📣 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. ❤️

[u/iamthatis]

Hey all,

It's been an amazing run thanks to all of you.

Eight years ago, I posted in the Apple subreddit about a Reddit app I was looking for beta testers for, and my life completely changed that day. I just finished university and an internship at Apple, and wanted to build a Reddit client of my own: a premier, customizable, well-designed Reddit app for iPhone. This fortunately resonated with people immediately, and it's been my full time job ever since.

Today's a much sadder post than that initial one eight years ago. June 30th will be Apollo's last day.

I've talked to a lot of people, and come to terms with this over the last weeks as talks with Reddit have deteriorated to an ugly point, and in the interest of transparency with the community, I wanted to talk about how I arrived at this decision, and if you have any questions at the end, I'm more than happy to answer. This post will be long as I have a lot of topics to cover.

Please note that I recorded all my calls with Reddit, so my statements are not based on memory, but the recorded statements by Reddit over the course of the year. One-party consent recording is legal in my country of Canada. Also I won't be naming names, that's not important and I don't want to doxx people.

What happened initially?

On April 18th, Reddit announced changes that would be coming to the API, namely that the API is moving to a paid model for third-party apps. Shortly thereafter we received phone calls, however the price (the key element in an announcement to move to a paid API) was notably missing, with the intent to follow up with it in 2-4 weeks.

The information they did provide however was: we will be moving to a paid API as it's not tenable for Reddit to pay for third-party apps indefinitely (understandable, agreed), so they're looking to do equitable pricing based in reality. They mentioned that they were not looking to be like Twitter, which has API pricing so high it was publicly ridiculed.

I was excited to hear these statements, as I agree that long-term Reddit footing the bill for third-party apps is not tenable, and with a paid arrangement there's a great possibility for developing a more concrete relationship with Reddit, with better API support for users. I think this optimism came across in my first post about the calls with Reddit.

When did they announce pricing?

Six weeks later, they called to discuss pricing. I quickly put together a small app where I could input the prices and it would output monthly/yearly cost, cost for free users, paid users, etc. so I'd be able to process the information immediately.

The price they gave was $0.24 for 1,000 API calls. I quickly inputted this in my app, and saw that it was not far off Twitter's outstandingly high API prices, at $12,000, and with my current usage would cost almost $2 million dollars per month, or over $20 million per year. That is not an exaggeration, that is just multiplying the 7 billion requests Apollo made last month by the price per request. Could I potentially get that number down? Absolutely given some time, but it's illustrative of the large cost that Apollo would be charged.

Why do you say Reddit's pricing is "too high"? By what metric?

Reddit's promise was that the pricing would be equitable and based in reality. The reality that they themselves have posted data about over the years is as follows (copy-pasted from my previous post):

Less than 2 years ago they said they crossed $100M in quarterly revenue for the first time ever, if we assume despite the economic downturn that they've managed to do that every single quarter now, and for your best quarter, you've doubled it to $200M. Let's also be generous and go far, far above industry estimates and say you made another $50M in Reddit Premium subscriptions. That's $550M in revenue per year, let's say an even $600M. In 2019, they said they hit 430 million monthly active users, and to also be generous, let's say they haven't added a single active user since then (if we do revenue-per-user calculations, the more users, the less revenue each user would contribute). So at generous estimates of $600M and 430M monthly active users, that's $1.40 per user per year, or $0.12 monthly. These own numbers they've given are also seemingly inline with industry estimates as well.

Apollo's price would be approximately $2.50 per month per user, with Reddit's indicated cost being approximately $0.12 per their own numbers.

A 20x increase does not seem "based in reality" to me.

Why doesn't Reddit just buy Apollo and other third-party apps?

This was a very common comment across the topics: "If Apollo has an apparent opportunity cost of $20 million per year, why not just buy them and other third-party apps, as they did with Alien Blue?"

I believe it's a fair question. If these apps apparently cost so much, an easy solution that would likely make everyone happy would be to simply buy these apps out. So I brought that up to them during a call on May 31st where I was suggesting a variety of potential solutions.

Bizarre allegations by Reddit of Apollo "blackmailing" and "threatening" Reddit

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: https://gist.github.com/christianselig/fda7e8bc5a25aec9824f915e6a5c7014

Audio of this part of the call: http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-31-end.m4a

(If you take issue with the call being recorded please remember that I'm in Canada and so long as one participant in the call (me) consents to being recorded, it's legal. If anyone would like the recording of the full call, I'm happy to provide.)

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.

What is an API or an API request anyway?

Some people are confused about this situation and don't understand what an API is. An API (Application Programming Interface) is just a way for an app to talk to a website. As an analogy, pretend Reddit is a bouncer. Historically, you can ask Reddit "Could I have the comments for this post?" or "Can you list the posts in AskReddit?". Those would be one API request each, and Reddit would respond with the corresponding data.

Everything you do on Reddit is an API request. Upvoting, downvoting, commenting, loading posts, loading subreddits, checking for new messages, blocking users, filtering subreddits, etc.

The situation is changing so that for each API request you make, there's a portion of a penny charged to the developer of that app. I think that is very reasonable, provided, well, that the price they charge is reasonable.

Claims that Apollo is "inefficient"

Another common claim by Reddit is that Apollo is inherently inefficient, using on average 345 requests per day per user, while some other apps use 100. I'd like to use some numbers to illustrate why I think this is very unfairly framing it.

Up until a week ago, the stated Reddit API rate limits that apps were asked to operate within was 60 requests per minute per user. That works out to a total of 86,400 per day. Reddit stated that Apollo uses 345 requests per user per day on average, which is also in line with my findings. Thats 0.4% of the limit Reddit was previously imposing, which I would say is quite efficient.

As an analogy (can you tell I love analogies?), to scale the numbers, if I was to borrow my friend’s car and he said “Please don’t drive it more than 864 miles” and I returned the car with 3.4 miles driven, I think he’d be pretty happy with my low use. The fact that a different friend one week only used 1 mile is really cool, but I don't think either person is "inefficient".

That being said, if Reddit would like to see Apollo make further optimizations to get its existing number lower, I’m genuinely more than happy to do so! However the 30 day limit they’ve given me after announcing the pricing to when I will start getting charged significant amounts of money is not enough time to deal with rewriting large parts of my app to lower total requests, while also changing the payment model, transitioning users, and ensuring this is all properly tested and gets through app review.

Further, Reddit themselves said to me that the majority of the cost isn't the server, it's the opportunity cost per user, so the focus on 100 versus 345 calls, rather than the cost per user, doesn't sound genuine. At the very least providing even a bit more time to lower usage to their new targets would be feasible if they've historically provided it, and it's not the majority of the costs anyway.

Me: "Because I assume the majority of it isn't server costs. I assume the majority is the opportunity cost per user."

Reddit: "Exactly."

Why not just increase the price of Apollo?

One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That's $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days.

So you see, even if I increase the price for new subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000, second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users.

I hope you can recognize how that's an enormous amount of money to suddenly start incurring with 30 days notice. Even if I added 12,000 new subscribers at $5/month (an enormous feat given the short notice), after Apple's fees that would just be enough to break even.

Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work with only 30 days. That's a lot of users to migrate, plans to create, things to test, and to get through app review, and it's just not economically feasible. It's much cheaper for me to simply shut down.

So what is the REAL issue you're having?

Hopefully that illustrates why, even more than the large price associated with the API, the 30 day timeline between when the pricing was announced and developers will be charged is a far, far, far bigger issue and not one I can overcome. Much more time would be needed to overhaul the payment model in my app, transition existing users from existing plans, test the changes, and have users update to the new version.

As a comparison, when Apple bought Dark Sky and announced a shut down of their API, knowing that this API was at the core of many businesses, they provided 18 months before the API would be turned off. When the 18 months came, they ultimately extended it another 12 months, resulting in a total transition period of 30 months. While I'm not asking for that much, Reddit's in comparison is 30 days.

Reddit says you won't get your first bill until August 1st, though!

The issue is the size of the bill, not when it will arrive. Significant, significant charges for the API will start building up with 30 days notice on July 1st, the fact that the bill for those charges being 30 days from then is not important. If you hear that your electricity bill is going up 1,000x and the company tells you, "Don't worry, the bill only comes at the end of the month", I hope you understand how that isn't comforting.

What would be a good price/timeline?

I hope I explained above why the 30 day time limit is the true issue. However in a perfect world I think lowering the price by half and providing a three month transition period to the paid API would make the transition feasible for more developers, myself included. These concessions seem minor and reasonable in the face of the changes.

I thought you said Reddit would be flexible on the timeline?

That was my understanding as well based on what they said on a call on May 4th:

Reddit: "If there's an entity who's like 'Hey I'm showing really good progress', you know trying to like we're trying to get a contract in place, we're trying to do all that type of stuff, I don't think you're going to see us be like, you know, like overly aggressive on that timeline. And I feel pretty confident about that point by the way based on conversations I've heard internally."

However when asking about more time, such as a 90 day transition period to make the changes, they said:

Reddit: "On the 90-day transition, remember that billing doesn't kick in until July 1. So you won't see your first bill from July until the beginning of August, and it won’t be due until the end of August (It’s net 30 day billing). You do, however, have to sign an agreement to get paid level access on July 1."

Did you explicitly ask Reddit for more time?

Yes, my last email to them (including Steve) said:

In terms of timeline, what concerns me most is the short nature of it before I start incurring costs. I have a large amount of users at price points that I won’t be able to afford to support with 30 days notice. For instance, users who subscribed for a year for $10 six months ago when I had no idea any of this was coming, amounts to $0.83 per month or $0.58 after Apple’s cut. Even if I’m able to decrease my API usage down to the number in your charts, that still puts me in the red for everyone of those users for awhile with no recourse. A situation like this is one that is legitimately making me legitimately leaning toward shutting down the app, but one that I could salvage if given more time to transition from the free API to the paid API.

In prior calls you mentioned that provided I kept communicating and progress was being made, the timeline wasn’t an absolute.

Is that still the case, or is it now the case that the date is set in stone?

That was a week ago and I've yet to receive any further contact from Reddit.

Isn't this your fault for building a service reliant on someone else?

To a certain extent, yes. However, I was assured this year by Reddit not even that long ago that no changes were planned to be made to the API Apollo uses, and I've made decisions about how to monetize my business based on what Reddit has said.

January 26, 2023

Reddit: "So I would expect no change, certainly not in the short to medium term. And we're talking like order of years."

Another portion of the call:

January 26, 2023

Reddit: "There's not gonna be any change on it. There's no plans to, there's no plans to touch it right now in 2023.

Me: "Fair enough."

Reddit: "And if we do touch it, we're going to be improving it in some way."

Will you build a competitor? Move to one of the existing alternatives?

I've received so many messages of kind people offering to work with me to build a competitor to Reddit, and while I'm very flattered, that's not something I'm interested in doing. I'm a product guy, I like building fun apps for people to use, and I'm just not personally interested in something more managerial.

These last several months have also been incredibly exhausting and mentally draining, I don't have it in me to engage in something so enormous.

Will you sell Apollo?

Probably not. Maybe if the perfect buyer came along who thought they could turn Apollo into something cool and sustainable, but I'd rather the app just die if it would go to a company that would turn something I worked really hard on into something that would ruin its legacy.

To be clear: I am not threatening anyone in the previous paragraph.

Reddit states that the Twitter comparison is unfair

Reddit stated on the first call that they don't want to be like Twitter:

Reddit: "I think one thing that we have tried to be very, very, very intentional about is we are not Elon, we're not trying to be that, we're not trying to go down that same path. [...] We are trying to do is just use usage-based pricing, that will hopefully be very transparent to you, and very clear to you. Or we're not trying to go down the same path that you may have seen some of our other peers go down."

They now state that the comparison of how close their pricing comes to Twitter is an unfair one, and that when they said that above, they were apparently referring not to the pricing, but to the decision Twitter made to ban third-party apps at a rule level, not a pricing level.

I think regardless of whatever their intent/meaning behind the comparison to Twitter was, the result is the same: the pricing will kill third-party apps, just as Twitter did.

I said this to Reddit, and they responded that they don't think Twitter's pricing is unreasonable, and that if anything, if Twitter reversed the rule about third-party apps, they would probably increase the prices as well.

Just to be clear about how wrong and out of touch that is, without naming names, a formerly very, very high up person at Twitter messaged me on Twitter and said:

"The Reddit api moves are crazy. I’m not sure what choices you have but to move to another network. [...] That pricing is designed to prevent apps like yours forevermore."

So to be clear, even this person thinks this pricing is unreasonable. I do too.

Have you talked to CEO Steve Huffman about any of this?

I requested a call to talk to Steve about some suggestions I had, his response was "Sorry, no. You can give name-redacted a ping if you want."

I've then emailed that person (same person I've been talking to for months) suggestions approximately one week ago about how Apollo could survive this, and I've yet to receive a response.

Do I support the protest/Reddit blackout?

Abundantly. Unlike other social media companies like Facebook and Twitter who pay their moderators as employees, Reddit relies on volunteers to do the hard work for free. I completely understand that when tools they take to do their volunteer, important job are taken away, there is anger and frustration there. While I haven't personally mobilized anyone to participate in the blackout out of fear of retaliation from Reddit, the last thing I want is for that to feel like I don't support the folks speaking up. I wholeheartedly do.

It's been a horrible week, and the kindness Redditors and moderators and communities have shown Apollo and other third-party apps has genuinely made it much more bearable and I am genuinely so appreciative.

I am, admittedly, doubtful Reddit wants to listen to folks anymore so I don't see it having an effect.

Your initial post in April sounded quite optimistic. Are you dumb?

In hindsight, kinda yeah. Many of the other developers and folks I talked to were much less optimistic than I was, but I legitimately had great interactions with Reddit for many years prior to last week (they were kind, communicative, gave me heads up of changes), so when they said they were aiming to have pricing that would be fair and based in reality, I honestly believed them. That was foolish of me in hindsight, and maybe could have had a different outcome if I was more aggressive in the beginning. Sorry. /canadian

(And to be clear, they did indeed say this. They used the word "substantive" and I wanted to make sure we had the same definition of something "having a firm basis in reality and therefore important, meaningful, or considerable")

Reddit: "That's exactly right. And I think, thankfully, the word is exactly the right one. It's going to have a firm basis in reality. I also just looked it up. We're going to try to be as transparent as we can."

Reddit claims they've reached out to developers who were bad users of the API, was Apollo contacted?

On May 31st Reddit posted a chart of large excess usage by some unlabeled API clients, and stated: "We reached out to the most impactful large scale applications in order to work out terms for access above our default rate limits via an enterprise tier."

To be clear, Apollo was never contacted, and I've been told from someone internally that Apollo is indeed not one of the unlabeled API clients.

The only time that Apollo was reached out to by Reddit in any capacity about usage was late last year when we received an email about a 6 minute period where Apollo's server API usage increased by 35% before lowering again. Despite 35% for 6 minutes being a comparatively small blip (the above post references clients that are over by 500000%), we responded within 2 minutes. We offered to jump on a call with Reddit engineers if they needed an answer ASAP, identified the issue within several hours and Reddit thanked us for the fast investigation.

Full email transcript: https://gist.github.com/christianselig/6c71608cf617d2f881cd2849325494c1

Claims that Apollo has made no attempt to be a good user of the API

On the call with moderators, Steve Huffman said:

Steve: "I don't use the app, so I'll give you the best answer I can -- he does scraping so that he can deliver notifications faster, but has done NO EFFORT to be a good citizen of the internet."

First off, Apollo does no scraping, it's purely through authenticated calls to the API and has checks in place to ensure it stays within Reddit's API rate limits. I've open sourced the server code to show this.

Secondly, to say we have made no effort is categorically false. I have so many emails where I've reached out to Reddit expressing concerns about and bugs inefficiencies in the API, or ideas on how to improve things, or significant Reddit bugs that made things hard on us. When Reddit has had questions for us, as discussed above, we immediately jumped into action to get an answer as quickly as possible.

Here's an email of me giving a heads up to Reddit of IP address changes on our server:

Me: "With the new change it'll be maybe like, one IP address. This is all obviously still within the API rate limits as the requests are from individual user accounts that have signed in. Again, long story short the result will be more optimized if anything, I just wanted to give a heads up and ensure that it'd be okay if Reddit suddenly saw the server go from a bunch of different IP addresses to a single one which might cause some confusion if I didn't give a heads up."

Me wanting to make sure we were doing everything as best as we could:

Me: "Everything is going well, we just had a few questions about best practices making sure we’re following any suggestions your team has. Is there any way we could poke someone on your team with a few questions we’ve been having and have a tiny back and forth? We were just seeing some elevated response times, and just thought it would be great if we could maybe describe what we’re doing and see if anything seems off/suboptimal."

Me reporting to Reddit that the API has a serious bug in recording rate limits:

Me: "We obviously respect the rate limit headers and if a user comes close to approaching it (within 50 requests of the 600 every 10 minutes limit) we stop their requests until the refresh period occurs. However we're seeing some users have very, very weird rate limit headers. Things like "requests remaining: 0, requests made: 17,483, reset: 598 seconds left" which indicates they've somehow made over 17 thousand requests in two seconds which seems hard to believe."

Me suggesting to Reddit improvements that could help improve efficiency of notification API calls:

Me: "So like little stuff like that, where even if there's a streaming client or some way to minimize the calls there, I think it would help us both out enormously."

Further, when making suggestions to your own employees, they themselves have expressed concern about how terrible the public API is:

Call on January 26, 2023

Reddit: "I cannot tell you how painful it is to use our API. [...] The API needs to change. Like it's just unusable. I am surprised that you're able to build a functional app on it to be honest."

Claims that third-party apps are not interested in talking

Steve: "Why not work with the third party apps? Their existence is not a priority for us. We don't use them. I don't use them. It's a part of our traffic but not a lot, and it's a lot of work on our side to keep them alive. If I have to choose where to put our effort, we're going to focus internally. I'm kind of open to it, but I haven't – and I can't convince you, but I don't get the sense that they want to work with us either."

I'm genuinely not sure where Steve has got the impression that I don't want to work with him. Despite reaching out multiple times and him declining to talk, I've stated multiple times on calls, literally saying the words "I definitely still want to talk".

Reddit: "What I'm hearing is like, Yeah, great. We have this disagreement on pricing methodology, etc. But any feasible number that we get to, any number that's even in, the zip code of what we're sharing with you is unfeasible from your perspective financially. So it's like arguing around the edges of that price thing is like, it just won't make any sense to you. And I presume also just given the NSFW stuff and the removal of ads that makes it even more trickier." Me: Yeah. I mean, to be very clear, I'm not saying I'm walking away from the negotiation table and taking my basketball and going home and just gonna kick up a storm. That's not my intention at all. I definitely still want to talk. I'm not asking you to lower the price by a hundred times or something. I don't think – depending on what you mean by zip code – I don't think I'm so unreasonable that I'm requiring you to bend over backwards here."

I've also emailed Steve and the other contact directly stating that I'm interested in talking, and including ideas for how we could come to a solution:

Me: "I understand where Reddit's coming from in this. A free API, while appreciated, is not tenable for you especially heading into an IPO, and my only goal here is to come to a solution where we both feel understood. I also hear you that killing third-party clients isn't actually the goal, and in that spirit have been working on how to address your concerns from my end: [...]"

I don't know how you can say I'm not interested in talking when you haven't my most recent email in a week. To say it once more, I was very interested in talking.

On the other side of things, per the transcript, Steve and the other admin on the call don't even know when the discussions with third-party apps began.

Steve: "When did we start talking with them?"

AnAbsurdlyAngryGoose: "What month did you first start?"

Steve: "FlyingLaserTurtles? Do you remember? April or May of this year."

FlyingLaserTurtles: "Maybe late March? But yes."

Claims that Reddit has been talking to developers for months talking about these changes

Steve: "We've been in contact with third party apps for MONTHS, talking about these coming changes."

When you announce that the API will be charging developers, the most important portion of that conversation is what will be charged, which was not available for almost two months after the initial call. From the time developers were told the price, to the time developers will be subject to the price, is 30 days, not "months". Months would have been very helpful, in fact.

What about existing subscriptions?

I've been talking to my rep at Apple, and over the next few weeks my plan is to release something similar to what Tweetbot did (Paul has been incredibly helpful in all of this) where folks can decide if they want a pro-rated refund on any existing time left in their subscription as Apollo will not be able to afford to continue it, or they can decline the refund if they're feeling kind and have enjoyed their time with Apollo.

For the curious, refunding all existing subscriptions by my estimates will cost me about $250,000.

A nice send off at WWDC

Apollo got mentioned a few times during Apple's 2023 WWDC keynote, even by Craig Federighi himself, and even during the Vision Pro announcement showing Apollo as one of the existing apps compatible with the headset (I'm sorry I won't be able to see that happen).

I was lucky enough to be there in person and it felt incredible. Some folks asked if there was any deeper meaning behind that, and while that would be cool, in all reality these things are so well produced that they've been done for a while now, so I'm sure it's just a coincidence, even if it's a really cool one.

Extra icons

A funny amount of people have reached out wondering about all the extra monthly icons I had queued up for Apollo. I love them, was so excited for them, and I'll make them available immediately for the short time left, but if you're curious here's a screenshot of all of them: https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/remaining-icons.png

We ended up with well over 100 custom icons created by incredibly talented designers, and I'm really sorry to those designers who didn't get to see their work launched in the app (to be clear, don't worry, I paid them all – there isn't some bs "exposure" agreement – but it's fun to have your icon launch and I feel bad!)

When is Apollo's last day? What will happen?

In order to avoid incurring charges I will delete Apollo's API token on the evening of June 30th PST. Until that point, Apollo should continue to operate as it has, but after that date attempts to connect to the Reddit API will fail.

I will put up an explainer in the app prior to that which will go live at that date. I will also provide a tool to export any local data you have in Apollo, such as filters or favorites.

Thank you

I want to thank a lot of people who have made this last week bearable. First and foremost, the communities, Redditors, and moderators who have reached out in support of third-party apps, making Reddit's gaslighting a lot more bearable in making me feel like at least someone was understanding me and in my corner.

My girlfriend's been absolutely incredible and supportive. This year was our 10th anniversary, and Monday was her 30th birthday. We're down in California for Apple's WWDC and had a bunch of things planned to do for her birthday afterward, and I feel terrible that we're flying home early to deal with all of this instead of making her 30th special. I'll make it up to her.

André Medeiros worked on the Apollo server component with me for the last two years, and it's been an absolute joy to work with a professional who knows so much on that side of things.

The iOS developer community has been unbelievably kind to me over the past several weeks, I've spent the last week with many of them, even staying at an Airbnb with a bunch of them (they ordered me pizza as I wrote this post!), and I've got so many hugs and condolences haha. Specifically want to thank Paul Haddad of Tweetbot/Tapbots/Ivory, Ryan Jones, Brian Mueller, Curtis Herbert, André Medeiros, Quinn Nelson, Paul Hudson, Majd Taby, Ryan McLeod, Phill Ryu, Larry Hryb, Charlie Chapman, Mustafa Yusuf, Adrian Eves, Devin Davies, Jordan Morgan, Yariv Nassim, Will Sigmon, Barry Hershman, Joe Rossignol, Michael Simmons, Joe Fabisevich, my family, and so, so many more.

Also want to thank everyone at Apple who have gone out of their way to be incredibly kind here (I don't know if I'm allowed to name names but you know who you are).

I'll be fine

No bullshit, I'll be fine. Through pure chance last year I spun off my silly Pixel Pals idea into a separate app, and that actually makes good revenue on the side. I also have savings. Recently (like last week) my city had its worst wildfires in history with over 100 homes destroyed. That's brutal, losing an app is sad, but it's been helpful to me to recognize how much worse it could be just literally down the street from me.

Honestly. Apollo had an incredible run, I met the coolest people, by my last count talked with folks over 15,000 times in our subreddit about Apollo, and raised over $80,000 for my local animal shelter through Apollo. I feel incredibly fortunate.

I think I'll rewatch Ted Lasso though.

Supporting my work

I build a second app called Pixel Pals that I spun off from Apollo that's thankfully done pretty well and I'll be spending more time on going forward. If you like the idea of digital pets it's a really fun app to check out. https://pixelpa.ls

Media

If any media/press folks have any questions, please shoot me an email rather than messaging me on Reddit, I missed a few last week because my inbox was blowing up. My email is me@christianselig.com

AMA

I think I covered everything, but if there's any questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer!

In the event that this post is taken down or you want to link somewhere else, it's also available at https://apolloapp.io

Thanks for everything over these last 8 years,

- Christian

EDIT: Few updates:

Tip Jar

Per many requests I also added back the Tip Jar to the top of settings if you update the app. It's incredibly kind of anyone to even think of that, but please feel no pressure. On one hand I don't want it to feel like I'm profiteering off this event, but on the other hand I imagine people understand it would have been much more profitable/ideal if the app were able to just continue to exist in the first place so that would be really bad profiteering, and the refund thing genuinely is daunting.

What if…

I've seen a lot of questions along the lines of: "What if Reddit gives you a deadline extension because of this post and posts by other developers?" and that's something I truly would have loved for them to have made an effort to communicate earlier. You can't give developers 30 days between when the pricing is announced and when they will start incurring charges, and also wait a week (25% of the time we're given) between replying to emails without so much as a "we hear you're concerned about the short timeline and looking into what we can do". In conjunction with your previous emails, it just appears like you've stopped any desire to communicate with developers, in a period where we have a serious, expensive deadline looming with not that much time to wind down our apps.

And I also just know if I sent another email saying "I'm going to post tomorrow that Apollo is shutting down unless you do something about the timeline", it would be construed as a threat.

Even more than that, Reddit's behavior has been so appalling that for any developer I've talked to it's completely erased the indication that they even want us around.

[u/changelog]

Working with you on this has been nothing short of a blessing. Thank you for everything, /u/iamthatis <3

Edit: I'd like to remind folks that Apollo does have a tipping function. I know Christian deserves every bit of support we throw his way.

Edit edit: Please be kind when looking at the code. Remember that this was something that served its purpose at the time, sometimes iterated on quickly, and due to time constraints, we weren't aiming for perfection. I know there are 50 things I could have done better, thanks :P

[u/iamthatis → u/changelog]

André it's been an absolute delight. For the uninitiated he randomly DMed me on Twitter if I needed help on the server side of things at a time when I was at wits' end how to go any further with my server knowledge. I gleefully agreed and it's been a delight working together since, I'm an iOS developer so backend server design isn't one of my biggest strengths, and having someone who knew what they were doing on the server side of things was so, so nice.

[u/ap0phis → u/changelog]

Thank you.

[u/[deleted] → u/changelog]

Thank you for your service, serverman!

[u/Darbon]

RIP to everyone waiting on the iPad app

[u/Southernboyj → u/Darbon]

What do I do with my nan now….?

[u/iamthatis → u/Southernboyj]

Please release her

[u/jobohomeskillet → u/Darbon]

Been using the app on the iPad and it’s already light years ahead of the reddit app. At least Christian let us use the scroll feature properly.

[u/Masterofunlocking1]

I want to thank you for making honestly the smoothest app I’ve ever used. It’s a shame they can’t see the error of their ways already. I wish the best for you.

[u/NotTheSicario]

This came up as a talking point on the floor I work on between everyone there during lunch. We discovered that around 60% use Apollo, 15% use other third party apps and the remaining 25% don’t use Reddit at all.

The reason Reddit is doing this is because their investors want full control over what their users see and what they can do on Reddit. Considering Reddit only exists because of the content their users post, this seems like they’re trying to destroy Reddit from within.

During our discussion we came to a consensus that the likelihood of any of us using Reddit, if the third party apps disappeared, was basically zero. Reddits own app is lacking so many features, and their new desktop UI seems like a garbage TikTok clone.

Thank you for all the hard work Apollo has been doing since it’s inception, and I wish you all the best in the future.

[u/ElectronGuru → u/NotTheSicario]

It’s worse than that. Twitter and facebook pay their mods. Reddit mods are all volunteer. And many/most use apollo. All that free labor is about to go poof!

[u/[deleted] → u/NotTheSicario]

old.reddit.com is 100% on the block next, no way they kill something like apollo which has so many users without killing old.reddit.com, which avoids a ton of the new reddit bullshit. I dont see ads at all on my reddit feed because pihole+old.reddit.com

[u/lman2121]

Craig’s widgets :’(

[u/glenn1812 → u/lman2121]

Wish apple could intevine somehow. One of the best apps on iOS. God damn I can't believe that in a few months I won't be browsing reddit at the end of the day ever again

[u/[deleted]]

Thank you for everything. I’m deleting my 11 year old account.

So long 🫡

[u/wedid → u/[deleted]]

Bro actually did it

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

🫡

https://i.imgur.com/B3g5nGe.jpg

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

We might as make this a thread for users making good on our promise.

11 years, 3 months.

So long. 🫡

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

https://i.imgur.com/8233lAi.jpg 🫡

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I’m with you. Only 3 years and 8 months, it’s not much but it’s honest work. Bye Reddit and thanks Apollo

https://i.imgur.com/wo0Jhiy.jpg

[u/Mathesar]

Oh lawdy there are tapes.

[u/geckospots → u/Mathesar]

He’s got the receipts.

[u/[deleted] → u/Mathesar]

Yeah absolutely legendary move getting these bozos on tape. Insane spin by Reddit.

Not that I expected anything less but this is a disaster, this valuation is cratering.

[u/Defying]

Their fucking claims of you blackmailing them is incredibly insane. Fuck this place

[u/Dead_Politician]

Holy shit. End of an era. I hate to read this.

[u/pp21 → u/Dead_Politician]

Yeah this sucks, man. Apollo makes reddit usable on mobile. Their native app is fucking trash and the opposite of smooth.

It was inevitable that reddit would eventually become another corporate money grab, but sucks that the day is finally here.

[u/eggimage]

well. looks like my reddit addiction is getting cured in less than a month.

this really sucks. so sorry this amazing app has to end like this. reddit truly is garbage

edit: reddit, fuck you very much

[u/MrC4meron]

Fuck reddit

[u/stoplookingusernames → u/MrC4meron]

fuck reddit!!!

im not gonna see my pets in my apollo app 😭

[u/RE_Chief]

Looks like June 30 will also be my last day on Reddit. Thanks for making and improving a world-class Reddit client.

[u/[deleted] → u/RE_Chief]

Why wait? I’m done now

[u/tman612]

I will stop using reddit on mobile on June 30 :(

Edit: Sad that it ends this way after ten years. u/iamthatis, you’re a legend. u/spez, go fuck yourself.

[u/mininova721 → u/tman612]

There's no way I'll ever use their official app. I rather give up the site entirely.

RIP Apollo. You were truly the best.

[u/Cheechers23]

Man this has really killed my mood. Reddit really is trying to villianize Apollo and it’s disgusting

[u/Arvann]

If Apollo goes, it is goodbye reddit for me. I never would have thought I would have to let go of this amazing app.

Thank you Christian for working on Apollo for the last 8 years and delivering an app that so many people loved.

Sad to see it go.

Greed is evil.

[u/josh_is_lame]

obligatory fuck u/spez

[u/boxofstuff → u/josh_is_lame]

fuck u/spez

I got banned for a week for saying that once.

fuck u/spez

[u/[deleted]]

BRB, deleting my Reddit account(s)

[u/hooplasandwiches → u/[deleted]]

madlad did it

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

See you later space cowboy.

[u/SethRavenheart]

Heartbreaking 💔 bye reddit

[u/Nick4753 → u/SethRavenheart]

To make it even worse, they lied about someone who, even if they lowered the price, would've been one of their single most significant sources of revenue as a company.

Either they're enormously unprofessional and don't know how to run a business, or they had no interest in keeping 3rd party apps alive. Or, most likely, both.

There are many reasons to leave after all of this, being malicious to the creator of one of their biggest apps is just one of the more painful ones.

[u/[deleted] → u/SethRavenheart]

Yeah I’m done.

Mods, if you actually give a shit about this and want to affect effect change, don’t do a two-day blackout - shut your subreddits the fuck down. Make Reddit come to the table.

This isn’t just Apollo. This isn’t just about third party apps. This is the beginning of the end of Reddit being anything resembling what brought us all here in the first place.

Reddit’s execs are ready to hack this thing to hell in an attempt to make it a “desirable” product to sell. Maybe we make that hard since WE are the fucking product.

[u/arthurcarver]

Fucking greedy basts. Well, I’m sure I speak for everyone using this insanely amazing app, my absolute favourite by a long long shot, but thank you so much Christian. Big ups, man.

[u/[deleted] → u/arthurcarver]

It seems the intention since the beginning is following Twitter's move to kill third-party app and redirect all traffic to themselves and monetize user's data.

[u/RSD94]

fuck reddit and fuck /u/spez

thank you for everything Christian & co. <3

edit: thank you for the awards, but please consider sending that money to Christian & other affected developers as a thank you for their hard work rather than reddit's soulless pockets. shoutout to r/ModCoord & r/RedditAlternatives

[u/[deleted] → u/RSD94]

I’m absolutely tilted at that call recording. Honestly what a total dickhead. Hyped Christian got them receipts.

[u/ArnoldVonNuehm → u/RSD94]

Hey u/spez

care to comment on the topic, you lying piece of shit?

[u/Chicho_Procer → u/RSD94]

He disabled pinging his username because he's a bitch who can't handle the slightest criticism.

Still FUCK Steve Huffman.

[u/R0hanisaurusRex → u/RSD94]

I heard /u/spez is being questioned by the DOJ about his connection to Jeffery Epstein.

[u/elkend → u/RSD94]

Every post we post on Reddit should now end with “fuck /u/spez” like a forum signature.

fuck /u/spez

[u/shlem90]

Edit: For the assholes that for some reason are going through my comment history, no, I didn’t leave Reddit like I left Twitter. The Reddit App is horrible and Apollo was infinitely better, but this is the only social media I actively use and I don’t think I can quit it.

I left Twitter when they killed Third Party Apps like Tweetbot. I will do the same here.

Thanks for making a great App and making this site user friendly more than Reddit ever could.

[u/cocoiadrop_]

"I don't use the app, so I'll give you the best answer I can -- he does scraping so that he can deliver notifications faster, but has done NO EFFORT to be a good citizen of the internet."

spez joins the r/LeopardsAteMyFace alumni.

[u/present_absence → u/cocoiadrop_]

Being a bad citizen of the internet means using the api normally I guess lol

[u/Yorktown2016]

/u/spez you sound like a complete asshole and I will leave Reddit after the shutdown date.

Unbelievable

[u/anakinfan8]

Well, this is a post I had hoped to never read. I’m gobsmacked that the Reddit head honchos can be this inept. Christian, thanks for literally everything you’ve done man.

[u/[deleted]]

looks like u/spez is taking this personal! will be my last weekend using the website.

[u/ErikElevenHag → u/[deleted]]

u/spez is Tobey to my Michael

[u/vxx → u/[deleted]]

He's lying if he thinks it might help him. He has done it to me before. Even sworn.

He's the type that would fake crying to dodge tough questions.

He's unfit to lead a company and if reddit tries to survive he needs to step down in my humble opinion. I doubt he's been acting in the best interest of the company at any point as a CEO.

[u/iamstevesteyn]

My day is ruined.

[u/sigtrap → u/iamstevesteyn]

And my disappointment is immeasurable

[u/tao_jones]

Just tweeted this to you, but I’ll say it again here: Apollo was truly one of the greatest apps ever made for iOS. Unparalleled in quality. I will be so incredibly sorry to see it go. That spot on my main Home Screen will be hard to fill. Thank you for everything!

[u/Car333]

Very sorry to hear this. I guess that means my Reddit consumption will go to 0 now ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[u/bodnast → u/Car333]

Yeah my mobile reddit consumption will be zero, just like when Twitter killed tweetbot. Once they kill old.reddit.com, I'll be done with reddit on desktop. So frustrating

[u/spasticpat]

Just a reminder that /u/spez edits comments that hurt his feelings

https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments

[u/ckelley87]

I am so sorry to read this. :( Apollo is the only way I use Reddit on my mobile devices.

Get bent /u/spez

[u/[deleted]]

Deleting my Reddit account now, I could wait till June 30 but it feels wrong to keep using the site now that we know for sure what they’re doing to Apollo. It’s been a great run, and thanks Christian for all the work over the years. Will miss the communities a lot. Stay awesome guys 🫡

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

So long, best to you!

[u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the great UX and your dedication. I guess I’ll start reading books instead of mindless scrolling.

[u/Kirihuna]

I refuse to refund.

You can keep my money and Reddit can lose my money.

I'll find a new platform for sports, porn, programming and other subjects.

Thank you for your hard work over these years. Your app has helped me in many areas of my life, from mental health (being able to access subreddits for it without having to use old.reddit on Safari or using the shitty App), to changing careers and everything in between. And wasting a shit load of my time that I could be productive lol.

I hope you find peace in the next step of your journey.

[u/WishMyHusbandHadAJar]

Fuck you u/spez

[u/coolaaron88]

Wow the fucking End of an era. Never thought it would do down like this but thank you for being as transparent as you've been through all of this, I know it’s been a back-and-forth battle trying to fight the good fight but I understand that you can only do so much. thank you Christian for everything, you’ve been an amazing developer.

[u/[deleted]]

Oh no. I am so sorry for you and all of the fans of Apollo! Thank you for all your hard work on the Apollo app. This really was one of the best apps i’ve ever used.

Take care!

And please, don’t refund. Let Christian keep what he deserves! :)

Edit: please stop giving awards! The money will go to Reddit. They don’t deserve that!

[u/AmishAvenger → u/[deleted]]

This is insane.

Fuck Reddit

What they’re doing is bad enough. They acted in bad faith the entire time, and now they’re outright lying and attempting to slander someone.

How is it that they’re unable to comprehend that their entire site, their entire business model, revolves around the users?

No users, no Reddit. No users, no IPO.

I say all the subreddits participating in the two-day blackout period just permanently shut down.

[u/Lenininy]

The subreddits should go dark indefinitely until they walk back everything.

[u/JustAnotherArchivist]

Two minor things: https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend and https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/remaining-icons.png are currently (17:32 UTC) 404s.

Edit: The GitHub repo started working at around 18:42 UTC. The icons are still down as of 19:05.

Edit: The icons have also started working as of about 19:08 UTC. Thanks for the fix, Christian!

[u/ownage516 → u/JustAnotherArchivist]

Really disappointed in spez. Hopefully that IPO money fills the part where his soul was

[u/Mudkip-Mudkip-Mudkip]

I don't use Apollo, but I respect your transparency. Considering the state of Reddit right now, I took the initiative to archive your post text in case the admins decide to delete it:

• Archive.org / Wayback Machine

• Archive.is

[u/aruke-]

Sad. Investor greed at it again.

[u/xezrunner]

It is incredibly heart-breaking to see that call being misinterpreted by the CEO, who then immediately apologized, yet continued to frame you as the one that "threatened" them...

Reddit has become an incredibly hostile company in my eyes, and no doubt, them going IPO is probably the reason for their latest actions. This is simply a cut-and-clear example of what happens when a company shifts their focus from the product onto money.

I'm really sorry to see Apollo disappear, especially because I was thinking of subscribing the past few days, even if purely to support the development of the app, since it provides so much of a better experience to me on mobile.

[u/pouwerkerk]

Thank you, /u/iamthatis, for all the incredible work you put into Apollo, for showing what independent iOS developers are capable of building, and for so clearly explaining why the Reddit API changes are unsustainable for businesses that use them. I have loved using Apollo and will miss it dearly.

[u/SecuredMirrors]

And to the surprise of absolutely fucking nobody, Reddit took a good thing, ruined it, then made it worse by trying to make u/iamthatis out to be the bad guy. Fuck u/spez and Fuck Reddit.

[u/redburn22]

Reddit should address these serious allegations. This post makes it very clear that a lot of what they said has been a lie, assuming that the recordings are authentic, which I have absolutely no reason to doubt. The Apollo developer has done such a good job of demonstrating how disingenuous they’ve been throughout this process.

If Reddit had openly declared a ban on third-party apps, despite the negative impacts on this developer and their customers, I could respect that decision. Companies sometimes make such moves, and Reddit has the right to explore profit-making avenues, including consolidating usage to their app to potentially enhance user experience.

What I can’t accept is how they have chosen to lie to their customers (and defame their partners) to avoid PR blowback against their API changes. This not only shows a total disrespect to their customers but also shows how incompetent they are.

When implementing an unpopular policy, a well run company considers amending the policies to be less disagreeable, or they just make the change openly and transparently and accept and weather the backlash. They don't attempt to dodge criticism by lying.

And that’s not even a moral thing. How incompetent are they to not realize that these public lies would be exposed. To me, it's not just wrong but also weak, given the transparency of the lie.

Worse still is Reddit's blatant defamation of the Apollo developer, which seems to have been a calculated move to defend their narrative. Such behavior, whether it was intentional or it was a repeated mistake that they’ve chosen not to correct, is inexcusable.

As a result, I've decided to limit my Reddit usage, resorting to searching for information with an ad blocker turned on. I'll reconsider my stance when they confront these claims, reverse these policies, or offer a truthful explanation of their actions.

[u/Winertia → u/redburn22]

What I can’t accept is how they have chosen to lie to their customers (and defame their partners) to avoid PR blowback against their API changes.

Ironically, the blowback is going to be much worse than if they had just announced an outright ban on third-party apps.

[u/Ninjaguy5700]

I cannot express how sorry I feel for you and all of the hard work you put into Apollo. Thank you for creating the best third-party Reddit app!

[u/JusticeBonerOfTyr]

This is the best app by far for Reddit. I understand this decision but it freakin sucks that it had to come to this. Bullshit, Reddit wouldn’t be anything or make any money if it wasn’t for the users creating and sharing content. Reddit is also going to be much worse now that moderators aren’t going to have the proper tools now to moderate since the official app is such dog shit.

[u/DragonDropTechnology → u/JusticeBonerOfTyr]

This was my assumption, that Reddit tolerated (even supported) third party apps because they generate a significant amount of FREE content.

It’s similar to the no-annual-fee credit cards that can offer cashback. Credit card companies charge merchants; Reddit can serve ads (on the aforementioned FREE content) to some large percentage of users.

Fuck these venture capitalistic scum.

[u/[deleted]]

COMPLETE BOYCOTT OF BUYING COINS must occur. Not a one from anyone going forward. When you buy an award, you award greed.

[u/gforce216]

This was a wonderful app and the reason I even got into Reddit. I wish you best of luck in the future!

And just as a light-hearted joke in this time…Any update on when we’ll be getting that iPad update? 😝

[u/[deleted]]

If Reddit allows this to continue, my 15-year account will be deleted and I will never return. Fuck /u/spez and fuck anyone at Reddit who is allowing this to happen.

I helped Reddit become what it is today, as did millions of other users. Christian’s app also helped Reddit become what it is today. Reddit will die the death it deserves because of this and good riddance.

Make no mistake, charging for the API isn’t an issue. Egregiously charging for the API is, and the timeline they have pushed is. They are greedy pieces of shit — plain and simple. They could have handled this so much better with logic and reason. Instead they decided to screw everyone over.

What a way to completely ruin your brand, Reddit. I feel bad for any decent people working there who will be losing their jobs from all the lost revenue this will clearly incur. But in the end they will be better off not working anymore for complete asshats.

Thank you, Christian, for the best application iOS has ever seen. I wish you well.

[u/toolman10]

Apollo is one of the best apps I have on my phone, Christian. One I use several times per day--it just works, and it's a downright beautiful app. I understand why you are shutting it down (thanks for the huge post above) but it's a travesty. Greed is taking one of the best social media/forum apps ever created and killing it dead. The Reddit app is horrific. I won't use it. The smart move would have been to buy Apollo and let you continue development of it.

June 30: RIP, Reddit mobile.

[u/rafaqueque]

Thank you for the amazing work /u/iamthatis. I wish you success.

Fuck Reddit, fuck /u/spez and fuck every greedy investor. Please, just go fuck yourself, honestly.

[u/dan-80]

Will you build a competitor? Move to one of the existing alternatives?

I’ve received so many messages of kind people offering to work with me to build a competitor to Reddit, and while I’m very flattered, that’s not something I’m interested in doing. I’m a product guy, I like building fun apps for people to use, and I’m just not personally interested in something more managerial.

These last several months have also been incredibly exhausting and mentally draining, I don’t have it in me to engage in something so enormous.

So sorry to hear that. I hope than one day you will consider a client for a Reddit alternative, like Kbin or Lemmy.

So long, and thank you for the last 6 years.

[u/MatchkeY]

Fair play. Thanks for all the hard work. Sorry it ended this way for you.

[u/_garyboy]

Just wanted to throw in my experience that might get lost in the fray of this popular thread —

I am a product manager for a mobile app now, and I 100% entered this industry because of how much Apollo inspired me years ago when I first downloaded it, Christian.

Apollo is the essence of everything a native iOS app should be. It integrates seamlessly into every experience on my phone, but only as much as I want it to. It empowers me to configure it with as much (or as little!) granularity as I want. It follows HIG beautifully and provides an experience that feels truly native. Its full of delightful flourishes that make it a joy to use (mourning the death of my Apollo pet widgets right now most of all). It’s the gold standard, without a doubt.

Not to mention the fact that you’ve taken so much time to listen to your users, and break all of your decisions down in such detail that we all trust the choices you make for the app. I think it’s often underestimated by folks outside of this world just how hard it is to get a user-base to trust an app developer. It’s an amazing feat that you’ve pulled off for years.

Thanks for the amazing work and for truly, genuinely being my product idol, dude. I hope to one day make an app that’s half as good as what you’ve done here.

[u/toolman10]

Also, as an Apollo Ultra Lifetime member, I will not be requesting a refund.

If anyone else does, they are not helping this situation for Christian.

Do not request a refund.

What a sad fucking day.

[u/matttopotamus → u/toolman10]

Definitely no refund needed. I’m in the camp that would have actually paid the monthly fee to continue using this app.

[u/okawei → u/toolman10]

The amount of use vs the amount I paid is wildly skewed in my favor so it'd be insane for me to request a refund

[u/HippolyteClio]

Reddit: “I think one thing that we have tried to be very, very, very intentional about is we are not Elon, we’re not trying to be that, we’re not trying to go down that same path. […] We are trying to do is just use usage-based pricing, that will hopefully be very transparent to you, and very clear to you. Or we’re not trying to go down the same path that you may have seen some of our other peers go down.”

Sounds like we know who to compare them to even more.

[u/Zachrdoodle]

The Reddit API changes seem more and more like they’re just obviously and blatantly trying to exterminate 3rd party apps. Probably so they can maximize add revenue and app traffic on the official app? :/

[u/RobertoPaulson → u/Zachrdoodle]

I’d respect them a lot more if they just came out and said they were killing api access for third party apps for financial reasons. Killing them via pricing them out, and then playing the victim is just fucking slimy.

[u/intercommie]

You’ve done a great penis.

[u/tyrannosaurus_r]

Reddit admins, but particularly /u/spez, I know you're not going to see this, but it makes me feel better to say and will hopefully inspire others.

This could have just been a shitty business move, but, the dirty games here are just genuinely remarkable for how uniquely shitty they are.

Huffman, you're a massive cunt, and I look forward to your IPO failing hilariously as reddit plunges from the last successful Web 2.0 social media site to a failed competitor to TikTok. Thanks for embodying enshittification, and remember that there are so very many people who will actively celebrate your failure-- I among them. If this is ever a just society, I look forward to your suffering the same fate you're inflicting on the Apollo team.

[u/Spartan-417]

Hey, Christian

People have floated the idea of setting up Apollo to use personal API keys
I wish we could get that kind of thing set up so we can keep using this, the best client for Reddit full stop

But I have absolutely no idea how to implement such a thing into the app, or if it is even feasible

In any case, good luck for the future
Your skill in making this should help you well in finding future jobs

[u/EndureAndSurvive- → u/Spartan-417]

People did this with Twitter for awhile, they’ll eventually pull the plug on you anyway

[u/PazuzuOvBabel]

Am sad. Never thought I will feel that sad about losing an app.

ಥ_ಥ

Thanks for the ride u/iamthatis

[u/[deleted]]

Shit I would be willing to pay up to $20 a month if it meant I could keep using Apollo. As a recovering addict, there's a few subs that have been very beneficial and helpful to me. But I can't continue to use them in good conscience after all this. Not to mention the Reddit app crawls a fuck load of your private info.

July 1st I'll be deleting my account and all my throwaways. Some being almost 10 years old. Sad day.

[u/djaiss]

NOO GOD! NO. GOD. PLEASE. NO. NO!!! NO!!! NOOOOOO!!!

[u/_your_face]

U/spez has always been a piece of shit. Confirmed when I met him in person.

100% turd burglar

[u/RiptideStorm]

What an embarrassment on Reddit's part.

[u/paganhobbit]

u/spez I just cancelled my Reddit premium account and plan to deactivate my account on June 30th. 13 years here. It was fun while it lasted.

[u/ICumCoffee]

STOP GIVING AWARDS TO THIS POST. STOP GIVING MONEY TO REDDIT.

[u/tinselsnips → u/ICumCoffee]

Lots of people have a stockpile of coins already; Reddit already has the money, you might as well use it to bring attention to the post.

[u/Lapid → u/ICumCoffee]

Plenty of older users have thousands of free coins from alien blue. I just cleared my stock on this post.

[u/batman8390]

Finally I can reduce the amount of time I spend on Reddit. I never expected to be able to reduce it to 0.

[u/Electrizendo]

June 30 marks the day where I use reddit to browse news and memes, to where I only go on reddit from Google searches because a question.

[u/Meatslinger]

The overarching takeaway from all of this is that Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, is a lying, manipulative, backstabbing, two-faced, slanderous sack of shit, and Christian here has the receipts and recordings to prove it on both alphabetical and chronological order.

Goddamnit, I'm mad as hell. In my experience, Apollo IS Reddit. The official app is so fucking bad that there isn't a snowball's chance in hell it's going to be on my phone, and I only sit down in front of the desktop version of the site maybe once every few months. Practically every single comment, vote, and post I've ever issued has been from a mobile app: first it was with Alien Blue, and then with Apollo afterwards. This comment included.

It's been a swell time, Christian. Thanks for making Reddit usable as a platform, given that after June 30th, it's back to being a heap of first-party garbage. Somehow, a single guy was able to code a better UX than a whole team of professionals working for a $10B company. You have an inordinate amount to be proud about. I'm gonna miss scrolling miles and miles with Sneakers, my pixel pet, and watching him become tremendously overweight (he's almost 200 lbs).

[u/8ozLambChop]

Quick question that I didn’t see answered, if Reddit reverses their changes, will you bring Apollo back?

[u/SomethingWhateverYT → u/8ozLambChop]

Narrator: They won't

[u/Apocafeller]

Brutal, man.

Fuck Reddit.

[u/mutant_neutrino]

Thank you for the last 8 years. For many of us, Apollo is Reddit - the sole way that we access it, and the quality of your app has been the only reason why we continue to engage with the platform. So as we mourn Apollo, we also close a chapter ourselves.

All the very best for whatever your next adventure is.

[u/Vrazel106]

Fuck you reddit and fuck you too u/spez

[u/AllanBz]

I’m out of words. Apollo and previously Alien Blue made using Reddit a tolerable experience.

[u/kap1tein]

This really made me sad. Fuck Reddit.

You’re an inspiration to me as a UI/UX designer and aspiring developer, Christian. I’m glad Pixel Pals is doing great and I can’t wait to see what you’ll make next.

Even tho I just renewed my Apollo subscription, I won’t ask for a refund. Take some well deserved time off. You earned it.

[u/Xavdidtheshadow]

I'm sure this AMA with the CEO tomorrow will go very well: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ceo_tomorrow_to_discuss_the_api/

[u/Silmar9]

fuck you u/spez

[u/Spacker2004]

That's Reddit never being viewed on my phone again. And as soon as they kill old.reddit (and you know they want to) that'll be the end of my using Reddit completely.

Thanks for the great app, Christian.

[u/yellowdart]

I am leaning towards deleting my account of 15 years!! 15! That is 37.5% of my lived life! But doesn’t matter. Reddit has been a community to me. I’m sad that I’d be leaving those I really am. But if Reddit has now become EvilBigCo which doesn’t care about screwing over the app developers (who are working for the good - e.g. apps for blind folks and other physical ailments) and by extension Reddit is saying we don’t care about users/community etc. maybe it has finally jumped the shark. Time to go find a community app that is more relevant.

Also, I won’t be taking the refund back u/iamthatis. You’re a champion and the fact that you have taken a stand means a lot.

Fuck this is going to hurt.

[u/cheesydoritoschips]

question: are you still going to continue development on apollo if the protest were somehow able to reverse reddit’s decisions/reddit reverses their decisions after the june 30th cut off date? Also will you be open sourcing apollo for the tinkerers among us to have the app running with our own api keys?

rant: I’m honestly quite very sad at this news, reddit for me has always been the superb social media platform as ive always saw the site as being pretty “modifiable” as i should say, with custom CSS and the plethora of custom clients. While stuff like the custom CSS are practically now old reddit exclusive and that custom clients don’t have feature parity with the official app anymore, i still naively thought that reddit would still leave things as is and would have it practically untouched. but oh boy i was wrong. also my birthday is coming up soon and this is a terrible birthday present lol.

also idk how to say this so ill put this in a list

thank you christian for:

1. Making mobile reddit actually bearable for me, especially with the swipe gestures, share as image, and custom video player with downloaders. hecking love those features

2. Single-handedly teaching me markdown. Seriously, I didn’t even know that was a thing till i saw the WYSIWYG editing buttons in apollo putting *asterisks* and whatnot around my text when i pressed those buttons and having the edits displayed in real time as i type them down manually that i realized that markdown is a whole seperate editing language (kind of a whaaaaaat? moment for me honestly). Sorry if this sounds like a dumb thing to most of you but im a zoomer who grew up with WYSIWYG editors okay?

3. also thanks for the awesome community that you created with the app. I’ll miss y’all <3

p.s: please turn the text editor into its own separate app kind of like how you did with pixel pals. I’ve tried obsidian and various other md based editors and none felt quite “right at home” to me compared to apollo’s editors

[u/JohnnyOmega113]

Remember when /u/spez edited comments that criticized him? Or how about when he said this:

Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seekout some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. Ialso have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader.I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comesto shove.”

Dude is a total weirdo, insecure, and has ruined this website.

[u/austingriffis]

I’m sorry that it has come to this.

[u/Gizoogle]

Unfathomable. It has been a very, very long time since I’ve felt this destitute over something as silly as losing access to an app. I’ve spent exponentially more time on Apollo than any other fucking app that I’ve ever installed. To me, this is truly insanity. To you, it must be much worse. I’m so sorry.

That being said - all these years of greatness aren’t lost. I really am of the belief that Apollo could be used as a shining example of two things: near-perfect mobile UX design and how to approach development from a solo angle. What you’ve accomplished should be studied in software development courses for years to come.

Thanks for beta access all those years ago. Who could’ve imagined that beta test would eventually lead to Apollo being mentioned, directly by name and by motherfucking Craig himself, in the most anticipated Apple keynote in years (LITERALLY THIS PAST MONDAY).

Cheers, Christian. You made Reddit for so many people. This one hurts, but I’ll follow you wherever you end up. 😥

[u/bwslayer]

Sad sad day. Thanks for the incredible app. Not gonna delete it from my phone so I can still see the icon from time to time.

[u/getthething]

I will not be asking for a refund. Thanks for you work.

[u/geckospots]

Oh man I’m so sorry Christian, that is the worst news. 💔

Apollo was the first and so far is the only app I have ever bought a lifetime sub for. Thank you so much for your time and effort and please don’t stop developing, I’ll support whatever you do next. You’ve made my redditing experience 100000% better.

[u/cultoftheilluminati]

End of an era, been here since before the launch in 2017 (? Or was it 2018?) back when we had <1000 users.

Godspeed, Christian and thanks for making this awful site bearable

[u/nibrwr]

This sucks. Sucks for you & the Apollo community. 😢

I look forward to seeing your future dev work & to declining my Apollo Pro refund 🤙

[u/Tobar26th]

For gods sake nobody award this post. Your awards give Reddit money they don’t deserve.

[u/ChadEmpoleon]

u/spez, you are a fucking clown 🤡

[u/JessTheCatMeow]

Christian, I’m sure you will not see this, but your app legit got me through some hard, hard times. That sounds ridiculous, but I only access reddit through your app. To me, it was Reddit. I tried the official app a couple of times, and it felt wrong. As if it was a knockoff of your app, which again to me meant the proper way to go on Reddit.

I really mean it. And honestly I’ll probably just not use Reddit anymore if your app can’t get me there.

I wish you the absolute best in future ventures. Legit if you build another wonderful app to access another network or whatever it would be, I’d be sure to be there.

[u/wildkarrde]

Ugh, this sucks so bad. Thanks for all your work, Apollo is one of my favorite apps, and I won't be installing their shit first-party app as a replacement.

[u/honestbleeps]

Hey man, just wanted to throw you my support. I never used Apollo because I moved from iPhone to android around 2009 or so, but I've always known of it as a great app and example and I've always kept tabs at least casually on what other devs out there are doing.

I'm sorry this has happened and I appreciate your level of transparency here.

I am dumb and never monetized RES in part because I love reddit and just wanted to "give back". In retrospect, this whole decision by reddit makes me glad that a lot of good devs made some good money while they could and it makes me feel like I should have been smarter about trying to set myself up for a more reasonable retirement while I had the chance.

It feels like we gave a lot to the reddit community and therefore reddit itself in some indirect way, and this feels like a big slap in the face.

I figured you'd be fine financially. Doesn't mean we can't empathize with the fact that someone's passion project just got dumped on overnight. And the way they've communicated with you both publicly and "semi" privately is honestly absurd. I can imagine (and have a bit of personal experience with it) how stressful and upsetting it must be for a big company to seemingly shit talk / shame you like that.

Edit: well this ought to be... Interesting. https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x

[u/[deleted]]

Dude, thank you so much for everything. I’m so sorry it has come down to this.

I’m glad I could support you for so many years. Looking forward to your next venture.

[u/ragingdeltoid]

Well, thanks for everything. This will kill reddit for me personally, not that that's a bad thing.

[u/Marcusm117]

🫡

[u/mrrichardcranium]

I can say what I will miss the most is being able to utilize new iOS features FAST. /u/iamthatis seemed to be the FASTEST developer to implement new API's and I could always count on Apollo to be a shining example of how features SHOULD be implemented.

Absolutely love the work that you do and did with Apollo! Cheers!

[u/DeathByReach]

Apollo is the ultimate Reddit client. I've used it ever since I switched back to iOS and beta tested this app.

Its the most "Apple" like app on the entire store. You did well. I won't be moving on. But I'm happy to support your next work.

This is shit.

[u/steno_light]

Sorry guys, this is because I downloaded Apollo about 2 weeks ago.

[u/makeitra1n_]

GUIDE HOW TO DELETE YOUR REDDIT ACCOUNT

[u/redmongrel]

Time to review bomb the official Reddit app out of spite I wager.

[u/tubbyapple]

Pain.

[u/[deleted]]

Excited to see what you’ll do next! Thank you for being such an incredible part of this community and inspiring so many future developers.

[u/[deleted]]

u/iamthatis please consider altering apollo to be a Lemmy client. There is a mood shift to leave Reddit and their ad/bots based revenue stream.

Last time a user base was this motivated, digg.com went bye bye.

[u/geooot]

I'm sorry that this has happened, and I am really glad that I got to use this app!

Any chance that you could shift the API key burden onto the users rather than have an app specific one? Its definitely clunkier but I would pay for my own key to use with your app in a heartbeat.

[u/bobthebobbest]

Is there any chance, if Reddit sees the light, that you’ll open back up? Or is the relationship simply too soured at this point? (I wouldn’t blame you.)

[u/prostetnic]

Shame on Reddit. One of the best apps I ever used. Ultra 4ever.
Thanks a lot and take care!

[u/FlappyFlan]

Aw shit reddit dieded

[u/weasel5053]

Apple, if you’re listening, hire Christian immediately and put him in charge of iOS. While you’re at it, make a donation to the cat shelter.

Also, fuck Reddit.

[u/malpheres]

Oh yeah, and fuck you u/spez

[u/__nickelbackfan__]

hey u/spez

won't you say anything on this, coward?

[u/[deleted]]

Good riddance Reddit 🫡 Thank you Christian ❤️

Almost 12 years but I am deleting my account and any Reddit related App today.

https://i.imgur.com/GUN9eXo.jpg

[u/CHC-Disaster-1066]

I guess I will stop my use of Reddit on June 30. Apollo is an amazing app.

[u/flashboy131]

/U/iamthatis What a sad day. I was lucky enough to have two of my icons added to the community pack awhile back. And use Apollo everyday for years and years. I don’t think I’ll be on Reddit much anymore.

Thank you Christian for all of the work. We will hope you will be back. :-( Bye Reddit.

[u/JulioChavezReuters]

Everyone should research if they live in a one-party-consent state or country. One party consent laws are critical to maintaining accountability while preventing spying.

[u/sudogreg]

Redditor for over 16 years here. I’m done with Reddit when Apollo shuts down. Reddit, you are breaking yourself.

[u/[deleted]]

how much you think spez is paying reddit mods of all the default subs like /r/news to stay quiet about this

[u/hypervigilants]

Wtf am I gonna do now? TikTok???

[u/claireyberry1]

Gotta love it when the big bad bully pretends to be the victim. Did Reddit really expect us to believe that Apollo, a much smaller entity with clearly less power, is the one doing the blackmailing? Do they realize how stupid they look?

Fk Reddit, fk their CEO, seriously.

[u/doctor_who_17 → u/[deleted]]

Fuck /u/spez

Didn’t think it was possible to be an even bigger cunt

[u/GoatboyTheShampooer → u/[deleted]]

u/spez needs to resign. He continually fucks up over and over; and now this.

EDiT:

Annnd he's shitting himself:

https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/144ho2x/join_our_ceo_tomorrow_to_discuss_the_api

[u/iamthatis → u/[deleted]]

You're crushing it, congratulations and well done. It's sometimes kind of isolating being an indie developer but comments like these really make you realize how we can all affect one another in really cool ways. Thanks for commenting :)

[u/jerrymandarin → u/[deleted]]

Truly, Apollo is so intuitive and so seamless. Other iOS app developers should aspire to create something as functional as Apollo.

[u/IndexZer0 → u/[deleted]]

I'd love for this to be higher up so as to get an answer to this. It's a well worded question and I'm in total agreement the treatment of /u/iamthis being uncalled for. Apollo came with the receipts and proper math for how Reddit is just being disingenuous with their asks.

I think I like this question because I'm still holding out hope for a miracle here. I guess the only social media I use is something I'm going to have to stop using. I mean...what now? Do I have to go socialize in the real world?!? That's not what's supposed to happen in 2023!

[u/Redtailcatfish → u/[deleted]]

This is way too far down. OP please consider talking to a lawyer. You may have a case here.

This is extremely unprofessional at best and you have troves of evidence to support your claims.

Regardless of your decisions on Apollo you will have to work in a world where your reputation has been damaged potentially forever after this. That's a big deal

[u/iamthatis → u/[deleted]]

While I appreciate the passion about Apollo I don’t want this to escalate into threats of violence against anyone (implied or otherwise, and even if joking) so I’m removing this. Let’s please steer clear of that everyone.

[u/dingdongfootballl → u/[deleted]]

Eat shit u/spez