from Hacker News

Apollo will close down on June 30th

by timf on 6/8/23, 5:22 PM with 1609 comments

  • by dang on 6/9/23, 1:03 AM

    All: there are over 1300 comments in this thread. To read them all, you need to click More links at the bottom of the page, or like this:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435&p=2

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435&p=3

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245435&p=4

    For other recent threads on this topic, brace yourself and go to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36251707.

  • by duckfruit on 6/8/23, 5:45 PM

    This makes me indescribably sad.

    Apart from mourning the loss of a fantastic app by an awesome developer, to me it signals the end of a golden era of small indie client only apps. Since the APIs for the likes of reddit, twitter (RIP tweetbot) and others were available for free or a reasonable fee it spawned a whole cottage industry of developers who made a living selling alternate front ends for these services. These apps invented many of the conventions and designs that eventually percolated to the official clients. Sometimes these innovations even became platform wide conventions (pull to refresh anyone?). The writing was on the wall for a while, but now the door is firmly closed on that era - and we will all be poorer for it.

  • by WestCoastJustin on 6/8/23, 6:20 PM

    In this situation, do you hire someone to negotiate with or for you? I'm thinking the intention here was to sell the company for $10 million and that came across as a threat because of the language that was used. You would not record the call [1] and then publish it if you actually were blackmailing them for $10 million. I'm not faulting the guy here at all, I just think it comes down to lack of experience in dealing with negotiations of this level. He clearly has an awesome product if you look at any of the HN/Reddit comments.

    He probably could have walked away will at least a few million vs shutting it down if there was a small level of negotiation that took place here. I'm not sure who was on the other end of the call but strategic accounts normally get pretty seasoned sales folks assigned to them. They are used to having hard conversations around pricing and pissed off customers. That's all part of negotiation.

    That call was brutal to listen too.

    Or, is saying you're shutting down part of negotiation too? This likely took it too far if it was, in that you're making reddit look like the bad guy very publicly now. So, it's probably worth it for reddit to cut ties and force people into the reddit app.

    No winners here:

      * Apollo the company is gone.
  * Apollo users are gone.
  * Reddit has no customer paying money.
  * Reddit cannot reference them.
  * Reddit users are ticked off.
    This is a case study in bad negotiation tactics on both sides. Reddit tried to squeeze them pretty hard right off the bat. Should have tried a 3 year contract or something with heavy discounts. This is wild.

    [1] http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-3...

  • by danpalmer on 6/8/23, 6:06 PM

    Well done to Christian for remaining calm, professional, and engaging with this process in an honest way, standing up for his users, but not attacking Reddit or its staff with emotion, just stating facts and holding them to account in a considered way. He comes across as a mature individual and one that I'm sure many would want to deal with in business or hire as an engineer or leader.

    In a way, Reddit couldn't have asked for a worse outcome, they have come out looking terrible and he has come out looking great and defining the community discussion.

  • by justusthane on 6/8/23, 5:35 PM

    Apollo is such an incredibly high quality app — in fact, it’s so good that I haven’t had it installed on my phone in a couple of years because when I have it I spend way too much time on Reddit.

    The features, the polish, the customizability — everything about it is really top notch.

  • by sebastialonso on 6/8/23, 5:54 PM

    I see two pretty distinct issues here: 1) most people's favourite app is going to die, and 2) many subreddits will be negatively affected by this move: prime example is /r/AskHistorians.

    Personally, 1) is not really an issue and people are enjoying the outrage train, and that's ok and valid and whatever, but it's a third party app. It's a no-brainer decision to try to kill it if it's hindering your ability to make more money. At the mid term is a great incentive for Reddit to improve their shitty app experience ("but Ads!" yeah, ads of course, you're not paying shot for using it, it's an impopular but pragmatic business model)

    But 2) it's the one that's really concerning. Hopefully they reverse this course for this point specifically cause this has a measurable impact on eyeballs, which ultimately means money.

    inb4: "Apollo dying means less eyeballs too dummy", yeah as I mentioned before the outrage is the fad. Once it passes, will see how much people actually leaves (little to none alternatives for Reddit btw). My bet is that could result in a small hump, if anything, in the long run.

  • by flanbiscuit on 6/8/23, 7:16 PM

    Here's a wild thought. What I would love to happen is that one of these apps (Sync or Apollo) release a version of their app where a user can enter their own API key. This would put the cost of the API usage on to the individual user instead of the app owner and the app owner can continue to focus on the app UI/features without worry. It wouldn't change how they made money off these apps either.

    Let's see what that would cost the average user.

    As mentioned in the post:

    $0.24 for 1,000 API calls, average 345 requests per day per user

    I have no idea if they prorate charges if you use less than 1000 calls so lets assume they don't, so the minimum daily cost for a user is $0.24.

    $0.24 per day, for a 30 days is: $7.20

    Hmm, I can't see many people wanting to pay that monthly.

    Maybe if reddit had a lower tier (0.12 for 500 calls would be $3.60/month)

  • by hn_throwaway_99 on 6/8/23, 5:54 PM

    I'm not a user of Apollo, and honestly have been perfectly fine using old.reddit.com on both mobile and desktop.

    That said, while I realize it's just his side of the story, the Apollo developer comes across as imminently reasonable and rational (and he apparently has the receipts to back it up), while Reddit comes across as embodying typical corporate greed. On a related note, I think everyone should understand that, in the long term, "Don't be evil" is simply impossible for large corporations - the incentives are just too strong to prioritize short/medium term revenue growth over user experience.

    In any case, while I don't think the people shouting "I'm done with Reddit" will make much of a dent in Reddit's overall usage numbers, I personally am deleting my account and blocking reddit on my devices. If anything I think this drama gave me a nice little push to take more control over my time that will make me happier in the long run.

  • by LapsangGuzzler on 6/8/23, 5:47 PM

    Honestly, I'm surprised that spez kept his job after getting caught modifying user comments straight from the production db[0]. That's who these people are dealing with, to be clear. And now he's accusing Apollo of threatening Reddit? Give me a break. How is this the guy who's gonna lead Reddit to the promised land?

    0: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev...

  • by willidiots on 6/8/23, 6:01 PM

    I hope Apollo's not overplaying their hand here, though it's super interesting hearing these conversations from the inside. It's clear reddit's got it out for the 3p apps, and I'm personally leaving reddit over this (longtime RIF user), but this post is a bit concerning.

    It focuses on the "[apollo can] quiet down [for $10M]" topic in the conversation, and the apparent misunderstanding between Apollo and Reddit, Reddit taking "quiet down" to mean "go away quietly, without a lot of public noise", as a threat.

    Apollo states that they meant "go dark", "reduce API usage", "reduce reddit opportunity cost". But for that position to make sense, Apollo would need some leverage here. They're using Reddit's API and platform behind the scenes - they have no leverage I can see. What am I missing?

  • by nkotov on 6/8/23, 5:33 PM

    Bad move from Reddit's end. Apollo is one of my most used apps because I absolutely refuse to use the official app. Just like the new Reddit experience on desktop version, the mobile app is just as terrible. Clunky, slow, not user friendly. No thanks.

  • by ellisd on 6/8/23, 6:05 PM

    Reddit 16-year club member here. Reddit has made the the most tone-deaf decision in their entire 17 year history. This will be a future case study on how to self-immolate your entire community.

  • by wolpoli on 6/8/23, 5:41 PM

    > Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."

    I can't believe that CEO of Reddit was telling internal people that Apollo tried to blackmail Reddit for a $10 million payout when that didn't happen.

  • by robbiet480 on 6/8/23, 5:37 PM

    I just don’t see Reddit’s response here other than “yes, turns out we are the bad guys who have been continually lying and manipulating the situation for our benefit”. I wonder if they’ll see employees quit over this. How do you trust your employer after this? I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or delete themselves over this.

    Just absolutely stunning turn of events, massive kudos to Christian for recording his calls with them for over a year (legally I might add). Reddit has 0 wiggle room here.

    EDIT: Just spitballing here but could an employee bring a shareholder lawsuit for negatively impacting financial outlook or destroying brand value? I feel like this is going to significantly reshape Reddit as moderators of large subreddits will be furious and quit if not destroy entire subreddits. Just look at how many big (millions and tens of millions of subscribers) subreddits are signed onto the blackout letter https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplet...

    EDIT 2: Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose his job over this?

    EDIT 3: Christian says in the post the refunds will cost him personally about $250,000. Does he have a claim against Reddit for that money I wonder? I'm sure lawyers are looking closely at the agreements right now.

    EDIT 4: #1 Reddit Android app "Reddit is Fun" is shutting down too https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_wi...

  • by graeme on 6/8/23, 7:15 PM

    Very odd for reddit to discount that it survives based on the free labour of power users, many of whom use Apollo and similar apps. This is one of those areas where a pure cost benefit analysis doesn't work.

    I mod a top 1% sub and one of our moderators exclusively uses Apollo for moderation work. Official Reddit app doesn't work well, and their workflow for modding doesn't involve a computer.

    ....what's that worth to Reddit?

  • by frankjr on 6/8/23, 5:48 PM

    Looks like June 30th is also the day I'll stop using Reddit. What a coincidence!

  • by duped on 6/8/23, 6:49 PM

    The only thing more embarrassing than Reddit's behavior is that after 18 years and hundreds of millions in funding they can't make an app or website with a better experience than what someone can do in their basement with just API access.

    Part of me thinks that one of the reasons they want to kill 3rd party apps is because they're embarrassed that they're all better than whatever Reddit has come up in the last decade.

    Maybe they should listen to mods and users instead of trying to push whatever they want down users' throats, because it's not going to last much longer.

  • by CharlesW on 6/8/23, 6:06 PM

    The end of Apollo is the end of Reddit for me. As with Twitter, I'll be taking my toys with me when I leave the sandbox.

    What are good tools for erasing one's Reddit history? I just learned about redact.dev (but haven't tried it yet) for example.

    UPDATE: react.dev seems to work well. It's deleted 1.5K+ posts as I type this at 0.65–0.85 per second.

  • by square_usual on 6/8/23, 5:37 PM

    > Then yesterday, moderators told me they were on a call with CEO Steve Huffman (spez), and he said the following per their transcript:

    > Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."

    > Wow. Because my memory is that you didn't take it as a threat, and you even apologized profusely when you admitted you misheard it.

    Wow, I didn't know it'd gotten that bad.

  • by SheinhardtWigCo on 6/8/23, 6:44 PM

    When your landlord raises your rent from $2000 to $8000, they're not really hoping to raise your rent. They're evicting you.

    I think the new API pricing model was developed with a single purpose: extinguishing third-party apps to improve the official app's install/usage metrics before their upcoming IPO.

  • by BolexNOLA on 6/8/23, 5:34 PM

    >Do I support the protest/Reddit blackout?

    >Abundantly. Unlike other social media companies like Facebook and Twitter who pay their moderators as employees, Reddit relies on volunteers to do the hard work for free. I completely understand that when tools they take to do their volunteer, important job are taken away, there is anger and frustration there. While I haven't personally mobilized anyone to participate in the blackout out of fear of retaliation from Reddit, the last thing I want is for that to feel like I don't support the folks speaking up. I wholeheartedly do.

    >It's been a horrible week, and the kindness Redditors and moderators and communities have shown Apollo and other third-party apps has genuinely made it much more bearable and I am genuinely so appreciative.

    >I am, admittedly, doubtful Reddit wants to listen to folks anymore so I don't see it having an effect.

    Man this is just a bummer to read.

  • by mrigor on 6/8/23, 8:45 PM

  • by brycewray on 6/8/23, 6:15 PM

    He put his email address at the end. As I told him in what I’m sure will be jillions of emails about the subject:

    > Have just read your amazing, sad, comprehensive Reddit post about the end of Apollo.

    > I was one of those long-ago paid-once users :-) and happily used Apollo for years. When I found out a few days ago what was happening to you, I actually deleted Apollo from my devices so I wouldn’t inadvertently cost you money through background stuff once Reddit’s API fees went into effect. Then, as I got really mad over what they’d done to you and the other third-party app devs, I spent hours deleting every comment and every submission I’d ever made to Reddit — because, of course, they don’t have a UI where you can do that easily — and then killed my account after seven years, just because all of this had made me no longer want any association with that platform.

  • by isocle on 6/8/23, 11:18 PM

    Let us not forget that they have been "experimenting" with killing mobile browser access on users: https://old.reddit.com/r/help/comments/135tly1/helpdid_reddi...

    This is the death knell of Reddit, and I hope that the blackout succeeds in getting them to revert their greedy plan.

  • by add-sub-mul-div on 6/8/23, 5:54 PM

    For what it's worth, I'm looking forward to July 1. Twitter had become a chore, but I didn't quit altogether until I was pushed out by losing the one client I found decent. It's been for the better. Like Twitter, Reddit has been on a long decline and has long since become a habit I stick to for no real reason other than that it's familiar.

  • by wunderland on 6/8/23, 5:29 PM

    Funny that this was just demo'd in Apple's Keynote this week

  • by sh34r on 6/8/23, 9:45 PM

    Reddit is Digging its own grave. Eternal September awaits all the old school forums that still remain. But perhaps that decentralization will be a good thing in the end.

    I think the network effects of Reddit are a lot easier to undo than that of Twitter. There is little core functionality that didn’t exist in forum software from the Naughties.

  • by generalizations on 6/8/23, 6:59 PM

    > Please note that I recorded all my calls with Reddit, so my statements are not based on memory, but the recorded statements by Reddit over the course of the year. One-party consent recording is legal in my country of Canada. Also I won't be naming names, that's not important and I don't want to doxx people.

    IMO this should be much more common practice, where it's legal. It would be cool to one day have built-in functions in our smartphones that automatically enable it when the detected location allows for it.

  • by fooey on 6/8/23, 6:47 PM

    RIF has now announced they will also be shutting down on June 30th

    https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_wi...

  • by couchdb_ouchdb on 6/9/23, 1:45 AM

    "I quickly put together a small app where I could input the prices and it would output monthly/yearly cost, cost for free users, paid users, etc. so I'd be able to process the information immediately."

    Someone should tell this dude about Excel.

  • by raydev on 6/8/23, 8:44 PM

    While I agree with services pricing their APIs in any way they like, it's worth pointing out that Reddit's current CEO Steve Huffman is the very same person responsible for editing Reddit user comments as recently as 2016, like he was just an admin on some no-name forum. [1] On the eve of an IPO, someone that irresponsible and childish should not be leading this company.

    I was initally on Reddit's side in this particular matter (and I still think Selig's API pricing justifications are worthless), but I was shocked to learn Huffman is still the CEO, so his offhand comments about this situation and Reddit's general bad faith interactions with Selig in the past week are now very obvious to me.

    Anyway, all the best to Selig.

    1: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev...

  • by taubek on 6/8/23, 7:31 PM

  • by jasonjayr on 6/8/23, 7:32 PM

    Looks like they just announced (as of about 30 mins ago) an AMA with u/spez tomorrow ...

    https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ce...

  • by chillbill on 6/8/23, 6:40 PM

    Not only does Steve Huffman need to step down and quit this whole business, the entire team of senior management at Reddit needs to just get away as far as they can from managing anything larger than a lemon stand. Impossibly stupid way of running things.

    Edit: Jesus Christ, that guy on the other end of the phone has just completely destroyed himself in the world of business by lying about the conversation he had with the Apollo developer: https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-...

  • by annon on 6/9/23, 7:00 AM

    The solution seems so easy to me, just tie the API access to reddit gold. It wouldn’t be completely smooth sailing, there would still would be many upset users. At the same time though, they would pick up a massive number of subs.

    The users that don’t value the apollo experience enough to pay for it would switch to the reddit app, driving more ad revenue. The users that do value the Apollo experience would still keep providing their content to the platform, in addition to becoming paid, direct, subscribers.

    This really seems like an amateur strategy.. kill the massively popular apps with ridiculous pricing and unfair timelines, and hope that the users of this massive community organizing tool you control don’t use it against you? Cut off (and piss off) a big segment of your power users in hopes that a sizable chunk of them move to the native app?

  • by whalesalad on 6/8/23, 5:58 PM

    This is totally wild. Apollo is easily one of the best iOS apps of all time and one that I use daily. I can't imagine it just poof disappearing over something like this.

  • by raylad on 6/9/23, 3:54 AM

    Why not point Apollo at a Reddit alternative, or use the open-source code for Reddit (or code like this https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit) instead of shutting it down?

    If Apollo's users (or a good percentage of them) moved over to an alternative platform, that would be poetic justice, at least.

  • by robotnikman on 6/8/23, 5:49 PM

    Looks like I will be quitting Reddit on the 30th then. I refuse to use their dumpster fire known as the official app.

  • by minimaxir on 6/8/23, 5:38 PM

    The allegations of bad faith on Reddit's end will make the upcoming subreddit protest shutdowns more spicy.

  • by jll29 on 6/8/23, 8:35 PM

    That's why I would not consider investing energy/money/time in developing an app/application/client of a proprietary third-party platform: they can lock you out any time, sunset the platform (seen with Google Search API) or decide to compete with you (seen with Facebook regarding games).

    Open standards, open-source based or decentralized platforms, or your own platform are the way to go (I'm talking here from the dev perspective, not from the end user perspective - but proprietary sites are equally annoying for end users when they get discontinued. Making a one-time exeption to my self-hosting preference, I had a blog hosted at Posterous until Twitter acquired them and they shut down).

  • by torartc on 6/8/23, 6:30 PM

    I could see this as a Digg moment for reddit. They've made no effort to put out quality software of their own and will kill some of the best experiences for using Reddit.

  • by davesque on 6/8/23, 7:50 PM

    It really feels as though all of the API pricing issues across the industry are signaling a clear ending to the rosey eyed 2nd tech boom that began with the invention of smart phones and social media.

    I remember when my software career started in earnest back in 2011. There was a lot of positive energy in the air. A whole generation of people was discovering the joys of engineering and sharing their efforts and creativity through various forms of open access.

    Now, it feels like that's all gone. The spirit of generosity and altruism in the tech industry is much diminished. It seems we have an odd combination of C-suite mental illness and activist investors to thank for that.

  • by yakkityyak on 6/8/23, 9:45 PM

    Ugh, this is the end of reddit for me.

    I didn’t think I was able to quit social media addictions, but I’ve successfully ignored Twitter since Elon took over. I’m confident I can do the same with reddit, although it will be much harder.

    I suppose all I really need is like some sort of curated RSS instead.

  • by goolz on 6/8/23, 9:08 PM

    I am waiting with great anticipation to see how they spin this in the AMA tomorrow. Anything short of Steve editing the posts himself and I will be disappointed /s. To the Reddit and Steve apologists, you will be on the wrong side of history.

  • by brokencode on 6/8/23, 8:24 PM

    I never thought Reddit would be so aggressive with their community after how poorly things went for Twitter.

    Why not roll out these changes slower and ramp up fees over time? Why not give app developers time to adapt?

    Apollo is written by one guy. Is it really fair to tell him to rewrite his business model and make significant changes to his app in just a month or two?

  • by jamespo on 6/8/23, 6:13 PM

    It's quite simple, make API access conditional on having reddit premium. Reddit get $50 a year and the apps can continue - although the userbase would be significantly lower.

  • by JohnFen on 6/8/23, 10:02 PM

    Wow. That's a real bombshell. If everything he says is accurate (I haven't listened to the recordings, of course, but I'm going to assume his characterization of them is correct), then Reddit's behavior here is beyond the pale. Particularly them accusing him of making threats.

    It's hard to see how Reddit can actually survive with this level of mismanagement.

  • by obblekk on 6/8/23, 6:41 PM

    It's totally unreasonable to expect you to make changes in 30 days. Consider app review time, that might not even be possible.

    After you shutdown, can you turn Apollo into a site-specific browser? Like request reddit html, write a custom transformer to make it less bad, render with a safari webview, and push nav changes as views on the stack?

  • by dh2022 on 6/8/23, 5:38 PM

    I am done with Reddit.

  • by UniverseHacker on 6/8/23, 6:27 PM

    Do you guys really expect a for profit company to offer free API access to 3rd parties, that offer a better experience with no ads, bypassing their revenue stream, and making their own site and apps look terrible in comparison?

    I've always been shocked Reddit allowed this at all. No other major player that owns a platform- FB, instagram, Google, etc. offers this either.

    I don't like it either but it makes perfect sense. You could even make the argument that not doing this would mean Reddit employees aren't doing their jobs, and aren't looking out for the company.

  • by honksillet on 6/8/23, 6:38 PM

    Reddit’s censorship of r/the_donald was a huge moment in the splintering of political discourse into disconnected silos. It used to be you could go to the front page of Reddit and see what each side of American politics was pushing that day. People on both the left and right would be confronted with news that otherwise they might not see in their personal echo chambers. That all died when spez and co first “quarantined” (ironic jargon choice) then ultimately killed T_D. Truly a sad chain of events. PS. T_D still lives at patriots.win fwiw.

  • by antonjs on 6/8/23, 7:30 PM

    This move by reddit is so crazy I can't help but wonder if they're lighting all this user goodwill on fire in the hopes of improving their negotiating stance with folks using reddit for other things (like OpenAI and others training models), and that they're thinking they'll be able to change API pricing for Apollo and others once they have those big contracts locked in. It seems incredibly risky upfront, and with hindsight right now, totally untenable if that's the game they're playing.

  • by rektide on 6/8/23, 5:23 PM

    Can someone please record a video of using this app? I'd love to have a record of what we are losing.

  • by trebills on 6/9/23, 6:12 AM

    Hacker News will have to do because my Reddit experience was 99.99999% Apollo. Can’t stand the website. Never would have used it without Apollo on iOS. I know there are much serious things in the world than an app shutting down but this is truly the end of an era.

  • by ineedasername on 6/8/23, 11:01 PM

    I'm confused about the details, maybe someone can clarify.

    The OP says Reddit claims they were being blackmailed (which clearly they weren't) but it's the talk around opportunity cost that I don't understand, especially as related alleged blackmail.

    1) It would cost Apollo $20m to continue operating, and somehow Apollo, not able to afford it and offering to just kind of walk away from the app constitutes Blackmail?

    2) The $20m opportunity cost claims. I don't get this. The new actual cost to Apollo would be $20m, that's not an opportunity cost for Reddit. The opportunity cost for reddit is really just the resources & attention it takes them to keep the API system running, which is presumable far, far, below the sticker price they will be charging 3rd parties per 1,000 API calls.

    3) In general, I don't understand how any 3rd party has leverage to threaten or blackmail Reddit. Sure some people prefer to use 3rd party apps & services, but I'm assuming (is this a bad assumption?) that if those apps and services went away that a large majority of of their users would simply switch to native reddit options rather than stop consuming & interacting with content they enjoy.

  • by nvahalik on 6/8/23, 9:04 PM

    I've been getting MORE porn spam on Reddit than I ever have before...

    I've blocked 2 dozen accounts in as many days.

    It feels like Reddit is about to implode.

  • by fumar on 6/8/23, 5:42 PM

    Apollo saved my Reddit usage years ago. It has too many nice to have features to list. I suppose off to Discord I go. Most subreddits have a discord parallel. More than ever it feels like all of the major platforms are ripe for disruption. They are filled with aggressive hostile ads, algorithms set to engagement, and closed experiences.

  • by jdlyga on 6/8/23, 9:12 PM

    This is the equivalent of Firefox closing down in 2005 and everyone being forced to use Internet Explorer. Reddit has been adding nothing but annoying clutter to their official app.

  • by bluecalm on 6/8/23, 7:54 PM

    One thing which is unclear to me and I would really appreciate some perspective: do you think they designed the new API pricing with intention to have developers actually using/paying it or was it just a PR way to say "we are closing the API for 3rd party devs"?

  • by sexydev on 6/8/23, 6:20 PM

    Remember when FB made changes and switched to timeline views. Everyone was saying this is the death of Facebook. Then in the next earnings call, they showed average engagement and time spent more than doubled.

    Everyone boycotting reddit is all talk and no hat. They will still be on reddit.

  • by jdlyga on 6/8/23, 10:05 PM

    You don’t see platforms being this user hostile and staying relevant for very long. Look at what happened with Facebook, for example. People are moving away from Reddit these days anyway, with Discord being the most common place to start a new community.

  • by kojeovo on 6/8/23, 6:54 PM

    Looking at #s on the app store / play store and it looks like RIF / Apollo usage is a drop in the bucket compared to the actual reddit app. I doubt this has any meaningful impact after all is settled. Just seems like a loud vocal minority.

  • by kaqvze on 6/8/23, 8:00 PM

    Does anyone have the least bit of business experience? This is outrageous. I have not followed this at all but how can everyone here be so biased against Steve?

    If you listen to the call this Christian guy literally said: "if your opportunity cost is really $20 million, you cut me a cheque for $10 million dollars and we can both skip off into the sunset"

    A joke, seriously? Why on earth would you say this in what was audibly a very tense, high-stakes call and negotiation for both sides? There is no excuse whatsoever.

    Very funny, because one week later he dishes reddit and Steve the biggest shitstorm in the entire history of the site - which it would be even without all the blackmail call drama. Hello? Costing and causing surely 10s of millions in damage.

    Can we appreciate that even if this Christian guy is just so genuinely ignorant, selfish and toxic without intentionally meaning any harm that at least Steve certainly was fully aware of all the implications, the seriousness and non-funny nature of the conversation?

    He had and has every reason and right to feel blackmailed. The only interpretation one can take away from Christian's behavior now is that Steve had better taken him up on the "joke". Clearly, the PR disaster could have been avoided by paying up instead of accepting the cost and reacting exactly as Steve did - in the call Steve rejected the offer and notion of doing any deals. The way he apologised is what you do to save the other person's face and keep the door open for the relationship. It's not what you literally think and mean.

    Steve was never going to go back to his team and say "silly me! I'm such an idiot for getting this idea into my head. That he's threatening us because he's about to shut down, cause maximum damage on the way out and stage a user revolt. When he was just trying to entertain us with a funny joke about us buying him out for $10 million. When we have no legal or moral obligation to do so. I love him, he's so funny, glad I apologised on the spot.".

    If anything, one should pay some respect to Steve, not taking up the blackmail and steering head on into this mess. Good luck!

  • by gameshot911 on 6/8/23, 11:09 PM

    Is this thread being sunk by HN, or is it a natural product of the default algorithm? Because it had far, far more upvotes than any thread above it (currently ranked #20), even those they were submitted earlier than this one.

  • by PaulHoule on 6/8/23, 7:04 PM

    It’s a basic problem for platform rot that the client is usually specific to a network today.

    Consider the following: AOL instant messenger, ICQ, Paltalk, Tivejo, MSN Messenger, Microsoft Messenger, MSN Messenger, Skype, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, 11 different messaging apps from Google, Zoom, Go2Meeting, WebEx, Microsoft Lynq, Skype for Business, Slack, iMessage, CuSeeMe, Discord, …

    A user looking superficially at those applications might notice very little difference or progress between them, the one thing they have in common is they are not compatible with each other, many of them are tied into a proprietary ecosystem (AOL, Facebook, …) and a major difference is they are tied into different proprietary ecosystem.

    Such an app always follows a scenario like “You should install Skype and contact me, unlike Paltalk it really works these days”. You try it and you’re like “Wow! This really works!” but after a few years it becomes less reliable and buggier than it was when it started. Some new application comes along and is in a honeymoon period where it knows it has to actually work in order to add new users while the old broken app can coast because they figure nobody can disrupt their two-sided market. History shows that the old app really will deteriorate to the point where the incumbent advantage is lost and a new app will be better…. For a while.

    What amazes me is that everybody from users to the app makers are stuck in this cycle and seem to have very little insight into it.

    It’s a reason why you need a service that is separate from the client and have to have competition for both. Unfortunately users seem to violently opposed to this and open messaging platforms like XMPP have only caught on with military and law enforcement users.

    The “fediverse” is a light of hope in this respect, what you learn when you get involved is it is not just Mastodon but there are many different systems that are inter operating. I wish the EU would take the problem seriously and just legislate interoperation between messaging apps, I mean, you can call an Android user from an iPhone, a Verizon customer can send a text to an AT&T customer, it is long past the time when you should be able to send a Slack user a message from Facebook messenger.

  • by Exuma on 6/8/23, 6:30 PM

    What did everyone think of that call?

    I'm not a client-facing person (a developer) so I might have been tongue in cheek myself as well. Not sure how any of that sounded threatening though...

  • by pciexpgpu on 6/9/23, 12:53 AM

    I am surprised nobody has coded a HTML/JS/CSS -> API thingamagic..

    Assuming the website is public, allows login using standard JS/HTML and provides results in JS/HTML/CSS: with all the hype around GPT4 etc, wouldn't it be 'easy' to catch the bullet using some converter? And keep deploying a machine to catch up with another machine that keeps changing its "API" (i.e. the look and feel of the website in this case)

    I am only partially joking.

  • by Nifty3929 on 6/9/23, 3:48 PM

    How much profit does Reddit make?

    I asked Bard and this is what I got:

    Reddit has not publicly released its financial information, so it is difficult to say exactly how much profit the company earns. However, we can make some estimates based on the company's revenue and expenses.

    In 2021, Reddit generated $350 million in revenue, primarily from advertising. The company also has a premium membership program that generates around $17 million in revenue. Reddit's expenses are estimated to be around $200 million, which includes costs for salaries, marketing, and operations.

    Based on this information, we can estimate that Reddit's profit in 2021 was around $150 million. However, it is important to note that this is just an estimate, and the actual amount of profit could be higher or lower.

    Reddit is a growing company, and its revenue is expected to continue to grow in the coming years. This growth will likely lead to an increase in the company's profit. However, it is also possible that Reddit's expenses will increase as the company grows, which could offset some of the increase in revenue.

    Overall, Reddit is a profitable company, and its profit is expected to continue to grow in the coming years.

  • by 19h on 6/8/23, 5:47 PM

    Can’t Apollo be open-sourced and the tokens of the original app be used?

    I’d absolutely donate on a monthly basis.

  • by time0ut on 6/9/23, 12:34 AM

    I’m done. I deleted my 13 year old reddit account. I won’t be back even if they backpedal. Mind bogglingly incompetent. Sorry to any of the good folks working there.

  • by meonmyphone on 6/8/23, 7:23 PM

    That's sad.

    I started using the mobile site after Reddit bought Alien Blue, and I saw how the user experience gradually deteriorated to push their mobile app.

    I occasionally used Apollo as an alternative, and I can understand the sentiment of the users. As a reluctant iOS user, Apollo was one of the things that kept me on the platform.

    Seeing the direction thar Reddit has been taking, I hope a new platform comes to take its place with the focus on discussions/community.

  • by colinrand on 6/8/23, 6:51 PM

    I haven't seen much discussion in defense of Reddit protecting their content from LLM training competitors. This to me is why they have to crack down on their API, it's no longer just SEO links back, it's training someone else's models on your content and community for free. This to me is the elephant. It's horrible how they treat their app community, but this is a massive problem for them.

  • by giarc on 6/8/23, 7:34 PM

    >Will you sell Apollo?

    >Probably not. Maybe if the perfect buyer came along who thought they could turn Apollo into something cool

    I get that it's something he built and loves, but if someone shows up with $1m and the alternative is to shut it down and get nothing. Then take the money even if it's not the "perfect buyer" and it won't be "cool".

  • by rogers18445 on 6/8/23, 6:29 PM

    Is there a legal reason why they can't just scrape reddit and forget about API? It would be the app users doing the scraping.

  • by throwaway4837 on 6/8/23, 7:58 PM

    The Reddit mobile app has a few big issues for me:

    1. When I click a post, sometimes it goes to a different post's detail page. The only way to remedy this is to refresh and visit the sub directly via Reddit search function, or restart the app.

    2. Video player sometimes just doesn't play the video no matter how often you click "play", similar fix as above.

    3. Google search is better at searching Reddit than Reddit search.

    Very annoying, but I still use it and never felt the need to use Apollo. To slightly defend Reddit, Apollo is just a client, and I assume they bring nothing else to the table. Apollo team should have had the foresight to see this coming years ago. Reddit can't be blamed for trying to monetize their data. If I had to choose between Reddit and Apollo, obviously I'd choose Reddit because Reddit is where the data lives.

  • by wlesieutre on 6/8/23, 7:38 PM

    It's a small thing, but if anyone would like to support accessibility, please try setting the official Reddit app's font size to as large as it can go.

    Then leave the app a review based on how well it compares to the system's accessibility font sizes which should go up to 310%.

  • by fiddlerwoaroof on 6/8/23, 7:07 PM

    I’m curious about how this works: it Apollo is going to be unable to operate at the new prices, would it be possible to release a version of the App that takes the user’s API key instead? And then the user can pay for Reddit API access directly?

  • by MuffinFlavored on 6/8/23, 6:31 PM

    > The information they did provide however was: we will be moving to a paid API as it's not tenable for Reddit to pay for third-party apps indefinitely (understandable, agreed), so they're looking to do equitable pricing based in reality.

    So far so good. Speaking facts, no opinion, no bias.

    > The price they gave was $0.24 for 1,000 API calls. I quickly inputted this in my app, and saw that it was not far off Twitter's outstandingly high API prices, at $12,000, and with my current usage would cost almost $2 million dollars per month, or over $20 million per year.

    No bulk discount?

    I guess it's in Reddit's best interest to have people on the official Reddit app in the first place.

  • by weinzierl on 6/8/23, 9:01 PM

    I don't get this blackmail thing at all. What leverage would Christian have anyways. It's not that when he shuts Apollo down every of its users will quit Reddit and when it comes to bad publicity, the damage is already done.

  • by kernal on 6/8/23, 6:27 PM

    As the saying goes - never rely on someone else's platform for your livelihood. This was always bound to happen and it was just a matter of time. Reddit needs to eliminate all third party clients that block their ads and siphon potential ad revenue in order to be financially attractive to investors.

    For the Redditors that laughed and criticized Twitter when they capped user counts in third party apps and raised their API usage fees, karma was waiting with patience to return the favor.

    I view what Reddit did as an opportunity. Even though Mastodon was a spectacular failure, I could see a Reddit alternative that uses the federated model that Mastodon does.

  • by foxbyte on 6/8/23, 7:22 PM

    Sad news for Apollo users. Reddit's API pricing change hit hard. With estimated $20M annual bill, it's impossible to maintain service. Users, consider not refunding to support the developers in these trying times.

  • by maltfield on 6/11/23, 4:55 PM

    Lemmy is a great (federated) reddit alternative. If anyone's looking to migrate from reddit to lemmy, this guide may help you find and subscribe-to subreddits across the lemmyverse

    * https://tech.michaelaltfield.net/2023/06/11/lemmy-migration-...

  • by ryanmercer on 6/8/23, 8:52 PM

    Seems foolish to build your company to be entirely dependent on the generosity of free API access, then rage quit when you have to start paying instead of, you know, charging your customers more.

    Also I see no evidence that he was accused of blackmail. A linked comment in the Reddit thread states:

    >Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million.

    The linked comment is from "BuckRowdy", apparently not even an employee of Reddit and that is not "blackmail". To me that's "hey, acquihire me and my company for 10 million and then you don't have to do the work!"

  • by sydney6 on 6/8/23, 8:27 PM

    A note about api pricing: I imagine many of these social networks will give themselves a reality check in terms of true value to their users, after years of everything for free. I believe there are pretty, pretty hard times ahead of FB, Twitter et al., once reality truly hits. And from what seems to be the disparity of perception in terms of api pricing/value at reddit, they too. 20 million.. lol. I mean, who will be even able to pay that? Same at Twitter's api pricing. For many, like it appears to be the case with Apollo, it is not even an viable alternative.

  • by e40 on 6/8/23, 9:08 PM

    I just deleted Apollo from my phone. Rip the bandaid off now, rather than wait until the 30th. In place of the icon on my home screen I put Kindle. Seems fitting.

    I deleted twitter a couple of months ago.

    This feels like a positive move for me.

  • by fhub on 6/8/23, 7:49 PM

    Given Apollo made WWDC in a few places including in Vision Pro, perhaps someone at Apple might consider just acquiring Apollo and pay the yearly API fees to Reddit.

    Over time Apple could then perhaps make the Reddit clone.

  • by satysin on 6/8/23, 5:52 PM

    It is a shame it came to this. The primary way I use Reddit is via Apollo so I guess I won’t be using Reddit as much.

    On the web I still use old.reddit.com but I can see them killing that off sooner or later.

  • by mindslight on 6/8/23, 8:48 PM

    Why is there NEVER any talk of adversarial interoperability? Explicitly maintained and versioned APIs were a nicety, but not a necessity! Especially in this day and age of continually pushed code updates. Why just throw away Apollo's popularity and go dark, rather than simultaneously diversifying by adding support for open platforms that appreciate users (eg Mastodon) while also mitigating the damage Reddit can do by continuing to access the site like every other HTTP user agent?

  • by mnsh on 6/9/23, 3:43 AM

    I use infinity app, might as well leave reddit from mobile :/ I sometimes use Twitter from mobile browser, the experience is ok but for Reddit, it's absolutely terrible.

  • by jcims on 6/8/23, 8:56 PM

    As a redditor from 2008 that still uses it too much every day, I kind of hope it dies and stops sucking up the attention from good ideas on how to run a similar smorgasboard of a site.

  • by ecommerceguy on 6/8/23, 6:45 PM

    I'll repost this link as it seems so very strange to me with all of the complaints these days about bots and fake accounts pushing narratives that everyone seems to forget Reddit was built on fake accounts replying to each other: It's so gross.

    How Reddit Got Huge: Tons of Fake Accounts

    https://www.vice.com/en/article/z4444w/how-reddit-got-huge-t...

  • by rvz on 6/8/23, 5:30 PM

    A lesson to be learned. Do not build your entire business on someone else's API.

    The outcome was unsurprising and it is unfortunate. But this is why third-party apps are always at a disadvantage. The same happened with Twitter and they made that clear and now so did Reddit.

    Like I said before in [0]

    "Either the API gets blocked for third-party clients, or you purchase a high price for it."

    [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36087219

  • by mnd999 on 6/8/23, 6:24 PM

    Sounds like Apollo has a nice frontend with a proven API behind it. Reimplementing the API on a different backend couldn’t be _that_ hard, at least for a POC. Supabase anyone?

  • by hinkley on 6/8/23, 9:33 PM

    Can anyone in the know illuminate us on whether the assertion that the new pay scale for the API makes all of these apps impossible to implement? Is this truly the case or is it more a matter of treating the remote server as essentially free and not working to retain all previously seen information to avoid duplicate calls?

    Some RSS readers pull data per user. Others aggregate across their entire userbase, so that the most popular feeds are only read once (or once per data center)

  • by bilekas on 6/8/23, 6:56 PM

    > with my current usage would cost almost $2 million dollars per month, or over $20 million per year

    This isn't the first story like this but the prices that are being calculated are absolutely outrageous.

    I have a feeling Redit just figured they have cornered this market already and the AI training that's being done is definitely a good reason to start paying for the API.

    But there are ways to offer "genuine enrichment integrations apps" a particular license.

    This flat rate is just not tenable for most if not all!

  • by replwoacause on 6/8/23, 8:38 PM

    I’m calling it now, the Reddit devs are already hard at work ripping off all the cool shit that makes Apollo 1000% better than their crappy app. Christian better LAWYER UP.

  • by d4nyll on 6/8/23, 7:55 PM

    I've quit most of the social media like Facebook, I'm not active on Twitter or LinkedIn. But I've always struggled to quit Reddit.

    But now, partially because of this (and partially because they've intentionally made the mobile web experience unusable over the last few years), I decided to quit Reddit a few days ago.

    And it feels great. I've spent the time that I would have wasted on Reddit tackling my TO-READ list of books instead. And I feel much happier for it.

  • by mulmen on 6/8/23, 6:23 PM

    I hope someone has been working on a Reddit replacement and is close to ready. This is Reddit's Digg moment and the time is now to market yourself as a place to go.

  • by George83728 on 6/8/23, 6:53 PM

    He needs to sue Steve Huffman personally for defamation. Steve has been a known lying snake for years and it's long past due that somebody make him pay for it.

  • by vachina on 6/8/23, 7:13 PM

    > 50,000 yearly subscribers at $10 per year

    Wow. Now I know why reddit is tightening the noose. Third party developers making bank feeding off of the firehose that is reddit API.

  • by issafram on 6/8/23, 9:34 PM

    Android's most popular Reddit app is called RIF (Reddit is fun). They will also be shutting down. The official app is so bad. Horrible decision by Reddit

  • by iamawacko on 6/8/23, 7:10 PM

    I've found Lemmy to be a good reddit alternative. https://join-lemmy.org/

  • by chrismsimpson on 6/8/23, 8:55 PM

    This guy should be done with Reddit and build his own API. Not an easy ask, I know, but if he’s got one of the preferred clients he’s not starting from zero.

  • by eiiot on 6/8/23, 6:09 PM

    Losing one of the best Apps on the app store is really heartbreaking. Although I'm hoping for Apollo to be open-sourced, it's probably unrealistic.

  • by planetjones on 6/8/23, 9:03 PM

    My account was 13 years old on Reddit. I just deleted it.

  • by r00fus on 6/8/23, 6:13 PM

    This sounds a lot like the whole Twitter issue where they messed with MFA, and ruined my ability to login anywhere other than a single laptop (that had an existing token).

    So that fixed my Twitter addition - I just stopped using it.

    The same will likely happen here - Reddit is going to find out that I'm happy querying for other users's content (from Google/Duck queries) but without Apollo, I'm probably not going to contribute.

  • by dimgl on 6/8/23, 6:46 PM

    This is absolutely nuts. The only reason I was still using Reddit was because of the Apollo app. Best of luck to you in the future Christian.

  • by sterwill on 6/8/23, 9:14 PM

    I use "rif is fun golden platinum" because it's simple and fast and I don't have to look at ads. I'll gladly pay Reddit _and_ rif to keep using that combination without ads. I'm certain whatever I pay Reddit to use their API through another app will be worth more to them than any ad revenue they could get from me, because that will be $0.

  • by cwkoss on 6/8/23, 7:53 PM

    Reddit is a huge tree that casts lots of shade across the forest floor. It may or may not topple completely, but its pretty clear that in the next month at least many large branches are going to fall, opening up the canopy for new seedlings to grow.

    Maybe we'll finally get some reddit competitors that aren't dominated by alt right blowhards.

  • by moritzwarhier on 6/8/23, 8:35 PM

    Sad. Just bought Apollo in March. But no hard feelings.

    Anyway, this will probably stop my Reddit consumption altogether.

    Already deleted my account a while ago, because some discussions became too toxic for me. Stil enjoying to read there and Apollo made it really enjoyable, even better than rif is fun on Android.

    Is there a good archive of previous Reddit content until now?

  • by Firmwarrior on 6/8/23, 6:42 PM

    Apollo should launch its own backend IMO, with a usable old.reddit style web interface and API access to other clients

  • by ml_giant on 6/8/23, 10:18 PM

    One thing I dislike about using Reddit (At least when accessing the main page from a browser) is that I have to be logged into an account in order to sort comments.

    Was this always a thing? I cannot remember if this was in the case in the past, and I don't really have a Reddit account that I actually log into ever.

  • by 2143 on 6/9/23, 11:00 AM

    > I quickly put together a small app where I could input the prices and it would output monthly/yearly cost, cost for free users, paid users, etc. so I'd be able to process the information immediately.

    Next time this kind of situation comes up, I highly recommend using a spreadsheet.

  • by golemotron on 6/8/23, 7:12 PM

    > Six weeks later, they called to discuss pricing. I quickly put together a small app where I could input the prices and it would output monthly/yearly cost, cost for free users, paid users, etc. so I'd be able to process the information immediately.

    Spreadsheets.. (cough, cough)

  • by replwoacause on 6/8/23, 8:15 PM

    If anybody has suggestions on where those of us taking part in the mass exodus can go, I’m all ears….

  • by polalavik on 6/8/23, 5:40 PM

    can Apollo just switch to supporting Lemmy.ml? That would be nice their UI kinda sucks at the moment.

  • by altairprime on 6/8/23, 7:36 PM

    With the evidence collected and presented, I no longer support my viewpoint in the prior Reddit conversation about this here at HN, and I'm glad to see Christian taking steps to protect himself from Reddit by shutting down and walking away.

  • by goolz on 6/8/23, 9:54 PM

    I am tempted to make an allusion that involves us, the making of foie gras and Reddit's ad-tech supremacy. With Steve being the guy who nails the ducks to the wood, forces the funnel down their throat and. . . well ya, you get the point.

  • by jcmontx on 6/8/23, 7:38 PM

    I seriously don't understand why don't they buy them out, put on some tracking/whatever feature on Apollo and keep business as usual. I'm pretty sure the guy would take a reasonable offer instead of walking out empty handed.

  • by paxys on 6/8/23, 7:34 PM

    Fully understand his stance, but it's a shame that such a great client will be shut down. If nothing else I'm sure making it paid-only and charging like $10/mo (from the current <$1) will still be a sustainable business model.

  • by rsolva on 6/8/23, 10:05 PM

    So, are mods at subreddits considering a move to alternatives like Lemmy?

    Spreading the controll of subreddits over multiple domains and communities is probably the only insurance against ending up in a situation like we are witnessing with Reddit now.

  • by marcell on 6/8/23, 6:44 PM

    Interesting to note that /u/spez hasn't posted anything on reddit for 10 months now: https://old.reddit.com/user/spez

  • by kgbcia on 6/9/23, 11:52 AM

    More reason to use RSS and blogs rather than a centralized politicised website

  • by adoxyz on 6/8/23, 6:00 PM

    And my usage of reddit will close down as well.

    So excited to have all that time back to be honest.

  • by symlinkk on 6/8/23, 6:50 PM

    Why not just pay Reddit for their APIs? If you’re making $20M a year by building an app on their platform, it seems totally fair to pay them $10M a year for access. Do you expect AWS to host your stuff for free too?

  • by askiiart on 6/10/23, 2:46 AM

    Wow, 20th most upvoted HN post of all time!

    Though my excitement about that does make it sound like I'm excited about Reddit's API changes... Social interactions are hard :/

  • by ineedasername on 6/9/23, 12:58 AM

    What’s the viability (I guess legally?) of creating an app that bypasses the API and just scrapes Reddit and parses it to something roughly equivalent to what these 3rd party apps were doing?

  • by ketchupdebugger on 6/8/23, 6:27 PM

    Apollo wont be the only one. This is all for Reddit's greed and trying to increase margins before attempting to IPO. Looks like I'll finally be free of my reddit addiction on July 1st.

  • by weare138 on 6/9/23, 12:31 AM

    Really adds insult to injury having to read about it on reddit.

  • by hokkos on 6/8/23, 9:58 PM

    Why not provide a form in the app to enter your own reddit API token, then a user could register its own pseudo app while staying in the free quota, or use the official reddit app token ;)

  • by MWil on 6/8/23, 7:00 PM

    I deleted my reddit account, a 10 yr old account - saw a bunch of others doing the same. Hopefully they get the message - better yet, hope they RECEIVE the message in the form of karma.

  • by navinag on 6/8/23, 11:10 PM

    Can all the 3rd party apps join hands & create an alternative. It can be open source and users could fund it with donations. Probably a non-profit following a model like signal.

  • by wahahah on 6/8/23, 9:09 PM

    Frankly I'd rather see the apps just launch their own backend.

  • by bluepod4 on 6/8/23, 9:11 PM

    Interesting that the CEO is doing an AMA this Friday to discuss the API. It seems a bit strange to advertise this using a system-wide notification. I imagine most users don’t care.

  • by stagger87 on 6/8/23, 7:42 PM

    Maybe I missed it, but why not just increase Apollo subscription rates to match the new pricing? It sounds like Apollo has a huge following that would be willing to support it. Take advantage of the hate train, tons of people would donate through a subscription model. It also sounds like these third party apps provide much better moderation interfaces, that could a selling point for the rates. Even if your subscriptions drop, it's still profit. I'm sure someone would be willing to do this, I don't understand the reason for not wanting to sell the app either. To me it sounds like the Apollo developer is undervaluing their position.

  • by commiepatrol on 6/8/23, 6:22 PM

    I'm sad about this. I use apollo daily, I really don't like the reddit app one bit. I guess I can still use the old.reddit.com for the 3-4 subreddits I still follow.

  • by Reptur on 6/8/23, 5:46 PM

    I have been browsing Reddit off and on since Digg lost their minds. Apollo was the only IOS app that was good quality for a long time, and it only got better as time passed.

  • by ryneandal on 6/9/23, 1:46 PM

    This will cause me to move on from reddit to some other form of entertainment. probably reading more books/articles/etc.

    I refuse to use their AWFUL first-party app.

  • by jszymborski on 6/8/23, 6:19 PM

    Missed opportunity imho... they should have made apollo its own social network, maybe even a lemmy instance with rooms with identical names to some of the reddit ones.

  • by goolz on 6/8/23, 9:50 PM

    The year is 2030, Reddit is now on it's 38th iteration. Steve and team have been slaving away, year after year, trying to come up with ideas on how to make the loads quicker, memes funnier, all while also pumping in 2000 metric tonnes of adverts/second. As it dawns on them that the app is somehow even slower, they frown. But Steve notices something out of the corner of his eye (despite all of the full page ads)... what could it be? It is a notification that ad-based revenue has gone UP!!! Everyone rejoices, Reddit is saved and Steve-and-Co have once again saved the world. Hooray.

  • by shmde on 6/8/23, 6:37 PM

    I use Sync Pro on Android to browse reddit. That's going out next I guess. Just waiting for old.reddit.com to die so I can finally leave reddit all together.

  • by hold_and_modify on 6/8/23, 5:57 PM

    Welp, there goes my Reddit usage. It's been a good run.

  • by jacksnipe on 6/8/23, 9:50 PM

    Wow, up until this point I thought the Reddit api drama was a bit tragic, but the inevitable endpoint of Reddit being a profit-driven corporation.

    This is straight-up villainy.

  • by 1000100_1000101 on 6/8/23, 6:02 PM

    I don't even use Apollo, so this shouldn't affect me in the slightest... but slandering folks? That's not cool.

    Account deleted, noted the slander as the reason.

  • by Whatarethese on 6/8/23, 5:29 PM

    Just unbelievable. This is just sad. I have no other words.

  • by phoen1k on 6/9/23, 5:48 AM

    Such a clean app. It’s the only way I’ve been using Reddit the past two years. Time to move on… I stopped using it for more than entertainment anyway.

  • by ZacnyLos on 6/8/23, 7:01 PM

    Simply join Lemmy (i.e. beehaw.org) or Kbin (kbin.social).

  • by monksy on 6/8/23, 9:16 PM

    RedditSync and RIF has also made the same announcements.

  • by nerdchum on 6/8/23, 8:18 PM

    Everyone is looking for an alternative Twitter but Reddit is straight up becoming a corporate bad guy and no one is looking for an alternative Reddit.

  • by schappim on 6/8/23, 11:19 PM

    At the time of writing this post is 2505 points 5 hrs in, and it is rapidly falling down the front page. Is this normal or is it being down ranked?

  • by est on 6/9/23, 2:45 AM

    I never used Apollo, but does it use only one single API key?

    Many OpenAI apps or services ask you to config your own key. Does this solves the API price problem?

  • by ChicagoDave on 6/9/23, 1:42 AM

    The big problem Reddit has is it has relied on unpaid moderators to get to their revenue streams.

    Piss off those people and you don’t have a business anymore.

  • by goolz on 6/9/23, 7:56 PM

    Wait why is this consistently getting pushed down below things that have been up longer and way less relevance or upvotes?

  • by dang on 6/9/23, 12:58 AM

    Ok, here are the major threads. Others?

    r/ProgrammerHumor will be shutting down to protest Reddit's API changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36249958 - June 2023 (233 comments)

    Sync will shut down on June 30 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36248234 - June 2023 (88 comments)

    Join our CEO tomorrow to discuss the API - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36246937 - June 2023 (73 comments)

    Reddit is Fun will shut down on June 30th in response to Reddit API changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36246398 - June 2023 (129 comments)

    Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from unpopular API pricing changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36238630 - June 2023 (115 comments)

    Reddit announces plan to lay off 90 workers as subreddits plan mass protest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36237285 - June 2023 (36 comments)

    Reddit's Recently Announced API Changes, and the future of /r/blind - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36231016 - June 2023 (288 comments)

    Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36225583 - June 2023 (134 comments)

    Reddit to lay off about 5% of its workforce - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36223466 - June 2023 (30 comments)

    Redditor creates working anime QR codes using Stable Diffusion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36218281 - June 2023 (100 comments)

    Reddit Laying Off About 90 Employees and Slowing Hiring Amid Restructuring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36218090 - June 2023 (56 comments)

    Reddit permanently bans account of user advocating Lemmy migration - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36215914 - June 2023 (298 comments)

    Reddit’s plan to kill third-party apps sparks widespread protests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36210805 - June 2023 (494 comments)

    Demo: Fully P2P and open source Reddit alternative - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36203610 - June 2023 (230 comments)

    iOS Reddit App Apollo's Developer Surprised by WWDC Callout - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36203277 - June 2023 (27 comments)

    We're joining the Reddit blackout from June 12th to 14th - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36202277 - June 2023 (54 comments)

    Ask HN: Reddit alternatives (that aren't Mastodon) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36199403 - June 2023 (30 comments)

    Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36196343 - June 2023 (213 comments)

    Tell HN: My Reddit account was banned after adding my subs to the protest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36192312 - June 2023 (218 comments)

    Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36187705 - June 2023 (172 comments)

    Don't let Reddit kill 3rd party apps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36179853 - June 2023 (260 comments)

    How Reddit became the enemy [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36177876 - June 2023 (154 comments)

    Update 3: Reddit effectively kills off third party apps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36170143 - June 2023 (23 comments)

    Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36166236 - June 2023 (76 comments)

    Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36162235 - June 2023 (416 comments)

    Fidelity has cut Reddit valuation by 41% since 2021 investment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36157829 - June 2023 (85 comments)

    Ask HN: Could Usenet get revived, to replace the soon to be unusable Reddit? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36153565 - June 2023 (149 comments)

    Teddit – An alternative Reddit front-end focused on privacy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36144211 - May 2023 (93 comments)

    Historical code from reddit.com - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36142971 - May 2023 (64 comments)

    Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36141083 - May 2023 (1292 comments)

    Reddit's API Changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36085422 - May 2023 (25 comments)

  • by GiorgioG on 6/8/23, 7:11 PM

    That IPO will go really well with potential investors knowing the CEO will be on the legal hook for making libelous statements.

  • by cheald on 6/8/23, 6:18 PM

    This is gonna kill reddit. I have no desire to use their horrific official clients. I'd rather just be done with it.

  • by imchillyb on 6/9/23, 5:27 AM

    God money, I'll do anything for you ... God money, just tell me what you want me to ... God money, nail me up against the wall ... God money, don't want everything, he wants it all ... God money's not looking for the cure ... God money's not concerned about the sick among the pure ... God money, let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised ... God money's not one to choose ...

  • by mikestaub on 6/9/23, 9:50 PM

    https://atproto.com is the future

  • by hakube on 6/9/23, 8:26 AM

    Can't he just create a new social platform based on Reddit+Apollo and poach users into that platform?

  • by koobock on 6/9/23, 12:52 AM

    It is okay. We have nostr now. Let's move forward on a platform without a central corporate interest.

  • by sydrawat on 6/11/23, 2:26 AM

    As an avid user of Apollo, I'm going to miss the great UX. It was class apart.

  • by whymauri on 6/8/23, 5:42 PM

    Does anyone know if Reddit has explored acquiring/hiring the Apollo team before? And/or why not?!

  • by jacooper on 6/8/23, 10:19 PM

    It would be very cool if he made the app free so people can actually try it before it gets killed.

  • by TehCorwiz on 6/8/23, 8:09 PM

    Spez just posted that there will be a discussion tomorrow about the API: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ce...

  • by perfectstorm on 6/8/23, 6:59 PM

    why can't reddit just give a 1yr grace period so 3p apps can update their pricing model to account for the new API prices? i know this is what I would do to avoid pissing off a massive use base if i were a decision maker at reddit.

  • by asciimov on 6/8/23, 6:23 PM

    Guess I need to start winding down my time on reddit, the next 3 weeks will go by fast.

  • by BonoboIO on 6/9/23, 12:15 AM

    I would never try to get a refund for Apollo. I got my money’s worth and way more.

  • by Jayakumark on 6/8/23, 6:45 PM

    Will plan my way out of reddit.

  • by yathaid on 6/9/23, 3:01 AM

    A bit of a missed opportunity here. Apollo could have shown users a running total of the API bill that the respective user is incurring and exposed how much Reddit thinks each user is worth. Putting that number in front of users would cause riots IMO. And would have been a delightful goodbye kiss.

  • by auggierose on 6/8/23, 7:22 PM

    Reads to me like this Christian guy asked for 10 mill to shut down his app. Why would they want to pay him that, instead of HIM paying THEM 20 mill? They are happy with him just going away. Sounds to me like a threat without having actually anything in hand to threaten with.

  • by classified on 6/9/23, 6:40 AM

    Never, ever, depend on other people's API for your own survival.

  • by seatac76 on 6/8/23, 6:27 PM

    spez is a comically bad CEO. This should not have been this complicated, if they wanted to kill 3P apps they could have just said that. This is a very Reddit thread () way of handling this!

  • by wnevets on 6/9/23, 4:01 AM

    Reddit claiming the Apollo dev tried to blackmail them is bizarre

  • by pmoriarty on 6/8/23, 8:47 PM

    Can someone please explain to me why users of third-party apps like Apollo don't just use their own API keys and pay for their API calls themselves?

    Why is the third-party app vendor (and not the users themselves) paying for these API calls?

  • by replwoacause on 6/8/23, 8:04 PM

    Wow… the “CEO” of reddit is a clown. I really had no idea.

  • by manx on 6/8/23, 8:43 PM

    Maybe it's time for federated link aggregators.

  • by renewiltord on 6/8/23, 6:11 PM

    I still don't understand why the user flow can't be:

    1. Download Apollo

    2. Go to Reddit.com

    3. Open your user settings

    4. Generate a client_id and client_secret

    5. Paste that into these two places in Apollo

    6. There you go

    Sure it's not strictly to OAuth2, but it's going to work just fine, right?

  • by squegles on 6/8/23, 6:09 PM

    One the best apps on iOS. Will be sad to lose it.

  • by Havoc on 6/8/23, 7:25 PM

    Feels like the beginning of the end for Reddit.

  • by stainablesteel on 6/8/23, 9:28 PM

    i don't plan on buying reddit stock anymore, this is unstable leadership

  • by rewgs on 6/8/23, 7:34 PM

    What an absolute shit show. Reddit is objectively in the wrong here. Like Christian says, I fully agree that Reddit should charge for API access. But this is ridiculous and is simply a transparent (likely successful) attempt to kill 3rd party apps and streamline the "brand."

    Ultimately, this is symptomatic of trying to monetize a service that either a) isn't something people want to pay for, or b) monetizing it in a way that kills the spirit of the service. A common problem with the internet, sure, but also smacks of a complete lack of creativity on the part of the suits. If this were an issue of maintaining Reddit's longevity, they could find a way to have their cake and eat it too. No, this is a clear attempt to raise their value before their IPO, so that a few suits can jump ship when the value is at its highest, as we've seen time and time again. And they're too stupid to see that their efforts fly in the face of their obvious goal.

    Reddit got popular for lots of reasons; a big one was that it was fun and still felt freewheeling in a way that the increasingly corporate internet wasn't. It was still anonymous (if you wanted it to be), weird, communal, much like the early internet that was seemingly disappearing before our eyes, and yet still decently mainstream albeit in a nerdy way.

    Something changed when people started referring to it as "social media." I've always been confused by that label. It's "social," yes, and I guess it is indeed "media," but it's not "social media." It has little in common with Myspace or Facebook or Instagram. It has much more in common with internet forums, albeit with an IMO better interface (the tiered comments design is simple and brilliant, much easier to navigate and keep parallel conversations going than your standard in-line forum). We don't call forums "social media" -- that label is quite loaded and comes with a number of connotations.

    But alas, they tried to monetize it via the same model that all other "social media" is monetized -- with ads, clamping down on the weird, etc.

    This kills the Reddit. Remember Tumblr?

    My prediction? Reddit is going to limp on, but as even more of shadow of its former self than it's already become. It will become the Facebook equivalent of this kind of "social media" -- a distinctly non-hip, safe, boring, corporate place, with an ever-aging user base. One day it will be sold for a comparatively measly fee to someone social media giant that doesn't even exist yet.

    Those who long for the Reddit of old will go off to other places. I myself already spend most of my time on HN anyways -- it's basically everything I want from Reddit and none of what I don't. It's got the "old.reddit.com" interface, doesn't require a mobile app to use on a mobile browser, is information-dense, clean, fast. Content-wise HN and the tech-related subreddits I frequent have a huge amount of overlap both in terms of content and I presume users. For everything else...meh, I can take it or leave it. The hobby subreddits are great, the /r/all comment threads for huge events are great, but all that was the cherry on top, not the cake.

    I'll probably just continue to mostly spend my time here, and check out, say, the various fediverse clones of Reddit. But just like Mastadon with Twitter, it'll be too fragmented to truly replace what everyone is jumping ship from.

    It's sad, but I suppose this is the way of all things. It's new, it's fun, it matures, it's stable, then it decays. So it goes.

  • by I_am_tiberius on 6/8/23, 6:44 PM

    Just deleted my account.

  • by butterisgood on 6/8/23, 7:16 PM

    So back to digg then?

  • by revskill on 6/8/23, 6:30 PM

    What is Apollo ?

  • by officeplant on 6/9/23, 3:12 AM

    I just came here because it hit 1337 comments. Nice.

  • by Sirikon on 6/8/23, 7:02 PM

    Reddit moment

  • by Exuma on 6/8/23, 6:11 PM

    Fuck reddit

  • by zzixp on 6/8/23, 5:58 PM

    Holy shit

  • by kats on 6/9/23, 1:02 AM

    It's so obvious that the Apollo dev is not a good guy.

  • by thdespou on 6/8/23, 6:19 PM

    I don't understand. Why not using the Reddit app?

  • by switch007 on 6/8/23, 7:15 PM

    Reading the transcript, you could tell Steve was trying to bait Christian after hearing "I could make it really easy on you". You can feel the power imbalance. Steve didn't get much but he obviously still felt like it was enough to make the accusations he did. Steve was probably recording too.

    Christian should have had a lawyer sit next to him on that call.

  • by dcow on 6/8/23, 8:43 PM

    Totally agree that Reddit are being glorious ass-munching hentais here. I fucking hate all that Reddit has become as a company and as a product.

    But also, dude just raise your prices. I read the whole announcement and truly don't understand why Apollo can't be $20/year. I don't know anybody who attributes a meaningful difference to $10/year and $20/year. I'm not a user but if I was faced with that type of price change and some language around needing to adjust pricing because Reddit is now charging for API access, I'd not give it a second thought.

    It really really seems weird to want to die on this hill when you don't need to. Maybe it is the harbinger of the end for Reddit and we're just overdue. But I see no reason the founder of a popular Reddit reader couldn't secure some temporary funding to weather the transition, or simply negotiate a longer lead time rather than spending all the time in talks and ugly back and forth.

  • by bagels on 6/8/23, 5:54 PM

    I don't have any dogs in this race, but Apollo should be careful about recording calls. Just because he is in a one-party location doesn't mean he hasn't violated the law wherever the other party is if they are in a two-party location and he didn't have consent from the other party.

  • by retskrad on 6/8/23, 5:41 PM

    The Apollo app had much better performance than the official Reddit app. However, the design of the app was amateurish and hideous to look at. The official Reddit app is actually designed by designers and it shows.