[AmericanChopper]

All of these 3rd social media clients really are “freeloaders” though, I don’t get what’s so controversial about shutting them down. If I made my own Netflix client that bypasses their revenue stream, and implemented my own revenue stream on top of it, would anybody be upset or surprised if it was shut down?

[kaba0]

Shitty analogy — does your users produce the movies as well?

[AmericanChopper]

The users don’t belong to Apollo. Reddit provides a service to Reddit users, Apollo freeloads on that service, cuts off Reddit’s revenue stream, and replaces it with its own. Why would anybody think that Reddit has some obligation to allow this, or that Apollo has some right to do it?

[doctor_eval]

Nobody thinks that, not even the Apollo author, which is why the problem is not that Reddit is charging for access to the APIs, but that they are charging far more than the amount they’re losing.

[AmericanChopper]

What is the profit margin on Reddit API calls, and what industry benchmark do you think it’s exceeding?

[doctor_eval]

I think reading the article will answer all your questions.