Last week, Christian Selig, the developer of the popular iOS-only Reddit app Apollo, announced via a Reddit post that all third-party Reddit apps would face exorbitant fees for accessing Reddit APIs.
In response to these changes, Selig has decided to shut down Apollo, despite the upcoming sitewide protest on June 12, where multiple large subreddits like r/aww, r/gaming, and r/music will shut down for 48 hours, and others like r/videos will shut down indefinitely, which could potentially result in policy changes that would allow apps like Apollo and Reddit is Fun to continue.
Selig explains his decision in a lengthy post, detailing what he tried to do to prevent these changes and reassuring users that he will be fine without the income from the app. While Reddit has made some concessions, stating that changes would not affect non-commercial and accessibility-targeting apps, Selig will cut off access to Reddit’s APIs on June 30, rendering the app useless. Users can continue to use Apollo as normal until the evening of June 30 Pacific time.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman held an Ask Me Anything to answer questions regarding the API changes, he said “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use,” “Some apps such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync have decided this pricing doesn’t work for their businesses and will close before pricing goes into effect.”
When questioned about the accusation that Christian Selig, the creator of Apollo, had threatened Reddit, which Selig denied and refuted with an audio recording of a conversation with a Reddit representative, Huffman, Reddit’s CEO, reiterated the criticism. He stated that Selig’s joke was not their main concern and accused him of having inconsistent behavior and communication with the company, making it difficult to do business with him. When asked for specific examples of such behavior, Huffman did not respond to Selig’s follow-up question.
