Currently sitting on the toilet and browsing reddit trough Apollo one last time 💔

  • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
    17·
    1 year ago

    To be fair, they allegedly weren’t profitable.

    Which I prefer. I’d prefer a general communal forum to be non-profit, user supported, and moderation decentralized.

    • hyperhopper
      15·
      1 year ago

      Any company can be unprofitable if you have 100x the staff you need working on features that make the site worse or are scams

    • BeegYoshi@lemm.ee
      10·
      1 year ago

      Allegedly, but reddit also spent tons of money on stupid shit. My favorite example is their braindead stupid million dollar Superbowl ad, but they also doubled the number of employees to 1400 in 2021. And all they have to show for it is a slow, ugly website and a trashy, extra-monetized mobile app. Fuck em.

      • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
        1·
        1 year ago

        Oh definitely fuck em. I’m just saying, they didn’t have a “good thing going” where they could just sit back and make millions.

    • Vanon@lemmy.world
      7·
      1 year ago

      Allegedly, yes. Where did the millions of dollars of revenue go, from all the ads and sponsors (which completely infest their app)?

      Reddit execs decided they needed thousands (?!) of employees, despite mods running the subreddits for free. They could never make an app as fully featured as those with literally one employee. And it took years for them to deliver promised features and mod tools (many are very recent or still unavailable).

      Lemmy and Mastodon, and all their apps, are running thanks mostly to a few dozen awesome people and donations.

      Where did Reddit’s millions of dollars disappear to again? And how is that not damning proof of their current execs incompetence?

      (Note: I direct this /rant in Reddit’s general direction.)

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
        5·
        1 year ago

        It’s easy to make $300,000,000 in funding into a “nonprofitable” company.

        You just pay the people running it more than you have. Then usually claim loses on your taxes.

    • butterypowered@feddit.uk
      1·
      1 year ago

      They literally didn’t even try to be profitable (by charging for the API) until April when they suddenly wanted more money than was viable.

      Reddit could have charged a sensible amount, or put ads in the API data, but instead they asked the impossible of the third party app developers. And I don’t think it was accidental.

      Well, it’s time to move on I guess!

    • Kittengineer@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      Sure it wasn’t profitable, but the money they were asking for was insane.

      No one was against them charging for the api, they were against the insane prices and how the whole thing was handled.

      Spez just trying to cash out as much for the IPO and fucking it all up.

    • FrickAndMortar
      15·
      1 year ago

      Was not expecting to find it dead, and went to launch it one last time. Gut punch.

      I wonder if Reddit shut it off early just to be spiteful bastards.

      • Eribetra
        2·
        1 year ago

        Same thing happened to Sync. Went to open it, just to find it now closes upon launch and is completely dead otherwise. Not as much of that “gut punch” feeling, since I now use the mobile website, but still really sad to see the 3rd party apps just, dying like this.

  • flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works
    5·
    1 year ago

    Great scene and carries across to this situation really well. Sane API pricing with different tiered API endpoints ($$ for the public ones, but separate tiers for 3rd party apps by negotiation to keep out the AI training farms, by keeping them in the expensive, non -negotiated tier) would have been fine.

    There were ways through this, but they’re already decided and weren’t willing to negotiate

  • Rhyz@lemmy.world
    5·
    1 year ago

    RIP Apollo and the rest of the 3rd party apps. I used Apollo everyday for the past couple of years and while I’m on here I still feel disbelief that it’s about to shut down.

  • 007v2@lemmy.world
    3·
    1 year ago

    Testing out Mlem for Lemmy and loving it. Has a very Apollo like feel to it! RIP Apollo!