Some users wonder if the dev will be charged for having it still up, others argue Reddit can't charge him without having signed a contract. Everyone is confused as to why the API change hasn't made it inoperable.
The thing is that it really is no longer about 3rd party apps working or not, rather, the level of disrespect displayed from Reddit towards us, their userbase. That's why I'm not going back.
I’m struggling to find as much interesting content as I did on Reddit. BUT I am much more easily finding pleasant conversations. And that I think is more important.
I’m posting more here than I did on Reddit because I want to be the change I want! Also I’m still learning to navigate this place too. I like it though.
I'm having a different experience with the content but can understand where you are coming from. I spent a lot of time searching out the niche communities I'm interested in and subscribing across all the instances i can find. Trying to actually post more too and encourage others.
The conversation aspect is so true though. It's been the most present surprise and is part of what's driving me to engage and start posting.
I was a RedReader user for quite a while (as in years). While being a bit spartan, I found it to be the best Reddit app for my preferences. Period.
But indeed, nowadays, there is actual (great) content on Lemmy and Kbin, and I am willing to get to it. Not much time left for Reddit. Sorry, spez, fuck you!
The only thing I'll be giving Reddit is my traffic, more than happy to lurk the comment but I definitely won't be posting, commenting, upvoting/downloading or helping admins by reporting spam and rule violations. None of that effort anymore
Traffic quality plays a big role too. If you never click on or engage with any ads your visits aren’t worth much anyway. You could even vpn yourself from a poor country and be considered even less valuable to the ad machines lol
Give Apollo a contract guaranteeing free API access until the end of time without nonsense restrictions on content and maybe I'd think about it. Short of that I'm all set.
(No it's not just Apollo. But he's the most wronged and the one I use.)
After the whole Brock turner the rapist crusade (deserved) I've been sitting here scratching my head why spez wasn't named and shamed with his real name by the same group.
Fact is even if Reddit rolled back the changes it’d be the classic “let’s see how far we can push our user base then we’ll roll that back to acceptable levels while slowly pushing those limits through later updates” strategy
Same. I used to use the official app because when I started using Reddit, I was not aware of third party apps. Then it was just inertia. After this fiasco started, I started trying various apps and used sync for the last 3 weeks. Now i'm here.
Reddit has made clear they have no respect for their users, especially their most active users responsible for creating and moderating their content. No matter what reddit does or doesn't do now, it is obvious it will continue to get worse.
It's also a wake up call to those who created content and did tons of free moderating for no gain other than personal prestige ... it is making us all realize that whenever we put in extra effort into a social media website that is privately owned - we create the content and reason for the sites existence but we don't financially benefit from it, someone else does who did no work to create any of it other than to claim ownership over everything.
It's the same old story from a thousand years ago or even the arguments of worker rights from the 1800s ... we create the means of production but we receive no benefit from our work
The leadership is too much for me. Too many right wing shitbirds with conspiracy delusions, too much open partying with Ghislaine(sp?) Maxwell, and too many mishandled scandals relating to sexual content with minors.
Huffman (Spez) gave some interview where he talks about civilization falling and he’d “be a slaver rather than a slave” (paraphrasing, I don’t have the interview open) which is just wild because he’s scrawny as fuck.
There’s always rumors of an IPO but I feel like the current staff isn’t fit to head a public company and would crumble under wide public scrutiny like on the markets
It’d be a preferable situation if it were either/or but even then I realize I’m probably not big and bad enough to strong arm myself into that position everyone else would rather have.
Spez is/was a doomsday prepper though I think he figures he’s got an edge over everyone else
Little late to the game on this one but I did finally get my words to reflect how and why I feel I do about this situation, I commented it recently on another post but I'm gonna drop it here again as I hope it can add to this discussion.
I quit when rif went down. I've never used an official app, desktop site, mobile site etc. Rif was Reddit to me for 10 years. Maybe leaving as a collective will make some difference, maybe not, but I'm going to start being more firm on how much I'll let companies try to push me around expecting me to just take it. They built it on our backs, then just took it away so a literal select few can cash in, when they are already filthy rich and had other options.
I've been explaining it to others as if you broke your phone. Now it's frustrating getting used to a new phone, but it has lots of new features you never even thought of that make up for the inconveniences. Sure I could go back to my old phone, it's comfortable to use, but the screen is broken and it cuts me now and again, and over time it'll cut me more often. I'd rather get used to the new phone.
This past year I've dealt with food going up, gas, utilities, rent, hell cigarettes and even beer, my fishing license went up. Every single nook and cranny they can pull a cent from you they will.
I'm done choosing to let them. If they want my data, my attention, my content, they can pull it from my cold dead hands damnit.
The app still works for me. But I've been hearing Reddit has shut down the old mod API token, but not the regular token yet. So that might explain a little. However, RedReader was granted accessibility exemption so who knows what's going on.
When the API shut off early, Apollo dev u/iamthatis (@ChristianSelig) revoked his token so I cannot see any of this; but I’m wondering if reddit isn’t pulling a silent reversal of this to stem the bleeding of users and content. There is a lot of useful stuff that has been deleted. The AMA staff resigning and all the stuff migrating to fedi. No matter how much f-u/spez tries to shout “This is fine”; the building is still burning all around him.
I thought access would essentially be the same from the app's perspective, just the app builders would start getting MASSIVE bills in the mail? And they were shutting it down preemptively to avoid this.
That was my understanding, also. I read that the first billing for devs would be sent on Aug 1, so developers who did not want to pay shut their apps down on June 30 so they wouldn't have even one bill for API use. However, it also sounds like Reddit shut off the API early from what Christian Selig said so they continued their petty games.
Reddit is supposed to block api access to anyone not in a contract with them. This is why all the apps stopped working early yesterday. Reddit had to turn access on to any app that is staying. That is why this is weird. Unless all these apps are in deals with Reddit.
Are you willing to test. If Boost is working it's a matter of any day it will shut off. Boost Dev is already making a lemmy app. Reddit is gonna die and hard!
@Jcb2016 Good news… at least two kbin apps are in the works. Follow @dansup for their Kbam app, and @hariette for their Artemis app. Artemis sounds like it’ll be heavily Apollo inspired, whereas Kbam is doing something a bit different.
This is a fancy bookmark from wherever your browser is. I have the same "app" and so do people who use Firefox on iOS. What you're looking at is essentially the same thing as kbin on the mobile internet.
The apps in development will have other QoL features that will be more similar to Apollo (but I hope more similar to Infinity for Android).
While Reddit might be fine it also could go down the same path as Yahoo, AIM, or Twitter. Either dying a slow death or ending up a shell of what it once was.
Hell even Slashdot still limps along, a shell of what it what it was before everyone moved from it to Reddit. For large ranges of "fine" I'm sure Reddit will fall into some category for some time at least.
It'll be fine in the same way Facebook is fine. It'll have users, and it'll maybe even make money. But Facebook is filled with negativity, regurgitated content, aggressive monetisation and an ever-increasing lack of personal connection.
I logged into Facebook for something last week for the first time in a long time. 14 out of the first 20 posts in my feed - so 70% - were "suggestions" or "promotions". It wasn't stuff posted by people I know or pages I've liked, and it wasn't even stuff that people I know or pages I've liked had interacted with. It was adverts and shitty, lowest-common-denominator content that I had no interest in.
Facebook isn't dead but it might as well be as far as I'm concerned. It's no longer enjoyable, interesting or useful to me. And Reddit is going down that same path.
Facebook is nowhere near as dead as you think it is. It is still the best place for local groups and many niche hobbyist groups. I really don't want reddit to be another version of that, 1 crappy social site is enough. Also you're missing a key differentiating factor: facebook has actual paid content moderators.
I don't think reddit will die, at least not right away (remember, digg shut down finally in 2018).
Best case scenario is they hemorrhage users, fail ipo, and then join the fediverse. I say this because joining will create a bridge for new users to come here.
Worst case scenario is they become like twitter. which is possible.
My money is on them trying to sell to Microsoft or Google for ai training, and keeping their api private.
You're making a great point about Facebook. It's still insanely popular among older and more rural Americans. I guess these are populations that would be more isolated without it and still see the value in participating. One example: I have a 21 year old niece who is on it 24/7, but then again she is a hour's drive from the nearest Walmart and and her parents. Three hundred miles from her bestie. She's two-thousand-ish miles away from me. She has my number, but she prefers Messenger to text.
It's also good for community groups, online garage sales, in memoriam pages, and the like. Some businesses like to use it instead of having a proper website, probably due to zero cost of hosting and familiarity of use.*
Reddit never fit naturally with any of those, but I'm sure it will find a niche of users in the same way.
*I'm sure there are other dynamics worldwide where Facebook might also be a valuable tool. These are just the first few examples I can think of in the US.
Reddit will be fine in the short term sure, but anyone who actually gave enough of a shit to put in the effort needed for it to work well have left or stated that they will no longer do anything more than the bare minimum. Reddit will still be around for a while, but it will never be the same place it was, and eventually will just become irrelevant as it's overrun with trolls and scammers. I give it 3 - 5 more years before it disappears without fanfare and no one will care.
Exactly my thoughts - it's going to be a slow decline. Probably the first thing that will happen is that mods will drift away and the quality of subs will decline. Any replacement mods may be good but are also just as likely to drift away after a month or two.
The site will slowly attract more and more spammers and scammers when they wake up to this fact... Whether it actually disappears I don't know but it will become irrelevant by becoming more bland and corporate in an attempt to chase money. It'll end up being more like Tumblr or something I reckon, something that exists but only some people actually use.
anonymous RIF seems to still work, even though logged in doesn't. it's not like the whole website is gated, I suspect many of these apps treat anon vs logged in requests differently
Same with Relay... I checked it to see what the dead so would look like and all the genetic frontage posts loaded in... It'll be interesting to see what happens.
The author of relay put out a post saying that it'll keep going for free while he decides what the subscription model is going to look like - it's the top post in the sub ATM.
Was surprised with that choice, but it doesn't change anything - not using it anymore regardless
Narwhal said they are going to continue and start going subscription only once Narwhal 2 is released. Apparently they worked out some kind of delay on billing.
Yeah I remember how they tried telling the Apollo dev that the bills won't be due for 30 days so that was like giving them more time. I'd expect that any apps that are still open are going to get a bill in a month.
Narwhal is still open too, I pulled up a list of my subreddits to look for equivalents.
You can't just charge people out of nowhere when they didn't sign a contract and blatantly did not consent via their announcements their apps were dead
I doubt any of these third party apps are going to recoup the named API cost with so many people fleeing reddit. Seems like a big gamble to me. Maybe Relay re-negotiated the price.
I wonder if they just high balled, expecting app creators to negotiate them down instead of taking the offer public and burning things to the ground.
Yeah, RedReader is one of the apps that had an accessibility exemption due to it being so good with its accessibility features. The official Reddit app doesn't have those features, so Reddit knew they would get sued if they didn't allow some 3rd party apps to fill in that need.
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