Apollo is dead. Long live Apollo • Hacker News Board

Re: Apollo is dead. Long live Apollo

#91

Post by coufu » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 1:14 AM UTC

Thank you Apollo for all the fun times. You made it way too easy to use Reddit. While you will be missed, I’m glad this is giving me time back in my life.

I’ve already finished two books since the new API pricing was revealed, and I am NOT a book reader (having read less than 10 books in my lifetime, and I’m turning 40 this year). But I’m happy to be becoming one.

Bye Reddit. I hope one day your corporate leaders will look back and realize the error of their ways and how they single-handedly destroyed countless online communities practically overnight.

Re: Apollo is dead. Long live Apollo

#92

Post by toyg » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 1:14 AM UTC

throwaway630000 wrote: post #66

Probably would have been interesting to relaunch the Apollo with its own backend as a direct competitor to Reddit. I think one simple push notification would've pulled millions of the most active users over to the new service

Hardly simple.

Who recreates all subreddits? Re-establishes all the mods? Re-subscribes all the users? And all the while on a brand-new implementation that has to immediately scale to millions of users flawlessly.

That's a lot of work.

Re: Apollo is dead. Long live Apollo

#93

Post by kemayo » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 1:15 AM UTC

shagie wrote: post #82

MBCook wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t blame Christian. Spez, on a whim, decided to basically destroy his livelihood, with basically no notice. Then Spez kept doubling down and accused Christian of extortion, repeating the accusations after it was proven they were false. I would sell the app even if they reversed course. I wouldn’t trust they wouldn’t do it again. I wouldn’t trust they’d ruin me some other way. If they had said “we’re doing this i…

I'm not sure how much of a whim Reddit had. A Virginia law was signed into effect on May 12th that required commercial entities that distributed "material harmful to minors" to verify the age of the users or be exposed to civil penalties. That law goes into effect in 3 hours.

I don't see how that could be related to reddit charging for their API.

Re: Apollo is dead. Long live Apollo

#94

Post by aeyes » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 1:15 AM UTC

shagie wrote: post #82

MBCook wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t blame Christian. Spez, on a whim, decided to basically destroy his livelihood, with basically no notice. Then Spez kept doubling down and accused Christian of extortion, repeating the accusations after it was proven they were false. I would sell the app even if they reversed course. I wouldn’t trust they wouldn’t do it again. I wouldn’t trust they’d ruin me some other way. If they had said “we’re doing this i…

I'm not sure how much of a whim Reddit had. A Virginia law was signed into effect on May 12th that required commercial entities that distributed "material harmful to minors" to verify the age of the users or be exposed to civil penalties. That law goes into effect in 3 hours.

NSFW content didn't show without an account for years. What's the difference between using the same account in the official app or on the website or third party apps?

Additionally one of the API changes which also goes is into effect is that they won't serve NSFW content on the paid API. So even if you pay you only get half of Reddit.

Re: Apollo is dead. Long live Apollo

#95

Post by akkartik » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 1:16 AM UTC

lousken wrote: post #11

So where is everybody going after reddit?

One option not mentioned so far: gemini://bbs.geminispace.org

Also +1 to https://tildes.net

The important thing: use multiple sites to hedge your habits against such issues.

Re: Apollo is dead. Long live Apollo

#96

Post by datenyan » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 1:17 AM UTC

adrr wrote: post #72

tayo42 wrote: post #35

I'm curious what happens to reddit now. I'm guessing just auto pilot of low effort content. Don't think it'll truly die as far as numbers go.

Nothing. Apollo was less than 1% of users. It would be interesting to a see a survey to see what population of Reddit was affected by these changes or cared.

I think the bigger issue is that Apollo (and other apps such as RIF) were amazing tools for moderators, with the official app lacking a lot of features the unofficial clients had.

Re: Apollo is dead. Long live Apollo

#97

Post by shagie » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 1:18 AM UTC

throwaway630000 wrote: post #66

Probably would have been interesting to relaunch the Apollo with its own backend as a direct competitor to Reddit. I think one simple push notification would've pulled millions of the most active users over to the new service

That would have required negotiating image hosting, having a significant amount of server power and storage space, dealing with laws about who can see what, and active moderation until volunteers can be found to moderate the content. Having someone to deal with DMCA requests and age verification laws.

If it wasn't a subscription service (that had to front load a lot of its costs), it also involves getting advertisers for people who are demonstrably hostile to advertisements on board.

This requires hiring more than a few people and investing a bit into the infrastructure needed. It isn't just "hey, gonna spin up a server that is API compatible with reddit and switch everyone over."

Re: Apollo is dead. Long live Apollo

#98

Post by exploringfalse » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 1:19 AM UTC

I can honestly say that I have no intention to continue using reddit on any mobile device without apps like Apollo, Sync etc. A real shame, because I found reddit communities made over hobbies to be such a good source of anecdotal information.

Re: Apollo is dead. Long live Apollo

#99

Post by jdalgetty » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 1:24 AM UTC

I guess this is how we break our addictions. Feels bad though.

Re: Apollo is dead. Long live Apollo

#100

Post by kemayo » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 1:24 AM UTC

mptest wrote: post #89

wardedVibe wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not really, it'd be outside the garden wall, and thus not monetizable by reddit

Can reddit issue requests to archive or whichever site is used to do it and have them taken down ? Or worse yet, rebuild their deleted history from the archives and THEN issue takedowns? I am realizing I have no serious idea how archival of digital content works legally.

User-provided content is provided under a license between the user providing it and the site hosting it -- inherently, because otherwise the site wouldn't be allowed to do anything with it at all. Generally this takes the form of the site's ToS saying that the user gives the site a perpetual license to use the content however they want, but generally not an exclusive license.

As such, and I'm not a lawyer and can't promise this is true, I suspect that reddit couldn't actually do takedowns on someone who's archiving their user-provided content. Any specific user whose content was archived without their consent could do so, however.