After many efforts of reasoning with Reddit, Apollo, a great third-party app on iOS, will be disappearing forever from June 30, due to the company's bizarre stance on over-charging access to developers. But a different, more damaging story is unfolding.
In a Reddit post, Apollo's developer, Christian Selig, goes into great detail about how he tried for weeks to reason with Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, but he only got hard nos in response.
But it gets worse, as Huffman reportedly tried to stick Selig up as threatening to cause a storm in a teacup for Reddit, claiming all sorts of falsehoods. But in this post, Selig offers copies of the calls he had with Huffman, clearly disputing these falsehoods.
There is a Reddit AMA being hosted by Huffman later today (June 9), where he's going to be explaining the API changes and other updates. But it seems more likely that Reddit's users are going to put him to task for what he's tried to do to Selig, and rightfully so.
Reddit's CEO has some explaining to do
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. ❤️ https://t.co/HOJaLMW8fxJune 8, 2023
Apollo has been the go-to Reddit app for years on iOS - even before Reddit decided to make its own app. But what made the app great to use was its great search tool, easy-to-use interface, media viewer, and the many icons you could choose from if you signed up for its Pro subscription.
But Reddit, and its CEO, have decided that it wants to charge as much as $20 million for third-party apps to work with its platform, and that's beyond realistic for any developer.
We've been here before with Twitter, as support for third-party apps like Tweetbot was suddenly shut down over a day. But Reddit has somehow approached this so much worse.
It's one thing to restrict access to a third-party app, but it's another to try and stitch up the developer and be proven wrong with chatlogs.
This is clearly not the end of this saga, but in the meantime, Selig's other app, Pixel Pals is a great app to use if you have an iPhone 14 Pro or 14 Pro Max, where you can look after pets in your home screen, lock screen, and the Dynamic Island.
