[slashtom]

I'm not sure how Christian couldn't have seen this coming. Corporations want control over their brand, image, and experience. How Reddit is accessed and viewed is 1:1 to the experience.

It's unfortunate, but when you hitch your wagon to a corporation's API, you are taking the risk that one day they wake up and say ok we're ready to control our narrative and turn off the API (or set exorbitant prices to access)

Writing was on the wall when facebook/instagram did this years ago.

[ink_13]

People have been using third-party clients to access Reddit for more than 13 years. When you have that kind of history, a change like this is difficult to seem like anything but a rug-pull.

[wldcordeiro]

The third-party apps predate the first-party even. Reddit had been a website only for years then bought the most popular iOS third-party client as a starting point so like you said it's very much a rug-pull.

[crazygringo]

No, because it's still a for-profit corporation, and one that's taken lots of VC funding and has also been looking to IPO. Owners change, management changes, priorities change, that's what happens in the business world.

If you don't think you're taking a major risk, then you're just being naive.

(I'm not defending Reddit here, but I am saying anyone should have been planning for this highly probable outcome.)

[haswell]

To me, this is the biggest thing that makes the Facebook/Instagram comparison problematic. Reddit's history is built on the backs of 3rd party apps, and they've long been part of the core ethos of the community.

The same can't be said for the Meta properties, and so I'd argue we're seeing something different/worse here.

[User23]

There’s a reason nobody has any sympathy for Charlie Brown. How many times does the football have to get pulled away for the lesson to sink in I wonder?

Edit: As many metaphors do, it works on multiple levels, but the fundamental message is don’t be a chump.

[satvikpendem]

Platform risk always exists, no matter the timeframe.

[AndrewKemendo]

This is always the response

Some form of “tough break kid welcome to the real world”

There’s a pervasive “if you can’t beat them join them“ attitude about these antisocial financial and social structures.

We need more people to say “Here’s an alternative to that model” instead of just throwing their hands up.

Stop excusing it. Start pushing for alternative ways to organize.

[sledgehammers]

So refreshing to hear a voice of reason.

You are totally right.

This shit attitude needs to change.

[latency-guy2]

> This is always the response

Because it's the right one.

> Some form of “tough break kid welcome to the real world”

Yes.

> There’s a pervasive “if you can’t beat them join them“ attitude about these antisocial financial and social structures.

The argument would be sound, if and only if others weren't making a business off the free to one side of the equation.

> We need more people to say “Here’s an alternative to that model” instead of just throwing their hands up.

You have no alternative until you offer free compute, storage, hosting, for reddit, Twitter, Google, etc., as far as I can tell, you do none of these things, nor will you be able to fundamentally break physics to do so.

> Stop excusing it. Start pushing for alternative ways to organize.

Pay me.

[ASalazarMX]

> I'm not sure how Christian couldn't have seen this coming

He did. Apollo has a freemium model, and if the API pricing was reasonable, he coult take the hit using the subscribers to subsidize the free users. The problem is the exhorbitant pricing, meaning all his users should be paying four times what the usual suscription costs, just to pay Reddit. It's bonkers.

[that_guy_iain]

Realistically, the price he would need to increase to isn't even that high. $5 a month. Paying $5 a month for an app you use daily, repeatedly to the point it makes 300 API requests - isn't asking that much. Would all his users pay? No. But they can use the free Reddit app with ads and what not or the website. But realistically, it's easy to think 5-10% would pay. And he would make a healthy profit and Reddit would get paid.

The problem, everyone seems to think Reddit doesn't provide enough value to be worth $5 a month to enjoy without ads and a nice UI.

Reddit wants about $0,00024 an API request. To think that isn't reasonable, seems odd. Sendgrid wants $0.0399 per email. ScrapingBee wants $0.098 an API request. Docraptor wants $0.4 an API request/pdf. I'm sure I could carry on and find more and more sites that cost more per API request, I didn't find one that was cheaper.

[wldcordeiro]

Yeah all the way back when Reddit sent out takedown threats on most 3rd party apps for their names (I use Relay which used to be called Reddit Relay, can't recall the Apollo app name before) and launched their own apps it was pretty clear.

[wslh]

I wonder why nobody is talking more loudly about LinkedIn:

1) if you export your data (yes, your data!) they don't include contact's email.

2) The can refuse to give you API access to your own data.

[postalrat]

LinkedIn's entire business model is based on LinkedIn getting paid for searching and contacting. And the recruiters paying then are often the scummiest ones who look for quantity over quality.

[mdasen]

Reddit's always been a bit of a weird site in this regard. Most sites closed off a long time ago and put so many ads everywhere. Old Reddit is still alive 5 years after the redesign and it's been so easy to avoid ads on Reddit in general. While most places have aggressively pursued monetization, Reddit has been a place where you could avoid most of that.

Even the way that Old Reddit showed ads was so quaint. If you look at Old Reddit without an ad blocker, you'll see an ad in the list of 25 items, but it has a different background color so you can easily visually differentiate it from the real content along with two high-contrast things noting that it's an ad. Sites like Twitter and Facebook have been minimizing your ability to differentiate ads from content by making them look nearly identical with a tiny, low-contrast marking that they're ads. Of course, New Reddit shows ads with the same tiny, low-contrast marking that other companies use. But unlike others, Reddit still allows you to choose the Old Reddit experience.

Yes, in some ways the writing has always been on the wall. In other ways, Reddit has been a bit different. They've largely ignored the kinds of things that other sites have gone after. Yes, when you've hitched your wagon to a company's site, you're at a certain amount of risk. That's also true of users who might find the site infested with ads or changing how they're allowed to do things. At the same time, Reddit has resisted that direction for so long that most people assumed it would continue. Why now? Why not 5 years ago?

It seems like the thing people are reacting to is the culture shock. Instagram was never open. They wouldn't even let companies schedule posts for a long time. Facebook was barely open, but never had the kind of ecosystem that Reddit had (and often fought against third party access). Reddit's policies felt really different and they aren't changing in a gradual fashion. It's not like Reddit told Apollo, "we're going to start charging 20 cents per month per user" and Apollo only works for those paying $1.50/mo for Apollo Ultra (and then a year later Reddit wants 50 cents and then a dollar and slowly Apollo Ultra goes up in price and more people move away from it). It's not like Reddit put in limits like "you only get 100 API calls per day per user" which would be 30% of an average Apollo users' usage. That would start bleeding users from Apollo over time, but not feel like slamming the door shut - and maybe Reddit charges $1/mo for unlimited API calls for the user and only those paying a subscription fee can get the unlimited calls. That would offer a way forward that users might grumble about, but could work with. Free users could still get a decent amount of usage and people who really cared could subscribe to a new Apollo Ultra at $2/mo. In fact, it could drive sales of Apollo Ultra - maybe 5-10x more people start paying for Apollo Ultra.

I think the big shock is that Reddit went from so open to so closed in one step while Reddit had historically accommodated the community's resistance to monetization. Old Reddit has stuck around for half a decade now. Despite being one of the most visited websites, a lot of monetization opportunities seemed to be ignored. Condé Nast/Advanced Publications seemed to mostly ignore the site. It was spun-out with Advanced Publications remaining owner and just kinda went along. Even after raising $200M in 2017, Advanced Publications was still the majority owner (and I think they're still today even after Reddit raised another billion dollars).

Lots of younger sites/networks have gone public with a lot less traffic and aggressively moved to monetize. I'm not saying this was the case, but it always seemed to users that Reddit's owners were a bit disinterested in its potential monetization and were mostly fine ignoring it - allowing users to easily block ads, keeping Old Reddit around, allowing free access for ad-less third-party apps, etc. In that environment, it does come as a shock. Reddit felt like this hidden place (that also everyone knew about). It just felt different.

You're not wrong that building on someone else's site is risky. At the same time, I can see the shock from such a sudden change to a site whose reputation was quite different.

[lost_tourist]

He said it, because reddit was always friendly and now they're doing a 180 on them with very short notice; no time to phase customers out or spread some of the cost out, just BAM "you get 1 month to switch to the new scheme or adios losers". Public companies have to basically become fascist to do what wallstreet expects of them, which is to let beancounters rule all decisions rather than listening to engineers and other employees.

[redbell]

> I'm not sure how Christian couldn't have seen this coming

It's not ONLY Christian but creators of apps like RiF, Relay and others face a similar destiny..

I haven't read any reactions from those creators regarding this Reddit Vs. Apollo saga since they're also "saga-ed".