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…
Oh wow, "pull to refresh" was invented by one of these indie clients? Do you remember which one?
Apollo will close down on June 30th
381–390 of 1001 posts
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#382I’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?
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is really astounding to see the CEO of Reddit being caught in a blatant lie denigrating a third party developer whose work has done a lot for the platform and who has the ear of a reasonably sized and loud portion of the community. I really hadn’t expected that. Corporate doublespeak is one thing, and management decisions aren’t necessarily always in the interest of their users - but such an egregious act is reall…
I actually believe reddit when they say the impact is small I'm using reddit for ages and never even considered anything besides their website. If the traffic to their site is primarily from the web (or web mobile or the official Reddit app), the client (3th party) users are only a loud minority. Of course I think the behavior is shitty but I don't think most people really care and reddit will not see any real impact…
If they are insignificant, then it's a really stupid bad-PR hill to die on.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is really astounding to see the CEO of Reddit being caught in a blatant lie denigrating a third party developer whose work has done a lot for the platform and who has the ear of a reasonably sized and loud portion of the community. I really hadn’t expected that. Corporate doublespeak is one thing, and management decisions aren’t necessarily always in the interest of their users - but such an egregious act is reall…
I actually believe reddit when they say the impact is small I'm using reddit for ages and never even considered anything besides their website. If the traffic to their site is primarily from the web (or web mobile or the official Reddit app), the client (3th party) users are only a loud minority. Of course I think the behavior is shitty but I don't think most people really care and reddit will not see any real impact…
So if the impact of the change is so small, why does the CEO of this company with thousands of employees feel remotely compelled to concoct a fantasy story where the Apollo developer is an evil villain that is so unbelievable and verifiably unbelievable it doesn't last six hours before blowing up in his face?
Even if you completely accept these policy changes as a long-term positive for reddit's growth, how can you have confidence in that leadership? How can you trust anything they tell you as an investor?
Steve has some kind of problem. It's been apparent before with editing comments in the live db, and it's apparent now. This problem is a risk for reddit. "Don't lie on or about phone calls" is pretty basic risk management and he can't handle it.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is really astounding to see the CEO of Reddit being caught in a blatant lie denigrating a third party developer whose work has done a lot for the platform and who has the ear of a reasonably sized and loud portion of the community. I really hadn’t expected that. Corporate doublespeak is one thing, and management decisions aren’t necessarily always in the interest of their users - but such an egregious act is reall…
I actually believe reddit when they say the impact is small I'm using reddit for ages and never even considered anything besides their website. If the traffic to their site is primarily from the web (or web mobile or the official Reddit app), the client (3th party) users are only a loud minority. Of course I think the behavior is shitty but I don't think most people really care and reddit will not see any real impact…
And this belief is based on what exactly? If you think critically about this, it stands to reason that the impact should not be small if it's worth it to Reddit to get people off of 3rd party mobile apps and put eyes on ads in the first party app.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#386I 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…
> Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose his job over this? If spez wasn’t fired on the spot for abusing his power to manually edit posts critical of him, why would you expect them to sack him over something that actually has a legitimate business angle?
What an extremely strange equivalence you've drawn.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#387Remember 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.
Yeah, the way people stop using a platform is usually by slowly losing interest and visiting less and less.
People making dramatic announcements of departure, on the other hand, are actually extremely engaged with the platform and rarely make good on their promise.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#388This 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…
Oh wow, "pull to refresh" was invented by one of these indie clients? Do you remember which one?
Tweetie for iOS
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#389I 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, Reddi…
The post mentions that Reddit calculates a $20M/yr opportunity cost to allowing Apollo to continue running as-is. Apollo is trying to say that $10M one-time is a bargain if Reddit truly believes the users are worth $20M/yr.
I don't think Apollo is using this argument as some sort of leverage. Reading through the post, they seem well aware that they are defenseless. They only have the court of public opinion.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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? Why would they? In fact, lots of people were already frustrated with the handling of "lifetime access" while having ads being pushed. A business, Apollo, made an offer (lifetime access) to gain marketshare. It worked as Apollo is the defacto Reddit App for iOS. Now they cannot…
> Why would they? > A business, Apollo, made an offer (lifetime access) to gain marketshare. It worked as Apollo is the defacto Reddit App for iOS. Now they cannot hold true to their offer, so they're forced to refund it. This is the price of the bargain Apollo made. That's practically the definition of tortious interference. https://www.findlaw.com/smallbusiness/liability-and-insuranc... "The most common form of [to…
No, it's not the definition of tortious interference.
Reddit did not force or induce Apollo to break a contract with its own customers. Apollo unilaterally chose to do that because it could not afford continued access to Reddit's APIs, which Reddit was not under a legal obligation to continue providing at historical rates that Apollo had based its entire product around, despite long-standing advice not to do so.