Interesting interview with the developer of the most popular 3rd part app about the issue.
Now Reddit wants rent to compensate for the lost ads. My guess Reddit also noticed most people using Apollo doesn’t create content, so Apollo users are just extracting value from Reddit.
I’d like to see the hard numbers before having an opinion about who yo be upset with.
I can't see the relationship between Apollo and Reddit as singularly one sided.
If content is created in the woods and no one is there to view it, did it create value?
You don't have to create content to create value. You can also promote the platform and grow loyalty, something possible with Apollo.
Reddit could still encourage third party clients and also monetize them in a reasonable way, but they have chosen to be unreasonable and will almost certainly kill the market for those apps.
How did you come to that conclusion?
His app is not providing cash in the form of direct payments or advertisements. His app removes the aggressive account creation, the official app has.
What value does this create for Reddit?
* The API access charges about 10x the price compared to the revenue per user they would expect if the users accessed reddit via web or official app.
* There was 30 days notice of the new pricing. He has many customers that pay per-year that he is going to lose money on until renewal.
* The price is too high. Compared to similar platforms that charge for API they are charging way more.
* An individual from the company called him out for having 'inefficient' code, which he took personally and mounted a good defense of his usage.
* The API is losing feature parity with the first party website/app.
* Reddit is itself building a bigger business on the backs of reddit users generating content. Many of those users use a 3rd party app. In fact, 3rd party apps were largely responsible for transitioning reddit into mobile usage. They seem to be overstepping their position in the ecosystem.
He could just request 100 posts first, halving the API requests, but the app would be less responsive.
Your comments seem to have a confidence level that their content doesn't justify.
That’s too late to be sending the request if you want the premium feeling of no loading times while scrolling, especially if you also want to do rich thumbnails of media.
https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/comment/...
This is just the third party developers' made up estimate and is not confirmed at all.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/kf4ucn/thanks_to...
Please don’t give me that “he’s the only one working”.
I have a lifetime Apollo Pro Ultra license and there’s literally no way in the app for me to tip him more, but I totally would if there was.
That said: least for me, I've found that some equipment actually does make me more efficient as a dev, even if I don't "need" it as the bare minimum to do my job. I could do my job on a 15 year old ThinkPad. But having a modern computer with a nice mouse, keyboard and a big external display makes a measurable different in my productivity
This is also talking about an iOS dev saying this would help test for iPads. How exactly does any of that make sense?
The app became borderline unusable on phones with low contrast ratios (non-oled)
He isn’t opposed to paying for API access, but he feels the rates they are charging are exorbitant to the point of being designed to forcel 3rd party apps out of business, not extract value from them.
I’ve already seen one subreddit threaten to shut down because the mod moderates it using Apollo and is unwilling to use Reddit’s UI or app.