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I still don't understand the Apollo collapse. The creator seemed to have convinced themselves that their users would not be willing to pay to continue using the

by Alupis 2y ago

I still don't understand the Apollo collapse. The creator seemed to have convinced themselves that their users would not be willing to pay to continue using the app - despite the outpouring of love Apollo enjoyed. It all seemed very short sighted and emotional.

keyle 2y ago
When things turn sour, sometimes you have to see the writing on the wall and think years in the future. It may not be something you signed up for. There is also a limit to which people are willing to put themselves through.
- Alupis 2y ago
  Ok, but it was inevitable Reddit wouldn't offer free services to businesses making profit off of their content forever. The creator must have wondered at some point how long the free gravy was going to continue flowing? Why no exit plan of any kind, or even an attempt?
  - djxfade 2y ago
    I never understood why Reddit couldn’t just have kept the API free, and embedded ads in the feed directly. They would get their ad revenue, and third party developers would actually help them make money.
    - Alupis 2y ago
      Probably because it would be easy to filter those ads from the feeds. The facts were businesses like Apollo built themselves upon Reddit's value-proposition. The content is what the users wanted - and Reddit had the content. Apollo's value-add was making that content more accessible to users - at Reddit's expense. We can debate how Reddit handled the rollout - but the facts are businesses like Apollo offered little to Reddit in exchange for Reddit's content. People operating businesses based on someone else's data (moat) should have an exit plan for when the free ride ends.
      - sethaurus 2y ago
        From a legal point-of-view, yes, Reddit had control of the data and chose to alter the deal. And the app developer did have an exit plan: shutting down the app and refunding subscribers. The developer appears to have weighed his options, considered the strategy Reddit was communicating with the rollout of their API changes, and concluded that this was no longer a viable market. Many people expressed strong opinions about what the developer should do, but he appears to have remained calm and rational throughout the experience, and chose to walk away when it made sense. However: > The content is what the users wanted - and Reddit had the content... > ...in exchange for Reddit's content... > ...operating businesses based on someone else's data (moat)... Let's not fool ourselves: the data was created by and for the users, and it never belonged to Reddit in any moral sense. It's a regrettable externality of our legal framework that Reddit was able to withdraw their free API and prevent the community from accessing its own data how it saw fit.
        Alupis 2y ago
        In no way can we consider the content on reddit to be owned by the users. By using reddit and posting, you agree to their terms - the content belongs to them. It's unreasonable to believe Reddit should continue offering free services to businesses that were making money off of Reddit's content.
        blendergeek 2y ago
        From the Reddit TOS: > 5. Your Content > The Services may contain information, text, links, graphics, photos, videos, audio, streams, software, tools, or other materials (“Content”), including Content created with or submitted to the Services by you or through your Account (“Your Content”). We take no responsibility for and we do not expressly or implicitly endorse, support, or guarantee the completeness, truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any of Your Content. > By submitting Your Content to the Services, you represent and warrant that you have all rights, power, and authority necessary to grant the rights to Your Content contained within these Terms. Because you alone are responsible for Your Content, you may expose yourself to liability if you post or share Content without all necessary rights. > You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content: https://redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement-september-25-2023 https://redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement-september-25-2...
  - blendergeek 2y ago
    > it was inevitable Reddit wouldn't offer free services to businesses making profit off of their content forever Their content. The audacity. Reddit is built on users' content and on free moderation. Sure it was inevitable that Reddit would lock things down for profit. But lets not pretend that this is Reddit's content.
    - Alupis 2y ago
      For the 3rd time you are entirely incorrect. I won't quote the TOS again for you, as I have done twice already. The moment you post to reddit, they can do anything they want with the content. It is now theirs. It's also naïve to say reddit was built upon users' content. Yes the content is the most important bit and the reasons users are there today - but that ignores all of the software and infrastructure that made it all possible. There's a reason reddit is what it is today, and it was not an accident.
      - raxxorraxor 2y ago
        For users TOS are entirely irrelevant on the internet anyway. Of course it is their decision to not embrace users in the end.
      - nsagent 2y ago
        > The moment you post to reddit, they can do anything they want with the content. It is now theirs. This is patently false. The content is not theirs, users grant Reddit a license to their content. See the TOS [1] you spoke of: > You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content: This isn't just some bit of semantics either. If you can contact the users, you could request a license for the content yourself. So really the only bastion Reddit has is technical measures for preventing scraping, since publicly accessible data is allowed to be scraped in the US due to legal precedent. That is, nothing in the TOS prevents other parties from displaying the data in other formats (as long as they don't use the API). The thing is, all the apps did make use of the API because they were not adversarial with Reddit, as opposed to webapps like libreddit that circumvent the API altogether. [1]: https://redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement https://redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement
fckgw 2y ago
Apollo had a yearly subscription while switching over to the new Reddit API structure would require a monthly fee. That puts you in a spot where you may have users that are still on a yearly plan and not paying in while incurring massive monthly API costs. It was the sudden short notice of API costs increases that caused the whole thing to collapse "One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That's $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days. So you see, even if I increase the price for new subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000, second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users." From: https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...
- Alupis 2y ago
  Refund at a pro-rated rate, be frank with users and tell them the situation and why you have to raise prices - then raise prices. I doubt users would have revolted had the subscription gone up to $19.95 or even $29.95 a year. Heck, my hiking app is more than that annually, and I barely use it. I remain convinced Apollo had options, but the creator was convinced it was an impossible situation. It was not. There was an outpouring of support and people willing to spend money on an app they saw immense personal value in.
  - forrestthewoods 2y ago
    > Refund at a pro-rated rate, be frank with users and tell them the situation and why you have to raise prices - then raise prices. I don't think the app store provides a mechanism to do this.
hbn 2y ago
I'm pretty sure even the paid Reddit API had some ridiculous stipulations, like you couldn't view NSFW content.
- wilsonnb3 2y ago
  As recently as a few months ago you could see NSFW content in Narwhal 2 on iOS. Not sure if it has since changed. I do remember hearing they were planning that change, though.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    NSFW is not available via API.
senkora 2y ago
It was so well-loved that someone cloned it for the fediverse version of Reddit: Voyager for Lemmy is a near-clone of Apollo for Reddit, but using web technology. I have now moved my Reddit usage fully to Lemmy because the official app was just such a pain to use.

by Alupis 2y ago

keyle 2y ago

When things turn sour, sometimes you have to see the writing on the wall and think years in the future. It may not be something you signed up for. There is also a limit to which people are willing to put themselves through.

Alupis 2y ago
Ok, but it was inevitable Reddit wouldn't offer free services to businesses making profit off of their content forever. The creator must have wondered at some point how long the free gravy was going to continue flowing? Why no exit plan of any kind, or even an attempt?
- djxfade 2y ago
  I never understood why Reddit couldn’t just have kept the API free, and embedded ads in the feed directly. They would get their ad revenue, and third party developers would actually help them make money.
  - Alupis 2y ago
    Probably because it would be easy to filter those ads from the feeds. The facts were businesses like Apollo built themselves upon Reddit's value-proposition. The content is what the users wanted - and Reddit had the content. Apollo's value-add was making that content more accessible to users - at Reddit's expense. We can debate how Reddit handled the rollout - but the facts are businesses like Apollo offered little to Reddit in exchange for Reddit's content. People operating businesses based on someone else's data (moat) should have an exit plan for when the free ride ends.
    - sethaurus 2y ago
      From a legal point-of-view, yes, Reddit had control of the data and chose to alter the deal. And the app developer did have an exit plan: shutting down the app and refunding subscribers. The developer appears to have weighed his options, considered the strategy Reddit was communicating with the rollout of their API changes, and concluded that this was no longer a viable market. Many people expressed strong opinions about what the developer should do, but he appears to have remained calm and rational throughout the experience, and chose to walk away when it made sense. However: > The content is what the users wanted - and Reddit had the content... > ...in exchange for Reddit's content... > ...operating businesses based on someone else's data (moat)... Let's not fool ourselves: the data was created by and for the users, and it never belonged to Reddit in any moral sense. It's a regrettable externality of our legal framework that Reddit was able to withdraw their free API and prevent the community from accessing its own data how it saw fit.
      - Alupis 2y ago
        In no way can we consider the content on reddit to be owned by the users. By using reddit and posting, you agree to their terms - the content belongs to them. It's unreasonable to believe Reddit should continue offering free services to businesses that were making money off of Reddit's content.
        blendergeek 2y ago
        From the Reddit TOS: > 5. Your Content > The Services may contain information, text, links, graphics, photos, videos, audio, streams, software, tools, or other materials (“Content”), including Content created with or submitted to the Services by you or through your Account (“Your Content”). We take no responsibility for and we do not expressly or implicitly endorse, support, or guarantee the completeness, truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any of Your Content. > By submitting Your Content to the Services, you represent and warrant that you have all rights, power, and authority necessary to grant the rights to Your Content contained within these Terms. Because you alone are responsible for Your Content, you may expose yourself to liability if you post or share Content without all necessary rights. > You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content: https://redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement-september-25-2023 https://redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement-september-25-2...
- blendergeek 2y ago
  > it was inevitable Reddit wouldn't offer free services to businesses making profit off of their content forever Their content. The audacity. Reddit is built on users' content and on free moderation. Sure it was inevitable that Reddit would lock things down for profit. But lets not pretend that this is Reddit's content.
  - Alupis 2y ago
    For the 3rd time you are entirely incorrect. I won't quote the TOS again for you, as I have done twice already. The moment you post to reddit, they can do anything they want with the content. It is now theirs. It's also naïve to say reddit was built upon users' content. Yes the content is the most important bit and the reasons users are there today - but that ignores all of the software and infrastructure that made it all possible. There's a reason reddit is what it is today, and it was not an accident.
    - raxxorraxor 2y ago
      For users TOS are entirely irrelevant on the internet anyway. Of course it is their decision to not embrace users in the end.
    - nsagent 2y ago
      > The moment you post to reddit, they can do anything they want with the content. It is now theirs. This is patently false. The content is not theirs, users grant Reddit a license to their content. See the TOS [1] you spoke of: > You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content, but you grant Reddit the following license to use that Content: This isn't just some bit of semantics either. If you can contact the users, you could request a license for the content yourself. So really the only bastion Reddit has is technical measures for preventing scraping, since publicly accessible data is allowed to be scraped in the US due to legal precedent. That is, nothing in the TOS prevents other parties from displaying the data in other formats (as long as they don't use the API). The thing is, all the apps did make use of the API because they were not adversarial with Reddit, as opposed to webapps like libreddit that circumvent the API altogether. [1]: https://redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement https://redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement

fckgw 2y ago

Apollo had a yearly subscription while switching over to the new Reddit API structure would require a monthly fee. That puts you in a spot where you may have users that are still on a yearly plan and not paying in while incurring massive monthly API costs. It was the sudden short notice of API costs increases that caused the whole thing to collapse "One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That's $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days. So you see, even if I increase the price for new subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000, second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users." From: https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...

Alupis 2y ago
Refund at a pro-rated rate, be frank with users and tell them the situation and why you have to raise prices - then raise prices. I doubt users would have revolted had the subscription gone up to $19.95 or even $29.95 a year. Heck, my hiking app is more than that annually, and I barely use it. I remain convinced Apollo had options, but the creator was convinced it was an impossible situation. It was not. There was an outpouring of support and people willing to spend money on an app they saw immense personal value in.
- forrestthewoods 2y ago
  > Refund at a pro-rated rate, be frank with users and tell them the situation and why you have to raise prices - then raise prices. I don't think the app store provides a mechanism to do this.

hbn 2y ago

I'm pretty sure even the paid Reddit API had some ridiculous stipulations, like you couldn't view NSFW content.

wilsonnb3 2y ago
As recently as a few months ago you could see NSFW content in Narwhal 2 on iOS. Not sure if it has since changed. I do remember hearing they were planning that change, though.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  NSFW is not available via API.

senkora 2y ago

It was so well-loved that someone cloned it for the fediverse version of Reddit: Voyager for Lemmy is a near-clone of Apollo for Reddit, but using web technology. I have now moved my Reddit usage fully to Lemmy because the official app was just such a pain to use.