@christianselig I like the comment that said Reddit has handed you a valuation of 20mil YRR so offer them the app for 30mil

@christianselig So sorry Christian. I hope this gets sorted out in your favor.

@christianselig That is *totally* ridiculous, only way for me to view Reddit is via Apollo.

This is a really sad situation they have put you into (as well as Apollo users) and there’s no room for discussion on their part, seems like they are taking a leaf out of Twitter’s playbook dealing with 3rd party developers.

Sending you positive vibes mate 👊🏼

@christianselig I’m amazed anyone can look at Twitter over the past several months and think, “this is the way forward for us as well.”

@christianselig really sorry to hear this 😔

You've done so much for Reddit and it's horrible to see how they're treating you in return. Your app is peerless and I wish they cared about the quality of the UX as much as they do the money.

@christianselig If every user provides their own API key in the free tier, would that make using the app possible after the change?

@christianselig There goes my dream of one day writing a Usenet server/proxy for the Reddit API so I could post using Mozilla Thunderbird! Seriously though, Usenet was great if it weren’t for the spam. Would love to see a modern take on it to replace Reddit.

@christianselig @bigzaphod holy crap, that sucks. Sorry to hear that. 😞

@christianselig boom, there it is! Thanks for creating such an awesome app btw, I’ll stick around if spez gets visits by three ghosts to convince him this is a stupid idea. Otherwise, I finally have a reason to use Mastadon now!

@christianselig Man this is fucked up. You should create your own version of Reddit lol. You've already created the perfect app. Just build the backend. I wish Mastodon was a good replacement for Reddit's features.

@christianselig Exactly what about accessing reddit is this profitable to warrant that cost of api requests? The app forwards the ads to the users? So it doesn’t really cost reddit anything to use apollo vs browser?

@christianselig A modest proposal: reduce your dependency on the reddit API (and gradually replace it entirely) by seamlessly integrating your own reddit alternative in the app, like Apple did for SMS with iMessage.

I.e. when an Apollo user makes a post or comment, it goes to your service, and other Apollo users pull it from there, not the Reddit API. Make the default to only see “blue bubble” comments by fellow Apollo users and hide “legacy reddit” comments.

As a bonus, make it federated

@christianselig It really sucks because Apollo is amazing for reddit over the crappy official app. Reddit is being really greedy. I won't forgive reddit for this, hopefully the pixelpals app will stay put

@christianselig Wow that seems like “F U” pricing. I have Apollo Pro and am definitely open to a subscription if you can make the numbers pan out for you.

@christianselig Just read your post about this in Apollo. It seems to be all about greed. Reddit shooting themselves in the foot.

@christianselig @siracusa I’m curious, is this apollo.app getting caught in the crossfire of Reddit trying to tax AI companies for using reddit data as training material for AI models?

@christianselig
This is exactly the kind of reason why I quit Reddit and joined here. Sorry for your loss, man.

@christianselig Any thoughts on making Apollo for Lemmy?

@christianselig I so hope there’s a reasonable solution…

@christianselig what a disaster - hopefully some press will cause them to reconsider. They’re effectively dictating your pricing model

@christianselig and with that, Reddit has reached its final stage of #enshittification

@christianselig Yikes, that's terrible. I hope there will be enough backlash that they will reconsider and offer more reasonable pricing for third party clients. 🤞

@christianselig guess Reddit is dead to me now too. Sorry to hear it, I’ve loved Apollo forever.

@christianselig
The enshittification of Reddit intensifies.

@christianselig truly horrible news. Your app is the only reason why Reddit is even usable these days. I’m so sorry it’s come to this but I wish the very best to you. Worst case if it all goes down, you were one of the best iOS devs ever

@christianselig Apparently they forgot what happened to Tumblr and Digg.

@christianselig Sorry to see this news today. It’s disheartening to see so many APIs being paywalled lately. As a developer, it feels like it’s really limiting my creativity. I’m trying to build a music events app, and it’s crazy how almost every related API has gone paid/private in the past few years. I could scrape, but it doesn’t feel as collaborative or ethical.

@christianselig

I’m an avid Apollo user, and this is the nail in the coffin for Reddit for me.

Do you think you could convert Apollo into a mastodon tool instead? Could be a great opportunity to carry some users this way!

@christianselig That sucks… I know its a bit early, but do you have any plans to make a Mastodon app?

@christianselig I literally just quit reddit and signed up here because of this. Funny that you are the first person I see here!

@christianselig Dam this sucks. I sub’d to Apollo today knowing it may end but wanted to lend some support.

@christianselig This sucks in so many ways.

@christianselig Welp, there goes my Reddit account. I refuse to use the official app. It's somehow worse than Twitter's. I'm sorry this is happening, dude. Apollo really is such an amazing app.

@christianselig what a load of malarkey

@christianselig
If Reddit executes on this as planned it will be more than adequate substrate for me to stop my monthly reddit prime thingie.

@christianselig @simonbs
I encourage everyone to let Reddit know how we feel. En masse. I did here:

https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/requests

I “applied” as an api developer and wrote as follows.

My comment:

I read today you’re poised to effectively charge the developer of Apollo $20mm a year to continue providing access to Reddit which is, in a word, untenable (or laughable unless your goal is to push everyone to use your own client).

@christianselig Standing strong on your side.

Take heart that you're in a kind of "canary in a coalmine", or, "fires of Gondor" position.

People see you. Now, people need to get to work.

@christianselig Now that Re-Edit is a public company; corporate news, corporate mods, corporate censorship.

@christianselig libreddit link: https://libreddit.northboot.xyz/13ws4w3/

They’re trying to do a Twitter, basically. Wonder if i.reddit.com and old.reddit.com will be next.

@christianselig So angry on your behalf. Such bullshit. Apollo is one of the best apps in existence and really the only reason I use Reddit at all.

@christianselig I've been using Apollo exclusively for the past 5 years. It's an awesome app with a great dev and If Apollo goes so does my time on Reddit. Glad that I found you here so I can keep up with your future projects!

@christianselig ngl, this pricing seems extreme

@christianselig Wow. I'm so sorry.

@christianselig damn shame. Greed. Been on Apollo Pro for as long as I can remember really.

@christianselig Ugh. Ridiculous. Apollo is the best way to experience Reddit on mobile. They should just buy you out and replace their crappy app with yours.

@christianselig jeeze that really sucks man. Thanks for sharing the context. It really is crazy and disappointing. I hope they come to their senses.

@christianselig serious question: would it be cheaper—or even possible—to basically proxy the Reddit API through your own Apollo servers so you only make any given request from Reddit once? Any way to investigate if that would actually be a feasible solution?

that’s just really unfortunate 😔

@christianselig This is sad. Im personally not using Apollo but i sure as heck wont be using the official reddit app if they shut down the client im using.

If they shut down old.reddit.com im out of there for good.

@christianselig
If things don't work out, it would be exciting to see more clients for Lemmy and Kbin :blobcataww:

@christianselig Screen scraping is in vogue again.

@christianselig Reddit is asking for very unreasonable amount of money. That is stupid. The clearly do not want third party applications to be operational,🙁

@christianselig Some bullshit. Apollo has been my staple Reddit client for years by now and like many others, I cannot stand the official Reddit app. I’ll follow Christian wherever he goes on his next venture because god knows Reddit isn’t gonna give him shit. I really don’t want Apollo to die, it deserves the place it’s made for itself.

@christianselig
wow. They’re dropping like flies.

@christianselig that sucks man

@christianselig Well, corporate proprietary silos + "need to claw every ROI" greed... What would one expect?

@christianselig Sorry to hear that 😞

@christianselig Apollo brought me back to being a daily Reddit user. There's no way I can use the native interface to keep up with the number of subreddit & users I follow. You must be crushed as the product owner but thanks for making such a great user experience.

@christianselig That price is absolutely ridiculous, and the fact that they aren’t bending on it makes me think they’re using this as a way to get rid of 3rd party apps without having to do the dirty work.

@christianselig this is fucked man, I’m sorry

@christianselig Absolutely insane - reddit is really going through the twitter route as if Elon bought them

@christianselig good grief, that’s bonkers!

@christianselig ❤️

@christianselig This fucking sucks, I'm so sorry. Hope saner minds can prevail there

@christianselig You should try to make clients for /kbin and Lemmy . It's worth it 👌

@christianselig Aw jeez man. That’s fucking ridiculous. :(

@christianselig ridiculous amount! I hope that Reddit comes to their senses.
I understand that they want to get paid for api-access, but this is “we don’t want third party apps, but don’t want to say it out loud” level of money.

@christianselig damn! I’m sorry…. Apollo made Reddit tolerable to use 😅 I guess this is the end for Apollo. But I hope you learned a lot from the years working on it, and you have opened up some good opportunities, and of course that you made a good amount of money before Reddit did this stupid decision 🫣

@christianselig oh fuck, this is awful 🤬

@christianselig
BOO!

@christianselig I’ve been using Apollo since the beta days & I am an OG Ultra Lifetime customer! I will probably quit reddit just like when twitter did this with Tweetbot. Sad

@christianselig I'm first and foremost an Apollo user (and Apollo happens to use the reddit API). If you'd switch your app to a federated version, I probably wouldn't even notice 😂😂

@christianselig guess I’m done with Reddit then

@christianselig i liked the API explanation so much that I’m subscribing to Apollo while it lasts

@christianselig Now I understand where this meme is coming from

@christianselig I am sorry to hear this. Apollo is a great app. It made Reddit usable for me.

@christianselig That sucks. Will you adjust your pricing, or is this the end?

@christianselig you obviously need to increase your subscription price and will have fewer but more lucrative customers. That'll result in a bill of much less than 20mil, but even if your cut is only 10% then it could be a big win, and even better: sustainable for everyone.

@christianselig wow, the NFT’s and avatar skins must not be doing so well; who’s have thought? #Apollo is orders of magnitude better than the first-party app. Unfortunately for #Reddit, that won’t change even if they kill off Apollo.

@christianselig well, i suspect lots of people will leave reddit. While i have never used your app have you considered retooling it for mastodon?

@christianselig Man Christian this absolutely sucks. The Reddit experience is nothing without your app. Once that stops working. I’m out. You have done such good things for the community. Never forget that.

@christianselig Noooo! I'm not a heavy redit user so never poked your app, but this is terrible news and I'm so very sorry! That's fair neither to you nor the users who have come to be happy with/rely on your products. Anything we can do from the user end? I would have scrolled through your post to look but that was ... a lot of comments and I found it a little overwhelming--sorry, rredit novice! I had intended to try and get into the platfform at some point, now I'm not sure it's a good idea.

@christianselig I await your next app! Apollo was my favorite and I don’t think I’ll browse Reddit any other way. Let’s hope they realize their bad faith offer isn’t worth losing most of their user base.

@christianselig And this is how people end up on Mastodon. While I didn't mind the Twitter changes because I barely ever used it, the latest Reddit announcement made me finally get on here.

@christianselig It's unfortunate that #Reddit has decided to go a similar money grabbing route as #twitter.

I guess a #Fediverse alternative to Reddit will benefit at the end, and that's never a bad thing.

https://mastodon.social/users/christianselig/statuses/110464420566906146

@christianselig and as soon as they force Apollo off reddit, I'm off reddit. Apollo is great software and I hope you can use it as a framework for something new. I'll be watching...

@christianselig

Such a shame, whilst I didn't use Apollo, I am using RIF and they will also close the app. However, as many have already said, it will get us off our Reddit addiction!

@christianselig truth is, all of these social media platforms cost money to run. How much API access should cost is arguable ($20M feels steep), but not free.

@christianselig Quite unfortunate to see! If there is perhaps a 'silver' 'lining' to this situation, it means I (and others like me) will probably be able to curb my Reddit addiction. Thanks, Reddit? (I say in a "Thanks Obama" sort of way)

@christianselig yikes!! How many Apollo users are there? If you were to invest that amount of money, you might as well ask VCs to help you in starting your own social network lol. Everyone else seems to be doing it, so why not? :)

@christianselig This is an absolute same Christian and truly breaks my heart! I have loved Apollo for so long. I’ll be leaving Reddit for sure if this doesn’t change.

Let me know where you go and what your next adventure is, I will follow you there!

@christianselig that's just so insane to me. Clients are a huge boon to platforms; pricing developers out is actively hostile to almost everyone.

If things go from worse to worst, maybe it might be worth considering building for the fediverse, kind of like what Tapbots is doing? There's a Reddit alternative called Lemmy that pretty much replaces most of Reddit's main functionality.

https://join-lemmy.org/

@christianselig is there any sense that the nature of the API use matters? I mean, Apollo adds value to Reddit while other uses of the API may be extractive.

@christianselig @siracusa

@christianselig hope you find a new avenue for your hard work! I’ll be following

@christianselig That really sucks man. Apollo is my main UI into Reddit on mobile devices. Best of luck.

@christianselig would be great if these companies let users pay them directly for API access.

@christianselig they're so afraid of genuine viable competition that they're trying to kill it with fire