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

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#811

Post by Nition » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 11:17 PM UTC

duped wrote: post #312

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…

They did make i.reddit.com which was a nice, fast, usable mobile site with no ads, and no app required.

They shut it down two months ago.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#812

Post by isocle » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 11:18 PM UTC

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.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#813

Post by schappim » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 11:19 PM UTC

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?

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#814

Post by flanbiscuit » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 11:22 PM UTC

what_ever wrote: post #605

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…

Reddit Sync as well - https://old.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/144jp3w/sync_wi...

This has been my Reddit app for ages. I've paid for the Pro version a long time ago. Sad to this go.

I'm not throwing in the towel like most people are, but I will just relegate myself to viewing it only in a desktop browser. We'll see how long old.reddit.com lasts after this

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#815

Post by wvenable » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 11:34 PM UTC

hiram112 wrote: post #752

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…

What refunds will he need to provide? I paid for the app years ago - it was $5 or so and I don't expect to get anything back. That's just how the game works. I know he also had some sort of monthly subscription - it seemed quite absurd for whatever additional trivial features it provided, but then again there apparently was some sort of Apollo fanboy group who got a lot of excitement out of new app logos, which seeme…

You can buy a year of Apollo Ultra in advance and 50,000 people have done just that.

I bet he was making enough that he didn't need another job but not significantly more than that.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#816

Post by elbigbad » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 11:51 PM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #338

thih9 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for about an hour To be fair, this doesn't seem that bad, especially in comparison to the API price hike and their handling of it.

I can't believe people are pretending to be outraged about something so boring. Oh no, a forum admin trolled a user in a troll subreddit, qué horror! The thread he changed the comments in was filled with users literally accusing multiple innocent people of being pedophiles who ate children, but sure, it's a bridge too far to change the user tag of comments literally threatening him rather than e.g. banning everyone w…

It’s also, like, Reddit. Not some financial or health database. It’s an Internet forum largely populated by literal children and teens.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#817

Post by gigel82 » Thu, Jun 08, 2023, 11:58 PM UTC

replwoacause wrote: post #588

Exuma wrote: post #233

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...

Christian came off somewhat flippantly and didn’t sound particularly experienced, but overall I trust his account of things. The reddit CEO seems like a weirdo to me.

You can hear the frustration in his voice, I recognize that tone very well :)

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#818

Post by colinrand » Fri, Jun 09, 2023, 12:00 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #508

colinrand wrote: post #321

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.

That's already happened; if that were the reason, they'd be trying to close the barn after the horses have already crossed into another state.

it's not a one time scrape, but a continual tuning

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#819

Post by BonoboIO » Fri, Jun 09, 2023, 12:15 AM UTC

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

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#820

Post by johnnyanmac » Fri, Jun 09, 2023, 12:19 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #775

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…

> 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 would like to be astounded. But Reddit has taken $1.4 billion in venture capital, meaning they are expected to make VCs well more than that. And one way that can happen is aggressiv…

>I suspect that they were thinking nobody would catch them like this. Or that even if they did, people would have forgotten by the IPO pop.

Yeah true. Still seems like a legally asinine thing to do. It was really as simple as "I did not see eye to eye with Apollo" and you can power trip all you want after that.

I don't know if there is a slander case here, but a C level executive shouldn't even risk it to begin with.

likely not, given how strong libel/slander laws in the U.S. are. Funnily enough, correcting the story so quickly before damages were done may have weakened a case.