How Reddit Became the Enemy - w/ Apollo Developer Christian Selig 

Hi! First off, this video is very _my face_ heavy. Zoom is stupid and did not record dual video streams so I have half as many shots of Christian as I do of myself and so there’s not many side-by-side shots where we both talk cause Zoom would flip away from Christian to me 🤦‍♂️. Tried my best! Second, I ain’t doing timestamps. Was up until 3AM editing this but timestamps are needed! Whoever does the nicest ones will receive my eternal love. Thanks, y’all!

0:00 Introduction to reddit cost cutting 1:31 Interview w Christian begins 3:04 History of Apollo and 3rd party apps 5:08 Christian’s relationship with Reddit 6:28 Reddit’s API announcements 8:19 Reddit’s early conversations with Christian 9:14 Discussing Reddit’s reasoning for API charges 11:08 Reddit’s announcement on developers abusing API limits 13:57 API and pricing explained 17:38 How many requests Apollo makes 18:47 Comparing to Imgur API costs 20:13 Justifying Reddit’s fees 21:43 What’s the problem with Reddit’s monetisation? 22:48 Christian breaks down Reddit’s revenue 24:48 Making national headlines 25:38 Reddit goes on the defensive 26:20 Apollo’s current charges 28:47 Reddit calls out Apollo 29:20 Explaining notification requests 31:21 Discussing Apollo’s efficiency 33:29 Discussing Reddit’s data 34:20 The Reddit app’s own API data 35:21 Similar story with Twitter 35:49 The problem with Reddit’s timeline 38:32 What will happen to Apollo and users 39:57 Reddit’s attitude changes 41:15 NSFW content restrictions 43:42 Shout out to r/chairsunderwater 44:37 Other missing API content ie Polls 45:26 Loosing trust with developers 47:13 Christian’s final plea 48:15 Wrap up

The fact that Apollo is being killed by Reddit less than a month after Apollo was mentioned BY NAME (and shown on screen multiple times) during WWDC is insane.

Reddit disgraces their late co-founder Aaron Swartz, advocate for openness and accessibility of information... who literally wrote about why an API is so important.

"I hate all social media, but leave me RU-vid and Reddit" well, that sentence gets two words less if I am forced to use the official client

Apple themselves favor Apollo vs the official Reddit app, Apollo is on demo iPhones during presentations and advertising, and last years WWDC presentation by Craig Federighi had Apollo on the iPhone being showed off. Good to see you interviewing Christian, seeing major news outlets cover this and the outpouring support for third party apps is wonderful to see. Hopefully Reddit backtracks when this is being universally despised by everyone.

Hopefully Reddit will fix this price because I will quit Reddit if I can’t use Apollo

This is literally EXACTLY what Twitter did. One day they're going to announce that all apps violate their TOS. Which TOS? The one they'll update the following day.

I called it. The second they announced they went public, I knew this would happen. Expect an NSFW ban too. Every time a company that makes a product that I use goes public, I go: _"It's over!"_ now...

Thanks for giving Christian a wider reach and hopefully Reddit changes their approach here.

As a day 1 Pro and Ultra lifetime subscriber, I can say that the £20 I dropped on it is the best value for money I've ever spent. Been on reddit 10 years but I'll leave if Apollo goes. Christian has done continuously great work and been heavily involved in the community, and just a normal person about it all. He's a good face to represent and be an ambassador for all the affected third party apps.

Worth to mention, Apollo Ultra is $12.99 and not $20.00 as Quinn mentioned multiple times despite Christian corrections. Stay snazzy!

The best sponsor spot ever....but also great conversation and really hope all this attention will bring Reddit to reality.

I have been using Apollo since he posted on r/Apple for beta testers. He’s been an amazingly polite, friendly, and community oriented developer who always listens to us and tries to give us what we want, if it’s good for Apollo. Whether that’s new icons, themes, the ability to upload to imgur in the comment box, and many other features. I used to use Alien Blue, then when Reddit bought it I switched. I’ve tried the official app, but it’s horrible. I won’t go back to it. I really hope they offer him a fair price for their API, because he should be paying for it IMO. But it needs to be fair.

The dev guy is so nice for being so royally screwed😭 hope this man can figure something out

By Reddit's argument, Reddit should be paying a majority of its revenue to end users, because ultimately Reddit is dependent on the community for all of its content, a large portion of the moderation, etc.

I was adamant on not usuing reddit for a long time because i had this weird loyalty to other user generated news/content sites. I was really bummed when reddit was known as the digg killer but digg made all the wrong choices right before the fall. It wasn't until the last few years i started using reddit more heavily to find info i needed to fix my car, honest reviews about very niche products and even news.

I love Apollo, it has been my reddit app since I switched to iOS. I think the decision to charge ridiculous amounts for the API is a way for them to move everyone to their app, mine data on their users and serve the ads they want to. As much as I would like to believe this would be reversed I truly believe this is an intentional move to clear competition.

Remember when Digg died due to greed? Seems like Reddit is about to have the same fate.

Great interview, Snazzy. Christian explained how APIs work really well and he’s totally right about this new policy: borderline ridiculous, at least from a consumer / developer side. It’s clearly revenue-focused ONLY. Waiting for him to make a Mastodon reader just as great as Apollo :)

Though I use Readder as my Reddit client of choice, not Apollo, it's important to underline that the issues at hand affect us all as users, regardless of our preferred client. A diverse, vibrant ecosystem of applications and interfaces is absolutely essential to Reddits original and ongoing success. Each client contributes a unique perspective and helps keep Reddit such a dynamic platform. This is where the importance of a reasonable, accessible API comes into play. It forms the backbone of this ecosystem, enabling a variety of clients to interface effectively with Reddit's infrastructure. By ensuring that the API remains open, intuitive, and capable, Reddit can foster an environment that encourages innovation and keeps the platform fresh and engaging for all users. Regardless of whether you're using Readder, Apollo, or any other client, we all have a vested interest in maintaining the vitality of this ecosystem. A robust and reasonable API isn't just good for Reddit or its developers, it's good for us, the users. It empowers us with choices and options that can tailor our Reddit experience to suit our individual needs and preferences. This diversity is something we should all champion.

When Apple is the benchmark for fairness, you know there's something very messed up. But going further, as Apple is the middleman and this kind of things is unfortunately more common than it should be, App Store rules could protect this small devs that make the iOS App Store unique in first place, but also prevent their lost portion with something like: if you are a app store developer and your service gives APIs that other app store apps rely own, you must follow this rules of fair chance of terms in other to prevent refunds on OUR platform.

I used Sync for years before switching to iOS, and have been using Apollo since. Reddit is just straight up evil for instantly killing these fantastic third party apps.

Great interview! I really feel like this is simply a push to move users to the official Reddit app, and essentially remove all the third party apps. The short time-frame, the lack of thought to the execution(existing commitment to users from existing third party apps, lack of features such as polls to paying users, etc), combined with relatively higher pricing all point to an attempt to remove the third party ecosystem entirely, without actually coming out and removing the third party ecosystem. All to pad numbers for an IPO.

I’m hoping that Apollo will just make its own platform

Thank you for having this conversation! This was a great conversation and Apollo is the only reason I got hooked on reddit. Keep up the snazzy videos.

This is doubly ironic since, at one time, their official app was actually a third-party client called Alien Blue that they bought in 2014.

What an awesome, nice guy. I'm paying for Apollo Pro, and maybe Ultra (unless Ultra puts you in a worse position), this month just because of this video even though I just use it like once a month (not a frequent reddit user at all 🙌

I wonder if this will be Reddit's Digg v4 moment I've been using RIF for years. Without that I will not be using reddit anymore as the official app, and all that it brings, is an abomination.

Appreciate the long video Mr. Snazzy! I was hoping there would be an interview somewhere, even better that it’s here

I found out about Apollo through one of your older videos, and have used it for hours each day since. This is a really large blow if Reddit goes this route, and sadly it would mean I wouldn't use it bc the desktop version sucks, and the app somehow sucks even more. Apollo is the best :'(

I don't understand how Reddit couldn't make a special license key and pricing tier specifically for third-party apps like Apollo that help popularize the site. But then again, that would require introspection and a deft hand, something silicon valley jackasses aren't known for...

I never paid for Ultra, but I would pay Christian directly just to cover the costs that would put him in the red… i‘m sure many people would do that. Such an awful thing to do from Reddit, its really messed up.

Really nice of my mother to sponsor Snazzy Labs

I sorta wonder if he added lemmy support quickly as a secondary thing, and then pushed ultra users to use that instead of his bill would be significantly smaller. Give the people a better option, and they’ll naturally want to use it. Not that lemmy is all so great right now, but with such an influx of users if he did that, it might be a feasible solution.

I can’t believe my mom sponsored this video, totally not what I expected from her

11:40 I'm pretty sure the service "pushshift" is/ was one of the "apps" on that graph. Pushshift was a very neat thing that pretty much archived all of reddit, from posts to comments and made it easily searchable. Pushshift was used in research and many moderation teams depended heavily on it. The normal Reddit API has a limit that only allows seeing the 1000 most recent posts or comments per query (so, if I want to see all comments a user has made, Reddit only allows me to see their 1000 most recent ones) and filtering out bad apples who did stuff in the past or finding out people who copy other posts or comments was made possible through pushshift. Reddit tried to reach out to the dev behind it, but apparently he has some serious private issues at the moment and so Reddit just pulled the plug.

Great work Quinn. Justice for Christian and Apollo.

I bet reddit themselves were scrambling to make these changes due to an edict from up high that wanted this done in x number of days. That is probably why it makes so little sense.

Redditor for 11 years, Mod for almost 7 years in a community that I grew from 4 to 6 figures. The writing has been on the wall for a very long time, the reddit that we built is gone. The reddit that really was _the frontpage of the internet_ while still being a unique vibrant space for all types of users and communities. With an emphasis on uniqueness & individuality, as well as community and supporting each other, with an emphasis on quality content & conversation. The death of 3rd party apps is the death of that reddit, all that remains is Reddit the social media company whose userbase only sees it as just another app for memes and general low-value internet stuff. I'm not deleting my account, as I can still recognize there's no replacement for many of the things that are on the site. But I will most definitely stop browsing at all, the new experiences are crap but most importantly: encourage crap production and consumption. This has been an issue since New Reddit became the default, and removing 3rd party support is definitely killing that off for good.

This is probably my favorite Snazzy video. And I don’t even use Apollo; but have been a Reddit user since the beginning. Thank you for how you handled this interview. Really well done.

Thank you so much for covering this, Quinn. Such an important issue for so many.

Man, I don't use 3rd party apps as I'm a desktop user but this is really alarming writing on the wall. Which has been on the wall for years, it's just now Reddit has gone over the words with a blood and flame colored highlighter, to make it terribly obvious that RES and old reddit are also in the crosshairs.

No Apollo - no Reddit. It's that simple.

I've been subscribed for a while now, and I realized today that I hadn't seen one of your videos in months! I looked you up to make sure you hadn't deleted your channel and saw you still upload regularly, despite RU-vid not showing me your videos - has this happened with any other subscribers? You have over 1M subs so I'm surprised you're not popping up on my homepage at all 🤔 Hopefully after I catch up on some of your recent vids, youtube will see that I enjoy this channel and It'll keep me updated from now on lol

Man, reddit app is trash. Without third-party apps I can see many people will just leave the platform. The website is buggy as hell, the app gets stuck all the time... There is really no good way to surf reddit with the official ways. And I see no dev paying the crazy prices..

I moderate a few indie band subreddits, they each only have a couple thousand users but i will absolutely drop reddit if third party apps get canned. I keep the main app around strictly for mod notifications and it feels like a completely different website that i would never use otherwise.

Thank you so much for this interview! It really brings a new perspective into the picture

Gotta love social media. “Hey, lets create a hyper addictive platform.” “Woah, you guys are using it too much!”

Great interview. Absolutely love Apollo and Christian’s work. What a slap in the face of the people that make Reddit what it is today

Thank you for creating this and platforming Christian and allowed him to speak directly to what’s going on. I’ve been an Apollo user for years and love it. If his planned cessation of service carries through, I’m going to be using the platform a lot less. It’s a shame really. Alien blue was great. The native app is workable but buggy. Apollo was so slick and streamlined switching back to the native app feels like trying to prep dinner with a butter knife after you’ve been using a finely honed chef’s knife in a professional kitchen all day. Probably a bad analogy but it felt right to me.

im an android user and someone who adapts but I don't think I'd use reddit's official app. i love sync for reddit..

I pay for Apollo Ultra just to support Christian. I don’t even need the features.

These app devs for Apollo, rif, BaconReader etc need to band together and go all in on supporting Lemmy. Continue supporting Reddit through your app to your limited budget, and as soon as the Reddit functionality ends for the month or whatever just give the user a popup explaining why with links to contact Reddit admins to complain, as well as ushering them into the process of lurking for free in the Lemmy communities with tutorials on joining an instance. From what I can tell, lurking on Lemmy and across federated instances is free and requires zero account.

REALLY enjoyed this video. Defenetly would want more of such interviews - Maybe with a slight better mic and less white noise, but was still hella fun to watch.

This is your best video I’m years. Super interesting and something so important it needs a wider audience to know what’s going on.

Wonderfully conducted interview! Subscribed!

Thank you for bringing this out on your channel!

This was an excellent rundown of the situation. Thank you!

I will be deleting my 8 year old Reddit account at the end of the month. RIP Apollo.

I paid for Apollo Ultra Lifetime, I expect Christian to go into bankruptcy for delivering me the Reddit experience I demand. /s

Great to see Snazzy spreading the news

Is that a system76 Mira/Major/Mega in the background?

Now I feel like the criminal since I paid for Apollo Ultra at launch for £19.99 in return for lifetime access 😅

I never thought about apps and apis in that way, don't know appollo, but this video was very interesting! Thank you! I hope it works out for them somehow

I've read what he said on r/Apollo and I think your video gives a whole new insight into what happened, bravo!

Thank you Christian, Apollo was truly the best…

I’m convinced we need a SnazzyPodcast now. QuinnCast.

Really enjoyed this style of video. Hope you do more like it.

I’m using Stellar on macOS. We’re in the same boat with all the 3rd party apps.

I will not use Reddit without Apollo, period. I’ve been on Reddit for 10 years, and I will close my account and delete my posts if Reddit follows through with their announcement. I understand that running Reddit costs money, but the prices they announced are just obscene.

This is the best video you’ve done in a long time keep it up! You did a great job!

Downloaded Apollo based on recommendation in your last Mac apps video. Was really enjoying using it till its imminent death was announced merely 48 hours later. I can’t help but feel responsible somehow 😅

this interview was fantastic for understanding and at the same time it's depressing as fuck to see how reddit is treating these developers -- some of the language in these communications, the logical fallacies with the api request efficiency accusations, the attitude on Reddit's part just blows. it absolutely stinks. who in the hell will want to do business with a company like that??

"How Reddit Became the Enemy".... it always has been.

I'm paying for the Apollo Ultra option, mainly to support Christian and his continued development of the Apollo app. I usually select single developer or really small scale developed apps since it's often a way better deal with a much more user-responsive team behind them. I would not be paying the same amount just to line Reddits coffers!

Shout out to my mom for sponsoring this video!

I don’t get why they came up with a flat fee. If you want to monetize access ok, but why not cut in on revenue streams like premium access and such with a percentage? Small platforms could continue for free and bigger ones could just slightly increase premium pricing and continue as usual.

What browser is shown at the beginning around 0:06?

Thanks for having Christian, learned a lot of good info

*Something that has not been talked about -- what about those of us that paid for the Lifetime Ultra license years ago? Definitely sucks* :/

Hope they fix this or I am done with Reddit.

Reddit is Fun was great when I was on Android. Once I switched to Apple I started using Apollo and don't think I could go back to anything else. If Apollo has to be shuttered I'm probably just not using Reddit on mobile any more.

Thanks so much for doing this.

Cool to see Seth Rogen sitting down to talk with the Apollo dev about this whole thing.

good video, what did he say at the end? snazzy, DIY perks and who? curious about a potential new youtuber to watch. and good video!

Christian is so incredibly talented

I kinda agree on the "Reddit, do better". I am a user since it's early days and only peeked every now and then into the official app. I used Reeder, Slide, Apollo,... Most of the time one app to browse and another one that can filter searches by media type, because sometimes I am looking for a meme and all those video and text posts would be in the way. Hoppe Christian can figure out what to do next, his app is really god

Anybody else miss the days when there was no official Reddit or Twitter app

I think an interesting data point would be how much it costs to run Apollo's servers that are in contact with reddit. I know it's probably less complex, but still interesting

Interesting hearing Christian talk about his usage and costs… but then another thing is a percentage of users (as in, me) are on Apollo Ultra with Apple family sharing. So uh, yeah that’s another $1 per user not recouped.

RIP Apollo. You'll be missed.

this is the definition of "Bite the hand that feeds you"

Really insightful, thanks for doing this interview!

Awesome Vid Snazzy - Thanks for bringing in C. Selig 🙏 and the awesome conversation. Time to join in the CJ Chorus 🤦 "Aaahhh, $**t Here we go again ☹️" Freedoms being bought off the internet 😮‍💨

We need a new place that stays open and true to the community

I think there is one other thing to consider - even if Christian does figure out a way to raise prices, remove free users and pay the costs to reddit...there is no guarantee that 6 months from now they don't change their mind and bump the price again. Or introduce some new feature to the reddit app and not add it to the paid API. And if that happens, then each per-user subscription will be 2-3x what they originally were, and he could be on the hook for refunds for even higher amounts via Apple if he isn't able to continue service...So even playing by reddits rules everything becomes even higher stakes.

Reddit is by far the most unstable app I was using regularly. Screwing over third parties

I hate that Reddit wants an IPO. It's losing some of it's best parts because of that. Money sucks man.

The official reddit app on my iphone I used about 30-45 minutes a day at my old work where there was no wifi we were allowed to use. It would use about 23gb of my 25gb limit in less than 3 weeks and the last 2 would be used on other things like Spotify driving to and from work. Then I would have to buy extra data. I found Apollo because I found this ridiculous. It changed from reaching limit 18-20 days into the month to not even reaching half at the end of the month using Apollo. I really wonder how Reddit is so slow on the website and is so damn inefficient and slow on their official app, but Apollo and other third party apps just do what they're supposed to do so much better. look. A 2 man team for Apollo, him and his friend that takes care of server creates a better app than Reddits 1800 employee team does. I know not all 1800 are developers, but still 1 developer makes a better app than reddit can. Now they're destroying the third party apps, that just means there will be a big flood of users going to some form of alternative platform. It's like facebook after like 2013 or 2014 where the site slowly changed from being a network of communities that centers around the user and they can set it up to see what they want to see + a few adds to what it is today. 99% ads in form of direct ads, promoted posts, suggested content, reels you might like, people you don't know but has similar opinions and then 1% of the posts are from your network. Facebook was good to use when it wasn't such a disaster platform that it is now. Seems like reddit is going down the same route and is gonna destroy the platform.