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The original was posted on /r/ApolloApp by /u/TechnologicalFreedom on 2023-07-06 14:19:26+00:00.
Honestly, Apollo was an app that kept me using this platform longer than I probably would've otherwise. You got all the benefits of the platform but actually had control over what you saw and how you interacted with the platform. I could block toxic key words and communities to prevent my eyes from being contaminated by a network that would otherwise be terrible for my mental health.
You could shut out trolls and noise simply by filtering out all the things you don't want to touch your eyeballs and you could choose to view only the communities that you wanted to, none of this "Suggested for you" nonsense.
Reddit isn't bad as a server of people and content; actually, it's great at what it does. What it's bad at is the way it's managed and overseen. What made reddit feel worse to use in my opinion was browsing it it's "Intended way" in its "Official capacity" so to speak. What the API Did was allow you to interact with reddit in a way that works for you, not against you. That's a big part of API usage on the internet I think, and it's why companies want to get rid of public API's. Back when they were niche and only used by people that knew how to program and make use of them, companies didn't mind because they probably helped the company make more money by being more accessible to professionals.
For a site like youtube, that may have been allowing content creators to better interact with uploading and managing their own videos on the platform; encouraging them to make more content and thus youtube more money. For reddit, it was moderation software; encouraging more active moderation to communities on the service; ultimately causing users to stay on the site longer and generate more ad revenue as a result.
But then API's got too big, they began being used to create applications and use-cases for the everyday consumer, apps that allowed people the harness these API's in a different way; they weren't just tools to make the official client/web client experience better, they were full-on brand new clients for the platform that allowed users to get around viewing these platforms in their official capacity's; which allowed people to avoid addictive algorithms and more importantly to these companies, advertising.
And then, in 2023 we hear all this news about models being trained on all the content created on these platforms. Companies even before this were racing to make changes to their API's, but it's starting to become clear to big tech companies that open-gate API's are no longer as profitable as a closed API that forces a single one-point of control consuming experience. And thus, it feels as if we're entering an era where it's increasingly becoming more difficult to interact with platforms in a way that truly suits the user.