From what I've gathered, Reddit has decided to do this since they can't show ads in their API results and monetize their user's attention. Many people are saying the price hike is simply anti-competitive (pricing 3rd party apps out) and they just want everyone to use their native Reddit app, which many users complain about. Reddit only offered an API for many years before they had their own mobile app available.
Popular third-party Reddit app Apollo is shutting down as a result of Reddit’s new API pricing
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/08/popul ... i-pricing/
Apollo App's Pricing https://apolloapp.io/pro-ultra/The popular third-party Reddit app Apollo is shutting down on June 30, 2023, as a direct result of Reddit’s recently announced new API pricing plans which would end up costing Apollo $20 million per year to continue to operate its business — an unsustainable ask for an indie developer. The app’s maker, Christian Selig, had been one of the first to call out the impact Reddit’s new API pricing would have on third-party Reddit apps, noting that even if Apollo switched to a subscription-only model, it would still be in the red under the new API guidelines. Since then, other app makers have come forward to share their same concerns and community backlash has prompted a site-wide protest with several top communities planning to go dark to send a message to Reddit leadership.
Reddit first announced its plans to adjust its API pricing in an interview with The New York Times, where it was positioned as a way to help keep Reddit’s sizable online forum site from becoming free fodder for companies training their AI systems on large swaths of the internet. Reddit has since said the move was not meant to “kill” third-party apps, but it’s hard to see how it would not, given the price increases.
After Selig’s call with Reddit to discuss pricing, he seemed to realize running the app would be unsustainable as a business.
“I’ll cut to the chase: 50 million requests costs $12,000, a figure far more than I ever could have imagined,” he wrote on the Apollo app’s subreddit last week. “Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year,” adding that he was “deeply disappointed in this price” and that Reddit had promised pricing would be reasonable and not operate like Twitter.
Twitter’s API price increases under new owner Elon Musk put a number of smaller projects, startups, helpful bots and third-party clients out of business. Even researchers and academics were impacted, leading to heavy ridicule and criticism of how Twitter was destroying its wider developer community out of greed.
Even as a developer myself, it's hard to feel sorry for the app developers because you should always understand this is the risk you take when you build a product on another company's API/platform and don't own your own shit.Apollo Pro/Ultra
Apollo is a free app that you can use as long as you want in free mode, but there's two paid options if you'd like to support me, the sole developer (hi my name's Christian and I love blueberries), and Apollo's future development! There's also two other, optional in-app purchases that I'll detail below too.
Note that these options are also available in the free app at any time via the Settings tab.
I'll break them down below, but in short the first is Apollo Pro, a one-time paid (no subscription) option of $4.99 USD that unlocks a bunch of additional features in the app. The second is Apollo Ultra, the highest tier, which includes everything in Apollo Pro plus additional features. Apollo Ultra is a subscription offering of $1.49 USD per month (or $12.99/year, or a lifetime unlock option is offered in the app) and is a subscription due to options within it having ongoing monthly costs to me, the developer.
Apollo Pro
One-time fee. "Pay what you want" to unlock, minimum $5 USD.
All these furious Redditors literally telling the Reddit Co-founder Steve Huffman "fuck you"...
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comment ... o_our_api/
That's the thanks Steve gets for creating one of the most successful websites on the planet? Can all these cheap bastards really not pay $5/mo for a site/app they are obviously addicted to and spend all their free time on? Maybe they shouldn't be spending all their free time on Reddit if they think $5/mo is outrageous, ya know? I bet many of their users spend 100+ hours a month on Reddit.
The subreddit r/antiwork https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/ is literally a subreddit about not having to work for a living which is at the top 1% of all subreddits with 2.7 million members.
I hope Reddit undergoes major changes as over the past few years it's become a haven for woke, far-left, SJW, socialists & communists who can't hack it in the real world.
I was addicted to Reddit for years 2009-2020 but I just can't stand what it's become any longer. I can only bear to look at the tech-related (mostly AI) subreddits now.
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