A lot of weird jerks caping for a company that is not profitable over a millionaire solo dev who tried to blackmail said company and failed who is now begging people not to accept a refund to help them continue to be a millionaire.
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Apollo Now Offers Option to Decline Refund Ahead of June 30 Shutdown
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Did you actually listen to the audio recordings? He did not blackmail anyone. Reddit CEO even apologized three times for the misunderstanding.
Haha if this was true imagine how incredibly stupid the “non profitable” company would have to be to not work with this supposed millionaire who has supposedly amassed a huge amount of wealth with only a tiny fraction of the user base that Reddit is completely unable to monetize.
If this was remotely true Reddit should fire Spez on the spot and hire Selig because he’s obviously several hundred times the businessman compared to anyone at Reddit.
While I am fully supportive of third-party apps such as Apollo using Reddit's API, I also would not hesitate to proceed with a refund. Unfortunately, I am a lifetime subscriber to Apollo so I am not eligible. I feel for the dev and this situation, but as others have said, Reddit is unprofitable and Apollo has made millions off of a free API for many years. Apollo absolutely 100% has the funds to refund everyone - it is a highly profitable app given that the API was free and I assume it was a very small team (perhaps even just Christian as the sole full-time employee).
Nothing wrong with getting a refund for a yearly subscription you paid for and did not fully receive. You can get a refund and still be supportive of Apollo and lowering the API cost structure.
The miscommunication between Apollo and Reddit was very unfortunate - and Apollo very clearly burned their bridge. I listened to the bits of audio recordings that were released, and I don't think the off-the-cuff remark "pay to go silent" should have been used, even if it was a misunderstanding indeed. It was a poor choice of words and much too informal for the very important conversation that it was.
Anyways, I've downloaded Reddit app and all will continue for me. My first instinct was to give up Reddit, but upon further consideration - nope - the Reddit app is fine.
Nothing wrong with getting a refund for a yearly subscription you paid for and did not fully receive. You can get a refund and still be supportive of Apollo and lowering the API cost structure.
The miscommunication between Apollo and Reddit was very unfortunate - and Apollo very clearly burned their bridge. I listened to the bits of audio recordings that were released, and I don't think the off-the-cuff remark "pay to go silent" should have been used, even if it was a misunderstanding indeed. It was a poor choice of words and much too informal for the very important conversation that it was.
Anyways, I've downloaded Reddit app and all will continue for me. My first instinct was to give up Reddit, but upon further consideration - nope - the Reddit app is fine.
I
It’s fine now. He’s currently begging for people not to accept a refund for services he can’t provide meanwhile there are people who can’t afford fresh tomatoes.
Apollo should have paid a few hundred and had an attorney speak for Him. He sounded terrible and was pretty clear he was hoping for a buyout to keep quiet. He would have sold every single user downstream for a payout. But that’s only from the recordings HE CHOSE TO RELEASE hahah
It’s fine now. He’s currently begging for people not to accept a refund for services he can’t provide meanwhile there are people who can’t afford fresh tomatoes.
Apollo and Reddit are two VERY DIFFERENT companies.
Apollo is essentially a very nice, high quality user-interface. It runs solely off of an API that was previously FREE. So, as you can imagine, it is much easier to profitable when you have such a substantial asset available at no cost. They still had to run their own servers for various things like notifications - but that paled in comparison to the billions of API calls they were using.
Reddit on the other hand is full-fledged social media company - their traffic and data use is immense - and they likely have hundreds if not thousands of employees across multiple global offices.
The cost structure and ability to monetize are vastly different between the two businesses. Put simply: Apollo can't exist without Reddit, but Reddit can/will exist without Apollo
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Just goes to show you have an agenda against the dev and thus trying to throw about your own narrative because the dev provided evidence that reddit CEO was blatantly lying when the CEO tried to publicly claim that he was being blackmailed by the dev and when the dev provided the press with the evidence, the CEO backed away and said it was all an error and yet with all that known you are still purporting that lie.
Debatable.
I’m guessing Selig isn’t going to release the Apollo source code because if/when a Reddit competitor appears Apollo could easily make a comeback as the client of a different social network.
As someone who's been a victim of actual blackmail (as in, the person who did it is in prison right now for it), claiming that that exchange was blackmail is pathetic.
This seems completely reasonable to me, and strikes a middle ground between two extremes present in the comments.
I think we should be able to acknowledge that Reddit has a right to charge whatever it wants for use of its APIs while still questioning whether it acted fairly by knowingly allowing their free use for so long and then -- rather suddenly -- charging a high (arguably exorbitant) price for them. Put differently, even if you believe Reddit owed no duty to third-party developers that provided a clear benefit to Reddit when it was a smaller platform, you might reasonably question whether Reddit is being a good corporate citizen now. I think not, but that's just my view.
As to adding an option to decline the refund, if you're the developer in this position, why wouldn't you do that? If you're the developer, you understand that you owe a pro-rata refund for a service you will no longer provide. You probably also understood the risk you took by creating a business model that depends on Reddit maintaining a status quo (or at least not throwing that status quo to the wind). But you also know that many users liked your prior work and might want to support it in light of your presently challenging situation. Why not give them that opportunity?
I'm agnostic as to whether users take the refund or not. That's entirely up to them. But those people who are complaining that this developer accepted certain risk should also understand the benefit of risk mitigation.
Lots of businesses people greatly value were built on foundations laid by other commercial players. That doesn't make their contribution any less valuable. If you build a sidewalk, someone else may use it to walk to work.
What most aren't getting is that that some here are upset because it seems Christian Selig is painting a picture that he will be only ordering off of the dollar menu soon... But he has made a ton of money over the years of Apollo's existence- more than most will make in their lifetime. I'm sure he saved some of that money.
Some here really thinks he is going to have it rough. Or is he trying to milk every cent?
Let's face it, the majority of people just skim though stuff, and most will think he's going to be losing ALL of his income. That Reddit was the BIG BAD GUY. I was in this boat. But after reading a lot on this, and seeing what is really going on, Selig to me looks like he's trying to milk every cent on this pity party. Like making tip jars and selling wallpapers, when in reality, he doesn't need this EXTRA INCOME. HE SAID HIMSELF HE DOESN'T NEED APOLLO.
But optics say that if you're against him, you're going against someone who is down on their luck and trying to "squeak by."
Some here really thinks he is going to have it rough. Or is he trying to milk every cent?
Let's face it, the majority of people just skim though stuff, and most will think he's going to be losing ALL of his income. That Reddit was the BIG BAD GUY. I was in this boat. But after reading a lot on this, and seeing what is really going on, Selig to me looks like he's trying to milk every cent on this pity party. Like making tip jars and selling wallpapers, when in reality, he doesn't need this EXTRA INCOME. HE SAID HIMSELF HE DOESN'T NEED APOLLO.
But optics say that if you're against him, you're going against someone who is down on their luck and trying to "squeak by."
Yikes. Lol.
What an interesting take. You’d rather simp for a billion dollar company instead of a single developer who made an amazing app and business that followed Reddit’s pricing and guidelines to the T?
He definitely attempted to, and when he realized it wasn't going well, he walked things back.
I know that I'd rather react to facts and reality instead of blindly joining the mob protesting on behalf of a developer who made MILLIONS by using everything that reddit built for free.
this exactly. like I said I don't want to side with reddit as I think they could've have handled this way better in terms of PR. Heck just coming out to say they want to end all third party support and start charging LLMs for its data would have been better than this "pretending to still let people do 3rd party apps with its API"
But exactly to your point, the maker of Apollo is clearly leveraging the situation to milk every last cent from all the idiots on the internet. That just doesn't sit right with me. It's not like reddit is charging him retroactively for all the years he's made money off this side business.
Imagine there's a very profitable DVD rental business for many years, but now is closing its doors because it failing to compete with online streaming services. Now if that dvd business rental business starts a gofundme, would you donate to it? I think the first question you would ask is - wait why do you need this money? You had a good business for years, and now you need to move on, but why are u asking me for more money??? Just out of pity??
If by "cheated" you mean developers have been taking advantage of free reddit API access for years, and now reddit has (smartly) decided to charge for access, then sure. Cheated. Good god.
IKR. Here’s more to chew on- The majority of work on Apollo was done back when it was first written. All these years later, the work would be minimal maintenance, maybe implement new features. Does that sound like a 40hr/wk job like the average Joe, who he’s asking not to refund?
If more of the uninformed knew he actually don’t need this money; that without it, he would still be very well off, then there’d be more of an uproar.
What?!
Apollo was developed by an independent developer, who contracted out the server bits; it was (still is, technically) in the App Store under Christian’s name - not an LLC or company name.
You left me blinking in amazement at this.
Curious what you would think a small independent developer would be.
Can you explain how he hid ads? I was under the impression that wasn’t possible and would be interested in the details.