just so this doesn’t overwhelm our front page too much, i think now’s a good time to start consolidating discussions. existing threads will be kept up, but unless a big update comes let’s try to keep what’s happening in this thread instead of across 10.
developments to this point:
- Apollo for Reddit is shutting down
- Reddit is Fun will also shut down
- Reddit CEO (/u/spez) is going to hold a AMA about the API update
- Sync has announced it is shutting down
- ReddPlanet has announced it is shutting down
- Reddit creates an API exemption for noncommercial accessibility apps
- /r/videos is planning to shut down indefinitely, beginning June 11
- A subreddit dedicated to migrating to kbin.social has been closed by Reddit
The Verge is on it as usual, also–here’s their latest coverage (h/t @[email protected]):
other media coverage:
How much were these apps making in revenue? Curious how bad the gap is with the API pricing.
If I read it correctly Christian(Apollo Dev) made ~$500.000 for this year by having 50.000 people get the $10 subscription. The problem is that now, since on the 6th month of the year he is forced to shut it down, he has to refund these people for the rest of the money(so ~$250.000).
From what I understand though, the problem is that Reddit doesn’t want to lose revenue from 3rd party apps avoiding adds, so in this section, from Christian’s own recording(which is legal in Canada) he mentions that Apollo is costing $20m/year and that’s what Reddit is after.
If it was truly about Reddit not wanting to lose money from not serving ads on third party apps, they would serve ads via the API.
I’d love to link it, but there’s so much content around this that I’ll never be able to find it.
I’m sure it was mentioned by some app developers that they were asking for access to the ad API that Reddit uses in order to serve their ads in the 3rd party apps so they don’t have to shutdown.
Also, asking after the proper GraphQL API access (instead of the older and less featured/efficient REST API) now that it’s becoming paid access… And I’m sure that the answer was “it’s not ready”.