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For what it'sp worth and from what I read. Apollo did have a backend that made up for features that the Reddit API either kept as private APIs or refused to implement. He released the code as open source last week. He paid a part-time developer for the implementation and maintenance of code as well. Featured that other APIs offer, like webhooks, pub/sub etc., were requested by various developers over the years but never implemented or took far longer to implement (years). This led to developers designing workarounds to get feature parity with Reddit's app, i.e., notifications. A few of these drastically cut down on total number of API calls by design, which would help them reduce the infrastructure spend they are so concerned with. Ignoring the content consuming (Apollo, RiF, Sync, etc.) third-party app side of the discussion. My biggest takeaway from the entire argument is Reddit now has 2000 employee's but 100 of the requests for improvements for the API, built-in moderator tools, etc., have been mishandled/ignored/years late. Because of that, many people took matters into their own hands and used the API to fill in the gaps in their moderation/admin/creator workflow, and initially, before they conceded on some of those tools, they were affected as well. It wasn't until a couple of days into the uproar (after the price was released, before the blackout) that they reversed course on some of those tools, including conceding the accessibility apps (being 39, and wearing hearing aids for severe loss, I sympathize with the users that are protesting because the web and first party app are lacking in this). I can understand the protest from the above, especially giving the short timeline between prices being released and go live. I'm all for businesses being profitable; I'm all for companies having the right to adjust processes, prices and change terms, etc., but in my opinion, Reddit has severely mismanaged this situation and, in general, been a severely mismanaged business if they are as the CEO says not profitable by now. |