Apollo Reddit Client to Shut Down Amid Ugly Negotiations Over New Developer Fees and Allegations of Blackmail

Popular Reddit client Apollo is set to shut down on June 30 due to Reddit‘s decision to begin charging developers for access to its content. Reddit has attributed the decision to the trend of generative AI, which uses large amounts of content scraped from the web to learn how to generate human-like text. Christian Selig, the developer of Apollo, has argued that Reddit‘s decision to charge for access is not based in reality, stating that Reddit is asking Apollo to pay $0.24 for every 1,000 requests to its API, which would cost $20 million a year based on the app’s current usage. Selig has also alleged that Reddit CEO Steve Huffman accused him of blackmail for suggesting that the company buy Apollo and maintain the app as an internal product. Charging for API access could help Reddit bring in more revenue, but it remains to be seen whether this will have any impact on their public offering plans.