whelp, there it is
And now I’m here after 17 years on Reddit. 🤷♂️
You and me both… I have seen that place through its ups and downs. From the narwhal bacon’s at midnight to Jolly Rancher, Zoop and the swamps of drogba.
I finally left my account a few days ago and haven’t been back since. The place is a shell of what it used to be and it’s been really very refreshing have a scout about somewhere else.
Fuck greed… It eventually ruins everything!
It is sad to see an amazing app become rendered useless due to some companies greed. They were not even being reasonable with pricing nor did they really give the dev time to figure out what to do.
I really hope that everyone leaves reddit and comes to the fediverse. Mastodon had a huge boost and it completely replaced twitter for me. I am sure Lemmy can do the same.
I’m hoping Christian ports Apollo to Lemmy. I’m not sure what the feasibility of doing so is but I’d actually pay a monthly subscription for the ability to continue using it
I think he wants the apps to die with its legacy. Maybe he would make another app that does it. I hope he does and I would pay a modest subscription for it.
I hope that on June 30th, when it shuts down, the app doesn’t just give an error message but instead displays some kind of farewell message.
How do you get to the point where you’re accusing Christian of blackmailing you in this situation? You’re the 500lb gorilla who’s driving all these app developers out of business. Even if you really feel like these app developers have been free riding on your largesse, how do you have so little perspective to be this petty and spiteful?
I listened to the recording, and read the transcript, and I can… I can see it. Not overtly, not intentionally - but the dev did not communicate clearly at all.
Twice the Reddit representative asking him to repeat himself, and still he failed to actually specify his intentions. The wording in the transcript never actually expanded what the dev was saying (‘buy out Apollo’). The evasive language made it sound like a shakedown, ‘pay me $10mil to make this all go away’.
I linked the dev’s own transcript above, but the actual quotes from the dev:
I could make it really easy on you, if you think Apollo is costing you $20 million per year, cut me a check for $10 million and we can both skip off into the sunset. Six months of use. We’re good. [Low voice:] That’s mostly a joke.
Okay, if Apollo’s opportunity cost currently is $20 million dollars. At the 7 billion requests and API volume. If that’s your yearly opportunity cost for Apollo, cut that in half, say for 6 months. Bob’s your uncle.
I was just saying if the opportunity cost of Apollo is currently $20 million a year. And that’s a yearly, apparently ongoing cost to you folks. If you want to rip that band-aid off once. And have Apollo quiet down, you know, six months. Beautiful deal. Again this is mostly a joke, I’m just saying if the opportunity cost is that high, and if that is something that could make it easier on you guys, that could happen too. As is, it’s quite difficult.
Now, we know that what the dev is doing is essentially offering to outright sell Apollo to end the demand it represents to Reddit. He doesn’t expect them to take it, but a lot of users asked if it were possible, and he’s suggesting it anyway.
But the wording of all of this never specifies ‘buying Apollo’. It sounds like he wants Reddit to like… pay him his ‘protection fee’. I’m sure he means ‘go quiet’ as in like, ‘go quietly into that good night’ (shut down) or ‘stop being so demanding’ (be retooled), in fact he later clarifies he means the latter and the Reddit representative apologises profusely.
But man, that was worded so poorly, and he was given two opportunities to clarify, and he just… didn’t. Only when the Reddit stand-in asked if he was suggesting Reddit buy his silence and compliance did he clarify that wasn’t at all what he was saying.
It was completely unintentional, no doubt. But it was miscommunication of the highest order, and it damaged the lines of communication so irrevocably it probably incentivised Reddit to cease negotiations completely.
The problem is this, from the transcript:
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.
Me: Like it’s a very-
Reddit: Yeah, that’s a complete misinterpretation on my end.
Me: Yeah. No, no, it’s all good.
Reddit: I apologize. I apologize immediately.
The “threat” part was resolved right there. Steve just wanted to retcon the conversation as a way to dog Christian. He didn’t anticipate Christian was gonna roll in with receipts.
Yeah, I found that interesting. I generally don’t attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence, and I imagine either (or both) of these is likely:
- The ‘evasive’ language made everything feel implied, that when pressed to outright admit his intentions he falls back. He was evasive, evasive, evasive, pressed, fell back. Still he did not clarify he was selling Apollo, only that ‘go quiet’ meant ‘pay me off and Apollo stops making calls’. It’s possible Spez did not believe him and was trying to deescalate.
- Internally discussing the outcome of the call with other members on staff, they may have felt (1) was true, or Spez accepted the explanation but other staff didn’t; they discussed the implications of each possible intention; and they collectively decided they should probably treat it as a threat since it remained ambiguous. It’s possible Spez did want to believe him but other staff didn’t.
The conclusion doesn’t have to be that Spez believed him, then personally as an individual decided “oh, actually, fuck it” and decided to lie about it anyway. In fact I’d say that of the three possibilities, that’s the least likely.
I listened to the recording and it was … messy. Christian wasn’t clear at all and it seems his intention of making what he described as a lighthearted jest fell like a lead balloon at the Reddit guys feet. To my mind it would have been a very important conversation and therefore if I was Christian I would have kept it business-like and clear. It still doesn’t excuse Reddit for weaponizing the conversation and screaming blackmail which makes the CEO come across as a man-baby throwing a fit.
Yeah, I felt the same when I read his post on Reddit. He worded things incredibly badly, and even I, when reading his post, got the impression that he wanted 10 million dollars to “make their problem go away”. It almost feels like he was testing the water by being vague about it, before backpedaling when he realized they weren’t into that.
[Edit] I get that he was probably trying to prove the point that their price was ridiculous and Apollo couldn’t be costing them that much, but man. Terrible way to communicate that. You’re not trying to sell your old TV to some guy in a bar here!
I agree. When I read and listened to the conversation, it’s mostly clear that it isn’t what he meant but it could definitely be construed in a different way. I think it was a pretty poor choice of words to demonstrate how much of the userbase uses third party apps and how much sway they actually have.
That said, it is what it is. Reddit’s PR team is definitely going to try to spin this as negatively as possible even if the Apollo dev is only trying to make a point. At least there were recordings so we can come to our own conclusions.
I imagine his intend was to imply - or at least put pressure on - the idea of Apollo actually costing them $20mil was an inflated number. The idea that it was a real and on-going cost, and had been for a decade, and he’s basically daring them to buy Apollo. Because if that number was real, they should leap at the chance:
If you want to rip that band-aid off once. […] Beautiful deal.
I believe that’s why it was ‘mostly a joke’ - he never expected them to take it, he doesn’t believe it actually costs them that much. It’s not what he’s taking from them - it’s what they feel entitled to take from the users, and they blame him for being in the way.
Personally I agree it doesn’t cost that much - I believe they believe it does, but only because they look at Apollo’s userbase and activity, and decided “oh boy, if we could sell ads to those users and sell their data at those rates, this is how much we would make” and decided that means Apollo is somehow costing them that. I don’t think ‘opportunity cost’ is an appropriate concept to price on, because it relies on obviously false assumptions.
Apollo is definitely costing them server bandwidth, as are the other apps. And it seems all the devs were ready and willing to cover the costs, even negotiate how their users could still be a revenue stream. But Reddit believes they were owed the same profit of Apollo’s users that they would make off of their own, and I think that’s nonsense.
After all, if somebody pirates Photoshop, it’s stupidly naïve to think that every single one of those users would be willing to pay Adobe $80 a month (in some countries that’s more than they make in 3+ months). And if somebody goes to a friend’s house and watches a Blu-Ray with them, it’s absurd to expect they mail a check for $20 to their local theatre.
The expectation that somebody using something convenient/free would use it just as much if it was demanding/unaffordable is… like, they’re not stupid, right? They can’t possibly be that stupid to think that was even attainable profit for them. I just don’t understand why they think that ‘opportunity cost’ is real.
I’m still not clear what the alleged threat was, that the app would… make API calls? earning reddit money? That Christian would say unfriendly things about the company that screwed him? What threat is an app developer to a corporation? It’s just patently absurd.
Weaponizing the community can be pretty powerful.
I love that Christsin had recordings. Can’t wait to see how spez’s AMA goes.
That AMA is immediately going to turn into ‘The Roast of Spez’ and I’m honestly quite looking forward to it. It won’t change anything since Reddit’s already too far round the ‘enshittification’ U-bend but it might be the last funny thing that’s ever posted there.
FYI, a lemmy iOS app, Mlem, is in active development, and we hope to be at 1.0 by July 1. It’s heavily inspired by Apollo, but, obviously, with changes for lemmy.
Stay tuned and subscribe to c/mlemapp for updates!
Edit: I want to note that, since one of the biggest sticking points with 3rd-party apps has been both accessibility for the blind and deaf and mod tools, they’re both on our minds as we design the interface. Getting both right will, of course, take time, but we want everyone to know that we fully intend to make our app usable for everyone.
Edit: I want to note that, since one of the biggest sticking points with 3rd-party apps has been both accessibility for the blind and deaf and mod tools, they’re both on our minds as we design the interface. Getting both right will, of course, take time, but we want everyone to know that we fully intend to make our app usable for everyone.
This is excellent to hear. If you’re still on reddit, you should post this to r/blind, as they’ve been in limbo about whether their tools will be granted an “exception” to use the reddit API and they may be looking into alternatives for their community.
I’ll consider it, but feel free to x-post this there or make your own post. We’re not exactly in PR mode right now since these tools and features are still in their conceptual stages and we’re still trying to figure out how best to implement them-- especially the accessibility features. We’re looking to bring on an accessibility specialist to the team to consult with us, so if anyone would like to help on that front Please let us know by joining our Mlem app chat on Matix.
We’ll also be making a wider recruitment post to expand our dev team in the next few days, so keep an eye out for that, too! We’re currently a tiny team of passionate volunteers, and there’s a LOT to do!
edit: Link to GitHub project iif anyone wants to get a feel for where we are now.
While I’m coping that Christian “ports” Apollo over to work with Lemmy, I love what you guys are doing with Mlem. I’m in the beta via TestFlight and what’s there works quite well (even though you can clearly tell it’s early days).
I’m very new to iOS development, but if I find the time and motivation I might put in the hours to contribute a feature or two.
Been using it for a few days, and it’s very nice. Not feature complete, obviously, but what’s there is great.
Glad you like it-- there will probably be many changes as soon as it gets updated (we’re still figuring out what works and what doesn’t). But, and everyone should be aware of this: v1.0’s goal is “be functional and stable”. Features will get added as we go (hopefully quickly). Apps like Apollo, RIF, etc, are mature, having been developed over years of work and user feedback. And while we can stand on the shoulders of giants like Christian Selig with regard to our direction and goals, we’re just getting started.
That said, we’re here to serve the community as we are also part of it, so we are doing all we can to build a great app!
there is also Jerboa on Android for folks who are on Boost, which is also going to inevitably disappear lol
I remember seeing somebody mention a Reddit-like wrapper for the Lemmy API so that existing Reddit clients can be interoperable with Lemmy without changing any code. Does anyone have more information about this project? It would be great if we could use open-source clients like Infinity (what I use for Reddit on Android) with Lemmy without rewriting them.
While I appreciate the effort that can go into building a good app… Jerboa sucks. Going from something like RiF to Jerboa is like having some teeth pulled… and being aware of all the little gaps where your teeth used to be.
I hope this changes in the future, in the meantime, I’m planning to write my own, in the middle of everything else I’m doing.
Just want to say I found and installed your app mlem on ios. So far so good. One bug I noticed is on my first login, after I closed the app, it deleted my logged in account. Logged back in and now working well. Forgot to do a bug capture but it hasn’t come up again. Amazing work, and really appreciate you helping people get access to Lemmy as a community.
Good to hear. I’m kinda hoping the Apollo source will become public once it closes. Anything that gets us close to that kind of experience would be great.
I’m the UX designer on the app, so the idea is to get close in terms of usability and style while making the app “our own”. So, the app will, ideally, feel a lot like Apollo, but without outright copying it.
We want to take the best of Apollo (minus some things we don’t like about it), and make something that’s inclusive of how lemmy works and operates.
minus some things we don’t like about it
What don’t you like about Apollo? If you don’t mind me asking.
the beta is currently open in testflight, I believe. we’ll be forming user testing groups in the near-future.
@BrooklynMan @mint That’s so cool! I’ll keep an eye out for it
I have the Mlem app but I’m have problems logging in, during login it says I I’m logged into beehaw.org but then says can’t connect to beehaw.org. Am I doing something wrong?
it may have to do with the popular lemmy instances being slammed right now. Until very recently, they weren’t handling a lot of heavy traffic-- after Christian Selig’s initial announcement about the Reddit API changes, there was a massive spike in traffic from Reddexiters, and, now, again within the last hour since his latest post. Instance admins are expanding their capacity, but can only do so much, being independent volunteers running servers on their own.
Give it time. the servers are a bit bogged down right now.
really? i was under the impression it was an open beta. hmmm… I’ll ask about that.
@Wenwald @BrooklynMan @mint test
Going to miss using Apollo. Great design and Christian built it with the user experience first.
