zlacker

Reddit has to make money in order to exist, and Apollo is undercutting them by providing an ad-free experience for less money than Reddit would be making from ads. You don't see the problem?

>>durand+(OP)
The problem is that many, many 3P app users are some of the most active and engaged on the platform. For example, mods of literally thousand of the top subreddits use 3P apps for moderation.

Any new user would just use the official client, but the fact that so many alternative ones exist and so many people use them is telling of the unusable state of their app.

I use reddit every day, only because I don't use the official app, because of that it's become my go-to site to look for things, even on a computer.

If I lose access to my 3P client, which is tens of times faster, not clunky, customized to my liking, has all the shit sub filtering set-up and is generally a joy to use ( mind you, it has ads too) I will simply not bother anymore.

So, people that use 3P apps usually engage more because otherwise they wouldn't bother, this change is going to royally piss off every single one of them. In the short term maybe some users are going to switch, but in the long run I think the platform is going to lose lots of people that actually engage in the community.