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Apollo will close down on June 30th

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Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#461

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

proxiful-wash wrote: post #203
goles wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this the same guy who went and edited comments of users who were critical of him on Reddit? If someone shows you who they are believe them…

Its the same guy who has let the entire platform be exploited for years at the expense of the people just wanting to connect about subjects online.

He’s also got a pretty sweet panic bunker, guns, food, and fuel supplies stashed away so when the division and panic he directly benefits from comes to a flash point he can ride it out safely.

Steve Huffman is not a good person.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#462

Post by circularfoyers »

jonas21 wrote: post #427
wolpoli wrote: post #29

> 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.

It sounds to me like the conversation went in a way that it could be interpreted as a threat. This is from the Apollo developer's own telling of the story: > As said, a common suggestion across the many threads on this topic was "If third-party apps are costing Reddit so much money, why don't they just buy them out like they did Alien Blue?" That was the point I brought up. If running Apollo as it stands now would co…

How is he making things difficult for them?

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#463

Post by rvz »

oldtownroad wrote: post #26
rvz wrote: post #7

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.ycombinato…

The tired “don’t build on someone else’s api” lesson doesn’t apply to this case because Apollo is specifically a method for accessing Reddit: Apollo wouldn’t exist without Reddit. The outcome here is sad, yes, but the author built a wildly successful app and made great money for close to a decade: a disappointing end does not discredit the journey. (Ps. your obsession with citing yourself is one of the worst parts of…

> (Ps. your obsession with citing yourself is one of the worst parts of reading HN)

Good. I don't care.

It is a priceless prediction that became true. Hence how unsurprising this is.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#464

Post by an-allen »

bhtru wrote: post #448
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,…

Reading the transcripts and listening to the audio and seeing how Reddit is behaving is a fucking wild ride. I use old.reddit.com on mobile and desktop so I'm not directly effected by these changes aside from the likely steep decline in moderation quality as longstanding mods lose their tools. I feel compelled to migrate from reddit and only utilize it as a resource for knowledge when it's the only resource for some…

I second this. I’ve deleted all the social media, except Reddit. When I see an organisation acting like this - its toxicity. Deleting reddit. I look forward tothe hours of my life back.

Bye bye.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#465

Post by antonjs »

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.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#466

Post by paxys »

Invictus0 wrote: post #127
falcolas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

Patagonia didn't take VC money, and reddit wouldn't have even survived this long if they hadn't

> and reddit wouldn't have even survived this long if they hadn't

The parts of Reddit that people actually like – a single lightweight web app (old.reddit.com) minus all the fluff (constant redesigns, broken video player, live streaming service, overengineered mobile apps, avatars, NFTs, coins/gifts, social networking, chat, clubhouse competitor, expensive acquisitions) – would have survived perfectly well without VC money.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#467

Post by ARandumGuy »

flanbiscuit wrote: post #421

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 w…

The main issue is there isn't enough time to implement such a solution. You have to develop this new system of handling API keys, communicate this change to customers, develop a process to migrate users, and figure out what to do with people who paid for an entire year of access 3 months ago. All of that is a herculean task for a small dev team to accomplish in 30 days.

That's not even dealing with the fact that this process would be difficult for users to actually use, and may run afoul of Apple's app store rules.

While that solution may be appealing to tech-savy end users, it's completely untenable for a popular app, especially given the tight time window required.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#470

Post by sroussey »

bardfinn wrote: post #417
mustacheemperor wrote: post #150

Earlier 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…

Their fight with ad blocking is the same Cold War every other social media site has. If they’re serving ads off of distinctly named infrastructure, or even distinctly subnetted or IP-addressed infrastructure, an adblocking router config will kill them no matter, & there’d be people writing those and distributing them. Their only hope would be to serve ads inline with content, to defeat those. Which … they already do,…

Ad blocking companies then come to publishers with extortion payment plans.
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