Apollo / Reddit app, API shenanigans.
Agree Apollo app isn't scraping, and I don't see why it would be making sufficient API calls from individual users IP addresses to present any such concerns to the reddit company.
Avoiding advertising by using the API is reddit financial hit; reddit could recreate the Apollo app themselves and collect the $5, too.
Ability to collapse sub discussions seems fairly unique, and on a big screen anyway you can quickly identify/triage useful content for you,
versus, twitter which is small screen oriented and much more of a linear experience presenting a lot more regretted user minutes ( as Musk call them )
Soldato
I think Reddit's angle is these third parties are 'using' Reddit to make their business and profit and it actually costs Reddit for them to do this with their being no fee for API calls. The creator of Apollo even agreed they should pay something for the API calls, I don't think this is uncommon. What wasn't good was the price they set and the time frame they gave.
Tbf, it must be a lot of calls from Apollo alone. I think Apollo said it would cost them $20m annually. At 24c per 1,000 calls, I think that's about... well, someone pls check my maths as I have that at around 83 trillion API calls a year?
Yes, and the hit should be subsidised by an API call charge, as agreed by most people. I don't think anyone's particularly arguing that. As said above, I believe it's the price and timeframe that upset the guy from Apollo. (I also believe they now do have apps on Android and iOS.)
Soldato
I don't think Apollo/Reddit agree on the amount of API calls, the creator of Apollo has shown some good data, but he says it's mostly priced him and others out of the market based on what Reddit are charging. He was fine with paying what would be normal rates.
Soldato
The interview I listened to with him, he didn't argue the amount of calls and even agreed they should pay, but the amount wasn't reasonable and only a months notice when he's taken yearly payments from people for his app. He's going to have to refund a reasonable amount to them due to the lack of warning.
Soldato
I was basing it on the: Claims that Apollo is "inefficient" section of this post, but I could well be reading it incorrectly. He's looking to do a similar deal as the Twitter third party apps did, but hopefully it doesn't cost him too much.
Soldato
Interesting (although, I admit, I've not read all that) but I'm fairly sure he commented in the interview, that he could make it more efficient if he had time, but they only gave a months notice. I think he mentioned pulling/caching more stuff in one API call to save other calls later. So, not that it was inefficient, but that he could optimise if he had time.
Soldato
There is nothing stopping him from doing that anyway, and then relaunching in a few months.
Soldato
Maybe, if that was his only problem.
He then had the issue of almost needing to charge people on a sliding scale. I think he said the average would be about $7 a month, but then would the people using £3 worth decide to not bother? Would he need to charge closer to the top end, which was about $15 per person? Would people pay that much?! Also, I guess these numbers would be the un-optimised, so I don't know how much he could bring that down but these are also just to break even...
Reddit won't even let users purchase their own API key and plug it into the app, hence taking full responsibility of the cost of their usage. One of the other app devs got clarification on this.
Reddit clearly DGAF working something out with 3rd party apps and want them dead.
Reddit clearly DGAF working something out with 3rd party apps and want them dead.
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yes, interesting (I probably need Apollo to find that section of the post lol) -
have twitter, ever exposed their API at the same level of reddit to provide enhanced usability for the average user (versus those commercial/instituional users that had done marketting research when it was free)
Caporegime
This is what people are missing. Reddit are quite clearly sending a message that they don't want people using their API to compete with them in any way. They are happy for you to give them free tools so they can use their free labour force of mods etc but they don't want end users on anything but the official app and website.
This isn't a "developers need to adapt". They are being run out of town and as usual these companies treat everyone like idiots and try to manage the PR around it and end up looking like even bigger ***** than before.
maybe this was already posted (can't search thread for youtube's ?)
interview with christian discussing nature of reddit API calls - he makes some comparisons with imgur api costs (don't really see the value of imgur, as anywhere near reddits though)
reddit server apparently has to hold a lot of individual user state specific data (read/unread posts) on the behalf of Apollo, so, not insignificant h/w resources,
API has no provision to get adverts, either.
interview with christian discussing nature of reddit API calls - he makes some comparisons with imgur api costs (don't really see the value of imgur, as anywhere near reddits though)
reddit server apparently has to hold a lot of individual user state specific data (read/unread posts) on the behalf of Apollo, so, not insignificant h/w resources,
API has no provision to get adverts, either.
Don
Mods now being removed from subreddits for setting them as NSFW
kotaku.com
Reddit Is Removing Mods Over NSFW Protests
CEO Steve Huffman is at the helm for a sitewide meltdown that affects some of the biggest gaming communities on the internet
kotaku.com
Caporegime
That gets to the heart of the matter. Reddit simply aren't being fair with their API charges. Thats the problem. There would be basically 0 backlash if they simply dropped their pricing to allow third party apps to remain viable.
I'm not surprised.Mods now being removed from subreddits for setting them as NSFW
Reddit Is Removing Mods Over NSFW Protests
CEO Steve Huffman is at the helm for a sitewide meltdown that affects some of the biggest gaming communities on the internet
As amusing as it was, it started to become incredibly frustrating what was appearing in my feed. I had to unfollow a bunch of subreddits, even with NSFW blur enabled.
Caporegime
You're not alone but you will be in a tiny minority. Ultimately people don't care. They say they do because that makes them feel good but it comes down to it they won't. The only way reddit will die or have serious issues is if their content dries up, they push their luck too much with advertising or do something monumentally stupid to the way it works.
The world is rife with slacktivism which is fine but at least be honest and say you don't really care.
Commissario
Goodbye Reddit. Just used Power Delete Suite on my accounts.