Shocked Pikachu face meme.
this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Can someone explain me this "Reddit API" thing?
Tldr They started charging 3rd party apps to use their API. The API that they had been using for ages and ages. They were shady about the timeline and their communication to devs was awful. So most 3rd party apps decided to end support as opposed to paying reddit.
Basically they wanted to make sure all users were seeing ads before their IPO.
I was a relay for reddit guy for ~10 years. Once the subscription update hit I uninstalled and moved to boost for lemmy.
Not quite correct. They didn't start charging for API usage. They banned it and pretended it could be paid for with completely absurd prices nobody could reasonably afford.
Ah I was just commenting back on how the relay for reddit deal went.. that's even shittier of them.
I'm not surprised at all.
Yeah, the prices were around +20€ for normal usage, for each user a month. It was a per call cost and the devs would have to eat it if they didn't charge the users, so many rightfully jumped ship. Who in their right minds would pay more than 20 euros to fucking access reddit on their phone, per month? Yeah right, fk you too.
They also didn't allow the api to access all content, plus other limits so apps would have a neutered experience
A key thing about the API is that moderating gets harder when the apps that moderators use to streamline/facilitate their work suddenly stopped working. Those apps relied on the Reddit API. These were created by and for the moderator community out of necessity.
Moderators had asked Reddit for tools and when Reddit didn’t provide they built their own. Then Reddit switched off the API without offering replacement tools.
That’s likely the primary reason that Reddit’s mods left and its content took a nosedive.
Further TL;DR
In preparation for an IPO:
Reddit: you must now only use our app to prop up our add revenue. No third party apps (unless you pay us handsomely)
Everyone: no thanks, just make our own alternative
I really miss a good Lemmy mobile client though...I was using liftoff which reminded a lot of RIF, but that seems to have been abandoned completely. A lot have ads, so that's a hard pass for me. I'm currently using Thunder, but it's a pretty buggy mess TBH with a lot of UI oddities and bugs.
Eternity is doing great for me
So far the best.
Voyager is very similar to RIF. I'd recommend it highly.
Same as you. Lost Liftoff and using Thunder now. Quite happy with Thunder, but I've got Raccoon and Voyager as backups right now. Just in case Thunder disappears as well.
In the same boat, I miss it still, other ones have a worse UI for me and hate the ad slots in the app although I have DNS ad blocking but its still annoying. Do update me if you find a good replacement as we're looking for the same thing
Voyager is my go to currently
Right off the bat it sit right, thank you
Boost works really well.
Filled with ads and not open source, so not for me.
Fair enough
I like connect
Sync is nice IMO.
Sync has ads and isn't open source, so that's a big no thank you from me.
Sync is the best client currently IMHO.
Uses ads so I'll pass
It doesn't if you pay for it.
It's not OSS so I I'm not paying/supporting it financially. I don't mind donating to a good ad-free (F)OSS client though.
I use boost and connect. They're both pretty good
I'm using eternity for lemmy, it is a fork of the original infinity for reddit but for lemmy instead
Mods used third party tools to help them with their unpaid work. These tools relied on access to the reddit api.
Then reddit charged ridiculous prices for api access, which would mean the apps would need money, so mods would need to pay to do their unpaid work or use the inferior reddit interface.
Given these choices, some mods decided to leave instead.
Reddit enhancement suite still works on old Reddit, so if you need decent tools, you can still mod from your computer. But no more moderating from the toilet at work. No more moderating on the bus.
One subreddit I still occasionally visit is now only moderated on the weekend. You can imagine how the quality has dropped
Reddit used to have a free and open API. This allowed 3rd parties to develop apps / interfaces for the site. These apps helped everything from making the site usable for some with accessibility issues to blocking ads to providing a customized interface to tons of other things.
Generally this was done by taking the API feed and re-engineering it to allow the desired presentation.
In a move to make the company more attractive to investors before going public, Reddit changed that API to a paid model. This meant any developer of those 3rd party apps would now have to pay a not insignificant in most cases fee to continue their access to Reddit. As such, most apps closed down and a very small portion of us long time Redditors migrated to Lemmy/ the fediverse.
Reddit used to have an open API. A lot of mobile apps sprung up to access reddit over the years, with different features. Reddit gained a lot of loyal members through users of these apps, but couldn't make ad revenue off them. Reddit decided last summer to start charging a lot of money to these app developers to continue using the API. A few of the apps started a for-pay subscription model to continue operating, but many just shut down their apps. Many redditors and Reddit mods revolted, because these apps made the site usable (some of them offered advanced mod tools, etc). We protested, shut down subreddits temporarily or permanently, deleted our accounts, moved to new platforms (like lemmy/kbin), etc. This was basically a move to maximize their ad revenue while Reddit positions itself for an IPO. It was really not cool.
There was some magic internet data thing where third party apps (like various reddit apps not owned by reddit) access and use reddit to power their apps, free of charge. That's API. Pretty much all voluntary reddit mods use third party apps to mod. Reddit started charging for the API, making third party apps useless, forcing everyone into the Official Reddit App. A lot of people boycotted or quit.
It wasn’t just mods using 3rd party apps. Anyone that experienced the switch from old.reddit or that used mobile had to be using 3rd party or only half their brain.
It was a thing last... summer? Where reddit announced they were going to start charging for every call a third party program made using the API. This was done with the intent of shutting down 3rd party reddit apps and to get users on the official one so reddit could make more money. However, it also destroyed a bunch of 3rd party tools that mods more or less needed, and which reddit had been promising to implement themselves for years with no progress. There was a brief protest where mods of many subs shut them down (mostly for less than a week, though some are still down IIRC). A bunch of users and moderators left reddit and went to other sites.
Others have covered it but the API pricing was $12,000/50 million requests, which is absurd bordering on comical.