I feel like it’s a combination of factors. First, I would want to stake my business on a platform that I don’t control given what happened with Reddit. Second, it must have been an emotional roller coaster going through the API stuff, so he is probably too burned out to start a new project.

Edit: Third, the lemmy/kbin user base is much smaller than Reddit’s. I don’t know if he would be able to replicate Apollo’s success with a new backend.