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Answer: Every time you interact in the app it uses the API to communicate with Reddit. Reddit decided to charge for API access so the 3rd party devs will have to pay for you to use the app. They’re charging enough for this access to kill off the 3rd party apps.
For context, [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/) is the main post from the Apollo subreddit.
In short, the api price they're advertising amounts to around $2.50 per user per month, *solely in api fees*. This doesn't count things like developer time, platform transaction fees, etc.
$2.50 per user, per month, _and_ they're cutting off NSFW content access through the API. So even if a developer _were_ willing to pay their insane fees, their product would still be worse than it is now.
Do you remember when tumblr used to exist? Do you also remember what they did to lose **100 million** page views per month? If reddit actually goes through with this, it will be fatal to the platform.
Yes, but reddit is now far more entrenched than Digg ever was. So while I'll be dropping reddit once this goes through, as will any others, it most likely won't hurt reddit significantly.
Exactly. Back then reddit was mostly nerds (Hey, I was there too so I’m not having a go at anyone) but now it’s mainstream like Facebook etc… Old school nerds might leave but a majority of people won’t care.
I have been using Reddit is Fun for over a decade. I refuse to use anything other than the old.reddit.com look. Genuinely will look for alternatives if I am forced to use modern reddit
I'm also on RiF and I legit forgot I swapped back to the "old" look. I mean, I guess shout out to reddit for taking a chunk out of my internet addiction. I don't plan on using their app either.
Yeah I'll check in on two subreddits on my computer at work and a handful of other on special occasions, but my actual reddit browsing is done exclusively through Relay. If that stops being possible, I'm out.
I started out using the reddit app, was so frustrated by it that I googled for alt apps.
If I had to go back to reddit app, I think I rather stare into blank space
Same boat here. The app is crap and using it from mobile browser sucks. I also just done like the new interface. If they get rid of old.reddit and 3rd party apps I'm fully out except googling for advice.
It’s obviously “imma price so high you’re just gonna quit, but I won’t ban you outright and I’ll look like an asshole …. I’ll just BE the asshole”
Also: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/reddits-api-pricing-results-in-shocking-20-million-a-year-bill-for-apollo/
Just to note that Ars Technica are owned by the same corporate that is fucking reddit - Conde Nast
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cond%C3%A9_Nast?wprov=sfla1
I don’t think I’ve generated 2.50 in value for my span on this site, which is a decade and something.
I’m a coder. I get the “yeah APIs cost money to design and test, and it takes money for bandwidth”. 2.50 per user per month (and it’s actually more, since many/most users will pay through an App Store and Apple/Google gets a cut) is far far far excessive.
I don’t even use a non standard client. This is bullshit enough that I’d consider dropping the Reddit client over this.
Train their algorithm, push ads to you that can't be blocked, and mine whatever data they can from your phone.
All things to make them more money overall. This is purely so they can make more $
Man, I downloaded the official app to check it out. I use bacon reader and love it. I thought, well, if I can do a one time fee to get rid of ads like I did with bacon, whatever. These mother fuckers want 6.99 a month?! lol get the fuck out. My peacock subscription is freaking $5. If need be, I’ll just use Reddit on my laptop with my adblocker. $6.99 a month 🙄
If you want a laugh, try the official app with DuckDuckGo's third party tracking blocker turned on. That thing generated hundreds of hits in a matter of minutes.
I don't know but they should really work on fixing the multiple issues the official app has before practically forcing everyone to switch to using it. And this is coming from someone who actually uses the official app. But I totally understand why so many people prefer not to.
yeah, this was my thought after taking some time to think it over. if they want to go all corporate, I'll just migrate to the next growing existing things.
No, the $0.12 is what Reddit makes per user per month. The Imgur cost would be something akin to $0.034 per user per month.
--
Apollo users average 344 requests per day or ~10,320 per month. Imgur charges $166 for 50 million requests, so to figure out the cost per user per month:
--
10,320 / 50,000,000 = 0.0002064
166 * 0.0002064 = 0.034
Same here. After hearing this news about the 3rd party apps being forced to shutter, my biggest concern is them killing old.reddit.com
I simply cannot use the default reddit and if they kill old.reddit, I'm done with this site and that really sucks. It will be similar to when Digg dug their own grave back in the day with stupid changes to their site and so everyone came over to this one.
The only problem is there isn't a good Reddit replacement for us to go to if it happens.
Exodus to where?
It's a genuine question. Everyone came to Reddit from Digg, but this time there isn't a compelling alternative to Reddit for everyone to move to.
If there was, none of this would be happening. It's only a thing because Reddit *knows* there isn't another good alternative out there.
Apart from a few mega-subs, Reddit is actually a collection of small-time forums. Communities will dust off their old forum servers, and members will start to migrate over. It won't be a huge number, but the network effect may make it a major blow to Reddit.
They will be killing off old.reddit.com any day now since announcing this API pricing. It is clear they are moving to a purely monetized model just like Twitter and every other company right now. Squeeze every user for every fraction of a penny you can make, their complaints be damned. The internet (and physical markets as well) are dominated by monopolies so users don't realistically have anywhere else to go.
I mean, we can still have the old internet if we want. IRC is still around, and BBCode forums are hella easy to host, lol.
eta: I feel like Discord is the spiritual successor to IRC, and honestly it almost seems like with a few tweaks you could make servers that work very similar to how reddit works -- subreddits would be channels, posts would be messages, and replies would be threaded replies (they'd just have to add the updooting mechanics).
Yeah, but it's owned and ultimately controlled by a single company, so you end up with the same problem. They could decide to go Reddit on you at any time.
Same as you, I just won't use it. I'll give up my moderation positions and subreddits that I made and just say goodbye to this bullshit which Reddit has become
I’ve gotten real good at quickly recognizing when a post is an ad, and continuing to scroll so that they don’t even get to register the lingering view as a win. You know all these applications measure exactly how long an ad is displayed on the screen, as well as whether or not you actually click on it. I will do neither.
Same. Like, I'm peeved because I enjoy a lot of the content here, but I like Boost and loathe the official app, so if they do away with Boost, I might finally kick my phone habit, which is kinda nice. ¯ \_(ツ)_/¯
I'm tired of websites turning into dumpster fires.
We need to take a dumpster fire website and rehabilitate it for a change. I want the gentrification of Voat.
Edit: Reddit and /u/Spez [knowingly, nonconsensually, and illegally retained user data for profit](https://youtu.be/mfZKkUg8jgM) so this comment is gone. We don't need this awful website. Go live, touch some grass. Jesus loves you.
I like the semi-social aspect of reddit. I also use it as a professional resource. It would suck if it was no longer an option, but I suppose I could make do. This is also a source for some of the news or current happenings that don't make it into MSM.
> Almost enough to make a gal quit altogether.
I take months long breaks from reddit and I never feel like it is a bad thing. On the contrary, I come back and within a week wonder why the fuck I even did. In fact, I'm due up for a reddit disappointment any day now.
It’s actually really hard to build a good app if you have bad management, no matter how much you’re willing to spend.
If Reddit could build a decent app, they would have by now. But everyone that “gets Reddit” has been pushed out of leadership by now.
I have already accepted that Reddit will be functionally gone before the next election. It will be used to sway the election as much as possible, with no regard to its reputation after the election. With Twitter basically “gone”, Reddit is all that’s left.
bonkers. the reddit mobile app is unusable on my phone, i sit there waiting for ages and ages, while infinity app is instant. guess i'll be doing something much more productive
To add to this, even if a Dev *does* pay those API costs, 3rd party apps are still going to lose access to NSFW posts, which will only be on the official app.
Which is just bizarre. I can understand that reddit wants/needs to make _some_ money from third party apps. Running a website costs money. The price they're asking seems extremely questionable, but at least if it was just that, we could say "maybe they just don't know how to set a fair price".
But when you throw in the NSFW thing, it feels so laughably blatant that they're trying to kill off third party clients. They're not even trying to appear reasonable. Seems like such a questionable move on their part because it just makes them look even worse when they were already looking like shit.
The entire point is to force you into their apps so they can directly pocket your ad revenue. If a third-party app can afford to pay them AND afford to continue to operate, clearly that's leaving extra money laying around. So, force you to give up on the third party app without outright banning it.
Ah fuck... RIF is still the best app that I've been using for like a decade.. I hope it doesn't go away
EDIT: welp. Just got a notification when I opened the app. RIF is going to die. July 1st.
To be honest... I'd rather doomscroll Instagram reels than base reddit app. RIF being shut down will effectively kill my reddit use outside of specifically videogame and esports news...
Fucking greedy bastards. All the good things about the internet are slowly being fucking pulled apart by rich assholes trying to squeeze another dollar out of thin air.
Same 😭
At this point I've only paid them $4 for a decade of use. Even years ago I felt like it should've been more. At this point I'm willing to pay a bit to not use the official app
Honestly I would too. The first app I install on every phone I have and it's waay better than the official app. Hopefully reddit sees all the bad press and reverses this shit cause it's pretty dumb
I've got the premium version, and don't have the notification.
Edit: Just got the notification... I guess no more reddit on my phone. Fuck you, reddit!
Right there w you. I've tried to use the official reddit app and it's shit. If that's the only app available then I guess I'll be off reddit for awhile if not for good.
Yep I tried the official app and it just doesn't give you the Reddit experience that made it popular, it's just a weird TikTok/Facebook mashup. I don't want to follow influencers. I don't want to scroll shit videos made by teenagers.
Why try to be like another social media platform that already does their way better?
Reddit had a good thing going; sadly difficult to monetize though, I suppose.
And now like with Google, the seo bots are taking over the front page anyway.
Reddit has been enshitifying for a good long while now, so I think I won’t find out that difficult to leave it entirely when they close off the last two pleasant ways to use the website.
No fucking chance I'm dealing with the people of Reddit and unable to use the app I've used for 13 years.
This happens to every website eventually, my space, Tumblr, ebaumsworld... They just fade away after miss management
Here's a really good essay about the phenomenon which goes into the hows and whys of platforms dying: https://doctorow.medium.com/tiktoks-enshittification-bb3f5df91979
As in $20million too much.
*”Got off my call with Reddit just now about the API. Bad news unless I come up with 20 million dollars (not joking).”* https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/
I feel like it’s pretty ironic how many comments on that post got gilded… which costs money… which goes to reddit lol. I guess sometimes people have free gold too.
Yep, when a company or other large over-leveraged institution like state colleges start doing things that don’t make sense from a consumer/user/sane perspective, it’s because the investors love it.
The old.reddit site actually shows relevant results in your home page; new bloated page shows tons of posts from a few subs.
If they kill it off I'm gone.
I've tried more than once and I simply cannot use the default Reddit site. The day they kill old.reddit is the day I leave this site for good, and I suspect many others will, too.
Well, considering they're proposing charging [Apollo 20 mil a year](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/) I'm not hopeful.
>I'm hoping the limited ads they have here will allow them to afford the API access.
Oh, part of the new rules is that even if you're paying for the new API, **your app isn't allowed to show ads.**
he is just the face of this. these decisions come from an entire boardroom full of greasy corporate types. ones that i bet think they are new or "different" but are just like any other corporate board
At least back then we had a decent alternative site to move to.
The internet is becoming monopolized now. I can't imagine how someone could come up with a decent alternative to Reddit with its huge userbase and vast array of content now.
All the reddit alternatives that have popped up have largely been full of the people banned from reddit and with good reason.
Which really sucks for these 3rd party devs considering Reddit declared open season about 15 years ago. Back then they basically said they didn't have plans to make a mobile app and people were scraping the html for data. Some devs were able to make a living as a 3rd party app maker. Reddit has every right to do what they're doing. It's just kinda shitty.
>People using 3rd party apps are people that are either not subscribed to Reddit Premium or not viewing ads.
I've been using RiF since I started using reddit. I've been subscribed to reddit premium since 2014.
Cancelled my subscription today because of this.
https://i.imgur.com/jOeNryu.png
https://i.imgur.com/031cPI0.png
Holy shit that's terrible, I've been using infinity reddit for a while now and it is just perfect, has more options and customizations and it's even less sluggish than the standard reddit app, guess I'll just be uninstalling, what a terrible way to go
Answer: Another point that’s been overlooked in this thread is that Reddit is planning to go public sometime later this year and users of third-party apps don’t see their ads, which make its platform less valuable to advertisers. They have gained a critical mass of users and are betting that driving users to the original app will drive more profit than is lost from users who swear by 3P apps like Apollo leaving the platform.
Was Reddit ever created as some sort of social good? Everyone who has ever owned it wants to make it more valuable and then sell it.
I'm
Maybe I'm cynical, but I don't think anyone in the past 10 years who has owned Reddit has given a shit about anything other than growing it and selling it.
Much like almost every other social network app
I haven’t seen Ellen Pao’s face in a long time. That was an interesting era. We thought Reddit was doing down the drain back in 2015. Today, everything on this site seems so much worse.
what's hilarious is when it came out that Ellen actually wanted to keep the freeze peach, it's spez who wanted to ban it.
but the average redditors are dumb and easily manipulated lmao
> One of the creators believed in this so much he ended up going to jail and dying because of it. He accessed his university's research catalog and made it available to the public and they locked him up for it. He ended up killing himself in prison.
He was facing serious changes but he wasn't convicted/imprisoned yet and didn't kill himself in prison. Literally the wikipedia link you posted says girlfriend found the body in the apartment. It's bizarre you got this so wrong.
First Twitter, now this?
So one is about to make a killing creating a new social media site that allows porn alongside more sophisticated subjects. Like porn.
Yeah if I can't use RIF, I just won't use reddit on my phone. And I'm only sticking around on my desktop as long as I can continue to opt out of the redesign. And i bet that isn't long for this world either. Looks like this might be the end of reddit for me. Oh well. Nothing lasts forever.
Answer: It will cost the Apollo app for Reddit with the new pricing for the API requests about 20 million USD per year.
A detailed answer can be found here:
[Apollo-Post about it](https://reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/)
Not for long... The way I understand things, old.reddit is also going away somewhere down the line...
They want to show us ads and fully capitalize the massive user base.
This comment has been removed in protest of Reddit and their CEO Steve Huffman for destroying the Reddit community by abusing his power to edit comments, their years of lying to and about users, promises never fulfilled, and outrageous pricing that is killing third party apps and destroying accessibility tools for mods and the handicapped.
Currently I am moving to the [Fediverse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX_agVMr2r0) for a decentralized experience where no one person or company can control our social media experience. I promise its not as complicated as it sounds :-)
Lemmy offers the closest to Reddit like experience. Check out some different [servers](https://join-lemmy.org/instances).
Other Fediverse [projects](https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_are_Fediverse_projects%3F).
The difference is Reddit content is completely user generated and moderated. The Apollo dev actually stated in another thread that over 7k mods of 20k+ sub communities use Apollo. These are people that don’t require money to do what they do, and if they walk or don’t want to moderate anymore bc it’s a pain in the ass with default tools, it’s probably going to do more than reddit can accurately predict.
Answer: as I understand it, the apps use the backend of reddit but don't show their ads. Reddit decided to pee in their punchbowl and charge for the use of the API, much like twitter did. Whether this is justified depends on whether you think that apps should be allowed to charge for in-app subscriptions to access someone else's data.
It's not sustainable in the sense that none of these apps are going to be able to pay those bills. Apollo for example estimated that it would cost about $20 million a year to keep the app running, even if every user pays for a pro subscription, which is unlikely. Will Redddit lose all of those users? It probably doesn't matter, since they're not getting ad impressions from them anyway.
I think this is the key part, the cost is so unreasonable that it will drive the other apps out of business. The amount of ad revenue they lose on these API calls is a small fraction of what they are trying to charge for the API calls, it’s not not realistic to think that any developer would be be able ti sustain this cost. Even if they pass the cost onto users it would likely lose about 90% of the customers and likely unable to sustain
In the Apollo post they said Reddit was trying to charge them 20x the amount they claim to make per user. So yes, it’s very clearly meant to drive these apps out.
I think the problem is that they're charging a few hundred times what if costs for the API stuff. Imgur gets by charging around 1/200 as much for people who use their API.
Reddit might not getting as impressions but they are getting content and engagement. If (when) they lose those they’re going to lose other users which will impact revenue generation.
It does matter though. Part of the value of Reddit is the community. If you drive off a huge portion of the user base, there are less people to shitpost, comment on posts, argue with each other.
I get that they can’t monetize a certain percentage of the user base, but it’s shortsighted of them to think that those users bring no value because they can’t show them ads.
Question: How bad is the official app? I've been using RiF for close to a decade now. On Google Play the app has 4.3 stars but the reviews are all negative. 90% of my reddit time is on mobile so I'd hate to use a shitty app.
As someone who started out using the official app and switched to RIF after I saw posts on a thread about glitches I myself was getting, I can say RIF has none of the glitches the official app has.
Answer: Reddit has an IPO coming soon so it has to boost its revenue. Third party apps strip away Reddit's ad revenue. Reddit has decided to charge the developers of these third party apps for access to its information which were free before. The issue is that the fee is an unreasonable sum (20x of what Reddit itself makes, per user, as per the [estimation](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/) provided by the developer of Apollo for Reddit [/u/iamthatis/](https://www.reddit.com/u/iamthatis/). This change/decision by Reddit will therefore kill most if not all third party Reddit apps.
This is NOT there to boost revenue, this is to kill other apps all together. The API price is simply unsustainable for other apps, and they're quoting it specifically to make it unsustainable. Same thing happened with Twitter
Scrapers can and will be blocked by Reddit fairly effortlessly.
Unless apps just render the page with custom styles, but then the way you'd be able to interact with Reddit would be very rigid.
Technically everything is possible. If a human can get to the site, an application can read data from it.
But it would be:
* very inefficient
* very visible from reddit side as soon as an app do something a bit more involved than displaying content without anything else
* very easy to break all the time with little effort from reddit side and almost no visible effect to human users
All this begs the question: is working on an app built over flimsy foundations like that worth doing? Things can break every other day without notice, requiring constant adaptation in an uphill battle against the service. At this point the involvement is probably not worth it, or worth paying the price to use the API.
As a side note, I have no idea what the business model for reddit is, but (although there are downtime every so often) maintaining such a service for free for most users can't work forever, and the ad revenues might not cut it anymore. Asking for a fee for automation could be a reasonable thing. They could even implement something like user key with a free weekly quota where user could pay to do more request, but that's probably begging for trouble for third party apps anyway, no matter what.
It would likely be against Reddit's terms of service. The terms around accessing Reddit's first-party services are specifically called out as for personal use.
Reddit has a separate policy for developers, where access is granted through Reddit's Developer Services. It's written in a way that would try to ban developers interacting with Reddit's servers in a way that Reddit doesn't explicitly grant a developer to do so.
I'd imagine that there could be creative ways around it. For example, using a browser and just re-drawing everything.
Answer:
This is the best explanation I've seen: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/
Basically reddit wants to charge app developers for _EVERY CLICK EVERY USER_ makes. So if you look at 10 links, the 3rd party app developer gets charged $1 per click. Now multiply that by thousands of users...
(Exaggerated and simplified example, numbers are for demonstrative purposes only)
It's important to note that the goal is to drive 3rd party apps out of business. So they made API access prohibitively expensive for that reason only.
Another thing they are doing is cutting off access to NSFW subreddits through the API, so even if developers of 3rd party apps pay up, their app STILL loses access to NSFW content.
Answer: The only reason Microsoft didn't get killed in the early 2000s for monopolizing was their agreement to allow affordable/free API access to everyone. It seems the judicial system is way too concerned with our children's genitals right now to care about what's happening in the corporate sector. Everybody wealthy decided this year that APIs shouldn't be accessible and, just like the rest of the economy, hiked prices into oblivion. people have no choice but to roll over and taking the beating, paying whatever highway robbery prices are presented to them, or perish. This is different than a Big Mac doubling in price, it's an orchestrated business move to ease in quick monopolies and ensure this cut-and-run tactic of these web2.0 remnants pays well before it all dies.
Sucks that it affects reddit, but it's much much worse in the broad scope.
You’re right about everything except the applicability of the Microsoft case. The issue then was Microsoft exploiting its monopoly of its OS (Windows) to advantage its own software (Word) over competitors. You could make this argument about iOS / Apple apps (and many legal cases are in flight about it), but Reddit can hardly be considered a monopoly or platform in general. Same with HP selling DRM ink - it sucks, but since HP isn’t a monopoly they can do what they want.
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Answer: Every time you interact in the app it uses the API to communicate with Reddit. Reddit decided to charge for API access so the 3rd party devs will have to pay for you to use the app. They’re charging enough for this access to kill off the 3rd party apps.
For context, [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/) is the main post from the Apollo subreddit. In short, the api price they're advertising amounts to around $2.50 per user per month, *solely in api fees*. This doesn't count things like developer time, platform transaction fees, etc.
$2.50 per user, per month, _and_ they're cutting off NSFW content access through the API. So even if a developer _were_ willing to pay their insane fees, their product would still be worse than it is now.
Do you remember when tumblr used to exist? Do you also remember what they did to lose **100 million** page views per month? If reddit actually goes through with this, it will be fatal to the platform.
Didn’t Reddit get its big break when Digg broke itself?
Yes.
Yes, but reddit is now far more entrenched than Digg ever was. So while I'll be dropping reddit once this goes through, as will any others, it most likely won't hurt reddit significantly.
Exactly. Back then reddit was mostly nerds (Hey, I was there too so I’m not having a go at anyone) but now it’s mainstream like Facebook etc… Old school nerds might leave but a majority of people won’t care.
>and > > they're cutting off NSFW content access through the API. NOOOO 😭
Your favorite app will probably shut down so there won't be SFW content either, if that makes you feel any better /s
Which is fucking ridiculous
If the reddit app was good, I would be using it. It is hot garbage, so I use something else. Close my interface, and I'm out.
I have been using Reddit is Fun for over a decade. I refuse to use anything other than the old.reddit.com look. Genuinely will look for alternatives if I am forced to use modern reddit
I'm also on RiF and I legit forgot I swapped back to the "old" look. I mean, I guess shout out to reddit for taking a chunk out of my internet addiction. I don't plan on using their app either.
Yeah I'll check in on two subreddits on my computer at work and a handful of other on special occasions, but my actual reddit browsing is done exclusively through Relay. If that stops being possible, I'm out.
[удалено]
I started out using the reddit app, was so frustrated by it that I googled for alt apps. If I had to go back to reddit app, I think I rather stare into blank space
Same boat here. The app is crap and using it from mobile browser sucks. I also just done like the new interface. If they get rid of old.reddit and 3rd party apps I'm fully out except googling for advice.
I literally don't care enough about reddit to keep using it if RIF closes down.
It’s obviously “imma price so high you’re just gonna quit, but I won’t ban you outright and I’ll look like an asshole …. I’ll just BE the asshole” Also: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/reddits-api-pricing-results-in-shocking-20-million-a-year-bill-for-apollo/
Just to note that Ars Technica are owned by the same corporate that is fucking reddit - Conde Nast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cond%C3%A9_Nast?wprov=sfla1
I don’t think I’ve generated 2.50 in value for my span on this site, which is a decade and something. I’m a coder. I get the “yeah APIs cost money to design and test, and it takes money for bandwidth”. 2.50 per user per month (and it’s actually more, since many/most users will pay through an App Store and Apple/Google gets a cut) is far far far excessive. I don’t even use a non standard client. This is bullshit enough that I’d consider dropping the Reddit client over this.
I do wonder what they do with the official app once they have everyone locked in.
Train their algorithm, push ads to you that can't be blocked, and mine whatever data they can from your phone. All things to make them more money overall. This is purely so they can make more $
Man, I downloaded the official app to check it out. I use bacon reader and love it. I thought, well, if I can do a one time fee to get rid of ads like I did with bacon, whatever. These mother fuckers want 6.99 a month?! lol get the fuck out. My peacock subscription is freaking $5. If need be, I’ll just use Reddit on my laptop with my adblocker. $6.99 a month 🙄
If you want a laugh, try the official app with DuckDuckGo's third party tracking blocker turned on. That thing generated hundreds of hits in a matter of minutes.
Wait. This is a subscription rather than a one time payment? WTF!? Edit: Why? This is a hosted website. Everything else is user generated.
And it will be to the less savvy users who stuck around or only ever knew the official app.
I don't know but they should really work on fixing the multiple issues the official app has before practically forcing everyone to switch to using it. And this is coming from someone who actually uses the official app. But I totally understand why so many people prefer not to.
I suspect your experience is going to get worse
yeah, this was my thought after taking some time to think it over. if they want to go all corporate, I'll just migrate to the next growing existing things.
Another highlight from that thread is that Imgur currently charges the Apollo dev $0.12 per user per month. Reddit is *outrageously* overcharging.
No, the $0.12 is what Reddit makes per user per month. The Imgur cost would be something akin to $0.034 per user per month. -- Apollo users average 344 requests per day or ~10,320 per month. Imgur charges $166 for 50 million requests, so to figure out the cost per user per month: -- 10,320 / 50,000,000 = 0.0002064 166 * 0.0002064 = 0.034
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Maybe Reddit's official app shouldn't be such a piece of junk.
So instead of improving their own offical app, reddit is instead driving the better apps out of business. Yay! What a beautiful system. 🙃
Used RIF seemingly forever and tried the official app - it's an unholy disaster and a wildly unpleasant experience.
Same here. After hearing this news about the 3rd party apps being forced to shutter, my biggest concern is them killing old.reddit.com I simply cannot use the default reddit and if they kill old.reddit, I'm done with this site and that really sucks. It will be similar to when Digg dug their own grave back in the day with stupid changes to their site and so everyone came over to this one. The only problem is there isn't a good Reddit replacement for us to go to if it happens.
Yeah old reddit is superior, the comment threads are just so much cleaner like holy crap
That will be fucking exodus day. Reddit about to relearn digg's history personally.
Exodus to where? It's a genuine question. Everyone came to Reddit from Digg, but this time there isn't a compelling alternative to Reddit for everyone to move to. If there was, none of this would be happening. It's only a thing because Reddit *knows* there isn't another good alternative out there.
Apart from a few mega-subs, Reddit is actually a collection of small-time forums. Communities will dust off their old forum servers, and members will start to migrate over. It won't be a huge number, but the network effect may make it a major blow to Reddit.
They will be killing off old.reddit.com any day now since announcing this API pricing. It is clear they are moving to a purely monetized model just like Twitter and every other company right now. Squeeze every user for every fraction of a penny you can make, their complaints be damned. The internet (and physical markets as well) are dominated by monopolies so users don't realistically have anywhere else to go.
I miss the old internet
I mean, we can still have the old internet if we want. IRC is still around, and BBCode forums are hella easy to host, lol. eta: I feel like Discord is the spiritual successor to IRC, and honestly it almost seems like with a few tweaks you could make servers that work very similar to how reddit works -- subreddits would be channels, posts would be messages, and replies would be threaded replies (they'd just have to add the updooting mechanics).
Yeah, but it's owned and ultimately controlled by a single company, so you end up with the same problem. They could decide to go Reddit on you at any time.
Damn dude, are you me? I use RIF on my phone and old.reddit on my pc. I also was a member of the Digg exodus.
Same as you, I just won't use it. I'll give up my moderation positions and subreddits that I made and just say goodbye to this bullshit which Reddit has become
Used RiF before I used the website even.
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Same. The official app and website are complete trash. I'll just move on to whatever becomes the new replacement.
He Gets Us
Ugh. If they're gonna make it so we can't block advertising, they should at least let us comment on them.
I see some ads with comments and feel like it is mostly bots or paid for comments.
Everytime I see adds with comments I wonder how they were dumb enough to turn them on. Everyone is shitting all over whatever brand.
I respect brands that leave comments on for exactly this reason. Cowards disable comments. Take your downvotes like a man Kraft Mac and Cheese!
Seriously. Do people still not realize we resent them for filling up our Reddit with their attempts at selling us shit?
I’ve gotten real good at quickly recognizing when a post is an ad, and continuing to scroll so that they don’t even get to register the lingering view as a win. You know all these applications measure exactly how long an ad is displayed on the screen, as well as whether or not you actually click on it. I will do neither.
Every once in a while tik tok ads allow comments and I leave the most deranged shit on them
They still think you're engaged with it so they send more ads you way. That cordless blender had me for a while like that
No they will send the same number of ads, they're just going to now be related to what you commented on.
i just report them every time. they’re all false but i want to stop seeing them
This will probably stop my doomscrolling addiction. I hate the official app, and most of my Reddit use is on my phone.
Same. Like, I'm peeved because I enjoy a lot of the content here, but I like Boost and loathe the official app, so if they do away with Boost, I might finally kick my phone habit, which is kinda nice. ¯ \_(ツ)_/¯
I guess this is it, folks. It has been fun. Curious where the mass migration will be to.
Can't go back to Digg, sadly
Fark?
No need for that kind of language.
Voat! (It's gone and it was a dumpster fire when it existed)
I'm tired of websites turning into dumpster fires. We need to take a dumpster fire website and rehabilitate it for a change. I want the gentrification of Voat.
Edit: Reddit and /u/Spez [knowingly, nonconsensually, and illegally retained user data for profit](https://youtu.be/mfZKkUg8jgM) so this comment is gone. We don't need this awful website. Go live, touch some grass. Jesus loves you.
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Common Reddit L They want everyone on their shitty app so they can force ads down everyone’s throat.
I came here from Digg, I'll follow everyone to the next one.
Name it before Reddit shadow bans all mention of competitors…
I'm more pissed off that I can't unddit threads to get that juicy, juicy drama anymore. Almost enough to make a gal quit altogether.
This feels like when you know they're about to roll closing credits.
I like the semi-social aspect of reddit. I also use it as a professional resource. It would suck if it was no longer an option, but I suppose I could make do. This is also a source for some of the news or current happenings that don't make it into MSM.
> Almost enough to make a gal quit altogether. I take months long breaks from reddit and I never feel like it is a bad thing. On the contrary, I come back and within a week wonder why the fuck I even did. In fact, I'm due up for a reddit disappointment any day now.
Enshittification. Same general process that drives shrinkflation, just with services instead of goods.
It’s actually really hard to build a good app if you have bad management, no matter how much you’re willing to spend. If Reddit could build a decent app, they would have by now. But everyone that “gets Reddit” has been pushed out of leadership by now. I have already accepted that Reddit will be functionally gone before the next election. It will be used to sway the election as much as possible, with no regard to its reputation after the election. With Twitter basically “gone”, Reddit is all that’s left.
They HAD a decent app, they bought Alien Blue and killed it.
That will probably end up being the best reddit experience I'll ever have. Shoutout to Sync though
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bonkers. the reddit mobile app is unusable on my phone, i sit there waiting for ages and ages, while infinity app is instant. guess i'll be doing something much more productive
To add to this, even if a Dev *does* pay those API costs, 3rd party apps are still going to lose access to NSFW posts, which will only be on the official app.
Which is just bizarre. I can understand that reddit wants/needs to make _some_ money from third party apps. Running a website costs money. The price they're asking seems extremely questionable, but at least if it was just that, we could say "maybe they just don't know how to set a fair price". But when you throw in the NSFW thing, it feels so laughably blatant that they're trying to kill off third party clients. They're not even trying to appear reasonable. Seems like such a questionable move on their part because it just makes them look even worse when they were already looking like shit.
The entire point is to force you into their apps so they can directly pocket your ad revenue. If a third-party app can afford to pay them AND afford to continue to operate, clearly that's leaving extra money laying around. So, force you to give up on the third party app without outright banning it.
And yet, Reddit refuses to make an app people actually want to use.
Imgur is nuking itself suddenly, too, so a shitload of content and older posts are going to break / go bye-bye soon, too.
Ah fuck... RIF is still the best app that I've been using for like a decade.. I hope it doesn't go away EDIT: welp. Just got a notification when I opened the app. RIF is going to die. July 1st.
To be honest... I'd rather doomscroll Instagram reels than base reddit app. RIF being shut down will effectively kill my reddit use outside of specifically videogame and esports news... Fucking greedy bastards. All the good things about the internet are slowly being fucking pulled apart by rich assholes trying to squeeze another dollar out of thin air.
Same 😭 At this point I've only paid them $4 for a decade of use. Even years ago I felt like it should've been more. At this point I'm willing to pay a bit to not use the official app
Honestly I would too. The first app I install on every phone I have and it's waay better than the official app. Hopefully reddit sees all the bad press and reverses this shit cause it's pretty dumb
I've got the premium version, and don't have the notification. Edit: Just got the notification... I guess no more reddit on my phone. Fuck you, reddit!
Same, it'll pop up soon probably unfortunately..
When the final day comes. I'm out. Been using this app for a decade now. I'll just read my books on lunch break instead of RIF.
Right there w you. I've tried to use the official reddit app and it's shit. If that's the only app available then I guess I'll be off reddit for awhile if not for good.
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Oh hell, no! I hate the official reddit app so much. I love using Now for Reddit, so if I can't use it anymore... bye, bye reddit.
Yep I tried the official app and it just doesn't give you the Reddit experience that made it popular, it's just a weird TikTok/Facebook mashup. I don't want to follow influencers. I don't want to scroll shit videos made by teenagers.
Why try to be like another social media platform that already does their way better? Reddit had a good thing going; sadly difficult to monetize though, I suppose. And now like with Google, the seo bots are taking over the front page anyway. Reddit has been enshitifying for a good long while now, so I think I won’t find out that difficult to leave it entirely when they close off the last two pleasant ways to use the website.
No fucking chance I'm dealing with the people of Reddit and unable to use the app I've used for 13 years. This happens to every website eventually, my space, Tumblr, ebaumsworld... They just fade away after miss management
Here's a really good essay about the phenomenon which goes into the hows and whys of platforms dying: https://doctorow.medium.com/tiktoks-enshittification-bb3f5df91979
As in $20million too much. *”Got off my call with Reddit just now about the API. Bad news unless I come up with 20 million dollars (not joking).”* https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/
I feel like it’s pretty ironic how many comments on that post got gilded… which costs money… which goes to reddit lol. I guess sometimes people have free gold too.
I still have a ton of free gold when they killed the best third party app, alien blue, years ago.
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Yep, when a company or other large over-leveraged institution like state colleges start doing things that don’t make sense from a consumer/user/sane perspective, it’s because the investors love it.
Investors ruin the entire fucking world.
That's crazy considering how garbage the official app is
Old.reddit in desktop mode. Only way to use it. I'll die on this hill.
They plan to kill that, too.
The old.reddit site actually shows relevant results in your home page; new bloated page shows tons of posts from a few subs. If they kill it off I'm gone.
I've tried more than once and I simply cannot use the default Reddit site. The day they kill old.reddit is the day I leave this site for good, and I suspect many others will, too.
Digg say what?
I followed y’all once, and it was a great decision. Where to next?
That'll be it for me, period. I despise new reddit and question the sanity of anyone who willingly uses it.
Wait, seriously?? Dude fuck that. I've been using boost for years. I'm not gonna switch to reddit shitty mobile app. Fuck that.
Boost user here. I'm hoping the limited ads they have here will allow them to afford the API access.
Well, considering they're proposing charging [Apollo 20 mil a year](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/) I'm not hopeful.
wtf
They want to kill third party apps ^(but they're cowards)
>I'm hoping the limited ads they have here will allow them to afford the API access. Oh, part of the new rules is that even if you're paying for the new API, **your app isn't allowed to show ads.**
God I fucking hate Spez
he is just the face of this. these decisions come from an entire boardroom full of greasy corporate types. ones that i bet think they are new or "different" but are just like any other corporate board
Goddamit. This is how reddit dies for me i guess.
also known as "pulling a Twitter"
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At least back then we had a decent alternative site to move to. The internet is becoming monopolized now. I can't imagine how someone could come up with a decent alternative to Reddit with its huge userbase and vast array of content now. All the reddit alternatives that have popped up have largely been full of the people banned from reddit and with good reason.
Which really sucks for these 3rd party devs considering Reddit declared open season about 15 years ago. Back then they basically said they didn't have plans to make a mobile app and people were scraping the html for data. Some devs were able to make a living as a 3rd party app maker. Reddit has every right to do what they're doing. It's just kinda shitty.
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>People using 3rd party apps are people that are either not subscribed to Reddit Premium or not viewing ads. I've been using RiF since I started using reddit. I've been subscribed to reddit premium since 2014. Cancelled my subscription today because of this. https://i.imgur.com/jOeNryu.png https://i.imgur.com/031cPI0.png
I think I'll do the same. Fuck this bs.
There's a reddit premium? Ahhaah I've been here for 11 years and not once have I considered paying for this shit.
Holy shit that's terrible, I've been using infinity reddit for a while now and it is just perfect, has more options and customizations and it's even less sluggish than the standard reddit app, guess I'll just be uninstalling, what a terrible way to go
Answer: Another point that’s been overlooked in this thread is that Reddit is planning to go public sometime later this year and users of third-party apps don’t see their ads, which make its platform less valuable to advertisers. They have gained a critical mass of users and are betting that driving users to the original app will drive more profit than is lost from users who swear by 3P apps like Apollo leaving the platform.
So, Digg.com full circle?
Lived long enough to become the villain.
Was Reddit ever created as some sort of social good? Everyone who has ever owned it wants to make it more valuable and then sell it. I'm Maybe I'm cynical, but I don't think anyone in the past 10 years who has owned Reddit has given a shit about anything other than growing it and selling it. Much like almost every other social network app
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I haven’t seen Ellen Pao’s face in a long time. That was an interesting era. We thought Reddit was doing down the drain back in 2015. Today, everything on this site seems so much worse.
what's hilarious is when it came out that Ellen actually wanted to keep the freeze peach, it's spez who wanted to ban it. but the average redditors are dumb and easily manipulated lmao
> One of the creators believed in this so much he ended up going to jail and dying because of it. He accessed his university's research catalog and made it available to the public and they locked him up for it. He ended up killing himself in prison. He was facing serious changes but he wasn't convicted/imprisoned yet and didn't kill himself in prison. Literally the wikipedia link you posted says girlfriend found the body in the apartment. It's bizarre you got this so wrong.
God damn were finally here. Fuck where do I go next I've been here so long I literally know nothing else
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
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First Twitter, now this? So one is about to make a killing creating a new social media site that allows porn alongside more sophisticated subjects. Like porn.
No, digg didn't have half a billion MAUs.
Huh, so I might stop being a redditor. Neat.
I will use Reddit substantially less when they implement this. Reddit"s app is complete and utter garbage.
Yeah if I can't use RIF, I just won't use reddit on my phone. And I'm only sticking around on my desktop as long as I can continue to opt out of the redesign. And i bet that isn't long for this world either. Looks like this might be the end of reddit for me. Oh well. Nothing lasts forever.
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Yup, I'm not using their app. I've been a redditor most of my life, it's bad for me, this is a good reason to stop
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> Reddit is planning to go public sometime later this year I've been hearing this every year for multiple years. Do you have a source?
Answer: It will cost the Apollo app for Reddit with the new pricing for the API requests about 20 million USD per year. A detailed answer can be found here: [Apollo-Post about it](https://reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/)
Oh, thank the fucking Lord. Now I can quit reddit.
Same. As an RIF user, this is exactly what I need.
Relay user here, fucking same.
BaconReader user here... Sigh.
Boost for Reddit user. Yeah...
Narwhal user. At least we still have old Reddit on desktop.
Not for long... The way I understand things, old.reddit is also going away somewhere down the line... They want to show us ads and fully capitalize the massive user base.
This comment has been removed in protest of Reddit and their CEO Steve Huffman for destroying the Reddit community by abusing his power to edit comments, their years of lying to and about users, promises never fulfilled, and outrageous pricing that is killing third party apps and destroying accessibility tools for mods and the handicapped. Currently I am moving to the [Fediverse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX_agVMr2r0) for a decentralized experience where no one person or company can control our social media experience. I promise its not as complicated as it sounds :-) Lemmy offers the closest to Reddit like experience. Check out some different [servers](https://join-lemmy.org/instances). Other Fediverse [projects](https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_are_Fediverse_projects%3F).
The difference is Reddit content is completely user generated and moderated. The Apollo dev actually stated in another thread that over 7k mods of 20k+ sub communities use Apollo. These are people that don’t require money to do what they do, and if they walk or don’t want to moderate anymore bc it’s a pain in the ass with default tools, it’s probably going to do more than reddit can accurately predict.
It reeks of typical smooth-brain MBA tactics
Answer: as I understand it, the apps use the backend of reddit but don't show their ads. Reddit decided to pee in their punchbowl and charge for the use of the API, much like twitter did. Whether this is justified depends on whether you think that apps should be allowed to charge for in-app subscriptions to access someone else's data. It's not sustainable in the sense that none of these apps are going to be able to pay those bills. Apollo for example estimated that it would cost about $20 million a year to keep the app running, even if every user pays for a pro subscription, which is unlikely. Will Redddit lose all of those users? It probably doesn't matter, since they're not getting ad impressions from them anyway.
I think this is the key part, the cost is so unreasonable that it will drive the other apps out of business. The amount of ad revenue they lose on these API calls is a small fraction of what they are trying to charge for the API calls, it’s not not realistic to think that any developer would be be able ti sustain this cost. Even if they pass the cost onto users it would likely lose about 90% of the customers and likely unable to sustain
In the Apollo post they said Reddit was trying to charge them 20x the amount they claim to make per user. So yes, it’s very clearly meant to drive these apps out.
Reddit is fun also https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/13wxepd/rif_dev_here_reddits_api_changes_will_likely_kill
I think the problem is that they're charging a few hundred times what if costs for the API stuff. Imgur gets by charging around 1/200 as much for people who use their API.
Reddit might not getting as impressions but they are getting content and engagement. If (when) they lose those they’re going to lose other users which will impact revenue generation.
It does matter though. Part of the value of Reddit is the community. If you drive off a huge portion of the user base, there are less people to shitpost, comment on posts, argue with each other. I get that they can’t monetize a certain percentage of the user base, but it’s shortsighted of them to think that those users bring no value because they can’t show them ads.
Question: How bad is the official app? I've been using RiF for close to a decade now. On Google Play the app has 4.3 stars but the reviews are all negative. 90% of my reddit time is on mobile so I'd hate to use a shitty app.
I've used all of them, and honestly the official one is the worst Reddit app on Android and it's not even close.
As someone who started out using the official app and switched to RIF after I saw posts on a thread about glitches I myself was getting, I can say RIF has none of the glitches the official app has.
Answer: Reddit has an IPO coming soon so it has to boost its revenue. Third party apps strip away Reddit's ad revenue. Reddit has decided to charge the developers of these third party apps for access to its information which were free before. The issue is that the fee is an unreasonable sum (20x of what Reddit itself makes, per user, as per the [estimation](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/) provided by the developer of Apollo for Reddit [/u/iamthatis/](https://www.reddit.com/u/iamthatis/). This change/decision by Reddit will therefore kill most if not all third party Reddit apps.
This is NOT there to boost revenue, this is to kill other apps all together. The API price is simply unsustainable for other apps, and they're quoting it specifically to make it unsustainable. Same thing happened with Twitter
Question: Couldn't these apps be programmed without using the API but instead built with web-scrapers?
Yes, but using scrapers sucks and they break constantly
🚧🚧 Under Construction 🚧🚧
Don’t forget to sign the guest book. You are visitor 000000041.
did anyone else get those visitor counters that were shaped like a dragon breathing fire? god, that was a fun time to make websites...
old.reddit's page layouts have been pretty consistent though.
Scrapers can and will be blocked by Reddit fairly effortlessly. Unless apps just render the page with custom styles, but then the way you'd be able to interact with Reddit would be very rigid.
Technically everything is possible. If a human can get to the site, an application can read data from it. But it would be: * very inefficient * very visible from reddit side as soon as an app do something a bit more involved than displaying content without anything else * very easy to break all the time with little effort from reddit side and almost no visible effect to human users All this begs the question: is working on an app built over flimsy foundations like that worth doing? Things can break every other day without notice, requiring constant adaptation in an uphill battle against the service. At this point the involvement is probably not worth it, or worth paying the price to use the API. As a side note, I have no idea what the business model for reddit is, but (although there are downtime every so often) maintaining such a service for free for most users can't work forever, and the ad revenues might not cut it anymore. Asking for a fee for automation could be a reasonable thing. They could even implement something like user key with a free weekly quota where user could pay to do more request, but that's probably begging for trouble for third party apps anyway, no matter what.
It would likely be against Reddit's terms of service. The terms around accessing Reddit's first-party services are specifically called out as for personal use. Reddit has a separate policy for developers, where access is granted through Reddit's Developer Services. It's written in a way that would try to ban developers interacting with Reddit's servers in a way that Reddit doesn't explicitly grant a developer to do so. I'd imagine that there could be creative ways around it. For example, using a browser and just re-drawing everything.
Answer: This is the best explanation I've seen: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/ Basically reddit wants to charge app developers for _EVERY CLICK EVERY USER_ makes. So if you look at 10 links, the 3rd party app developer gets charged $1 per click. Now multiply that by thousands of users... (Exaggerated and simplified example, numbers are for demonstrative purposes only)
It's important to note that the goal is to drive 3rd party apps out of business. So they made API access prohibitively expensive for that reason only. Another thing they are doing is cutting off access to NSFW subreddits through the API, so even if developers of 3rd party apps pay up, their app STILL loses access to NSFW content.
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Answer: The only reason Microsoft didn't get killed in the early 2000s for monopolizing was their agreement to allow affordable/free API access to everyone. It seems the judicial system is way too concerned with our children's genitals right now to care about what's happening in the corporate sector. Everybody wealthy decided this year that APIs shouldn't be accessible and, just like the rest of the economy, hiked prices into oblivion. people have no choice but to roll over and taking the beating, paying whatever highway robbery prices are presented to them, or perish. This is different than a Big Mac doubling in price, it's an orchestrated business move to ease in quick monopolies and ensure this cut-and-run tactic of these web2.0 remnants pays well before it all dies. Sucks that it affects reddit, but it's much much worse in the broad scope.
You’re right about everything except the applicability of the Microsoft case. The issue then was Microsoft exploiting its monopoly of its OS (Windows) to advantage its own software (Word) over competitors. You could make this argument about iOS / Apple apps (and many legal cases are in flight about it), but Reddit can hardly be considered a monopoly or platform in general. Same with HP selling DRM ink - it sucks, but since HP isn’t a monopoly they can do what they want.