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Comment by penguin_booze | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'm missing something: why can't Apollo--or any other app--pass the API burden to the user? I get that this means the user experience via the app would effetively turn out to be paid service. But then, to match, Reddit could have also relaxed their policy to the effect that, up to n API access would be free; beyond that, Reddit would charge the user.

Microsoft, for example, already do this for many of their Azure services. Thus, if you're a moderate user on the free plan, you get essentially a free ride.

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This sort of stuff tends to be against the terms of service – it is with Twitter at least and Reddit are following their playbook here.

This would have the same effect though, almost no one would use it, and that kills the business case for Apollo, and Apollo ceases to exist. Maybe an open source volunteer run client might limp on, but that's it.

It's also super easy to detect these sorts of things and just ban that usage.

Probably possible but that would likely take their app's user base down significantly as most average users wouldn't go through the steps to register their own API keys and setup billing.

This was something that the Apollo dev (and a few other apps) were interested in, but the timing was just too sudden to make work. Specifically for Apollo, they had been selling year-long subscriptions for $12/year. With the API pricing change happening on July 1, that meant Apollo would have to continue to offer up to 11 months of the same service, at the same price (since users already paid for it) while operating at massively higher costs.

Christian even said that if Reddit had given app developers longer -- maybe six months to a year -- it would have been tough to change the business model, but not impossible. With this timetable, he would have had to come up with something like $500k in 30 days just to cover immediate costs, which was obviously impossible.

> Specifically for Apollo, they had been selling year-long subscriptions for $12/year

Ah, thanks. I wasn't aware that Apollo was already a paid app. Clearly, I'm not a mobile user, much less familiar with the app as well. I browse Reddit mostly on the desktop, via RSS feed.

Seems it should be possible to shut down, refund, and relaunch under a new pricing model? Does Apple forbid that?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213252

> Developers who offer subscriptions can increase the price of a subscription without interrupting service only under certain specific conditions. If the increase does not exceed approximately USD $5 and 50% of the subscription price, or USD $50 and 50% for annual subscriptions, and where permitted by law, developers may change the price without interrupting service. Developers may do this no more than once per year.

> ...

> If the subscription price increase is above the thresholds, exceeds the annual limit, or occurs within territories where the law requires it, you must opt in before the price increase is applied. If you don't opt in to the new price, the subscription will not renew at the next billing period. You can subscribe again within the app or on the Manage Subscriptions page.

This would be with interrupting service though wouldn't it?

This would be, "I can no longer provide the service you bought, so I will refund you, cancel the subscription you have, and introduce a totally different subscription that accounts for the new upstream costs."

I would not expect Apollo to do this now after Reddit swung at Christian the way it did, but I'm curious to know if there was ever a semi-graceful way to handle it even on a short timeframe or if Christian was contractually boxed in.

edit: fixed very important typos

> If you have a subscription to an app that's making a price increase that meets these specific conditions, Apple will always notify you of an increase in advance. You'll be notified in multiple ways that include an email, push notification (if push notifications are enabled), and a message that you must acknowledge which is displayed within the app. Apple will also inform you of how to view your subscription plan details and how to cancel the subscription if you prefer.

If that was done, the subscription would need a new approval for the price increase before it continued or the subscription could be canceled by the user (or automatically with the price increase) by Apple.

Apollo sold subscriptions for up to a year, and they would’ve had to burn money to honor those subscriptions. The cost was in the millions.

They did ask for more time for the changes than the given 30 days, and Reddit refused.

Reddit is doing this on a per-app basis rather than a per-user basis. That would be a great idea, but sadly reddit it against it (likely because the goal is to kill third party apps).

Do you mean letting users provide their own API key? Most people would probably stay within the free API limits-but I believe this is also a violation of the reddit TOS which strongly discourages using multiple oauth client IDs.

Apollo absolutely could do all of that.

That being said, I doubt anyone would use it. $1 per 1k requests is insane.

I'm not exactly sure what counts as an API call, but it has the potential to add up quickly. On initial load, new Reddit makes 209 network requests and old reddit makes 127. I doubt the API needs that many requests, but it's not a nested API. It likely requires a bunch of additional requests to grab accessory information.

It seems plausible that power users would end up easily running into $1 to $5 daily usage fees. Nobody is going to pay $30/month for Reddit plus an application fee.

Apollo's developer has already shared estimates that the total API costs for the app would be around $2.50 per user per month.

This is literally answered in the linked article.

they could but not in under 30 days.

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