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Apollo Back end just made public

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Re: Apollo Back end just made public

#91

Post by andremedeiros »

aniforprez wrote: post #47
yosito wrote: post #38

GitHub repo link, in case Reddit deletes the thread: https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend Interestingly, this seems to just be a proof of concept, and the repo is archived. While the developer of the Apollo front end is getting screwed in this whole debacle, this seems to me like an opportunity. He could literally build an alternate Reddit back end (ok, pay someone to do it, if he doesn't want to do it hi…

This backend does very very little outside of continually polling the reddit API for new messages and some other sundry tasks for operating the iOS app. There's nothing here that suggests any of this could be built out to a full fledged social media backend that is similar to reddit. Not to detract from the work being done but it's for a very specific use case: supporting adding features to the app frontend

This is bang on.

Re: Apollo Back end just made public

#92

Post by eterm »

pjc50 wrote: post #78
eterm wrote: post #21

Politically reddit have played a blinder. They've succeeded in killing their main competitor (in terms of ad share) and could even now walk back the api charges for any smaller operators and leave Apollo dead and avoid the biggest backlash. It's scummy as hell and I won't want to continue to contributing to reddit, but I can't help but feel they've been shrewd in getting what they wanted.

Does Apollo have any ad share?

It doesn't show adverts that otherwise would be shown on the official reddit app.

Sync is similar. I have a one-time purchase for "ad free" Sync. That stops me seeing adverts I would see in the official app for a fraction of the cost of reddit premium.

Re: Apollo Back end just made public

#93

Post by LeSaucy »

andremedeiros wrote: post #82
Waterluvian wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made something that people got a lot of value out of. That’s incredible. The actual code and commits are just the journey. They’re not the product. I’m rather delighted every time someone shows a realistic journey full of all the things we all experience, but some of us pretend don’t happen. Thanks for being vulnerable and sharing this.

This is an amazing way to look at it. Thank you for your perspective <3

Any developer should be proud of the value that code/backend provided millions of users.

Re: Apollo Back end just made public

#94

Post by re-thc »

seanalltogether wrote: post #67
andremedeiros wrote: post #4

Hi all! I wrote this code, and for educational purposes, I’d be more than happy to answer any questions. A gentle reminder that the whole history is here for show. This is very vulnerable — you can see the times I was in a rush, or when I took my time. You’ll find my mistakes. Either way, all I ask is please be kind. I know there are 50 things I could have done better, but this is a product of the reality at the time…

So am I right in thinking that the backend was needed to poll the user account in order to generate notification? Was that one of the issues that reddit had with how apollo was using their apis?

> Was that one of the issues that reddit had with how apollo was using their apis?

I doubt reddit had any actual issues other than it impacting profits and no optimization to Apollo would fix it.

Re: Apollo Back end just made public

#95

Post by Grimburger »

andremedeiros wrote: post #4

Hi all! I wrote this code, and for educational purposes, I’d be more than happy to answer any questions. A gentle reminder that the whole history is here for show. This is very vulnerable — you can see the times I was in a rush, or when I took my time. You’ll find my mistakes. Either way, all I ask is please be kind. I know there are 50 things I could have done better, but this is a product of the reality at the time…

Don't be ashamed of code you wrote that wasn't intended for an audience.

Most would hate to see what a sausage gets made out of, but nearly everyone will eat that same sausage.

Re: Apollo Back end just made public

#96

Post by lolinder »

wongarsu wrote: post #63
londons_explore wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some companies, for example Ticketmaster, PR disasters are fine. They don't affect the profitability of the company, nor the user base.

However if a company's CEO holds a reddit AMA that company probably does care what the public thinks.

Or that company cares what the Reddit community thinks and is convinced that they have an ace in the hole. An ace like, say, having full control over the platform and being able to make the AMA look like it goes however they want it to.

Re: Apollo Back end just made public

#97

Post by tester457 »

542458 wrote: post #52
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #12

What if all the blackout communities move to an open source, community funded, community owned and run version of Apollo? I’d be happy to try and convince my 100k community to Apollo and if the UX is similar for web and mobile then I’m not sure switching costs would be that high during the blackout. I’d help fund it but all my money is wrapped up in my trash cooperative.

I haven’t seen a compelling OS alternative to Reddit yet. The ones I’ve seen have all either been big on decentralization at the expense of long load times and a lot of UI complexity, or big on 4chan-style dialogue with little moderation. Neither of those sounds like a great migration path. IMO this is the same problem “migrate off Twitter” efforts had.

Have you seen Tildes?

- incredible moderation and respectful community

- you can't sort by controversial

- non-profit, no investors can corrupt it

- beautifully simple UI, better than old.reddit on mobile

- fast and not decentralized

- no images just text

- open source

- The site is the main mobile interface, not an app

- No limits to logged-out browsing

- Completely functional for browsing without javascript

- Zero third-party scripts/assets during normal use

- Uses modern versions of simple, reliable, "boring" technology

https://docs.tildes.net/philosophy/site-implementation

Re: Apollo Back end just made public

#98

Post by andremedeiros »

malone wrote: post #48
notRobot wrote: post #10

> The goal of making the code for this repo available is to show that despite statements otherwise by Reddit administrators, Apollo does not scrape anything and users purely authenticated Reddit API requests, and does a great deal of work to ensure the Reddit API rate limits are respected.

If this is true why does Apollo need its own server at all? Couldn't the client make requests directly to the reddit api servers instead? Then each user could use their own api key, rather than Apollo having to pay millions for a single key that accommodates everyone.

Theoretically it could do it all from the app, but it would have to resort to background updates, which are scheduled at iOS’ discretion. Christian was aiming for consistency, which is why this exists.

Re: Apollo Back end just made public

#99

Post by bee_rider »

yosito wrote: post #38

GitHub repo link, in case Reddit deletes the thread: https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend Interestingly, this seems to just be a proof of concept, and the repo is archived. While the developer of the Apollo front end is getting screwed in this whole debacle, this seems to me like an opportunity. He could literally build an alternate Reddit back end (ok, pay someone to do it, if he doesn't want to do it hi…

Running a social media site and handling all the moderation and other legal issues seems like

* a giant headache

* a totally different skill set from building an app

Anyway the code is o̶p̶e̶n̶ ̶s̶o̶u̶r̶c̶e̶ probably going to be open source soon and his company is probably not going to keep working on it now that Reddit has basically wiped out their business model, so we may as well ask why don’t you or I fork the code and then create the social media site?

Re: Apollo Back end just made public

#100

Post by acatton »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #2

All this backlash is going to kill Reddit. It will take a thousand little cuts for sure, but it started the moment they announced their ludicrous pricing.

Reddit's doom has been announced over and over again since they started raising the bar for what is an "acceptable" sub-reddit in 2011.

The reality is that Reddit hasn't ceased growing since then. The same thing happened with YouTube. YouTube pushed its content to switch from filthyfrank to Jimmy Kimmel/Fallon. Advertisers are not interested in us, early-adopters, mostly young and middle-aged western males. They want kids and soccer-moms: they're less likely to install an ad-blocker, and have a much wider range of products for which they're the target audience.

I think we need to understand that we were never the target audience.

Reddit, like YouTube, will do more than fine. The early-adopters just won't be part of it.

My hope is that we will go back to independently ran niche-community bulletin-boards, like in the 2000s with phpBB, instead of piggy-backing on some other new for-profit corporate walled-garden.

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