Reddit's Greed Just Killed The Site's Best Third-Party App
Reddit has had a tumultuous past few weeks. In that period, the platform imitated Twitter to charge for a critical piece of software that allows third-party apps and bots to exist, faced developer backlash, and even a planned shutdown of hundreds of sub-Reddits with millions of followers. Now, the first casualty has been announced, and it's a big one. Apollo, one of the most popular third-party Reddit apps, is shutting down on June 30.
In an extremely detailed Reddit post, developer Christian Selig announced that following some tense conversations with Reddit, the two parties couldn't arrive at a solution and therefore, Selig has decided to pull the plug on the app after eight years. To recall, Reddit recently announced that it would start charging for its API, a piece of code that acts as a bridge between a platform and all services based on it.
Apollo will close down on June 30th. Reddit's recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue. Thank you so, so much for all the support over the years. ❤️ https://t.co/HOJaLMW8fx
— Christian Selig (@ChristianSelig) June 8, 2023
Apps like Apollo and bots rely on API callback to stay functional and do their job. Defending the move, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman argued that the self-proclaimed "Internet's first page" needs to be fairly compensated, because Reddit data is valuable, especially when it is being used to train money-milking AI products. However, the cost of Reddit's API is what created quite some ruckus among developers like Selig and community moderators. In an older post, Selig provided a breakdown of how Reddit's API pricing would incur nearly $2 million in monthly fees for Apollo, swelling to around $20 million in annual API fees.
An unfortunate victim of platform greed
But what really choked developers was the short notice, as Reddit reportedly offered developers only 30 days to adapt to the API switch. Selig announced that even if he hikes the current Apollo subscription to $5 per month and gains thousands of new subscribers, that still won't be sufficient to sustain the API payments and cover operational costs. It seems that Selig also had some tense moments with Reddit representatives who allegedly accused him of threatening or extorting the company to the tune of $10 million. Selig responded in his Reddit post by revealing that he'd recorded all of the calls with the company, and he shared a snippet of one call to counter the claims about his supposed threats.
Selig's Reddit post also contains transcripts of his conversations with company executives and it appears that Reddit was far from being cooperative, let alone offering some breathing room by extending the API fee grace period. Selig says he even suggested an Apollo sale to Reddit, considering it is the most popular Reddit client and has raked millions of downloads. However, Reddit was apparently not interested in that idea, and CEO Huffman reportedly refused to talk directly with Selig.
However, Selig isn't inclined to sell Apollo to any random buyer. "I'd rather the app just die if it would go to a company that would turn something I worked really on into something that would ruin its legacy," he wrote. Selig says he is working on a way to refund the current subscribers and before the June 30 shutdown, will offer users to export their data. At the end of the day, it's just a poor send-off for a very fine app.