HandsHurtLoL

HandsHurtLoL, 2 years ago

Can someone give me some perspective on the 100 API per minute versus 10 API per minute in terms of me - a dirty f'ing casual - trying to use reddit via a 3rd party app?

I get that API is when my 3PA is talking to the reddit server, but is that happening for, say, every post that loads up on my infinite scroll? Or every time I open a post to read comments?

In other words, would my usage need to be as slow as "don't browse more than 10 posts per minute" to have stayed in the free lane?

HandsHurtLoL, 2 years ago

Okay, this helps me a lot. In essence, as someone using a 3PA, I represent 1 API, so for wildly successful 3PAs like Apollo, we're not talking 1000 API per minute, we're talking like 500k API per minute.

This is interesting also as it pertains to what you said about bots. When I used reddit for knitting and crochet, there was a bot that a community member had created that would reference a website that we all got patterns from, and then would generate a comment with a direct link to that pattern's page. In the lead up to the blackout, the bot's maintainer (not creator) was still in the dark about whether that bot would be shut down or not because reddit provided very little clarity when asked specifically about that bot. That bot was probably called up just a few dozen times per hour, so I imagine it would have been allowed to continue operating, whereas bots for AutoMods in subs with millions of subscribers were probably pulling huge numbers of API.

Thanks for chipping in!

HandsHurtLoL, 2 years ago

I had no idea that was the history involved. This makes more sense now why maybe reddit has a vendetta against quality developers. haha