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Popular Reddit App Apollo Shutting Down on June 30

Christian (the developer, he posts here on MR btw) will be utilizing the same refund strategy as Tweetdeck where users can decide if they'd like a refund or if they'd like to let the dev keep the money to support further work on other apps. I'm 100% choosing the latter. Also this article does a poor job at underlining that Reddit's CEO literally lied to his employees and said Christian is trying to extort the company for money; that's how pathetic the leadership is at Reddit. Christian implied that this incident is what pushed him over the line into deciding to completely shut down Apollo rather than find a workaround.

Anyone trying to give Reddit the benefit of the doubt here is deluding themselves. The prime objective of this move was to completely kill third party apps with a brutal and quick decapitation. They're hoping this kind of quick move (where the devs are only given 30 days before being billed in the hundreds of thousands) forces devs to completely shut down their apps rather than modify their pricing structure over the course of 6 months or so. Read Christian's posts for more info on Reddit's offensive pricing strategy vs. how gracious Apple were when shutting down Dark Sky's API. As recently as a couple months ago Reddit were telling API users that they have nothing to worry about and the only changes coming to the API over the next few years are improvements to how it functions. Decisions like this aren't made overnight, they knew they would do this and lied to the devs about it because it would ruin the objective I described earlier: to completely kill third party apps.

The reason they want to kill third party apps rather than facilitate them with fair pricing and rollout periods is that third party clients are capable of bypassing much of the incredibly invasive tracking strategies utilized by Reddit. Reddit's CEO said third party app users only account for a very small percentage of Reddit's userbase so I suspect they're preparing for even more maneuvers involving advertising/tracking that will further irritate people to the point that mass emigration to third party (ad free) apps may hurt their IPO chances even further.

A lot of Reddit users are seemingly unaware of the extent to which Reddit tracks them. It's practically Facebook level. As Reddit increase their tracking capabilities and bombard users with more ads to demonstrate to the market that they're a competant ad platform just like Meta/Google, what do you think users will do? Will they continue using the official Reddit app with 1,000 layers of tracking and ads or will they go to the better designed, ad free Apollo? A ton will probably stick with the Reddit app because they know no better but Reddit do not want to take the risk.

EDIT: If you're wondering why they decided to charge for the API rather than kill it completely given their objective to kill third party apps, it's for the same reason Twitter decided to keep their API up: outside of third party apps, moderating tools, and bots, APIs are useful for companies to create cross platform social media management tools and analytics tools. Large companies utilizing these APIs can easily eat the cost and are probably unconcerned with a 30 day notice. Indie devs are the only people being priced out as they're the only people that threaten the platform's ad strategy.
 
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zakarhino said:
Christian (the developer, he posts here on MR btw) will be utilizing the same refund strategy as Tweetdeck where users can decide if they'd like a refund or if they'd like to let the dev keep the money to support further work on other apps. I'm 100% choosing the latter.

Anyone trying to give Reddit the benefit of the doubt here is deluding themselves. The prime objective of this move was to completely kill third party apps with a brutal and quick decapitation. They're hoping this kind of quick move (where the devs are only given 30 days before being billed in the hundreds of thousands) forces devs to completely shut down their apps rather than modify their pricing structure over the course of 6 months or so. Read Christian's posts for more info on Reddit's offensive pricing strategy vs. how gracious Apple were when shutting down Dark Sky's API.

The reason they want to kill third party apps rather than facilitate them with fair pricing and rollout periods is that third party clients are capable of bypassing much of the incredibly invasive tracking strategies utilized by Reddit. Reddit's CEO said third party app users only account for a very small percentage of Reddit's userbase so I suspect they're preparing for even more maneuvers involving advertising/tracking that will further irritate people to the point that mass emigration to third party (ad free) apps may hurt their IPO chances even further.
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Thanks for the insight and additional context. Much appreciated.
 
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The Clark said:
This is super unfortunate news, but I don't believe people will stop using Reddit all together. I love Apollo, but I'm certainly not going to give up Reddit over this.

Anybody who says they will should authentically ask themself, "Am I never going to log in again? Am I never going to READ the result of a Google search if I see it comes from Reddit?"
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This is going to be a blow to the kind of users that made reddit good. The usefulness will not go away overnight but this combined with lots of other negative changes the last several years will erode the value going forward.

For what it’s worth, exactly like with Twitter, reddit has lost a user over this. Just like Twitter I’m not going to cover my eyes when it has useful information, but it’s not going to be something I purposely use. It used to be, but then they both killed the only reasonable way to use it.

And again in both cases it wouldn’t be so bad if their websites weren’t some sick joke. It’s like something out of The Onion. Neither site wants you to read what you came for. 10% of the page is content you have to click to keep reading, 90% of the page is content you don’t want being pushed on you.
 
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Let’s all thank @ChristianSelig Thank You!

1686256796346.png
 
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Graphikos said:
Well, I just used my trusty Google search and Bard gave me the number. Has to be true, right? To be fair I didn't deep dive into the statistics but I'm sure if you look around there are estimations and numbers to get a general idea from. So sure, consider it all to be estimations and possible calculations to the arguments. But I think it still generally holds up no matter what values you plug in. Reddit is huge...
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Huge? Naw, but I guess it's perspective, cuz it ain't even in the top ten
www.statista.com

Biggest social media platforms by users 2025| Statista

Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp are the most popular social networks worldwide, each with at least two billion active users.
www.statista.com www.statista.com
 

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jarman92 said:
He says he has 50,000 subs at $10/year. That's $500,000/yr gross, so not sure where you're getting your $5M figure from. Even if you're multiplying by years in business, Apollo has existed for less than 8 and obviously wasn't getting anywhere near 50,000 subs for the vast majority of those years. Then subtract Apple's 30% cut and other overhead, and it's readily apparent that Apollo hasn't generated close to $5M in revenue, let alone profit. Not to mention the fact that simply making millions over multiple years doesn't make one a "multi-millionaire."
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Except you you're purposely slanting the situation so as to position reddit as the "bad guy" and Apollo as an "angel"

1) He has grossed $500,000 a year from subscriptions ALONE
2) Next apple's 15% cut (not 30% you are lying again) - that is $425,000
3) There are plenty of purchases in the app that is NOT a subscription (in fact that's what I purchased - Apollo Pro). Let's even assume it makes 50% of the sub revenue, that's $200,000
4) He has no costs. That's the whole point of this argument. He's been freeloading his server off Reddit's. He doesn't even host the frigging content. I repeat HE HAS NO COSTS.
5) So he has a take home of $625,000 a year. Let's say that it grew linearly for 8 years. That would be 80k+160k+240k+320k+400k+480k+560k+640k = $2.88 Millions Dollars
6) That doesn't even include pixelpal, which he has publicly admit has made more money for him than Apollo itself
7) Someone who has earned more than 5 million is not considered a multi-millionaire? What kind of world do you live in?
 
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gpwdeux said:
Huge? Naw, but I guess it's perspective, cuz it ain't even in the top ten
www.statista.com

Biggest social media platforms by users 2025| Statista

Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp are the most popular social networks worldwide, each with at least two billion active users.
www.statista.com www.statista.com
Click to expand...
Just shows how absolutely massive YouTube is. I think my 10 year old nephew watches more YouTube compared to any other TV/movies.
 
I’m deleting my Reddit account!

{hand goes to ear}… I’m being told I’ve never had a Reddit account. Still… ****** behavior by Reddit, based on the transcripts & call recordings.
 
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The Clark said:
This is super unfortunate news, but I don't believe people will stop using Reddit all together. I love Apollo, but I'm certainly not going to give up Reddit over this.

Anybody who says they will should authentically ask themself, "Am I never going to log in again? Am I never going to READ the result of a Google search if I see it comes from Reddit?"
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I used twitter multiple times a day, every day. I had zero issues deleting it when Musk took over. I will also have zero issues deleting Reddit assuming they don't back down.

The mobile app, for me is just an unusable mess. And even when I have my laptop open in front of me I will use my iPhone to browse as even the desktop site is a mess.

And who is still using google for search as that has also been going to hell lately?
 
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macduke said:
But they're not selling their own stuff. They're providing a much better UI/UX for reddit, and people are using it to use reddit. This is more like if someone made a much better shopping app for Walmart that was wildly popular and brought in a lot of customers for Walmart, and Walmart started charging the company behind the app exorbitant fees to continue making it, despite the fact that they put in a lot of hard work for years to make a much better app than Walmart and deserve to be compensated for that effort. Not to mention the app helps out Walmart a ton.
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No it isn't. His original example was much more accurate - yours is WAY off.

They're selling their own subs to access a free website where you can't buy anything.

That website relies on advertising to make money which is bypassed by the 3rd party app that is making money. So in this case Reddit is making nothing, the 3rd party app seller is making the money and Reddit has been offering their entire service for free to the 3rd party app maker and all the users of it.
 
Outdoordude01 said:
Just shows how absolutely massive YouTube is. I think my 10 year old nephew watches more YouTube compared to any other TV/movies.
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No kidding right? Hell thanks to my kid, all I watch now is Youtube, Plex, Tubi, and Pluto. I only pay for "regular tv" now because mainly I can afford it, and it just seems like the "normal" thing to do. Like it is some sort of emotional support animal LOL
 
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Joseph C said:
Losing Tweetbot and Apollo in such quick succession hurts.

Both such well built apps. It’s very sad.
Click to expand...

The age of companies making no money because all their adverts have been blocked is ending. Having users and getting funding for just because data is valuable is coming to end - they now need to actually make money from that data.
 
zach-coleman said:
Good advertisement for call recording, eh? I wonder how he did that, since you can't do it on an iPhone.
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Sure you can. Audio in/out via a lightning adapter and though a physical recorder, or though your computer. It's simple.

Or you could just put it on speakerphone and record via a computer.
 
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OhMyMy said:
Have you seen the sizes of their subs? r/wallstreetbets alone has 14M. Do you really think a few thousand users getting hurt over an app would make any dent? People are going to forget soon as another flash news come along. People believing otherwise are just delusional.
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But who is making most of those posts on r/wallstreetbets? Is the average user using the reddit app on their phone? Or is it the power user using a 3rd party app?

I don't know and neither do you, so only time will tell.
 
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