Dear Reddit, why are you the way you are?
"So I can see my Apollo for Reddit" ☠️
What is going on with social media platforms these days? I mean, are we on the brink of losing two major social media giants in the same year? Sigh!
That’s what I thought when I first saw the post of Christian Selig, the founder of popular third-party Reddit iOS client Apollo late May. As it turns out, I’m probably right. After the downfall of Twitter (and Spotify), Reddit is now following in its footsteps.
For the uninitiated, it all started when Reddit published a post mid-April detailing its upcoming API changes. TL;DR - It’s bad. It’s bad for everyone involved. It’s bad for third-party Reddit apps (like Apollo, RIF, Sync, etc.), it’s bad for Reddit moderators (who are not being paid a penny btw), it’s bad for the community, and ultimately, it’s bad for Reddit.
While I understand that it is reasonable for Reddit to monetize its API, there are two major flaws in the execution:
Third-party app developers are not given sufficient time to adapt to the changes.
The pricing of the API is exorbitant for most third-party Reddit client apps to sustain and continue operating.
Here’s the thing: While third-party users might make up a minority of Reddit’s monthly active users, these are relatively important people who generate and moderate content on the platform.
One would think Reddit, being a community-focused platform, would care about its power users. Wrong! Judging by the current landscape, the company wants to get rid of them to appear more “investment-worthy” while going public. If things don’t change for the better, I foresee Redditors shorting Reddit stocks after IPO as some sort of revenge (coughs GameStop coughs).
How did we get here?
Let me start with the bad news: Apollo has announced its plans to shut down operations at the end of this month. You know what’s more heartbreaking in the post? The section where Reddit blatantly made allegations about Christian for “threatening” the company. Fortunately, Christian has proof to defend himself and has rightfully made the evidence public.
Here’s a relevant excerpt from the post:
About 24 hours after that call with Reddit, I received this odd message on Mastodon:
"Can you please comment publicly about the internal Reddit claim that you tried to “blackmail” them for a $10,000,000 payout to “stay quiet”?"
Then yesterday, moderators told me they were on a call with CEO Steve Huffman (spez), and he said the following per their transcript:
Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million."
Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."
Wow. Because my memory is that you didn't take it as a threat, and you even apologized profusely when you admitted you misheard it. It's very easy to take a single line and make it look bad by removing all the rest of the context, so let's look at the full context.
I can only assume you didn't realize I was recording the call, because there's no way you'd be so blatantly lying if you did.
As said, a common suggestion across the many threads on this topic was "If third-party apps are costing Reddit so much money, why don't they just buy them out like they did Alien Blue?" That was the point I brought up. If running Apollo as it stands now would cost you $20 million yearly as you quote, I suggested you cut a check to me to end Apollo. I said I'd even do it for half that or six months worth: $10 million, what a deal!
The bizarre thing is - initially - on the call you interpreted that as a threat. Even giving you the benefit of the doubt that maybe my phrasing was confusing, I asked for you to elaborate on how you found what I said to be a threat, because I was incredibly confused how you interpreted it that way. You responded that I said "Hey, if you want this to go away…" Which is not at all what I said, so I reiterated that I said "If you want to Apollo to go quiet, as in it's quite loud in terms of API usage".
What did you then say?
Me: "I said 'If you want Apollo to go quiet'. Like in terms of- I would say it's quite loud in terms of its API usage."
Reddit: "Oh. Go quiet as in that. Okay, got it. Got it. Sorry."
Reddit: "That's a complete misinterpretation on my end. I apologize. I apologize immediately."
The admission that you mistook me, and the four subsequent apologies led me to believe that you acknowledged you mistook me and you were apologetic. The fact that you're pretending none of this happened (or was recorded), and instead espousing a different reality where instead of apologizing for taking it as a threat, you're instead going the complete opposite direction and saying "He threatened us!" is so low I almost don't believe it.
But again, I've recorded all my calls with you just in case you tried something like this.
Transcript of this part of the call | Audio of this part of the call
I bring this up for two reasons:
I don't want Reddit slandering me to internal employees or public people by saying I threatened them when they reality is that they immediately apologized for misunderstanding me.
It shows why I've finally come to the conclusion that I don't think this situation is recoverable. If Reddit is willing to stoop to such deep lows as to slander individuals with blatant lies to try to get community favor back, I no longer have any faith they want this to work, or ever did.
If this isn’t unprofessional, petty, and miserable, I don’t know what is. Soon after this discourse, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman hosted an AMA, which, as you might have guessed, was vague, and didn’t address any real queries.
Is the official Reddit app really bad?
Yes, it sucks. It absolutely sucks.
How has the Reddit community reacted?
To a surprise to absolutely no one, the entire (well, a significant majority) community has come together to push back against Reddit’s poorly timed API pricing changes. If there’s one thing that unites Reddit, that’s fighting for a common cause. I mean, do you remember how people coordinated to secure their community’s position on r/Place? Absolute mad lads! Not to mention, the whole r/wallstreetbets fiasco during the pandemic.
Notably, several popular subreddits have gone on a blackout (public subreddits gone private) for 48 hours starting today to protest against Reddit’s controversial decisions. Furthermore, some subreddits have even gone on an indefinite blackout. 💪🏼
You can check the stats of the subreddits that are currently private from this appropriately titled website called Reddark. At the time of writing this piece, 6292 of 7265 subreddits are dark with a combined subscriber count of 2,617,191,114!
While I have a love-hate relationship with Reddit, I’m personally devastated to see the downfall of what was once a messy cesspool of good and bad stuff. It’s only bad stuff from here and I doubt it’s going to get any better unless the company backtracks on its moves. We will have to wait and find out.
Do we have viable Reddit alternatives?
Not really. There are ones like Lemmy and Nostr, but I doubt they will ever take off and manage to reach even half of Reddit’s MAU. The closest I can think of is Mastodon, which is more of a Twitter alternative than Reddit. And yes, I’m blissfully ignoring Tumblr, 4chan, and the like for my own sanity.
Poorly Aged Things
And in today’s episode of poorly aged things, we commemorate Craig Federighi’s fallen dream of seeing Apollo for Reddit widgets on macOS Sonoma. RIP :(
Update: It’s at 46:36. Substack doesn’t seem to support timed YouTube embeds for some reason.
Hmm, I guess I should post this on r/agedlikemilk. Oh wait, it’s private because of the Reddit blackout movement. Good job, Reddit! 🫡
Honestly, it felt nice to see Apple namedrop Apollo multiple times at the event. And my favorite workout app Any Distance is one of the winners of Apple’s Design Awards 2023, yaay!
Small Wins 🥹🌟
For this edition, my biggest small win is finally getting sufficient sleep last night. My schedule has been packed for the past few days and it feels great to have a good night’s sleep. Here’s to hoping I don’t go sleep-deprived again.🤞🏼
I also felt rejuvenated early last week when I cycled to Bannerghatta National Park. The safari ride was incredible and I got to see and say hi to a lot of animal friends.
Until next time,
Hearts if you liked it, subs if you loved it!
Fight the good fight,
Subin
Check out https://kbin.social/ as well