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Popular Reddit App Apollo Shutting Down on June 30
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I didn't bring it over when I upgraded my iPhone, using Apollo exclusively.
The Elon Musk takeover of Twitter is when this latest bout of hostility started. Not only hostility toward users and external developers but also toward the company's own internal developers and staff.
And again, what’s the issue with that? It’s Walmart’s business. Walmart owns the lots and the lanes. Said companies have no contract with Walmart. Said companies decide to invest in bus despite the risk. Said companies in fact MADE 3 million dollar USD in the 8 years with no investment other than his own time (valued at 200k at most).
no really. I would love to hear any sane person describe why this is not ok?
Another interesting point - quite a number of reddit moderators were reportedly using third party reddit apps because they were unable to fulfil their responsibilities using the stock reddit app. So you have people in a volunteer position, paying for an app out of their own pocket just so they can do the job reddit was presumably too cheapskate to do on their own.
At this point, I really have no idea why Reddit is still not profitable. They are basically a massive forum, they have apparently outsourced all their moderation duties, their content is generated by their user base free of charge, so their costs are basically server hosting, and they are still making a loss even at $100 million in ad revenue?
Yes because the code writes and maintains itself by magic and their ad sales are handled by make believe people who work for free.
They are hosted on AWS iirc and their hosting costs at their scale will also be huge.
While disappointed, I am not surprised to see their IPO goes unhindered. As for the origin of customer hostility, I'd argue that could trace back as soon as when first instance of the commercial activity happened in human society, so that's thousands of years back, definitely not something that's brand new to tech world. With money strictly on the line, goodwill and spirit often get thrown out of the window asap.
Alas, the continuing end of an era with simpler life and simpler internet without so many random craps that exist today. What do we even get out of more advanced internet? Connect toxic people together to topple the status quo? Well, I would pick another day to discuss this.
I replied to an earlier post you made, though I don't think I ever got a reply, and I am curious as to what you think of my response.
To reiterate my point, I can agree with you that it was always a risk on the developer's part, and that Reddit has handled the whole situation extremely poorly (in my opinion), and while being a jerk is not a crime, it's not really the sort of attitude I would like to encourage or see celebrated.
Yes, Christian has made money (else, he would not have stuck around for as long as he has). However, we don't know his costs, he is potentially on the hook for tens / hundreds? of thousands of dollars in refunds, nobody likes having their perfectly stacked deck of cards upset just like that, and I hope you are not cheering that this is happening to him either.
I don’t mean so much in general as in computers specifically, but I do think it was around the tipping point when the internet went from academic to big business.
In the early days, the people using computers would not put up with open user hostility, because there were so few computer users they all knew what they were doing. When it became a mass market thing, people realized they can abuse computer users because they never knew any better.
Plus the motivation early on of people making software was to make it for the users, even when the goal was to make money because you made money from satisfied users. Now it’s not for the users anymore no matter what the companies tell themselves. It’s not about making their experience better anymore, it’s about steering/forcing them to whatever fulfills management’s engagement/profit quotas for the next quarter.
So now that I type all this out, it was basically Microsoft and the like with corporate software, and then Google mainly helping to create this ad-fueled hellscape we now call the internet.
The part that bothers me is it would not be that hard to inject those promoted posted into the API feed and add some requirements on showing them to the api users. Require certain data to be transmitted back to Reddit as well.
Hell even sweeten the pot a little and provide a cut for the clicks seen on the app.
It is not that hard to to see if a users bases add display rate and click threw rate are out of line with other known sources. They could use their own app as a bases and a 3rd party should with with in an acceptable range relative. Also with some more refinements even be able to adjust for the difference types of users.
I haven't replied to your previous post, because for the most part I agreed with almost everything there.
To sum up:
- It is unfortunate that he found a business model that works and it IS a big part of his current income and I am in no way cheering for the fact that those things are going away. I do think it does suck somewhat that this happens to him but I also do not hold the position that this is a catastrophic hit to his life because 3 millions USD is plenty for a one person team and doesn't even include his other projects income. Again I'm made the same analogy in another reply, if this was a situation where if he had to invest 2 years of his time (say 200k worth) into a product led to believe there would be monetization and then the service suddenly changed course 6 months into the payback period, I would think very differently of that scenario. As it is today, it's a very healthy balance of cost/risk/reward for Apollo
- To your point about platforms. He didn't have much of a choice to choose from and therefore he HAS to pick the one with significant risk. I wouldn't look at it from that angle. The reality is that if he had picked any other platforms, his chance of leading to a 3 million dollars revenue target is next to near zero. The fact that he even got there is partly because of his very polished product, but a BIG part of which is because of reddit's enormous value backing the product. If you stick apollo EXACT interface onto say macrumors forum, his monetization will not be even 1% of what he earned. So at that point you have to really question, who is serving who? Plenty of people here seem to think that the contribution of value over the past 8 years has been 60/40% between Reddit itself as a platform and apollo. That is completely delusional. Apollo's contribution to the growth of the platform is more of the order of magnitude of 0.01%. Remember we are not talking about what % of traffic goes through Apollo, we are talking about if Apollo had not existed, how many users would not be using reddit to begin with. And that number is infinitesimal. And for that Apollo should be very thank you that it was temporarily allowed to monetize off Reddit's enormous content for massive profits (pure income, no costs).
- To me this does somewhat reflect the employment situation. It is ALSO of my opinion that if a company decides to lay someone off with minimum notice, minimum compensation (within legal limits) there is nothing unethical about that. Cruel? Maybe. Self-destructive (reputation wise)? Sure. Mis-management hr wise? Yep. But unethical? No. That would be if they somehow company stole money from their salary. But at least in my country, we have strict labour laws. This is where we ensure the company DO have legal limits as to what they can and cannot do. And there IS a generous legal requirement for how much notice to give, and how much to pay etc.
- People are mad that their favourite way of browsing reddit is going away
- People are mad because of this "big guy" squashing "the little guy" narrative
- The situation is unfortunate for a group of business owners but dealings between businesses are OFTEN resulting in one party getting a better end of a deal. This is business as usual
- Nothing done by any parties involved as far as I know have done anything illegal
- Nothing done by any parties involved has done anything unethical
- If you think that legal profit maximizing behaviour is unethical, boy, I have some bad news for you about corporate america
Thank you for taking the time to reply to me as well. I find your response very well thought out, and it certainly builds on your earlier argument about aggregators not owing third party developers a single thing.
It's just that this is maybe the 4th or 5th time a third party app I love to use has been discontinued due to lack of support, and it's a bummer, because they really did offer a much better experience. The first was ProTube in 2016, at a time when YouTube flat out refused to support any of the newer iOS features like PIP and split-screen multitasking, but performance was just so much better. Then there was FastFeed (a third party Instagram app for the iPad), and Instagram would promptly yank their API months later, and they still don't have an iPad app today. Then there was Tweetbot earlier this year, and now Apollo.
I do also agree on a third party Macrumours app likely not being very profitable, and Tapatalk has been giving me issues intermittently (most notably, lack of push notifications from time to time), and the issue with using websites like Ars or Macrumours in browser form is that autocorrect seems quite screwed up (maybe it's due to all the ad blockers I use?) and makes typing a chore for me.
It's like we have all these websites aggregating all the users and content, but the parent companies can't seem to put out remotely decent apps for us to interact with their content, and you would think that third party dev support would be a match made in heaven, but no, everything has to be about the bottom line.
I agree that nothing illegal has been done, I will agree to disagree on the "unethical" bit (especially since moderators reportedly have to rely on third party apps to do their work, free of charge, because the stock app is apparently so bad), and well, I just think the whole matter sucks.
Oh I completely 100% agree with you, and am very empathetic of the situation. The internet is in a sad state of affairs imo. It's increasingly monopolistic. It's a bit like social networks, content tends to have the same network effects. In order words, you don't really want to go to 8 sites to get all your content. It's too much work. So the winner tends to takes all. But as we all know, monopoly removes incentives to innovate/improve and as such, consumers suffer. It sucksThank you for taking the time to reply to me as well. I find your response very well thought out, and it certainly builds on your earlier argument about aggregators not owing third party developers a single thing.
It's just that this is maybe the 4th or 5th time a third party app I love to use has been discontinued due to lack of support, and it's a bummer, because they really did offer a much better experience. The first was ProTube in 2016, at a time when YouTube flat out refused to support any of the newer iOS features like PIP and split-screen multitasking, but performance was just so much better. Then there was FastFeed (a third party Instagram app for the iPad), and Instagram would promptly yank their API months later, and they still don't have an iPad app today. Then there was Tweetbot earlier this year, and now Apollo.
I do also agree on a third party Macrumours app likely not being very profitable, and Tapatalk has been giving me issues intermittently (most notably, lack of push notifications from time to time), and the issue with using websites like Ars or Macrumours in browser form is that autocorrect seems quite screwed up (maybe it's due to all the ad blockers I use?) and makes typing a chore for me.
It's like we have all these websites aggregating all the users and content, but the parent companies can't seem to put out remotely decent apps for us to interact with their content, and you would think that third party dev support would be a match made in heaven, but no, everything has to be about the bottom line.
I agree that nothing illegal has been done, I will agree to disagree on the "unethical" bit (especially since moderators reportedly have to rely on third party apps to do their work, free of charge, because the stock app is apparently so bad), and well, I just think the whole matter sucks.
But the solution isn't to shout at the players, we need to change the game. I dont know what the solution is, but I am optimistic that it can be done. Think the power GDPR has brought back to the consumer hands and companies have no choice but to comply.I'm not the biggest fan of Reddit, they censor too much and are very political. However I back their decision as free loader companies like Apollo are making a lot of money off of content and infrastructure that they don't own and use for free. There is nothing wrong with the Reddit app, it works fine. Every Apollo user is lost revenue for Reddit, why continue to allow this? This 'Reddit ban' won't amount to much, it will just result in people using Reddit properly as designed. I'm surprised people are that upset about this to be honest other than 'fake outrage' because a company wants to make money on their own infrastructure.
This whole thing is because Steve Huffman is having an IPO this year and he wants to cash out of Reddit with as much cash as he can. Nothing else matters to him expect to increase the apparent value of Reddit so he can pocket the most cash on his way out the door. Getting rid of subreddit apps is a way of concentrating his subscriber base. I was reading on iOS today that Apollo was a favorite of the visually impaired it is sad it is going away just for that reason. Beyond that I could careless. I did learn about the Pixel Pals app, a very cute app I gladly paid for.
It's great the official app works well for you. Sensitive content does not work properly on the official app nor do the moderator tools. So great it works "fine" for you but it doesn't work fine for everyone. Many people questioned what they are supposed to do since key features are missing from the official mobile app and asked when they were going to be fixed and got crickets during the AMA. People don't want to be forced to being at computer to fully use Reddit. They are going to lose users unless they do something. Getting the mods angry that do work for you for free isn't a great strategy.
I agree in the long run it will have zero effect on the IPO. Reddit has some other issue killing its IPO prices.
I will admit I am not an applo users but know in when it came out there was no reddit mobile app. Reddit had not created their yets.
I think the largest issue people have is a very high cost for the API and next to zero warning. 30 days is very little time to update things and goes double in mobile application. Mix that with a path of forcing a user to update the app with Apple's review process. 90 days would of been more reasonable and dropping the price.
All honestly this seems like Reddit is wanting to kill some of the 3rd party apps and force more first party. That is not illegal and I think it might just be handle poorly. I totally get Reddit not wanting to buy his app. They have their own. This is very different than when they bought blue Alien they wanted to speed somethings up. Apollo does not offer that much over reddit and sure as hell not worth price he would be asking. Sadly the value of Apollo has been dropping for a while to reddit in terms of cost to buy. As soon as Reddit released their own first party App Apollo value started dropping and now sadly it is next to worthless. I do wish Reddit seem to be more willing to work with 3rd party but it is their call.
I don't think many people disagree that the API should have costs associated with it, that's not the issue here - the issue is the high cost that Reddit has determined, along with the short timeframe for developers to implement it.
And again I’ve posted this a many times in this thread, they’ve honestly miscalculated the messaging here. They would’ve been much better to just announce the cut off of the api entirely and give say a 60 days notice than to announce a high pricing plan. They have no intention of charging you api. They just want to rid of 3rd party apps. If they have announced it this way maybe they could’ve avoided a whole lot of drama. Because seemingly most redditors took it as a personal insult when a high price is asked.
Because it's an extremely short-sighted move that overlooks the fact that a disproportionate number of third party reddit app users are likely "superusers" themselves, in that they perform tasks like moderating subreddits and create tools / apps, and other high-level, technical tasks which require third party apps because the stock app is just so bad.
Does it make business sense to dump a million free users (Apollo reportedly had 900,000 users) who are generating content for all your other 430 million monthly active users, as well as pruning those subreddits and making them much more useable for everyone? I will argue it doesn't, so Reddit better pray that the loss in user-generated content for their monetised users is survivable.
And as we are now finding out, moderators also have the power to disable entire subreddits, and because they aren't paid, there is no harm to them doing so (compared to say, Hollywood scriptwriters going on strike), so they can afford to do so indefinitely, and the only one losing out is Reddit who desperately needs to look good for their IPO later this year.
Let's say I agree with you from a business standpoint that Reddit does deserve to earn from every user using their service. I can think a of a number of ways they could have handled the situation that didn't involve them dramatically raising fees in a bid to cash in on LLMs trying to scan their content (which is likely already a done deal), falsely accusing the Apollo dev of blackmail, giving third party devs less than a month to transition, or that disaster of a AMA that did nothing except show how out-of-touch Reddit leadership is.
Do they not teach common sense in business school anymore?
I won't but the problem is Reddit will continue to show up on google search so as a workaround, I will adding the website to my blocklist in my hosts file on Windows and Android so even if I click on it by accident, I won't enter the website. I did the same with Twitter when Musk destroyed the site with his takeover.
Before the era of Twitter and Reddit, I was a member of forums and bulletin boards and I survived. I can do so again.
They paid because they have no life and get off on the power trip. Let us not start feeling sorry for terminally online moderators.
Yeah but see you just did it again. You brought in ethics. Ethics denotes morals or standards of conduct.
The problem is that you are blending what a person does and what a company does. While companies are made of people, those people make decisions along the basis of the reason the company exists, its business purpose. If you make ice cream, you make decisions about how to sell ice cream, you are not worried about the morals of ice cream. Just because a business pursues a path that doesn't benefit everyone, or in fact hurts other businesses, doesn't make it a moral issue. In fact anytime a company "wins" over another company they are "hurting" someone. Does that mean that once a customer chooses one vendor that another company should never try and win that business? That would be "hurting" someone.
The only way in which morals come into the picture is the case when the business purpose is one of morality. Many non-profit or even B certified corporations would fall under this category. However, since Reddit is not one of those, it is improper to call this a moral or immoral decision.
Also, just because they are not public doesn't detract from their fiduciary responsibilities. They certainly took investment and that means they have that responsibility to their investors. Also remember, this company makes over $350M a year in revenue. At that size you aren't doing anything in a vacuum. You have a whole executive team, board of directors, investors, etc... and the major decisions of the organization run through a process. This would have been approved by the team and not some random afternoon decision.
As a business you can't let a less than 2% of your user base dictate your business decisions. However, I agree with the sentiment that it could have been handled a lot better, and without the hockey stick curve to the change. The way it was handled I think everyone thinks is terrible. But it also has nothing to do with morals.
The fact that so quickly and so many of the younger generation bought into this unethical narrative is rooted in a deeper culture of anti-corporation. In many ways, genz has feel that they have been oppressed, or taken advantage of. They are not interested in the actual debate of business ethics and they refuse to educate themselves on the operations and functions of a corporate entity. All they really want, is something they can point finger at to voice the inner frustration.
Of course it never really amounts to any real change. So the event passes and next month it will be another wrong-doing from another corporation they will be furious about. Last month it was Netflix's ban of password sharing. This month it's Reddit's ban on third party apps. Next month it will be something new. And in their own words, they can't wait for these corporations to suffer from their own foolish decisions and burn to the ground (which of course it never will).