Apollo for Reddit isn’t the only Reddit app that’s shutting down due to the company’s new API pricing: on Thursday, rif is fun for Reddit (previously Reddit is Fun), ReddPlanet, and Sync also announced that they would be shutting down on June 30th, the same day Apollo will be.
Reddit’s API updates: all the news about changes that have infuriated Redditors
June 9, 2023
Reddit’s API updates: all the news about changes that have infuriated Redditors
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Jun 8
It’s not just Apollo: other Reddit apps are shutting down, too
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Vergerif is fun for Reddit is shutting down “in response to Reddit Inc’s API changes and their hostile treatment of developers building on their platform,” its developer wrote in a message on r/redditisfun. The developer said Reddit has “unfortunately shown a consistent unwillingness to compromise on all points” mentioned in a previous post, including expected costs “in the ballpark” of Apollo’s expected $20 million per year, Reddit’s decision to block ads in third-party apps, and the removal of sexually explicit content in third-party apps even though that content will still be available in Reddit’s official apps.
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Jun 8
Apollo for Reddit is shutting down
Illustration: Alex Castro / The VergeApollo, one of the most beloved iOS apps used to browse Reddit, will be shutting down due to the company’s new API pricing that will make the app much more expensive to operate.
The app will shut down on June 30th, according to developer Christian Selig. “Reddit’s recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue,” Selig wrote on Twitter.
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Jun 7
Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from its unpopular API pricing changes
Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeReddit is creating an exemption to its unpopular new API pricing terms for makers of accessibility apps, which could come as a big relief for some developers worried about how to afford the potentially expensive fees and the users that rely on the apps to browse Reddit. As long as those apps are noncommercial and “address accessibility needs,” they won’t have to pay to access Reddit’s data.
“We’ve connected with select developers of non-commercial apps that address accessibility needs and offered them exemptions from our large-scale pricing terms,” Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt says in a statement to The Verge.
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Jun 5
Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps
Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeUpdate June 8th, 5:12PM ET: Apollo developer Christian Selig announced his app would shut down on June 30th. His announcement post on Reddit refuted Reddit’s accusations that his app was inefficient and contained a partial transcript of a call from a Reddit moderator where the company’s CEO apparently says that Selig tried to blackmail the company.
Some of Reddit’s biggest communities including r/videos, r/reactiongifs, r/earthporn, and r/lifeprotips are planning to set themselves to private on June 12th over new pricing for third-party app developers to access the site’s APIs. Setting a subreddit to private, aka “going dark,” will mean that the communities taking part will be inaccessible by the wider public while the planned 48-hour protest is taking place.
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May 31
A developer says Reddit could charge him $20 million a year to keep his app working
Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeApollo, the popular Reddit app for iOS, could face millions of dollars in fees as a result of Reddit’s new paid API model. According to an update posted by developer Christian Selig, Reddit could charge Apollo roughly $20 million per year if it continues operating at its current scale.
Reddit announced changes to its API policy in April, which allows the platform to put limits on the number of API requests made by a third-party client like Apollo. But now, we have more details on what exactly this means: Selig says Reddit plans on charging about $12,000 per 50 million requests.
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Apr 18
Reddit’s upcoming API changes will make AI companies pony up
Illustration: Alex Castro / The VergeReddit announced new API changes today that will eventually pinch its content pipeline from being used to train artificial intelligence tools, including the models that power OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing AI. AI chatbots’ abilities to provide powerful answers have data resources like Reddit to thank — and now Reddit is planning to put that robot food behind a paywall.
Social media resources, including Reddit, are some of the sources used to train large language models (LLM) that can provide cogent responses to human prompts. Some of this data can be scraped in an unstructured manner, but Reddit’s API has helped companies make it easy to directly find and package useful data.
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