On the tech side of things, I’ve very bummed that the excel­lent iOS Apol­lo Red­dit app has announce it will be shut­ting down at the end of the month. The major­i­ty of my use of Red­dit has been via Apol­lo in recent years. It’s been heart­en­ing to see such a thor­ough­ly well-designed app from an inde­pen­dent devel­op­er and I’ve been hap­py to give a month­ly donation. 

Reports are that Red­dit is prepar­ing for an IPO, which means crap­pi­fy­ing every­thing to make it look more prof­itable for poten­tial investors. The result is that it will be less use­ful for many of its users, who are the ones that cre­ate all the real val­ue in the first place. You’d think the ongo­ing Twit­ter melt­down in val­ue (part­ly from killing off its third-party apps) would be instruc­tive but appar­ent­ly not. It’s a les­son Sil­i­con Val­ley refus­es to learn.

I’ve long thought that the Quak­ers sub­red­dit in par­tic­u­lar filled a lot of the func­tion of the orig­i­nal Quak­erQuak­er: a curat­ed list of inter­est­ing, time­ly online con­ver­sa­tions. I’ll still be around. I have my RSS read­er let­ting me know when there’s new posts there and I will often respond to ques­tions via the Red­dit web­site. But a lot of my “hey what’s going on now” brows­ing has hap­pened on Apol­lo and will stop. 

There’s a 48-hour Red­dit boy­cott hap­pen­ing start­ing June 12 par­tic­i­pat­ing. Judg­ing by the detailed account of cor­re­spon­dence in the Apol­lo devel­op­er’s post, it’s unlike­ly to change any­thing, but Red­dit lead­er­ship will at least see just how pissed many of its users are.