Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/01/tech/reddit-outrage-data-access-charge/index.html

by thunderbong • 3 years ago

126 77 3 years ago

Irishsteve2• 3 years ago

The owner of this client should just try to replace underlying Reddit with something else. Someone tried something similar years ago they bought up all the popular twitter clients

Someone1234• 3 years ago

It is a good idea in theory, but the timeline is tricky. It isn't realistic to get something up and running before Reddit cuts them off, and by the time they could the users would have moved on.

turnsout4• 3 years ago

What? There are many people who pay to use Christian's app specifically to interact with Reddit. If Apollo suddenly switched to another social network, it would make a lot of people understandably angry

daveidol• 3 years ago

Sure, but what’s the alternative? Shutting it down? Like that won’t make people angry too…

pornel• 3 years ago

Tweetbot has been killed by a similar API shakedown, switched to Mastodon, and the app has been very well received.

Irishsteve2• 3 years ago

Seems like he is in an impossible position to continue down his current path. He has a large enough user base he might only need to replicate a few key subreddits. Sure didn’t reddit start off by having bots vote or post submissions

TylerE• 3 years ago

The suggestion I saw that I like is just to allow bringing your own API key. That way I can pay for my (and ONLY my) usage at whatever level I'm comfortable with.

turnsout4• 3 years ago

Unfortunately the number of people who would pay for both an Apollo subscription AND their own Reddit use AND would be willing to obtain and enter an API key is effectively zero.

jwineinger• 3 years ago

I don't get this suggestion. Users of this app (myself included) want a different UI for Reddit. Changing the underlying store to something else would make it useless to me because I'm specifically using it to access Reddit. "Something else" wouldn't have the same communities and content that I want to view.

unethical_ban• 3 years ago

The suggestion seems to be to turn the client into a generic interface for any reddit-like site, and port people to that. Imagine if a few million people swung over to a new site like the exodus from freenode.

Reddit's content isn't special. It's all network effects.

theseanz• 3 years ago

Are you talking about UberMedia? I used to work there!

techscruggs• 3 years ago

The reason why everyone is upset is because Apollo works perfectly for the Reddit use case while the official client does not. Sure it is technically superior, but it is "better" from a product management perspective.

Reddit, Tumblr, TikTok, Instagram, etc, all attract a similar type of user but they are different products that engage people in different types of social interactions.

You can't port that.

robertoandred• 3 years ago

Speaking as an Apollo user for five years, the official app is just terrible. From big problems like confusing/inconsistent navigation and missing video and text formatting options to annoyances like slow/delayed animations and janky scrolling, there's just a huge lack of thought or polish in Reddit's app.

I think Reddit is just embarrassed that one guy can make an app that's so, so, soooo much better than their slow, cluttered, ugly, expensive app.

bcrl• 3 years ago

They should just buy it from the developer.

mrcode007• 3 years ago

I think this could be an implicit coercion attempt to get the app on the cheap leveraging lack of the alternatives for the developer

btgeekboy• 3 years ago

The irony is they already did that with Alien Blue, and now we’re here.

stetrain• 3 years ago

They already did that kinda. They bought Alien Blue, which was the top iOS Reddit client before Apollo. They brought the dev onboard, sunsetted the Alien Blue app in favor of a new official Reddit mobile app, and gave all of the users who had purchased it a few years of Reddit Gold credit.

I think that app may be the basis of the current Reddit app somewhere deep down inside, but it basically bears no resemblance at this point since Reddit's priority is chasing ad revenue and TikTok style feeds instead of just letting people follow and comment in their communities.

This of course left a gap for a new good iOS client and Apollo was born.

If they bought Apollo I'm sure the same cycle would occur again.

brucethemoose2• 3 years ago

Thats because Apollo doesn't datamine you to oblivion, or madly optimize for engagement.

If Reddit adopted Apollo, they would slow it to a messy crawl in 6 months.

ericmcer• 3 years ago

They probably have totally different priorities. Apollos only goal is good UI/UX.

Reddits is tracking, Ad revenue, prioritizing cached content and who knows what other priorities have been pushed into it.

mattrick• 3 years ago

If their priority is to make money, why wouldn’t they invest in the UX their official app. It’s probably their main revenue stream but it’s so bad that it drives users away to third party clients they can’t monetize. Now instead of actually investing in making their app better and giving users a reason to go back to it they’re blocking third party clients so they don’t need to actually improve their app. It’s a lose-lose for their users and it reflects very poorly on them.

Also it’s not like Reddit doesn’t have the resources to both improve their apps usability and focus on tracking, ad revenue, etc.

ranger_danger• 3 years ago

The amount of people that still have no idea how to either download video posts or have sound enabled while playing the video... are astonishing.

jraby3• 3 years ago

I read someone else’s opinion on a separate hacker news thread saying they thought the reason for the increase was because of AI and LLMs. Twitter recently did something similar.

Not sure if it’s true but it struck me as making sense. The timing is too coincidental.

kentm• 3 years ago

Even old.reddit.com has gotten bad. I have an annoying persistent problem that ads auto-play with sound, despite being disabled in my Reddit options and in my browser options. I've re-enabled and re-disabled all of these options and it still happens.

They (Reddit) claim that this is not expected behavior. Some other people have also reported this. No fixes.

memalign• 3 years ago

I wonder if old.reddit.com is a freeze-dried old codebase in maintenance mode. If so, I would expect it to get worse over time, broken by accident, never prioritized to be fixed.

czinck• 3 years ago

Reddit's problems aren't because of their technology, it's product decisions. Yeah, sure, maybe all their devs suck, but it was managements decision to create the abomination of their new layout to be more instagram-like. Devs aren't putting a million nags to use the official app on their mobile site of their own accord. Devs aren't consistently ignoring moderator issues/complaints.

Maybe their devs are jealous of what one guy with freedom to actually create the best thing he can can do, but I really doubt they came up with the idea to charge 100x what imgur charges for similar API calls.

gremlinsinc• 3 years ago

One guy ? Try ten different or more, from Apollo to Relay to BaconReader every damn one of them is better by a factor of 10x or more than the reddit app, which probably took a team of 20 six months.

MindBeams• 3 years ago

It's inevitable that I'll still have to filter search results by Reddit to find genuine information, but if the only option for Reddit is the official app/website, I'll just stop browsing and commenting altogether. I don't understand how their official app could remain so bad.

KingMachiavelli• 3 years ago

What's really strange is Reddit could have a good app because they just bought the most popular iOS client, Alien Blue, back in 2014.

I still can't understand why they would buy a perfectly good app just to replace it.

runamok• 3 years ago

Because what is good for the user and what is good for company revenue don't always align (at least in the short term).

ck2• 3 years ago

Everything built on hardware you don't own is doomed to end like that at scale, yes?

When are we going back to owning your own fast, light, redundant hardware so you don't have to charge millions for free APIs that were responsible for all your growth in the first place?

make3• 3 years ago

I'm not sure what difference it makes where or how the site is hosted?

zerocrates• 3 years ago

I don't think Reddit's issue is the cost of operating the site but the pressure to generate bigger revenue for the IPO (or maybe more, a plausible story by which they could generate big revenue).

Of course costs play a part in how much revenue you need, but even in the realm of costs it's probably employees rather than servers that's dominant.

nazgulsenpai• 3 years ago

Similar post, 340 comments 9 hours ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36162235

whatyesaid• 3 years ago

Funny how HN selectively applies this rule. Third front page thread in two days without updates.

DoreenMichele• 3 years ago

I think that probably falls under: HN has grown and has limited staffing.

typon• 3 years ago

Am I the online who uses Firefox and old.reddit.com to browse reddit on my phone? It works pretty well.

verall• 3 years ago

This is what I do and it's not great. It's fine for me but I understand if people don't like zooming in all of the way to click the tiny "comment" button.

sourthyme• 3 years ago

I still miss i.reddit. I've been trying hard to get off of reddit entirely but it hard because the community and information subreddits provide is still very good. But the other day I noticed the reddit frontpage is just repeating posts if you continue to click next page...

DoingIsLearning2• 3 years ago

Not alone but definitely in the minority.

I am not sure if it is statistically significant but I founded a small tech sub-reddit (~30k users) and from the moderator stats 70% of traffic is from their iOS app.

I used to use 'reddit.com/.compact' which was an actual mobile friendly and light interface, but that was depricated this year and now, like you, I am stuck with old.reddit.com on mobile.

skinnymuch• 3 years ago

70% come from the official Reddit iOS app? How much are from visiting Reddit directly and any other Reddit official apps? I'd expect a tech community to use the official apps less than the norm.

laweijfmvo• 3 years ago

Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year. Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month

900,000 total users, if they were all converted to paid users, would cost $1.89 per user, so Apollo could charge $1.99 per month. Or they could charge $2.50 per month as stated above.

This seems reasonable for access to all of reddit and their engineers to maintain it for you?

CPLX• 3 years ago

I mean the people that make the content are users. The same people who use the app.

stevenwliao• 3 years ago

But they can't charge $2/mo. Not all of their users will pay. In fact, most won't, and many who would already paid for "lifetime membership" (Apollo Pro/Ultra) which they sold anywhere from $5-$50.

They'd probably have to charge $10-20/mo just to break even.

rdlw• 3 years ago

Only if paying users also had to pay for free users. They could charge $2-3/mo and make the app only available by subscription.

It sucks and I still think the developer(s?) would take a pay cut, but it seems like the only viable choice at this point.

irdc• 3 years ago

if they were all converted to paid users

There's your problem.

jabart• 3 years ago

70% of 2.50 is $1.75 which would put them under with current mobile app store pricing of a 30% fee for subscriptions. $3.75 gets them closer but then margin is $0.125 which would total to $112,500/yr if all 900,000 users switched to paid which is highly highly optimistic.

fknorangesite• 3 years ago

Don't forget Apple's cut. And presumably Apollo devs don't want to work for free. And not everyone will pay. And, and, and ... soon you're charging 5, 6, 10 bucks a month.

m3kw9• 3 years ago

According to calculations, His only pivot is to make it sub only for like 5$ a month. Remember 30% goes to Apple.

bkishan2• 3 years ago

Since Apollo qualifies as a small/medium business, that's 15%

bkishan2• 3 years ago

reasonable for access to all of reddit

Not all of reddit. You're still blocked out of NSFW content (which will not be accessible over any tier of API).

asdff2• 3 years ago

Why should I have to pay when my de facto web browser is the apollo app versus the safari app? At the end of the day its just an app interfacing with a website in both cases, and regulating that in either way is inconsistent and stupid.

starik36• 3 years ago

When you are in the web browser, Reddit makes money off you by serving you ads. With Apollo, they get nothing.

kimbernator• 3 years ago

I think a big point in this change that people are ignoring is the restriction of explicit content, even to paying customers. As I understand it, anything labeled with the "NSFW" tag will only be available through the official app, even for paying customers.

andrewstuart23• 3 years ago

I'm pretty tired of the outrage headlines. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed, and willing to move on. I'm not interested in the web or official app, and while I really appreciate Reddit, I spend a lot of time on the site that could probably be spent elsewhere, and maybe this change provides the impetus for me to find healthier ways of using my time.

basisword• 3 years ago

You find healthier ways to use your time, a developer loses his livelihood. The outrage is at the latter, not about how you use Reddit.

ezekg• 3 years ago

This is just business. He'll figure it out. He's a businessman, after all.

veave• 3 years ago

That's what happens when you build your business on another business. He knew that reddit could close their API access at any time.

andrewstuart23• 3 years ago

I do get that, and having to change up the focus of your career sucks, 100%. I don't want to diminish the pain and frustration there. But empathy doesn't need to include outrage.

I'd point out that any of third-party reddit app devs have one of the best resumes for whatever's next. They should have their choice of paths, whether that be adapting their codebase to $NEXT_PLATFORM, doing some high profile consulting, going back to a day job, etc. It'd be better if they didn't have to, for sure, but it also isn't career-ending.

cheeze• 3 years ago

That's fine for you, but for many this represents "the end of Reddit as they know it today"

Kind of a big deal for me.

wand3r• 3 years ago

I only recently started using apollo so maybe it isnt as impactful. However, I exclusively browse reddit on old.reddit.com with a redirect plugin and RES. So that would be a much more major impact for me.

That said, Apollo is pretty rad. I hope they figure something out.

andrewstuart23• 3 years ago

I mean, I agree with the sentiment 100%. It's the end of reddit as I know it and I'm bummed about that. It would be swell if they reverse course in the next month, but this event just has me re-evaluating my use of the platform and at least for now, I'm just preparing myself for whatever is next. Which, if the studies are to be trusted, would be healthier if it was not the next social platform.

arp242• 3 years ago

Discussed extensively yesterday and today:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36141083

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36162235

jsnell• 3 years ago

This has been discussed to death in the last couple of days, and I don't see any new information in this article.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36141083

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36162235

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36142285

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36142418

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36147252

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36143308

WesolyKubeczek• 3 years ago

It's probably that this time the whole freaking CNN has a story, more than anything. But otherwise yeah, call me they definitely reduce their appetite or definitely not, I'd say.

dsr_• 3 years ago

Bring back Usenet, but with a s̶t̶u̶p̶i̶d̶ modern web2.5 interface and a Markdown article format

JoeOfTexas• 3 years ago

As an indie, I feel for the people who made it big with these apps.

But, its a ticking time bomb. Your whole business is a derivative of content provided by another company's community. Yet, these alternative apps squeeze in their own advertisements between posts.

I don't think $20 million/year is reasonable at all, but they have been monetizing off free APIs.

elif2• 3 years ago

this reminds me of when i worked for a 150 employee business whose sole revenue came from consuming facebook and twitter apis.

you are really just fucked as soon as the giants decide to steal your product, even if they can't compete with your product on usability, features, or marketing. all they have to do is change their pricing.

elif2• 3 years ago

if they charge for api usage for activities they allow for free in the web app, all they will do is shuffle traffic to more expensive heavyweight calls by crawlers and client-side javascript hacks.

Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr

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