indeed. Swiping to refresh and just seeing blank views everywhere was such an abrupt and matter of fact ending. I’m wondering a few things: 1. Will the app ever be made open source 2. Could an endeavor be undertaken to give everyone their own ability to auth to the api themselves? Then instead of relying on the Apollo oauth keys you plug your own in and/or run your own self-hosted auth infra. These days it’s so easy to spin up an app on Fly or similar. Could see small communities a-La mastodon where one person operates an auth/api server for themselves and a few others (distribute the api load to many tiny api instances) versus the Apollo situation where one dev is footing the bill for every user. Hate to see what is hands down the best iOS app of all time just poof disappear.
throwaway1777 3y ago
Yeah you’re drunk. Apollo was a cash grab and selig admitted as such. That being said no one can give any points to Reddit for how they handled things either.
- torsday 3y ago
  Creating a great product that makes money isn't a cash grab.
  - Graffur 3y ago
    they created an interface around a product they didn't own..
    - torsday 3y ago
      You just defined every third party app that works with an API. Are all such apps cash grabs to you?
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  I guess you can call "creating a great product that people want to pay for" a "cash grab", but what isn't a cash grab then?
- OnlyLys 3y ago
  >and selig admitted as such Proof of that happening?
_blz2 3y ago
Centralization of internet forums was always going to end like this. I hope this accelerates the decline of Reddit dot com. The moderation and the censorship is pretty much universal across the large boards. You will find tons of deleted comments on anything which challenges the common view remotely. Can't say I'm not glad the site is going down, or enough alternatives pop up.
busymom0 3y ago
Remember Alien Blue before Reddit bought it? That app still appears to work: https://www.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/14nimob/alien_blue_still_functions/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/14nimob/alien_bl...
fencepost 3y ago
What's so sad about this is how easily it could have been avoided. Reddit could have done their equivalent of Musk's blue checkmark push and actually succeeded by simply requiring a paid user account for third party API access. Plans and pricing would have been implementation details to hash out, but they literally had everything they needed for it already in place. Instead they came up with a half-baked approach that's a terrible fit for how apps in the Apple and Android ecosystems are allowed to charge and gave developers 30 days to be ready for it - or ~75 if you want to be generous and go back to when they said "hey, we were wrong a few months ago, we are going to a paid API after all." Sure Narwhal has negotiated an extension (the developer declines to say anything about it, but he's not eating months of API charges) while he prepares a completely rewritten version of his app that will work with the new subscriptions. *slow clap* I wish him well.
- halfbrite 3y ago
  > I wish him well. We all do, but does anyone really believe spez won’t seem to kill it off a year from now?
tech234a 3y ago
WefWef [1] is a Lemmy client that looks and feels very similar to Apollo and even supports importing the data exports created by Apollo. It feels almost native despite being a web app. For anyone looking for a Reddit/Apollo alternative I would recommend checking it out. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36488016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36488016
8bitsrule 3y ago
GeoCities redux. Corporations don't like communities unless they can profit. One day the Greater Community will arise as a non-profit under the control of its contributers. "The community literally helped this site grow to what it is today by engaging with and creating content, creating communities (sub-reddits), and moderators who assisted in developing those communities for free." -- https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/14kjohc/never_forget_how_reddit_began_as_an_empty_website https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/14kjohc/n...
- spombg 3y ago
  Wikipedia’s staying power gives me hope that non-profits can succeed in this age of dopamine driven fast clicks
CSMastermind 3y ago
I started reading the Wheel of Time books this year and I discovered their surprisingly active subreddit where they have an active read-along including spoiler free first time reader threads. I listen to the No Dumb Questions podcast and the official episode discussion threads are on Reddit. As are the official discussion threads for the Nebula original Jet Lag episodes. As are the best unofficial discussion threads for newly aired TV show episodes. When new Age of Empires or Planet Zoo patches/expansions drop the only place to find thoughtful discussion is the subreddits for the games. The actual game developers hang out there as well. The subreddit wiki for Cities Skylines is the best guide to mods available on the internet. If you need to talk Civ strategy or want to follow the latest Smash Bros tournament then Reddit is the best place to go. Similar to when new music drops from a major artist - the best interactive discussion happens on Reddit. I haven't found anywhere that's as good as /r/NFL for game threads during the season. ----- I've long given up looking at Reddit for any meaningful discussion. Every major sub is infected with noxious politics. Technology/programming subreddits are flooded with confidently stated but mostly uninformed opinions. Trying to post something helpful feels like swimming against the tide. But I still go to Reddit for discussion about media be it books, podcasts, video games, music, sports, or others. I really hope someone migrates those communities somewhere else so I can finally ignore the site.
jbigelow76 3y ago
I'm pouring one out for Apollo tonight, I tried the official Reddit app and it's hot garbage and the Reddit website is somehow worse. Mastodon and Lemmy are fine, but I'm old enough to remember the web I grew up with and that what I would really like to see is a Renaissance of niche bulletin boards and RSS based blogs. I'm not holding my breath though.
Dwedit 3y ago
Infinity is the Open Source one.
tycho-newman 3y ago
In losing reddit we lose nothing of value.
causality0 3y ago
At this point I'm more angry at the mods than I am the evil corporation. They were afraid of Reddit ruining Reddit so they went ahead and burned it down themselves first. Congratulations, you got to be the ones to light the match.
groestl 3y ago
Eeee
madrian 3y ago
End of Apollo means end of Reddit for me. In same time I bought premium of Octal for HN.
happytiger 3y ago
It’s a sad day. I just deleted the app. Starting to delete all my Reddit accounts now too. I’m so tired of poor managers ruining good products.
traceddd 3y ago
They’re passing up an interesting opportunity to compete.
2-718-281-828 3y ago
where's the long live apollo part?
MivLives 3y ago
I'm going to miss reddit. I was one of the people who came over from digg. I deleted the app and stopped using the site when the protest happened. There's a missing itch for me for short to medium form content that isn't straight news, or straight memes. A thousand person discord server works differently than a 10k person reddit. Part of me wonders if this is inevitable. We used to do this ever few years. Hoping from aim/man/yahoo to Skype to discord. I guess we figured things had gotten stable enough. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe we all got too comfortable and thought our content consumption habits could stay the same for ever. The internet has changed from when I first got on Reddit. I wont say for better or worse. I don't like it as much.
draw_down 3y ago
[dead]
ilinx 3y ago
I came here from Apollo today. I think I’ll be happier having a news feed without all the ridiculous stuff. Hopefully the community is decent. Edit: I will genuinely miss Apollo, but it was what made reddit useable for me. It was one of those rare pieces of software that was so elegant that at a first glance you would assume it was only a few hundred lines of code. That kind of elegance is rare and beautiful. It belongs in some sort of software hall of fame.
Graffur 3y ago
So there third party apps were trying to run a a _profitable_ business off Redit APIs?
mbrochh 3y ago
I've deleted my Reddit account last week, after 13 years. So far, surprisingly, I don't miss it at all.

1036 points by bears-n-beets 3y ago

IAmGraydon 3y ago

Bye, Apollo. I kind of feel like a drug has been taken away from me. It’s is going to take a bit to adjust to not using Reddit on my phone, as I refuse to use their app.

Exuma 3y ago
110% agree... I have occasionally today looked at my phone like Hm....... nothing to do here, and then just stared out the window. There's always opportunities to learn instead, but I already learn for hours a day.
- bloopernova 3y ago
  I've been reading. No clickbait. No ragebait. Just Discworld and its hilarious inhabitants.
  - pwpw 3y ago
    I stopped browsing Reddit 2 months ago and switched that time to reading Discworld too! It’s fantastic. I just started Mort. It feels like an incredibly more rewarding use of my time. Terry Pratchet really is wonderful.
    - WFNY 3y ago
      GNU Terry Pratchett
robinsonrc 3y ago
Lemmy with Wefwef (if you can get past the odd name) has gone a long way to smoothing the transition process for me http://wefwef.app/ http://wefwef.app/
Mezzie 3y ago
Woke up this morning with no Apollo to scroll through as I wake up and wait for my medication to work. It was definitely weird, but not bad.

lousken 3y ago

So where is everybody going after reddit?

ColdAcanthaceae 3y ago
Since the Apollo dev broke the news, I'm trying out Lemmy and it's an interesting alternative. Definitely too new to say what will happen to it, but looks promising.
IAmGraydon 3y ago
Back to real life.
- unpythonic 3y ago
  I was an innkeeper, in this crazy, little town in Vermont... https://youtu.be/OwYw2i2icNg?t=430 https://youtu.be/OwYw2i2icNg?t=430
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  Oh I wish. People struggling with reddit replacements should try making new friend groups in 2023. Lot more energy for a lot more disappointing results.
seanthemon 3y ago
I uh.. came here?
AndroidKitKat 3y ago
I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I'm going to try giving up internet comment sections for a while to try and see if I can live without them. I have wasted far too much time on Reddit, Hacker News, and recently Lemmy (which I tried to use as a Reddit replacement). The articles themselves would be nice to keep around, I haven't found enough RSS feeds to make my feed reader app populated enough. I will probably make a userscript to disable comments here, use Kagi search to minimize the amount of Reddit in my search queries, and overall use a solution like Screen Time to try to limit use of other sites I spend way too much time on. I know a lot of users are going to Lemmy or Kbin, both of which are on the Fediverse.

smoldesu 3y ago

> With the death of Apollo also goes the metaphorical death of all the best parts (IMO) of the internet: open-source, Apollo was Open Source?

bears-n-beets 3y ago
Sorry, that was definitely the wrong phrase to use. I was reaching for a term I couldn’t find - something that conveys the concept of “freedom” on the internet - like the ability to leverage an existing tool/service and build upon it and make it better?
albert180 3y ago
The Backend was open sourced to counter U/spez Bullshit arguments about inefficient code creating too many API requests See here https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend

ortusdux 3y ago

Sync is also dead. They just sent out a push notification: "Sync for reddit had shutdown. Thank you for using Sync. It's been one hell of a ride."

deelowe 3y ago
Yep. It was fun. I'm done with reddit I guess.
x86x87 3y ago
apparently there is going to be a Sync for Lemmy. Hopefully we also get Apollo for Lemmy and get rid of reddit for good.
- PestoDiRucola 3y ago
  On that note, does anyone know if there’s any decent lemmy mobile apps? I searched a bit but couldn’t find anything meaningful
  - sosodev 3y ago
    https://join-lemmy.org/apps https://join-lemmy.org/apps this page lists various Lemmy interfaces. I've just joined the mlem testflight and it's decent. It also seems to be improving quite quickly now that people are flooding to Lemmy.
  - zacte 3y ago
    For Android there's Jerboa which seems to have the most features and Liftoff which is still getting there. Personally I like Thunder which supports iOS as well, I got it off GitHub
    - neurostimulant 3y ago
      While Jerboa is an app created by the core developer of Lemmy, it's not as official app and the developer treat it as a personal project and freely blocks any instance he don't like there. I understand it's within his right to do so, but I still find it concerning due to his association with Lemmy and how many people think it's the official app.

Wherecombinator 3y ago

I pretty much only like Reddit for niche communities and fighting shit google results. The latter is a necessity but for the former there’s other communities to satiate my needs. It’s just that it’s a bit of a fragmented way of diving into my interests. Is there such a thing as a forum aggregator?

bears-n-beets 3y ago
Where are these other communities? I can’t find them. And no, I don’t count Discord as an acceptable replacement. Googling for old-school forums has been pretty fruitless for me thus far as Google is basically useless without appending site:reddit.com these days (the supreme irony of that…)
- Wherecombinator 3y ago
  I guess it depends on how niche your interests are. I’m mainly into electronic music machines and synth diy. There’s enough forums for me. There’s other stuff that I frequent on Reddit but at the end of the day it’s usually just crap to distract me that I could do without.
  - bears-n-beets 3y ago
    I'm part of a lot of smaller women-centered communities on reddit - my favorite subreddits were r/MoneyDiariesACTIVE, r/FIREyFemmes, r/girlsgonewired r/adhdwomen, r/AmateurRoomPorn, r/AskWomenOver30, etc. Not all of these are explicitly for women only but they all have a majority female user base. I don't think there are equivalents in a forum-type format; I'd probably have to go to TikTok or something, but I don't care for that format so I'll probably just lose those communities for the most part.
    - VeryFinePrint 3y ago
      The big "mostly women" subreddit I'll miss, despite being a guy, is the /r/RomanceBooks subreddit. It is hands down the best book community on reddit. At least as far as community and moderation goes. It sounds like the mods don't think the alternatives are technologically mature enough.

jmclnx 3y ago

I am confused, 12:00am UTC is 8:00pm EDT. So UTC 12:00 should be 11:00 pm PDF. It is 7:40 EDT as I type this on June 30 EDIT: was in junethack while typing this, yes 5pm PDT is 12 UTC :)

bryan0 3y ago
confused is the expected state when thinking about timezones so you have nothing to worry about.
mmebane 3y ago
The author posted on Twitter ~20 minutes ago that he shut it down early, due to some change in the API causing crashes. I presume he had been expecting to shut it down at midnight in some American time zone. > Well, looks like Reddit pulled the plug a little early. Apollo started crashing, but I just manually revoked my token and it looks like it fixes the crashing, but no more Reddit access haha. Those folks are fun to the very end! > @ChristianSelig > 6:49 PM (CDT) · Jun 30, 2023 Source: https://twitter.com/ChristianSelig/status/1674928286781124611 https://twitter.com/ChristianSelig/status/167492828678112461...
- x86x87 3y ago
  hah. if twitter wasn't such a twat we could actually read the tweet. You know what? fuck reddit and also fuck twitter.
  - soneil 3y ago
    https://mastodon.social/@christianselig/110635856662952525 https://mastodon.social/@christianselig/110635856662952525 and yes, I totally get that there's a wider point to be made in reddit and twitter both going hostile on the same day.
bears-n-beets 3y ago
You're right, I think I mixed up PDT vs PST

x3n0ph3n3 3y ago

Reddit is Fun is also gone.

mongol 3y ago
I noticed that I could use it when logged out.
arprocter 3y ago
The writing was on the wall, but as a user for a decade+ opening it to see "No threads here. Tap to refresh." is a little jarring

tspike 3y ago

RIP Bacon Reader. Reddit, you’ve burned so much goodwill. I’ve been an enthusiastic user for over 14 years. Now I’m planning to delete my content. At one point recently, I got excited about applying for an engineering leadership position with you, but this debacle has made me realize your senior leadership is not who I want to be reporting to.

goda90 3y ago
Please don't delete it without adding it to the Internet archive first
- sentientslug 3y ago
  Putting the content somewhere else defeats the whole purpose of deleting it.
  - wardedVibe 3y ago
    not really, it'd be outside the garden wall, and thus not monetizable by reddit
    - mptest 3y ago
      Can reddit issue requests to archive or whichever site is used to do it and have them taken down ? Or worse yet, rebuild their deleted history from the archives and THEN issue takedowns? I am realizing I have no serious idea how archival of digital content works legally.
      - kemayo 3y ago
        User-provided content is provided under a license between the user providing it and the site hosting it -- inherently, because otherwise the site wouldn't be allowed to do anything with it at all. Generally this takes the form of the site's ToS saying that the user gives the site a perpetual license to use the content however they want, but generally not an exclusive license. As such, and I'm not a lawyer and can't promise this is true, I suspect that reddit couldn't actually do takedowns on someone who's archiving their user-provided content. Any specific user whose content was archived without their consent could do so, however.

jdalgetty 3y ago

I guess this is how we break our addictions. Feels bad though.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

Tell HN:

CivBase 3y ago

Still using Boost with the ReVanced patch[0]. No telling how long that will last though. Regardless, I'm massively scaling back my use of Reddit. [0] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wHvqQwCYdJrQg4BKlGIVDLksPN0KpOnJWniT6PbZSrI/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wHvqQwCYdJrQg4BKlGIVDLks... Edit: For those interested, the patch just lets you use your own API key. But the dev is no longer supporting the app and there's no telling whether the bring-your-own-key strategy will work in the long term, considering Reddit's recent behavior.

Peanuts99 3y ago
Boost is still working for me on the standard API key. I wonder how long that will last.

ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago

>Edit: sorry, Apollo wasn’t open source. That’s what happens when I make a post while two beers deep I guess. Well, the server backend was recently opened: https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend

8note 3y ago
I think only made available, but not licensed?
- xeromal 3y ago
  Yeah, it was put on github as proof they weren't webscraping like spez claimed.

MBCook 3y ago

I’ve long used Apollo to hold an alt account. I just downloaded the official app and logged in. In 3 minutes I deleted it. Ignoring design issues, all of a sudden the official app grabbed ALL Reddit links and if I viewed Reddit in Safari there was an unremovable “Open in the app” banner above the Safari content that couldn’t be removed. No way. Deleted. The last year has just destroyed so much of the value I get out of the internet.

bredren 3y ago
Apollo had an optional safari extension that caught Reddit URLs and opened them in Apollo instead. It was great.
- perfect-blue 3y ago
  And it worked flawlessly too. Apollo was really a cut above anything I’ve seen out there. Was holding out hope that Reddit would reverse course, but I suppose not.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    I don’t blame Christian. Spez, on a whim, decided to basically destroy his livelihood, with basically no notice. Then Spez kept doubling down and accused Christian of extortion, repeating the accusations after it was proven they were false. I would sell the app even if they reversed course. I wouldn’t trust they wouldn’t do it again. I wouldn’t trust they’d ruin me some other way. If they had said “we’re doing this in 6 months” and then listened to the community, that’s different. But Spez burnt the bridge to the ground and poured toxic waste on it.
    - shagie 3y ago
      I'm not sure how much of a whim Reddit had. A Virginia law was signed into effect on May 12th that required commercial entities that distributed "material harmful to minors" to verify the age of the users or be exposed to civil penalties. That law goes into effect in 3 hours.

goda90 3y ago

RedReader for Android, and Dystopia for iOS were both granted exemptions to the new API pricing by Reddit due to their accessibility and non-commercial nature.

foepys 3y ago
I'll give it 2 months at most until Reddit will claim that their own app is now accessible enough to shut down the other apps.
dirtyid 3y ago
Joey on Android with text to speech feature also seems to be working. The developer has been very quiet throughout ordeal, hopefully there's an exemption as well.
ftth_finland 3y ago
With all due respect to the developer of Dystopia, the experience compared to Apollo is subpar. I tried twice already to use Dystopia, but I can’t really force myself. Probably just for the best to give up on Reddit.

spazztastik 3y ago

I’m giving Lemmy a try using wefwef.app

voisin 3y ago

I am actually quite sad about this. I noticed the same thing re Apollo app no longer working. I used Apollo to interact with a number of communities and have tried the official app and the website (both new and old) and simply cannot use them in the same manner as I used Apollo. I am done with Reddit now and the void created by losing the communities I interacted with has left me with a feeling of loneliness. Damn you u/spez.

meepmorp 3y ago

So, will Reddit still manage to have an IPO soon? Or maybe better to ask, a successful one.

dehrmann 3y ago
The window is closed right now, but this at least removed one of the risks. At the same time, it exposed the moderator risk, the revenue impact isn't clear yet, and it's drama that investors might not like.

tayo42 3y ago

I'm curious what happens to reddit now. I'm guessing just auto pilot of low effort content. Don't think it'll truly die as far as numbers go.

mandmandam 3y ago
Sure, they've got the numbers. But there's no life. I picture the hordes of zombies in The Walking Dead, unknowingly led by a select few ghastly humans wearing zombie masks.
- bears-n-beets 3y ago
  Yeah, I personally suspect it will be a slow death march over the course of a few years, culminating in it basically becoming 9gag.
adrr 3y ago
Nothing. Apollo was less than 1% of users. It would be interesting to a see a survey to see what population of Reddit was affected by these changes or cared.
- tayo42 3y ago
  I think it's more important to know how many are content creators and posters that are effected.
- datenyan 3y ago
  I think the bigger issue is that Apollo (and other apps such as RIF) were amazing tools for moderators, with the official app lacking a lot of features the unofficial clients had.
  - covercash 3y ago
    I recently described it to a friend as trying to get from point A to point B in ankle deep water when using 3rd party apps compared to waist deep water in the official app - sure, you can do it but it’s going to take significantly more time and effort. So if you’re constantly popping in and checking things throughout the day, that extra time and effort really adds up. By killing these user friendly apps that a large portion of power users and mods preferred, it’s Reddit showing all of these dedicated unpaid contributors that their time and effort don’t matter to the company. Steve spit directly in all of our faces repeatedly over the past month and now most of us are actively rooting against the success of an IPO. I hope he continues to be the 3rd most successful Reddit cofounder, and his name never gets mentioned in a positive light within YC/HN.

jprd 3y ago

I hear you. I only get the courage to post a comment when I'm beers deep; it doesn't always go well. I feel you did great!

bears-n-beets 3y ago
That's very nice, thank you :) Pros and cons of lowered inhibition I guess haha
replwoacause 3y ago
Same. Then I delete it 24 hours later.

extr 3y ago

I remember signing up for Reddit as a college freshman. I was a digg user and joined Reddit in the aftermath of that fiasco. I sometimes laugh looking over my post history for the past decade plus. If you read the posts linearly, you can trace my evolution from a kid arguing passionately over politics and culture (things he didn't really know much about), to a more mature young adult who rarely waded into discussions unless he had something meaningful to contribute. To me now, as a 31 year old man, who mainly posts on a few private subreddits full of likeminded people (and still occasionally gets into arguments about things he knows nothing about). Until today I had not really mentally processed that Reddit as we knew it was going away. Until a hour or two ago I started get Rate Limits on Reddit Sync. At first I thought it was some kind of bug. Then noticed the date. Like others mentioned, it will take some getting used to not having it. I've already noticed since the blackouts that "site:reddit.com" is less effective than it was even a month or two ago: some of the key subreddits I used have gone and stayed dark. I wish the owners of Reddit the best in turning their website into TikTok. But if I have need for mindless entertainment, I'll probably just use TikTok directly. The small communities of likeminded people are not as easy to replace, and will be missed.

doublepg23 3y ago
I can trace my earliest account to middle school. You can imagine the cringe on there...
- SantalBlush 3y ago
  If every Reddit user was tagged with their age, it would be an eye-opening experience. "Why is this 16-year-old talking about divorce lawyers on r/relationship_advice?"
  - anthomtb 3y ago
    A 16 year old with recently divorced parents probably has some reasonable insight there.
    - 3y ago

ape4 3y ago

Is there a way to change some settings or something to make the official reddit app look more like RIF?

johnnyanmac 3y ago
The app? No, there's no such way to control that. Your best bet is CSS configurations on the website but it'll be a pale imitation.

bibabaloo 3y ago

This is sad, but the silver lining is that the official app is horrible enough that it will more or less force me to go cold turkey on breaking my Reddit addiction.

dom96 3y ago

I am still somewhat shocked that they went through with this. I built a Reddit API[1] alternative as a form of protest, they responded by blocking my personal Reddit account. Very sad what Reddit has become. 1 - https://api.reddiw.com https://api.reddiw.com

ztgasdf 3y ago
Will you release the code for this?
- dom96 3y ago
  I think so. Though it’s not nearly as sophisticated as you might think. Are you interested in hosting an instance of it?
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    What will they do if many people do. Make the site inaccessible without signing in?
    - simfree 3y ago
      Even LinkedIn has not gone quite this far, usually the first page is viewable without logging in.
  - simfree 3y ago
    Having an equivalent of Nitter and Invidious would be amazing! I would love to host an instance of this API, you should publish your code! Apps like RedReader will be impossible to modify and use in a libre manner without a replacement API implementation like this.
    - TobTobXX 3y ago
      > Having an equivalent of Nitter and Invidious would be amazing! Something like https://teddit.net/ https://teddit.net/ ?

ryanwhitney 3y ago

I tried Apollo early on and it was a bit too bare-bones. After all the news, I gave it another whirl for the past month and it’s very nice. After previously using the official app, it was a breath of fresh air to see a native video player, native share sheets, and so much more. Super nice, useful details like image counts on galleries. Such a shame that Reddit’s huge team is actively working in the opposite direction. Amazing work, Christian. Really unfortunate that Reddit has gone in this direction and truly shameful and disgusting how they’ve handled it.

9935c101ab17a66 3y ago
There are so many small details that make Apollo such a well designed app. I definitely started to feel the UI could use an update / polish recently, but man, the UX was unreal. Assorted highlights: - Share post / comment as image. When sharing comment as image, you could specify how many parent comments to include in the image as well. Super useful. - The theme change shortcut (more common now, but I think apollo was one of the first apps I noticed it in) - you could change subreddit with one tap. Narwhal doesn’t have this and it’s so annoying. - unreal in-app media playback (including YouTube) - customizable swipe gestures - great comment editor - content filters - ability to hide subreddits in just a couple of taps - saved item categories I’m done with Reddit on mobile devices. I’m actually quite happy to have a good reason to stop using Reddit, but I’m sad that such a well-designed app has just disappeared.

throwaway630000 3y ago

Probably would have been interesting to relaunch the Apollo with its own backend as a direct competitor to Reddit. I think one simple push notification would've pulled millions of the most active users over to the new service

FormerBandmate 3y ago
Hopefully he does that later. Reddit sucks
toyg 3y ago
Hardly simple. Who recreates all subreddits? Re-establishes all the mods? Re-subscribes all the users? And all the while on a brand-new implementation that has to immediately scale to millions of users flawlessly. That's a lot of work.
shagie 3y ago
That would have required negotiating image hosting, having a significant amount of server power and storage space, dealing with laws about who can see what, and active moderation until volunteers can be found to moderate the content. Having someone to deal with DMCA requests and age verification laws. If it wasn't a subscription service (that had to front load a lot of its costs), it also involves getting advertisers for people who are demonstrably hostile to advertisements on board. This requires hiring more than a few people and investing a bit into the infrastructure needed. It isn't just "hey, gonna spin up a server that is API compatible with reddit and switch everyone over."
- predictabl3 3y ago
  So, are we just pretending like reddit has any of that when it started out?
  - shagie 3y ago
    It was a single page link farm with votes that competed with Digg in a much simpler regulatory time. https://web.archive.org/web/20051124035428/http://reddit.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20051124035428/http://reddit.com... (edit: upon reflection, I am nostalgic for the time when that the top link there was to "The Truth About Web 2.0" at paulgraham.com shared by a user named AaronSw) If you were to try to build something today that competed with Reddit and wasn't just a "here's a bunch of links - vote on what you like (without even comments)", it would take quite a bit more investment. If you were to build reddit c. 2005 you wouldn't even need a device local app.

shagie 3y ago

This happens to coincide with the date that a new law (singed May 12th) goes into effect in Virginia requiring commercial entities that publish or distribute "material harmful to minors" to verify the age of the users. Commercial entities violating that may suffer civil penalties. https://legiscan.com/VA/text/SB1515/2023 https://legiscan.com/VA/text/SB1515/2023

lotsoweiners 3y ago
I don’t know law and am bad at technology too but I’m wondering if there is ways companies can get around these kinds of laws through a combination of geofencing, blocking IPs, and displaying messages that the service isn’t available in a particular state/country. I understand that it might make economic sense but just wondering if showing a certain amount of due diligence helps absolve them legally.
- shagie 3y ago
  That's exactly what some of them do. Pornhub blocks access in Virginia over new age verification law - https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/pornhub-blocks-access-in-virginia-over-new-age-verification-law/ https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/pornhub-blocks-acces... Part of the challenge with this one is it does that "civil right of action" where it's not the state suing the entity but private citizens. That makes it more difficult for the company to defend against it. Though this gets into a "how much effort are you going to put into it" and "how much control do you have over the ways the content is distributed?" This also is about liability for the backend service - not the ISPs or other providers (3rd party apps are in a gray zone as to if it is Reddit or the 3rd party app that would be liable for showing such content... and my crystal ball says it would probably end up being that Reddit would be solely liable).
fluidcruft 3y ago
Sounds coincidental. It doesn't have anything to do with pricing and NSFW content is still flowing to the remaining clients (as of right now). Reddit has never mentioned that law either as far as I know.

lannisterstark 3y ago

> metaphorical death of all the best parts (IMO) of the internet: open-source, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit. That's a weird connection to make. Reddit isn't be-all-end-all of open source (given that it or most of the major apps were never open source anyway)

altano 3y ago

I'm one of the first Reddit users, joining in October 2005. My usage has gone up and down over the years, but for the first time ever for me, Reddit doesn't have a bookmark, a pinned app, or any way for me to get to it other than typing in the URL. I don't care about all of the API drama beyond the fact that I was paying for a Reddit premium subscription AND Apollo to have a good experience using Reddit and, now that that isn't an option, I am stepping away for the time being. Reddit will forever have a special place in my heart.

RheingoldRiver 3y ago

There will be a spiritual successor though, for kbin/Lemmy, called Artemis: https://kbin.social/m/ArtemisApp https://kbin.social/m/ArtemisApp Right now it's in a closed beta, and the size of the closed beta is increasing slowly through the end of the month. The goal is for it to be public around the start of August. That kbin magazine has a link to a signup sheet for the closed beta. (disclosure? I was an alpha tester for it, and so far it looks AMAZING. The dev is awesome, it's a really friendly community, and the amount of progress in just 2 weeks of development is really impressive.)

Shawnj2 3y ago
Memmy is also similar to Apollo
- morisy 3y ago
  Been using Memmy — a few weeks ago, it felt like a very impressive beta app, and since then it's gone to just feeling like a great app. Seems to have taken a lot of good lessons from Apollo in terms of responsiveness and speed. Planted the seed of wanting to even host my own Lemmy instance.
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  There are also Mlem, Liftoff and Wefwef
toyg 3y ago
There is also Jerboa. A bit rough but does the job.
the_lucifer 3y ago
> What is Artemis using for building its user interface? > The Artemis UI is built with React Native + Typescript Sorry, this is DoA for me. This is not a spiritual successor. Biggest USP of Apollo was its clean, native and thoughtful UI, not cross platform UI bloatware
- 3y ago

foogazi 3y ago

[flagged]

lucb1e 3y ago

Oh that's dumb. I forgot to check my inbox before midnight. I had offered Tildes invites and don't have the password to that account (but have been logged in since years, can access the auth token, etc., but reddit doesn't want you to recover from this scenario, so that's gone forever). Well... anyone here needs a Tildes invite?

codeslave13 3y ago
Would love a tildes invite
- lucb1e 3y ago
  No contact info on your profile, not sure how you want me to send an invite without someone else snatching it...
  - neonnomad 3y ago
    Would love one for myself if you don't mind.
  - gremlinsinc 3y ago
    I'll take one, if you don't mind.
BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
I'd love one; Hope you don't mind if I send you an email in lieu of posting mine here?
- lucb1e 3y ago
  For the record: That's fine! Contact info is on my profile for a reason :). As you'll have seen, I have replied to the email!
istjohn 3y ago
I'll take one, please.

coufu 3y ago

Thank you Apollo for all the fun times. You made it way too easy to use Reddit. While you will be missed, I’m glad this is giving me time back in my life. I’ve already finished two books since the new API pricing was revealed, and I am NOT a book reader (having read less than 10 books in my lifetime, and I’m turning 40 this year). But I’m happy to be becoming one. Bye Reddit. I hope one day your corporate leaders will look back and realize the error of their ways and how they single-handedly destroyed countless online communities practically overnight.

exploringfalse 3y ago

I can honestly say that I have no intention to continue using reddit on any mobile device without apps like Apollo, Sync etc. A real shame, because I found reddit communities made over hobbies to be such a good source of anecdotal information.

paulcole 3y ago

Narwhal (a 3rd-party iOS Reddit app) is still going and it turns out not biting the hand that feeds you works pretty well. Respect to the Apollo guy for having the confidence that he could get Reddit to back down through a well-organized PR campaign. But he could’ve had a decent business if he’d just backed down, given in a little, and not tried to make Spez look like a bigger idiot/liar than he already did. I love a good risky David v. Goliath gamble and would’ve liked to see him win, but sometimes you lose it all.

transcriptase 3y ago
>Well-organized PR campaign. Sure, if you call simply posting his experiences on his own subreddit for his own app a PR campaign. He certainly did a better job than Reddit did, blatantly lying about their conversation, timelines, and motivations for killing 3rd party apps. Reddit is trying to pivot to the TikTok and YouTube comment section population of the internet, while the HN commenter types were simply costing them money. We’ll see how it plays out.
- paulcole 3y ago
  > Sure, if you call simply posting his experiences on his own subreddit for his own app a PR campaign. Yes, this and the organized blackout and anti-Reddit posts among the biggest subreddits is a coordinated PR campaign. Remember that the headline narrative they were pushing was “Reddit is killing 3rd-party apps.” It was buried in walls of text that in fact Reddit was making 3rd-party apps pay more than they wanted to pay. If Reddit was in fact killing 3rd-party apps why does Narwhal still work? And yes, I understand that you are quite bright and understood exactly what was going on. But the whole point of the campaign was to appeal to people not like you and get them on the side of the developers. Although admittedly getting Redditors to post “fuck /u/spez” is only marginally harder than shooting fish in a barrel. I’m not throwing shade. Respect to them for shooting their shot. But see it for what it was: an attempt to control a narrative, get the public on their side, and achieve a desired outcome. If that’s not PR, what is?
  - robertoandred 3y ago

sedatk 3y ago

For some reason, Narwhal, which is another nice app, is still working.

vachina 3y ago
App developer is playing ball with Reddit. Is going to charge users for API usage and complying with all terms of usage e.g. no nsfw content
- sedatk 3y ago
  I wasn't asked for payment yet. I wonder when that will kick in.

GoofballJones 3y ago

So many sites and companies have turned on the users that put them on the map. Twitter, Red Hat, Reddit. It's like they're saying "we don't need the users anymore."

klardotsh 3y ago
They're all panicking for money. Modern capitalism demands not just stable businesses, not just profit, but quarterly increasing profits for all of eternity. This is obviously-to-anyone-who-isn't-a-grifter impossible and company after company will die being forced to chase it.
- pierat 3y ago
  hn sez 30x plz?

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

Official post as shared over here earlier (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36541886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36541886) https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14nb5qs/today_is_apollo_for_reddits_last_day_and_i_just/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14nb5qs/today_is...

zmmmmm 3y ago

If you care about this stuff, please at least give the fediverse a try. Yes it's inadequate right now in all kinds of ways. But the main reason is that not enough people are there. It needs critical mass. Pick whatever you want - kbin, lemmy, mastodon. Go there, find your community (it will probably look very sad compared to Reddit). And contribute something positive - comment, post, whatever. If everybody just did that, we would kickstart something durable that couldn't be destroyed and take back the internet that everybody is pining for.

kaibee 3y ago
I tried to make a lemmy account on my phone in between errands. Couldn't figure it out. I'll give it a shot on desktop, and I want a reddit replacement, but I wonder how many other people are gonna go to the same effort. Maybe that's a feature though, an escape from eternal September.
- GuestHNUser 3y ago
  I joined kbin.social and have been pleasantly suprised with it. Everything I'm subscribed to there is slow moving at the moment, but frankly I find that pace refreshing. I've seen threads remain active for several days, which doesn't seem to happen anywhere else.
  - esperent 3y ago
    I tried to make a kbin.social account several times, and also lemmy.world, lemmy.social. They all take several minutes work to fill out the form, and then another few minutes waiting. Then they hang with no error message. It's tedious and I've given up trying to sign up for any of these new fedi-reddits. EDIT: ok, after reading some more of this thread I decided to have one more try. Sign up on squabbles.io took 2 minutes. Yay! EDIT 2: information density is so low on squabbles. Also, they already block all NSFW content - I'm not looking for porn, but I am looking for a community where people are free to share whatever kinds of content they like, including stuff that I don't like. There needs to be strong boundaries - nothing illegal, no racism etc. But the boundaries should be as broad as possible. Besides, NSFW means a lot more than just porn. Are we allowed to share dirty jokes there? Or important but horrible videos exposing war crimes? A community that decides to block all of this from the very beginning is not what I want. Although I can understand their reasoning and honestly if I was running the site I might we'll make the same decision.

goolz 3y ago

When I was younger and in college I remember Spez coming to my city to visit friends and gave a small talk, detailing how they got started. I was enraptured by Reddit, tech and coding at the time so I really looked up to him and what they were doing. I am sorely disappointed in how things have turned out. Tech as we know it has become this sick, twisted battle for clicks and eye-balls and exits. Not to discount those that are doing great work, but where did all the integrity go? Edit: remember when Google had the audacity to have the catchphrase “don’t be evil”? Bahahaha. Good stuff.

damontal 3y ago

narwhal is still available.

mgdev 3y ago

I deleted my Reddit account of over ten years over this. No going back.

ClassyJacket 3y ago
They already deleted mine because I refused to buy into their gender ideology BS. Haven't used it since. Good riddance.
deely3 3y ago
Do you still read article from Reddit when you search for information?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jahlove 3y ago

AlienBlue (the original 3rd party app) is still working.

cheshire137 3y ago
Interesting, when I go to my purchases in the app store, I see Alien Blue, but consistently when I tap it to try and re-download it, I get a "failed to connect to App Store" error.

codazoda 3y ago

I’ve only really used Apollo on Reddit. The official app never stuck for me and I don’t have it installed. It’s one of the few apps I only really use on my phone, so I don’t have it bookmarked or anything. At this point, I’m burned and so I’ll take my ball and go home. I bought the screensavers though. Thanks for all the good times Apollo.

samrjack 3y ago

The last two weeks I noticed an onset depression in my life and I think it was because I basically stopped using Reddit since the blackout started and I have no intent to go back. I swear it was an addiction withdrawal. I’ve been feeling better the past 2 days but I do miss having a place that helps me keep in touch with the parts of the world I cared about.

kypro 3y ago

> the death of Apollo also goes the metaphorical death of all the best parts (IMO) of the internet: open-source, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit. It died years ago for me. I don't want go get too nostalgic, but it depresses how amazing the early internet was compared to what it is today. The early years of web 2.0 (2002 - 2007ish) were the golden age imo. Then Facebook and the smart phone came along... From that point on the internet was no longer a place for geeks on their desktop computers to chat on forums and build cool stuff for other geeks. It became mainstream. Boomers got online. Children got online. Then the corporations monetised everything. Everything happening to Reddit today is a result of boomers, children and corporations going online. Edgey content gets banned or boomers complain. Everything gets age-gated or censored because, "think of the kids". And all you're left with is sterile advertiser friendly content served next to half a dozen ads.

pierat 3y ago
I mean, you cant just have Pepsi being advertised in a r/wtf deadly bus crash with people wearing coca cola, now can you? I mean, think of the chil... advertisers!
n42 3y ago
boomers built the internet, my dude

usaar333 3y ago

The official Reddit app is quite bad compared to say Sync (this is on Android). Like.. doesn't even seem to have a rich text editor?

btw0 3y ago

Reddit Migration Directory https://redditmigration.com https://redditmigration.com

mellik 3y ago

Honestly I’m not sure if I’ll use Reddit on mobile anymore since Apollo is gone. The native Reddit app is horrible

88913527 3y ago

Goodbye, Reddit. 127.0.0.1 www.reddit.com

paulmd 3y ago

Yup, same thing, wasn't sure what timezone it was gonna happen in, then all of a sudden it did. Screenshotted a couple pages of my (cached) home page for the memories.

gleenn 3y ago

The Apollo author should put up a page that says "Reddit has moved to Mastadon, click here to sign in"

goykasi 3y ago
Why would he post a dishonest statement?
- Graffur 3y ago
  These apps developers were trying to piggyback off the reddit api, so are you surprised?

sagarpatil 3y ago

I’m curious. Do you guys use some app to access hackernews? I still use the browser like a caveman.

iOsiris 3y ago
Harmonic on Android
bears-n-beets 3y ago
I use Octal for iOS
amrangaye 3y ago
Hack is great.
cheshire137 3y ago
I'm enjoying Octal on iOS.
replwoacause 3y ago
Octal on iOS and Hack on MacOS for me.

whalesalad 3y ago

Sad day indeed. Swiping to refresh and just seeing blank views everywhere was such an abrupt and matter of fact ending. I’m wondering a few things: 1. Will the app ever be made open source 2. Could an endeavor be undertaken to give everyone their own ability to auth to the api themselves? Then instead of relying on the Apollo oauth keys you plug your own in and/or run your own self-hosted auth infra. These days it’s so easy to spin up an app on Fly or similar. Could see small communities a-La mastodon where one person operates an auth/api server for themselves and a few others (distribute the api load to many tiny api instances) versus the Apollo situation where one dev is footing the bill for every user. Hate to see what is hands down the best iOS app of all time just poof disappear.

throwaway1777 3y ago

Yeah you’re drunk. Apollo was a cash grab and selig admitted as such. That being said no one can give any points to Reddit for how they handled things either.

torsday 3y ago
Creating a great product that makes money isn't a cash grab.
- Graffur 3y ago
  they created an interface around a product they didn't own..
  - torsday 3y ago
    You just defined every third party app that works with an API. Are all such apps cash grabs to you?
AlexandrB 3y ago
I guess you can call "creating a great product that people want to pay for" a "cash grab", but what isn't a cash grab then?
OnlyLys 3y ago
>and selig admitted as such Proof of that happening?

_blz2 3y ago

Centralization of internet forums was always going to end like this. I hope this accelerates the decline of Reddit dot com. The moderation and the censorship is pretty much universal across the large boards. You will find tons of deleted comments on anything which challenges the common view remotely. Can't say I'm not glad the site is going down, or enough alternatives pop up.

busymom0 3y ago

Remember Alien Blue before Reddit bought it? That app still appears to work: https://www.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/14nimob/alien_blue_still_functions/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/14nimob/alien_bl...

fencepost 3y ago

What's so sad about this is how easily it could have been avoided. Reddit could have done their equivalent of Musk's blue checkmark push and actually succeeded by simply requiring a paid user account for third party API access. Plans and pricing would have been implementation details to hash out, but they literally had everything they needed for it already in place. Instead they came up with a half-baked approach that's a terrible fit for how apps in the Apple and Android ecosystems are allowed to charge and gave developers 30 days to be ready for it - or ~75 if you want to be generous and go back to when they said "hey, we were wrong a few months ago, we are going to a paid API after all." Sure Narwhal has negotiated an extension (the developer declines to say anything about it, but he's not eating months of API charges) while he prepares a completely rewritten version of his app that will work with the new subscriptions. *slow clap* I wish him well.

halfbrite 3y ago
> I wish him well. We all do, but does anyone really believe spez won’t seem to kill it off a year from now?

tech234a 3y ago

WefWef [1] is a Lemmy client that looks and feels very similar to Apollo and even supports importing the data exports created by Apollo. It feels almost native despite being a web app. For anyone looking for a Reddit/Apollo alternative I would recommend checking it out. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36488016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36488016

8bitsrule 3y ago

GeoCities redux. Corporations don't like communities unless they can profit. One day the Greater Community will arise as a non-profit under the control of its contributers. "The community literally helped this site grow to what it is today by engaging with and creating content, creating communities (sub-reddits), and moderators who assisted in developing those communities for free." -- https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/14kjohc/never_forget_how_reddit_began_as_an_empty_website https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/14kjohc/n...

spombg 3y ago
Wikipedia’s staying power gives me hope that non-profits can succeed in this age of dopamine driven fast clicks

CSMastermind 3y ago

I started reading the Wheel of Time books this year and I discovered their surprisingly active subreddit where they have an active read-along including spoiler free first time reader threads. I listen to the No Dumb Questions podcast and the official episode discussion threads are on Reddit. As are the official discussion threads for the Nebula original Jet Lag episodes. As are the best unofficial discussion threads for newly aired TV show episodes. When new Age of Empires or Planet Zoo patches/expansions drop the only place to find thoughtful discussion is the subreddits for the games. The actual game developers hang out there as well. The subreddit wiki for Cities Skylines is the best guide to mods available on the internet. If you need to talk Civ strategy or want to follow the latest Smash Bros tournament then Reddit is the best place to go. Similar to when new music drops from a major artist - the best interactive discussion happens on Reddit. I haven't found anywhere that's as good as /r/NFL for game threads during the season. ----- I've long given up looking at Reddit for any meaningful discussion. Every major sub is infected with noxious politics. Technology/programming subreddits are flooded with confidently stated but mostly uninformed opinions. Trying to post something helpful feels like swimming against the tide. But I still go to Reddit for discussion about media be it books, podcasts, video games, music, sports, or others. I really hope someone migrates those communities somewhere else so I can finally ignore the site.

jbigelow76 3y ago

I'm pouring one out for Apollo tonight, I tried the official Reddit app and it's hot garbage and the Reddit website is somehow worse. Mastodon and Lemmy are fine, but I'm old enough to remember the web I grew up with and that what I would really like to see is a Renaissance of niche bulletin boards and RSS based blogs. I'm not holding my breath though.

Dwedit 3y ago

Infinity is the Open Source one.

tycho-newman 3y ago

In losing reddit we lose nothing of value.

causality0 3y ago

At this point I'm more angry at the mods than I am the evil corporation. They were afraid of Reddit ruining Reddit so they went ahead and burned it down themselves first. Congratulations, you got to be the ones to light the match.

groestl 3y ago

Eeee

madrian 3y ago

End of Apollo means end of Reddit for me. In same time I bought premium of Octal for HN.

happytiger 3y ago

It’s a sad day. I just deleted the app. Starting to delete all my Reddit accounts now too. I’m so tired of poor managers ruining good products.

traceddd 3y ago

They’re passing up an interesting opportunity to compete.

2-718-281-828 3y ago

where's the long live apollo part?

MivLives 3y ago

I'm going to miss reddit. I was one of the people who came over from digg. I deleted the app and stopped using the site when the protest happened. There's a missing itch for me for short to medium form content that isn't straight news, or straight memes. A thousand person discord server works differently than a 10k person reddit. Part of me wonders if this is inevitable. We used to do this ever few years. Hoping from aim/man/yahoo to Skype to discord. I guess we figured things had gotten stable enough. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe we all got too comfortable and thought our content consumption habits could stay the same for ever. The internet has changed from when I first got on Reddit. I wont say for better or worse. I don't like it as much.

draw_down 3y ago

[dead]

ilinx 3y ago

I came here from Apollo today. I think I’ll be happier having a news feed without all the ridiculous stuff. Hopefully the community is decent. Edit: I will genuinely miss Apollo, but it was what made reddit useable for me. It was one of those rare pieces of software that was so elegant that at a first glance you would assume it was only a few hundred lines of code. That kind of elegance is rare and beautiful. It belongs in some sort of software hall of fame.

Graffur 3y ago

So there third party apps were trying to run a a _profitable_ business off Redit APIs?

mbrochh 3y ago

I've deleted my Reddit account last week, after 13 years. So far, surprisingly, I don't miss it at all.