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

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#481

Post by scinerio » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 7:36 PM UTC

jffry wrote: post #257

brycewray wrote: post #165

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…

For anybody who would like to mass delete their own comments and submissions: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite/

This seems like a much more effective protest vs. subreddits going dark.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#482

Post by edgyquant » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 7:36 PM UTC

thx-2718 wrote: post #106

HDThoreaun wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The quality of Reddit comments has never been particularly high. Sure there are quality posts, but like other social media most posts are essentially spam and those that aren’t inaccurate/hyperbolic or just memes.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#483

Post by altairprime » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 7:36 PM UTC

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.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#484

Post by kilroy123 » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 7:36 PM UTC

ellisd wrote: post #118

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.

12-year here, but before that, I was a lurker. I quit using Reddit two years ago. Haven't looked back.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#485

Post by kedean » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 7:37 PM UTC

Demmme wrote: post #290

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…

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…

You're neglecting the tools and bots that use the API, which are heavily utilized by most mod teams. One of the pillars of reddit is unpaid moderators, and if the tools that make that job doable on the scale of reddit stop working, then you will see a mass exodus of those unpaid moderators. That means the death of most of the big, well moderated communities like AskHistorians, AskScience, AITA, etc.

I've already seen many of these subs having moderator led discussions about relocation options for the communities.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#486

Post by brainbag » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 7:37 PM UTC

WeylandYutani wrote: post #350

SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #287

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.

Agreed. All those 3rd party apps were blocking ads and trackers. Hell you can't even browse Reddit without an account anymore!

They were not "blocking" ads and trackers, those features are not exposed by the API. They couldn't do it even if they wanted to, which was discussed at some point.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#487

Post by rewgs » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 7:37 PM UTC

bogwog wrote: post #254

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #182

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…

Yeah this guy didn't handle this situation very well. I don't know if it would've been possible to save Apollo for reddit, but that call didn't help at all. Also, what's the deal with him not wanting to start a competitor? That's like his only bargaining chip in this situation, and he's just throwing it away because he feels overwhelmed and wants to make iOS widgets. I totally sympathize with him and how this situati…

> Also, what's the deal with him not wanting to start a competitor?

Yeah, what's the deal with this iOS developer not wanting to start a competitor to checks notes one of the largest websites in the world? Surely you just up and did that last week, it's no big deal.

I guess I should start getting used to saying "Jesus christ, HN" now that I won't be saying "Jesus christ, Reddit" anymore.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#488

Post by skeaker » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 7:37 PM UTC

iLoveOncall wrote: post #236

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…

So the bad guys are not the ones making an alternative client that makes money off of Reddit while not displaying their ads? Oh, okay. Those 3rd party apps are leeches that are playing surprised_pikachu.jpeg when the blood supply is cut. The simple fact that this guy has to reimburse 250K of subscriptions shows the insane amount of money he made off of the back of Reddit.

That money is pennies to reddit. Apollo was around long before the official app and established a majority mobile userbase which you could argue helped build reddit into what it is today. I guarantee you it 100% made reddit more money than it made the developer of the app. Reddit is the bad guy for slandering him and gaslighting their users at every turn, yes.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#489

Post by wlesieutre » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 7:38 PM UTC

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%.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#490

Post by bbatsell » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 7:38 PM UTC

bardfinn wrote: post #414

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…

[flagged]

The “free” limits are per-app, not per-user. Any API call using Apollo’s OAuth client_id and client_secret is attributed to Apollo’s limits and then API usage, whether it comes directly from a user’s device or through another server.

Reddit has never provided access to its ads to third-parties, and now third-party apps are banned from showing any advertising at all.