Apollo will close down on June 30th • Hacker News Board

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#101

Post by falcolas » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 6:02 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #74

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,…

> "Don't be evil" is simply impossible for large corporations

I see Patagonia as the antithesis of this broadly accepted assertion.

It's possible, it just takes having a goal for your company that's more than greed.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#102

Post by teamspirit » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 6:02 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #46

nkotov wrote: post #9

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.

And exactly what are they losing from business perspective? Few users that generate only costs?

That's the thing, to use an overused adage: it's a feature not a bug. They want these people gone. They calculated their contributions and decided it won't hurt, or hurt badly enough, for them to care. They'll all make millions on the IPO, step away, and sell. None of this makes a difference to that master plan. The sooner everyone accepts this the less time will get wasted on trying to convince Reddit this is a mistake. It's not a bug.

Reddit is a shell of what it was when I started on the platform 14+ years ago.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#103

Post by 1000100_1000101 » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 6:02 PM UTC

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.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#104

Post by d1str0 » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 6:02 PM UTC

Scarblac wrote: post #81

justusthane wrote: post #12

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.

I had never heard of it before this. Could he just make a backend for it and take his users with him?

Might be a pretty big legal argument if he just copied Reddit backend functionality. Would probably have to redesign the front end from the ground up as well to make it clear it’s not just a rip off.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#105

Post by gnoop » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 6:02 PM UTC

mr90210 wrote: post #13

Whatarethese wrote: post #6

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

Don’t be. Sometimes businesses such as Reddit must make bad decisions so that new players emerge. That’s exactly how it’s been, and people jump to alternatives when such platforms start acting out.

One thing I've noted is that online forums have expanded and consolidated a few times over the decades. We saw expansion to start, back with BBSes, then consolidation to FidoNet, Usenet, and services like AOL. Web forums took us into expansion. Link aggregators and meme sites moved toward some consolidation. Reddit is basically Usenet 2.0.

I suspect we may see another round of forum expansion again as people want to carve out their own niche communities again. We might not see Usenet 3.0 for a bit while we let people expand then let a new site come along and consolidate.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#106

Post by thx-2718 » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 6:03 PM UTC

HDThoreaun wrote: post #37

robbiet480 wrote: post #14

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 recor…

Other social media companies seem far less ethical to me. Facebook still has tons of employees even though they treat users much worse than reddit. In the end reddit is a business that exists to make money. They were never going to let third party apps that undercut ad revenue exist forever.

It's a weird balance right?

You'd think letting 3rd party developed apps for your platform frees up resources you would otherwise put in to develop your own app.

Individuals that use third party apps are probably power users so they're the one's submitting content and writing good comments. The very backbone to what brings people to the platform.

With quality of submissions and comments going down then presumably the number of actual visiters to the site will also go down. Thus lowering potential revenue.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#107

Post by smodo » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 6:03 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #46

nkotov wrote: post #9

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.

And exactly what are they losing from business perspective? Few users that generate only costs?

The opportunity to stand out from other enshittified platforms. But I guess now we need to find a new thing for VCs to fund for us. Maybe an app that pretends to use AI to create memes or something.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#108

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

chomp wrote: post #97

19h wrote: post #45

Can’t Apollo be open-sourced and the tokens of the original app be used? I’d absolutely donate on a monthly basis.

You'd likely have to enter an API agreement with Reddit, and it's unlikely they'd be willing to run you through the sales funnel and write up a contract just sell you what's effectively a $3/mo API plan. That said, open sourcing the app would be great to archive it for posterity.

If you didn't have a need to post, I would assume Apollo could be update to allow one to specify a Teddit/libreddit instance's API (which would act as a caching proxy for reddit). You'd be able to get a similar experience without relying on Reddit directly.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#109

Post by tshaddox » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #46

nkotov wrote: post #9

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.

And exactly what are they losing from business perspective? Few users that generate only costs?

It’s an ads business, so the game is always “giving away a huge number of requests for free to monetize an extremely tiny portion of those requests.” So as soon as bean counters look at the books, it’s easy to be tempted to just identify cohorts of those requests that are unlikely to convert and cut off those users.

It takes someone who is more than just a bean counter to realize that maybe, just maybe, the only reason people are interested in those free requests in the first place is because of the communities on Reddit that bring all the actual value.

And who knows, maybe one day everyone will realize that the “free social media monetized by ads” business just totally sucks and can only ever lead to situations like this.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#110

Post by whymauri » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

Marsymars wrote: post #75

whymauri wrote: post #30

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

Well a) the Apollo team is two people and b) why would they? Reddit’s priority is monetization. Acquiring/hiring the Apollo team doesn’t help that goal.

Monetization and growth go hand-in-hand. I'm an old.reddit.com user (even on MoWeb, I know I'm a psycho), but the way people talk about Apollo is like it's absolutely superior to the current Reddit app. If I were Reddit, and my users loved this third-party product _so much_, I would at least explore promoting Apollo to a first-class interface for browsing Reddit.

For the scale of Reddit as a company, it's likely a trivial deal; whereas the cross-pollination of ideas and UI/UX learnings could easily be worth more than the cost of collaborating.