Technology

15 for me. No ragrats.

You and me both.... I have seen that place through its ups and downs. From the narwhal bacon's at midnight to Jolly Rancher, Zoop and the swamps of drogba.

I finally left my account a few days ago and haven't been back since. The place is a shell of what it used to be and it's been really very refreshing have a scout about somewhere else.

Fuck greed..... It eventually ruins everything!

me too... though not sure how long on reddit

I'm hoping Christian ports Apollo to Lemmy. I'm not sure what the feasibility of doing so is but I'd actually pay a monthly subscription for the ability to continue using it

I listened to the recording, and read the transcript, and I can... I can see it. Not overtly, not intentionally - but the dev did not communicate clearly at all.

Twice the Reddit representative asking him to repeat himself, and still he failed to actually specify his intentions. The wording in the transcript never actually expanded what the dev was saying ('buy out Apollo'). The evasive language made it sound like a shakedown, 'pay me $10mil to make this all go away'.

I linked the dev's own transcript above, but the actual quotes from the dev:

I could make it really easy on you, if you think Apollo is costing you $20 million per year, cut me a check for $10 million and we can both skip off into the sunset. Six months of use. We're good. [Low voice:] That's mostly a joke.

Okay, if Apollo's opportunity cost currently is $20 million dollars. At the 7 billion requests and API volume. If that's your yearly opportunity cost for Apollo, cut that in half, say for 6 months. Bob's your uncle.

I was just saying if the opportunity cost of Apollo is currently $20 million a year. And that's a yearly, apparently ongoing cost to you folks. If you want to rip that band-aid off once. And have Apollo quiet down, you know, six months. Beautiful deal. Again this is mostly a joke, I'm just saying if the opportunity cost is that high, and if that is something that could make it easier on you guys, that could happen too. As is, it's quite difficult.

Now, we know that what the dev is doing is essentially offering to outright sell Apollo to end the demand it represents to Reddit. He doesn't expect them to take it, but a lot of users asked if it were possible, and he's suggesting it anyway.

But the wording of all of this never specifies 'buying Apollo'. It sounds like he wants Reddit to like... pay him his 'protection fee'. I'm sure he means 'go quiet' as in like, 'go quietly into that good night' (shut down) or 'stop being so demanding' (be retooled), in fact he later clarifies he means the latter and the Reddit representative apologises profusely.

But man, that was worded so poorly, and he was given two opportunities to clarify, and he just... didn't. Only when the Reddit stand-in asked if he was suggesting Reddit buy his silence and compliance did he clarify that wasn't at all what he was saying.

It was completely unintentional, no doubt. But it was miscommunication of the highest order, and it damaged the lines of communication so irrevocably it probably incentivised Reddit to cease negotiations completely.

I'm still not clear what the alleged threat was, that the app would... make API calls? earning reddit money? That Christian would say unfriendly things about the company that screwed him? What threat is an app developer to a corporation? It's just patently absurd.

Been using it for a few days, and it's very nice. Not feature complete, obviously, but what's there is great.

Edit: I want to note that, since one of the biggest sticking points with 3rd-party apps has been both accessibility for the blind and deaf and mod tools, they’re both on our minds as we design the interface. Getting both right will, of course, take time, but we want everyone to know that we fully intend to make our app usable for everyone.

This is excellent to hear. If you're still on reddit, you should post this to r/blind, as they've been in limbo about whether their tools will be granted an "exception" to use the reddit API and they may be looking into alternatives for their community.

Just want to say I found and installed your app mlem on ios. So far so good. One bug I noticed is on my first login, after I closed the app, it deleted my logged in account. Logged back in and now working well. Forgot to do a bug capture but it hasn't come up again. Amazing work, and really appreciate you helping people get access to Lemmy as a community.

I’m a more recent Apollo user, having switched to iPhone last year. But I’m in the same boat. The third party apps are the only way to go on any platform.

I’ve also been a paying Reddit gold (now premium) user for, I dunno, maybe 10 years. It’s offensive that after all that, I can’t run the software I want to run to access the site. It’s a sign of enshittification.

And frankly, Apollo or not, Reddit isn’t what it used to be. It’s less friendly and welcoming than the narwhal days when /r/LucidDreaming was the hottest community. It’s more abrasive now, more childish. Like the rest of the internet, I suppose.

I live in South Korea where it's also legal to record only with single party consent. It's not that long ago that I found out that it's not a universal thing. It should be.

It's not my favorite but I can see the passion of the dev in my app. It's not fair to discount the whole thing because you think it sucks.

you are the only person i have ever heard express that opinion.

First time I have heard this take… are you actually spez?

Sure perhaps it's not the best but for iOS it's as close to a native app experience as possible, and ad free.

I think it's just that it's the most popular one on IOS, and a lot of the android ones are android only? And it was the first one whose story got picked up by the media.

Idk. I've never used it. But every app that isn't RedReader is clearly inferior, what are ya'll doing? /joke

This is just one of those harmless areas where opinions differ.