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Comment by lb4r | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat related, but I'd love for Apolloapp to break free from the Reddit API and simply become its own thing. It's backed by, depending on how you measure things, probably almost 50% of the Reddit community as it is. With some VC backing, or simply just crowdfunding to start things off, and continuous support from the subreddits that have gone dark, it could very well become a thing.

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Apollo has recreated the easiest 5% of what reddit is.

Hosting at scale, content moderation (just the bare minimum to remain legal in various jurisdictions), plus all the internal bureaucracy that is involved in employing more than just yourself or a handful of people (complying with government regulations and paperwork for employee training, salaries, benefits) are all things that Apolloapp is not.

Getting a bunch of people to agree to not use reddit for two days (or longer) is a hell of a lot easier than getting that same number of people to agree to support Apolloapp as the New Reddit.

I don't disagree with the difficulty of the task. I'm just saying that IF there would be an alternative, Apollo would probably be the best starting point, at least if one were going for fast scaling.

VC funding is primary reason that reddit reached the current situation. Another VC funded alternative will follow the same death spiral.

Link aggregators/social networks cannot generate VC expected returns without dying in the process.

This death cycle of social networks has repeated itself in silicon valley for decades.

At this point doing VC investment into social networks is like a game of hot potato. Who gets to exit first before the social network self destructs

To be honest, I am not all too familiar with all the pitfalls of VC funding, so I don't feel confident in either agreeing nor disagreeing with you.

Either way, there are other ways to both raise and make money.

I agree. I think the only successful alternative has to be a non-profit.

Decentralized solutions don't scale.

Although I actually (and REALLY) hope you are right, I think a purely non-profit alternative would be doomed to fail. And my argument for this is pretty simple: How often do non-profits out-compete for-profits? Sometimes, maybe, but rarely.

I would be interested to hear how you measure Apollo usage to say it's backed by 50% of Reddit.

I've never used it and don't know anyone that has. I read a stat yesterday that only about 5% of Reddit traffic comes from 3rd party apps (might be incorrect) so I'm curious what impact it has beyond just a client for reddit. (I'm vaguely aware of some moderation tools that Apollo has.)

I don't mean the usage of Apollo in particular, but my understanding from what I've read is that according to some metrics, almost 50% of Reddit have gone dark, partly in support of Apollo. It's already the unofficial alternative to Reddit, except also kind of being Reddit at the same time.

Correction: I did a quick check, and around 40% went dark according to this source, so not quite the 'almost 50%' that I proclaimed: https://twitter.com/aakashg0/status/1668107416490192897

Ah, that makes more sense. 40% going dark is actually way higher than I would have thought.

It also depends on how you interpret it. 22% of submissions, 38% of comments, 48% of authors, 43% of karma went dark.

> probably almost 50% of the Reddit community

This is the loud minority fallacy. I foresee less than 1% of the community actually willing to leave reddit. Spaz knows this. They are just really noisy, but not so many people care about the third party apps.

The difference here is that even though there is a loud minority, and I agree with your assessment of 'less than 1%" of actual Reddit visitors, almost half of Reddit is not accessible anymore. If there ever was an opportunity to create an alternative to Reddit, now is probably the time, and Apollo is probably the best starting point.

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