Nah. Reddit’s client is the official Reddit client, but Apollo is the de facto one for people who want to actually use Reddit.
Also Apollo now has a Safari extension which will automatically redirect Reddit links to Apollo. Previously this was a manual process after the page already loaded after telling Reddit for the umpteen-billionth time you want Safari, not the official Reddit client.
This. I think I would actually give up on reddit without apollo, the official app and website are user-hostile. I wonder if they will tighten the API up and eventually kill third-party clients.
If Apollo is the interface, what is Reddit besides a JSON document store and object storage for media? Once Apollo is big enough (network effects, critical mass, whatevs), it could spin off of Reddit as the backend (Cloudflare R2 for objects, workers and KV for comments). You can even backfill from the numerous Reddit archives (Internet Archive, Pushshift, etc) out there.
(Apollo user with an interest in a distributed web platform)
Yeah, agree. I'm arguing for disintermediation of the community from the corporate entity attempting to squeeze as much value out of the community as possible (and in the process, being a hot potato from one company to the next). Communities deserve better (Stackoverflow and Wikipedia come to mind), and the technology primitives are stupid simple. Perhaps I've been reading too much Neal Stephenson and Cory Doctorow lately!
Philosophically? Sure. But with how the masses act and behave and take interest in, getting the critical mass of non-technical people you would need to make it work is a massive hurdle.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit will skate by with inertia for years to come no matter how suicidally they behave because they have mass appeal. Losing one audience doesn’t matter because they have millions of other audiences. You start up a social network that interests mainly technical people and the journalists that report on them, well it’s just not going to thrive because after the honeymoon period is over, the network just starts to look stale and slowly die off. E.g. Google+.
Well Twitter on iOS started life as Tweetie which was an absolutely fantastic client on both iPhones and Macintoshes. I wouldn’t call it that now, even if some of the original Tweetie code is in there. Apollo with ads doesn’t seem like it is in Reddit’s business plan and after some time I think Apollo would go the way Tweetie did.
Edit: Something from the dredges of my memory just came back up and reminded me of something. The official Reddit client did start life as a 3rd party client: Alien Blue. [1]
So the real risk is Apollo becoming the next Alien Blue. Personally I would rather it stay independent.
> Apollo is not the defacto reddit client. Reddit's own app is.
Reddit's is the official client.
> Defacto: in fact, or in effect, whether by right or not
I think in this case the validity of the word "defacto" depends on your sample population. Apollo is very popular (and a fantastic reddit client, I wish there was an equivalent for HN) but I can't imagine it's marketshare is anywhere close to even 50%. Among tech enthusiasts I'll bet it ranks pretty high. Similar to an app like Overcast. If you poll HN or other tech communities I bet it's well represented but in the broader ecosystem it's a small fish.
100% agree. Thanks to Safari extensions (and the afore mentioned AMP redirector) you can now jump right into Apollo from a Reddit link and it's the best experience.
I hope the marketshare of the official client is at the very least high enough to prevent them from crippling APIs so third-party clients are gimped, like Twitter has done.
I'd be happy if someone would bake mobile teddit or other "proxies" app. I know site still works but this could be done more handy and with aiming at additional features, like pushing yt videos through invidious "pipe".
> Programs are also considered malware if they secretly act against the interests of the computer user.
There are two criteria that software must meet to fit this definition:
1. The software must act against the interests of the computer user.
2. This must be done "secretly".
I unfortunately do not know much about the Reddit App for iOS so I can't make a judgement as to whether it fits definition 2. I think I can say with confidence it fits definition 1.
I believe (s)he wanted imply reddit's official app displays a lot of inline advertisements and other stuff that makes it difficult to determine what is legit subscribed content and what is sneakily inserted by reddit.
The ads are. The data being collected to target those ads is not.
I guess a non-malicious way of collecting the data for ad purposes could be to collect it locally and offer the user to review it before sending it off.
Also Apollo now has a Safari extension which will automatically redirect Reddit links to Apollo. Previously this was a manual process after the page already loaded after telling Reddit for the umpteen-billionth time you want Safari, not the official Reddit client.