Sean Heber
It's amazing that Reddit, having watched the fallout after Twitter killed off their third party developers, would go on to say, "You know what, that's an excellent idea and we should do it too!" It seems their new API pricing scheme might very well be a deathblow to @christianselig's excellent Apollo client (along with tons of others, I'm sure). https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/ 25 comments
Nelson Chu Pavlosky
@bigzaphod @Sandywb @christianselig For the same reason corporations recently copied each other in laying off workers, even though there's lots of evidence that hurts profits in the long term: control and power are more important to capitalists than profits. If their power grab fails and kills the company/product, then they can go scorched earth and make sure no one else rules or benefits either. If their power grab succeeds, then they have more absolute power. They win either way.  
Karyl :godot: :procreate:
@bigzaphod @christianselig Oh geez... If they nuke Apollo I will just quit using Reddit. Fuck that noise
(っ◔◡◔)っstephen
@bigzaphod @christianselig they want to kill off 3rd party apps without saying they are killing 3rd party apps
Matt Stocum
@moliver if it’s not, this is a staggering level of incompetence. They know the number of API calls each client is making. They could definitely calculate a reasonable price, they chose not to.
𝗺𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿
@mattstocum 
Sean C.
@bigzaphod @christianselig if you want to force people to use your "official" piece of shit app, just say so, this API shell game is just chicken shit
AdmiralFrosty
@bigzaphod @christianselig Remember when HBO yanked a bunch of original stuff, people complained, but now all the services are doing it? It has that vibe.
Dan Neuman
@bigzaphod @christianselig I could see that price for an individual user, eg people making large language models with AWS. But to charge an app for access seems a bit absurd. Maybe if they served native ads, and if Reddit got better advertisers.
Jim Lipsey
@bigzaphod @christianselig @siracusa Is $2.50/month too much to ask for ad-free API feeds and full support of 3rd-party clients? Add $8/month for the developer and app store fees, and I'd be happy to pay the total for Apollo, as I would have for Twitter charging for ad-free API-access within 3rd-party apps before Musk. Users who would pay for a client are among the most valuable to advertisers. Ad-free on Apollo and twitter clients always felt like borrowed time. Is this really unreasonable?
Jessie Nabein
@bigzaphod This will also kill front-end tools like libreddit and teddit, which make browsing and archiving reddit immensely convenient. No ads or distractions
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@bigzaphod @jasonnab i rely heavily on teddit instances to keep tabs on things without an account so this is awful to hear.
Jessie Nabein
@jahtnamas @bigzaphod Me too, I use teddit exclusively ever since I found it, it's just way easier to track subreddits and going ons that way, with no desire to interact. I'm hopeful either something like another API being left available, or some kind of alternative HTML scraping would happen? Seems like a lot of effort though... There WAS also https://i.reddit.com which WAS the super mobile reddit design (RIP), but it's gone, and im sure old.reddit will disappear soon given this news... 
Chris Coleman
@bigzaphod @christianselig If it were me, I'd at least look into what it would take to turn Apollo into an alternative to Reddit. Now maybe that's a dumb idea, and much easier said than done. But the hardest part is getting real users who are willing to pay, and that part is already done.
Tom Jacob
@bigzaphod @christianselig @siracusa im sorry, what fallout? As far as I can tell, journalists and even @AOC@twitter.com continue to happily tweet away and take the abuse. Fwiw, as soon as Apollo stops working, so does my use of reddit.
Trebach
@freediverx @bigzaphod @christianselig @siracusa Before you delete your account, overwrite your comments and posts with something else because they just do a soft delete of them. They don't have an edit log, so this is how you can make sure they don't profit from your work any longer
Chase
It’s a calculated maneuver for sure. Can’t collect user data if they’re using a third party app. |
Gregory's Server
@bigzaphod @christianselig Why would a business emulate such an unsuccessful business model?