Popular Reddit App Apollo Shutting Down on June 30

[CarAnalogy]

The more appropriate analogy here is that you started collecting ingredients from people in your community (for free), letting other people bake them in your ovens, and then giving the cookies out for free to anyone that asked. You made profits by selling data collected about cookie preferences and displaying ads to your cookie makers - so also not quite "for free". Some people decided to start packaging these cookies and providing a better end-user experience with the cookies, and charged a reasonable fee for this experience. They also provide enhancements that make it easier for your bakers to actually bake the cookies. You fully knew about this. You worked with them to improve integration between your process and their processes. You continued to accept donations from the community in terms of people making cookies and also providing ingredients. You simply provide the ovens and foot the electricity/gas bill. You then say you will continue taking things for free from the community, will continue to monetize their labor, but you will start charging the folks repackaging an exorbitant amount of money because you are trying to get your cookie business bought by a larger organization and can't have people providing a better end-user experience (otherwise you would charge a more reasonable rate if it was really just about lost ad revenue).

You still expect the people donating ingredients (posters and commentors) and bakers (moderators) to continue working to generate you money while removing tools that make their jobs easier. You also can't understand why the community is upset that your tacit agreement to freely use their stuff to make you money while allowing them to freely access their cookies in whatever form they choose has been tossed out of the window on a whim, because they need to squeak out a little bit more money.

No one is saying this behavior is illegal. It also extends well past Apollo, to other third party apps and integrations. Moderator toolbox is a huge one that may not be able to exist after the end of the month. There is a reason massive subreddits are shutting down, some indefinitely. Folks that think only Apollo's user base are the ones impacted, so it will be a negligible impact on Reddit overall aren't fully aware of the entire situation. Mod functions are next to useless on the first party app, and mod toolbox makes moderating much easier in a desktop browser. Third-party apps filled a massive void here, and is a huge reason for much of the discontent. Reddit taking away the tools to curate the content (for free) the community provides them (for free) isn't exactly the smartest idea.

It's a little like tacitly consenting to someone helping sell your cookies for years, asking nothing in return, then suddenly demanding that they pay you twenty million dollars for the next batch, and they have 30 days to figure out how to do that. There is a much more reasonable way to change the terms, but that approach would be essentially cutting off the cookie distributor.

Reddit has every right to monetize their API if they choose to do that. This wasn't about monetization, it was about cutting out third party apps.

 

[PaintTheSkyGrey]

It's a little like tacitly consenting to someone helping sell your cookies for years, then suddenly demanding that they pay you twenty million dollars for the next batch, and they have 30 days to figure out how to do that.

Well, my key point here is that reddit only exists because of user-generated content. They're not actually the ones making the cookies or providing the "ingredients" for the cookies. They wholesale rely on a lot of unpaid work. And the folks that do this work are saying they're upset reddit is taking away a method to make this work easier. It's a far cry from benevolent reddit providing free cookies they made themselves with their own money and just deciding they don't want to share them for free anymore.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Well, my key point here is that reddit only exists because of user-generated content. They're not actually the ones making the cookies or providing the "ingredients" for the cookies. They wholesale rely on a lot of unpaid work. And the folks that do this work are saying they're upset reddit is taking away a method to make this work easier. It's a far cry from benevolent reddit providing free cookies they made themselves with their own money and just deciding they don't want to share them for free anymore.

Yeah I agree with you. Any analogy is going to be a stretch for this situation but pretty much any way you slice it, reddit is within their rights but being a dick about it.

 

[Stromos]

People have zero concept of why Apollo loses even with charging users. The reason many used these apps was because Reddit blocked certain content from having sound on mobile. Reddit isn’t suddenly charging for using its API as is. It’s putting out a new API that locks certain content to Reddit native apps only. Reddit is controlling what you can and see and hear while doubling down on making sure there are no alternatives. So not only would Apollo have to charge users, many users would no longer have a reason to use the app.

Even if Apollo and RiF stayed around the reason to use those apps is being partially crippled. The developers of said apps know this and realize the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

The entire concept of Reddit trying to do this is obviously wanting to know who looks at questionable content in detail. They cripple their own app to push people to browsers where they can scape the most data about user activity. What they are going to do with this data is unknown and in itself is reason to leave the platform altogether.

There is a much bigger picture to all of this.

 

[yaxomoxay]

People have zero concept of why Apollo loses even with charging users. The reason many used these apps was because Reddit blocked certain content from having sound on mobile. Reddit isn’t suddenly charging for using its API as is. It’s putting out a new API that locks certain content to Reddit native apps only. Reddit is controlling what you can and see and hear while doubling down on making sure there are no alternatives. So not only would Apollo have to charge users, many users would no longer have a reason to use the app.

Even if Apollo and RiF stayed around the reason to use those apps is being partially crippled. The developers of said apps know this and realize the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

The entire concept of Reddit trying to do this is obviously wanting to know who looks at questionable content in detail. They cripple their own app to push people to browsers where they can scape the most data about user activity. What they are going to do with this data is unknown and in itself is reason to leave the platform altogether.

There is a much bigger picture to all of this.

Not that I don’t believe you, I just want to investigate this more. Any source ?

 

[spinedoc77]

Those apps were already neutered with lack of chat support, or rather Reddit not letting them access and show chats in the app. I've been getting used to the official Reddit app and it's not so bad, although Apollo was much nicer. But with a good system wide ad blocker like Adguard, you really only see the "promoted" story type of ads and it's not so terrible.

 

[yaxomoxay]

Be honest here…did you deserve it?

Well…. Partially 😂

 

[PaintTheSkyGrey]

Not that I don’t believe you, I just want to investigate this more. Any source ?

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/12qwagm

Reddit will limit access to mature content via our Data API as part of an ongoing effort to provide guardrails to how sexually explicit content and communities on Reddit are discovered and viewed. (Note: This change should not impact any current moderator bots or extensions.)

 

[yaxomoxay]

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/12qwagm

Oh wow. Thanks. Yep, that’s bad.

 

[Stromos]

Not that I don’t believe you, I just want to investigate this more. Any source ?

Reddit blocks audio on the main app for certain content it’s not anything to source it’s just fact. Look up the issue and the solution for years has been use a third party app. The changes to the new API came from Reddit’s mouth themselves. The rest is just looking at the whole situation. The end product is pushing users to browser for said content. No mobile user protections on a browser.

 

[Killbynumbers]

Wow, I hate to break it to Reddit, but a lot of these users won't be converting to the Reddit app. Personally, I'll probably just stop using Reddit all together.

The official Reddit app is all I have used all these years. I didn't know there were other options till now.

 

[Sir_Macs_A_Lot]

While it is a shame that Apollo is going away, I was using Reddit long before Apollo even came along. I didn't join Reddit because of Apollo. I used Reddit because it was a great 'one-stop shop' to communicate with and get information & answers on just about every topic you can think of.

Money talks, so if all of the people claiming to quit Reddit now actually do (hopefully it will be more people that claimed they were moving to Canada when a certain politician won the election) then this will affect Reddit's bottom line and they may be forced to reconsider their position and try to work out something with Apollo. Either that, or they'll see how big an impact Apollo really had and find a way to adopt Apollo's UI (or something similar) into their own.

 

[yalag]

The more appropriate analogy here is that you started collecting ingredients from people in your community (for free), letting other people bake them in your ovens, and then giving the cookies out for free to anyone that asked. You made profits by selling data collected about cookie preferences and displaying ads to your cookie makers - so also not quite "for free". Some people decided to start packaging these cookies and providing a better end-user experience with the cookies, and charged a reasonable fee for this experience. They also provide enhancements that make it easier for your bakers to actually bake the cookies. You fully knew about this. You worked with them to improve integration between your process and their processes. You continued to accept donations from the community in terms of people making cookies and also providing ingredients. You simply provide the ovens and foot the electricity/gas bill. You then say you will continue taking things for free from the community, will continue to monetize their labor, but you will start charging the folks repackaging an exorbitant amount of money because you are trying to get your cookie business bought by a larger organization and can't have people providing a better end-user experience (otherwise you would charge a more reasonable rate if it was really just about lost ad revenue).

You still expect the people donating ingredients (posters and commentors) and bakers (moderators) to continue working to generate you money while removing tools that make their jobs easier. You also can't understand why the community is upset that your tacit agreement to freely use their stuff to make you money while allowing them to freely access their cookies in whatever form they choose has been tossed out of the window on a whim, because they need to squeak out a little bit more money.

No one is saying this behavior is illegal. It also extends well past Apollo, to other third party apps and integrations. Moderator toolbox is a huge one that may not be able to exist after the end of the month. There is a reason massive subreddits are shutting down, some indefinitely. Folks that think only Apollo's user base are the ones impacted, so it will be a negligible impact on Reddit overall aren't fully aware of the entire situation. Mod functions are next to useless on the first party app, and mod toolbox makes moderating much easier in a desktop browser. Third-party apps filled a massive void here, and is a huge reason for much of the discontent. Reddit taking away the tools to curate the content (for free) the community provides them (for free) isn't exactly the smartest idea.

Unfortunately the analogy breaks down, and here are the reasons

• People are not "donating" ingredients, people are dying and desperately wanting to give ingredients to this house in exchange for "points". Same for mods. There's so much contribution in fact, there is a huge pile ingredients throw away every day. Don't make it sound like it's a leech of the community. The community is extremely happy with this setup.
• Then the packagers - at one point the packagers asked the business owner, can I repackage your FREE goods into fancy boxes and sell them? Owner says yes, but did NOT agree to do it indefinitely. Then some time in the future the owner said ok no more, I want to keep my cookies free. With 30 days notice. Ok what's the issue here? It's the owner's business.
• Again, don't get confused about the exorbitant charge. The owner is basically politely telling the packager "no more package", but saying it will cost a "gazillion dollars". Honestly they should've just outright said API shutdown in 30 days. Because you all can't read business talks.
• Last point, you are completely off about the need to IPO means that they do not want a better experience. No. To go back to your analogy, they don't want packagers anymore because guess what the owner is missing out ad revenue from cookeis sold in package. Because packagers are FREELOADERS. They should be thankful that they were let to freeload for up to 8 years. And is now angry that they are not told to stop after they have already profited 3 million US dollars? Please.
• You could argue, well if it's missed revenue then why not just work out a deal with the packagers where they recover the missed ad revenue with a charge. Sure maybe, but it's entirely the business owner's prerogative to do that or not. The owner might think that's too much trouble for what it's worth, would rather all cookies be sold in one way. Or the owner might have some plans on their own packaging in the future, and having multiple packers would make that inconsistent. Who knows. But it's extremely entitled to think that the owner needs to bend to the will of the packagers when again - they have been absolute freeloaders for so long and more than fairly compensated for their work.

 

[yalag]

Yeah I agree with you. Any analogy is going to be a stretch for this situation but pretty much any way you slice it, reddit is within their rights but being a dick about it.

They only come off as a dick because most people don't understand business talk. No, they do not actually want a gazillion dollars for API. What they are saying is "API SHUTDOWN in 30 days. GOODBYE". And yes it's their rights to do so. And no 30 days is not unreasonable, as a business you willingly put your business dependent on another service without first securing any commitment or agreement. That's YOUR decision to take that risk. Knowingly as well, apollo knew this. There's not an ounce of deception in this whole story. All parties knew.

 

[coopguy]

Oh man, a lot of interesting posts in this thread. Reddit is trying to kill third party apps, full stop.

• The reddit API has never offered their "promoted" posts (ads) as a part of it. It isn't that 3rd party app developers see these posts in the feed and strip them out. Reddit could easily add the promoted posts in the feed and tell third party app developers they must display them, but they aren't.
• Even if third party developers want to have certain content and features, they can't. Reddit has never made an API for their chat feature, making it impossible to implement in third party apps, and now they're going back and removing NSFW content from the API, restricting it to first party apps. So even if developers implement paid subscriptions, their users will have a functionally crippled experience with certain content limited from their view vs. first party.
• Third party reddit apps on iOS/Android have mostly been free, with either a one time or paid subscription for additional features and the removal of the developer's own ads. Reddit has now told third party app developers that they are forbidden from displaying their own ads. Right away, that makes it so the developer has to charge the subscription or one time purchase up front (separate from API feeds).
• Reddit rolled out these changes with very little notice (30 days), which isn't enough time for third party developer to roll it out (per the Apollo dev) with the consideration of informing users, converting existing users, etc.
• Everyone doing the math on monthly users and saying "just charge $1.98" by doing math of fees/active Apollo users is ignoring the fact that it assumes every single user will convert to the subscription (they won't), that the developer has to make money too now with reddit prohibiting developers from putting their own ads in their reddit clients and not offering revenue sharing on their own ads (current Apollo yearly subscription is a little under $1/mo, $10/yr), and then at the $20M/yr API fee quoted, and then you have to add +30% minimum to all of that to account for Apple's IAP cut. When you take the $2/mo per user for API fees, the $1/mo for the dev, $3/mo, add the 30% and you're at $4 minimum, again assuming every single existing user converted (which won't happen).

I already used shreddit to delete all my comments and posts for the past 13 years. If reddit doesn't change course and Apollo (for iOS) and Relay (for Android) shut down, I will limit my use of reddit to the desktop (which will substantially reduce the time I spend on reddit, which is 90% mobile). If they kill old.reddit as well, then I'm fully out and will leave.

While it is a shame that Apollo is going away, I was using Reddit long before Apollo even came along. I didn't join Reddit because of Apollo. I used Reddit because it was a great 'one-stop shop' to communicate with and get information & answers on just about every topic you can think of.

Money talks, so if all of the people claiming to quit Reddit now actually do (hopefully it will be more people that claimed they were moving to Canada when a certain politician won the election) then this will affect Reddit's bottom line and they may be forced to reconsider their position and try to work out something with Apollo. Either that, or they'll see how big an impact Apollo really had and find a way to adopt Apollo's UI (or something similar) into their own.

When I joined reddit in 2010, smartphones were in their infancy, and all my reddit browsing was on the desktop because I didn't own one. As smartphones have evolved and apps become more feature filled, I browsed reddit more and more on mobile. I generally consume more content on mobile. If reddit wants to limit their access to their very bad first party app, then I'll just look at content elsewhere.

On your comments on adopting Apollo's UI: reddit will never do this because the UI concept of most third party apps is diametrically opposed to the goals of new reddit and the first party reddit apps, which is to auto-expand/auto-play everything. This has two goals: An endless content feed that keeps you on the site longer, and it embeds "promoted posts" (ads) in-line with organic content so you have to see it. Third party apps like Apollo and Relay don't expand images, videos, or text posts by default, so even if you saw an ad (which the reddit API has never exposed and reddit is refusing to implement despite easily being able to do so), you'd notice it was an ad and you wouldn't expand it. That would reduce the value and reach of ads.

 

[coopguy]

They only come off as a dick because most people don't understand business talk. No, they do not actually want a gazillion dollars for API. What they are saying is "API SHUTDOWN in 30 days. GOODBYE". And yes it's their rights to do so. And no 30 days is not unreasonable, as a business you willingly put your business dependent on another service without first securing any commitment or agreement. That's YOUR decision to take that risk. Knowingly as well, apollo knew this. There's not an ounce of deception in this whole story. All parties knew.

I don't know if you've read any of the history of discussions, but reddit has been asked this by the third party app community for years, and they've insisted that they wouldn't just pull the rug out and charge for API access with little notice, and the charges wouldn't be unreasonable.

Yes reddit is in their rights to do with they want, including blanket cutting off the API with no warning, but it's bad business practice and it's disrespectful to the third party app community that helped build up reddit. And, beyond that, reddit is misrepresenting the change and the nature of the discussions to the community, which is directly disproven by transcripts of the calls with third party developers (which are backed up with actual telephone recordings showing the authenticity of the transcripts).

Additionally, reddit cutting off third party apps when they have far better moderation tools than the first party apps (which are, IMO, garbage) is a disservice to the fact that reddit's entire site relies off unpaid moderators. By making the jobs of your unpaid moderators far harder, you are giving them incentive to either moderate less, or throw in the towel. More than 1000 subreddits are going dark on Monday as protest, and many subreddit owners have said if reddit doesn't change course, they'll just leave them permanently set to private (meaning they won't be able to be posted to or have old posts viewed).

 

[yalag]

I don't know if you've read any of the history of discussions, but reddit has been asked this by the third party app community for years, and they've insisted that they wouldn't just pull the rug out and charge for API access with little notice, and the charges wouldn't be unreasonable.

Yes reddit is in their rights to do with they want, including blanket cutting off the API with no warning, but it's bad business practice and it's disrespectful to the third party app community that helped build up reddit. And, beyond that, reddit is misrepresenting the change and the nature of the discussions to the community, which is directly disproven by transcripts of the calls with third party developers (which are backed up with actual telephone recordings showing the authenticity of the transcripts).

Additionally, reddit cutting off third party apps when they have far better moderation tools than the first party apps (which are, IMO, garbage) is a disservice to the fact that reddit's entire site relies off unpaid moderators. By making the jobs of your unpaid moderators far harder, you are giving them incentive to either moderate less, or throw in the towel. More than 1000 subreddits are going dark on Monday as protest, and many subreddit owners have said if reddit doesn't change course, they'll just leave them permanently set to private (meaning they won't be able to be posted to or have old posts viewed).

Don't bring the users or mods into this. It's ridiculous to spin this story to make it sound like the users and mods are held as prisoners while being tortured. No. They are not. They are extremely happy and addicted. They are free to leave any time, but none will because it's extremely addictive to be a mod. As soon as one leaves, there are 8000 applications for that one position. I would love to see a reddit mod exodus or users. But it won't.

This story was never about the users, or mods. It's just the about the freeloaders (apps). And they have done a tremendous good job with their PR firm.

 

[PaintTheSkyGrey]

Unfortunately the analogy breaks down, and here are the reasons

• People are not "donating" ingredients, people are dying and desperately wanting to give ingredients to this house in exchange for "points". Same for mods. There's so much contribution in fact, there is a huge pile ingredients throw away every day. Don't make it sound like it's a leech of the community. The community is extremely happy with this setup.
• Then the packagers - at one point the packagers asked the business owner, can I repackage your FREE goods into fancy boxes and sell them? Owner says yes, but did NOT agree to do it indefinitely. Then some time in the future the owner said ok no more, I want to keep my cookies free. With 30 days notice. Ok what's the issue here? It's the owner's business.
• Again, don't get confused about the exorbitant charge. The owner is basically politely telling the packager "no more package", but saying it will cost a "gazillion dollars". Honestly they should've just outright said API shutdown in 30 days. Because you all can't read business talks.
• Last point, you are completely off about the need to IPO means that they do not want a better experience. No. To go back to your analogy, they don't want packagers anymore because guess what the owner is missing out ad revenue from cookeis sold in package. Because packagers are FREELOADERS. They should be thankful that they were let to freeload for up to 8 years. And is now angry that they are not told to stop after they have already profited 3 million US dollars? Please.
• You could argue, well if it's missed revenue then why not just work out a deal with the packagers where they recover the missed ad revenue with a charge. Sure maybe, but it's entirely the business owner's prerogative to do that or not. The owner might think that's too much trouble for what it's worth, would rather all cookies be sold in one way. Or the owner might have some plans on their own packaging in the future, and having multiple packers would make that inconsistent. Who knows. But it's extremely entitled to think that the owner needs to bend to the will of the packagers when again - they have been absolute freeloaders for so long and more than fairly compensated for their work.

• They were completely happy with this setup. Because they were free to access their content in whatever form they chose. You have also completely ignored the moderators that do their work for free and rely on third party tools to more effectively maintain the website. The moderators are also unhappy about this, which is why there are such a large number of very popular subreddits shutting down. It doesn't matter if person that contributes little to the site uses the official app. It does matter if the biggest contributors and staff do, which is exactly what the administration alluded to when highlighting Apollo's daily user API request rate. You can't seem to understand that there was a give and take relationship, reddit has decided to turn that into "take", and now the community is upset. They can be upset. That is fine. Why are you so upset that they are upset?
• You are stating that there is no exorbitant charge, but that there is an exorbitant charge put in place to force third party apps out of the picture. So which is it? Charge or no charge? If the idea is to just shut out all third-party apps, why not just do that? Why hide behind pricing them out of service? That's not "politely telling" - that's being shady and manipulative. "Politely telling" would be outright stating the facts, with a sundown period.
• I did not state that the IPO means they don't want a better experience. I said that they can't have a third party product with a better experience because of the IPO. The evidence of this is that they are not looking to simply recoup lost advertising costs, nor are they implementing solutions like including promoted posts in the API. Nor things like allowing Reddit premium users to continue using the API in third party apps with lower API costs to the developer. No, they don't want third party apps, full-stop. Which is their prerogative. And it's the community's prerogative to start deleting content, shutting down subreddits, and not posting anymore. Not sure why you're so upset about the reaction to Reddit's own actions.

 

[dcingie]

Reddit has devolved into a big circle jerk with every thread turning into a political thread. Anyone been to r/pics lately? Pseudointellectuals arguing with strangers on the internet for fake points. The site can die a slow death as far as I’m concerned.

 

[coso]

I'm deleting all my reddit comments and posts with Redact.dev as I do every year and delete my Reddit account for good, no more browsing either

 

[yegon]

Money talks, so if all of the people claiming to quit Reddit now actually do (hopefully it will be more people that claimed they were moving to Canada when a certain politician won the election) then this will affect Reddit's bottom line and they may be forced to reconsider their position and try to work out something with Apollo. Either that, or they'll see how big an impact Apollo really had and find a way to adopt Apollo's UI (or something similar) into their own.

I agree, unfortunately, many will claim to leave then won’t. Was guilty of this, but not now.

When the news first broke (to me) a couple of weeks ago, I deleted the Apollo app and thought that’s that. But I didn’t delete my account. Sure enough, a week later I wanted back in so I did two things - reinstalled Apollo and tried the official app out of curiosity. Official app is laughably bad, and combined with my misgivings about Reddit’s practices, it told me I’m simply not prepared to persevere with it. Then Apollo announced their closure, and I took that as a sign and decisively went nuclear and deleted my account this morning. A little easier for me as I’ve been looking to use it less anyway so this is the convenient final straw if I’m going to be selfish and make it about me-me-me.

If there’s some specific info that only Reddit can give me I’ll suffer the website without an account briefly. Browsing Reddit without an account is a fate worse than Facebook though, so I won’t be there long, ha.

While I hope it does affect Reddit’s bottom line, I’m not particularly optimistic, but who knows, platforms have risen and fallen in the past.

 

[coopguy]

Don't bring the users or mods into this. It's ridiculous to spin this story to make it sound like the users and mods are held as prisoners while being tortured.

When did I say that anybody was being tortured?

On the contrary, I cited how a lot of users are backing strikes on the site including 1000+ subreddits going dark in protest and other mods saying they will leave the site and make their communities private. That's the opposite of being held captive, reddit is making a decision that they are allowed to do and users/mods are stating their intent to leave and shut down subreddits as a result, which is their right to do.

Just because reddit is legally allowed and able to do something within their rights does not necessarily make it a wise decision.

 

[yalag]

When did I say that anybody was being tortured?

On the contrary, I cited how a lot of users are backing strikes on the site including 1000+ subreddits going dark in protest and other mods saying they will leave the site and make their communities private. That's the opposite of being held captive, reddit is making a decision that they are allowed to do and users/mods are stating their intent to leave and shut down subreddits as a result, which is their right to do.

Just because reddit is legally allowed and able to do something within their rights does not necessarily make it a wise decision.

Never claimed it to be wise.
Stupid decision? Yes
Incompetent? Yes
Mishandled the communication? Yes
Bad business decision? Perhaps even Yes (time will tell)
Unethical to cut off API access? No

 

[CarAnalogy]

They only come off as a dick because most people don't understand business talk. No, they do not actually want a gazillion dollars for API. What they are saying is "API SHUTDOWN in 30 days. GOODBYE". And yes it's their rights to do so. And no 30 days is not unreasonable, as a business you willingly put your business dependent on another service without first securing any commitment or agreement. That's YOUR decision to take that risk. Knowingly as well, apollo knew this. There's not an ounce of deception in this whole story. All parties knew.

The only point I would disagree with is that they didn’t simply say API shutdown in 30 days. It’s not shutting down. They intentionally set terms to price Apollo out of the market. Yes it was a risk for the developer to build his business on a third party API. But there was no reason to take this approach. Being a “dick” is not terribly descriptive I realize, but these terms have been repeatedly described as “unreasonable.”

 

[yaxomoxay]

Reddit has devolved into a big circle jerk (…)Pseudointellectuals arguing with strangers on the internet for fake points.