Apollo dev explains how third-party Reddit apps are affected by API changes | Hacker News Reader

Apollo dev explains how third-party Reddit apps are affected by API changes

old.reddit.com

115 pointstech234a55 comments

Losing my Twitter client was what got me off the platform for good, and by the end I welcomed it.

It's the same for Reddit. Of course it's not enjoyable anymore. It's just hard to pretend it isn't there and make a clean break.

But paying for a third party client is a non starter, as is using the official site or app. At this point if they want to drive me away I won't fight it.

I already paid for sync reddit app. It works great. But I'm pretty sure I'm not going to pay a monthly subscription for reddit. That's just taking a bad habit too far.

If Reddit would stop making the site and app unusable we wouldn't need alternative clients. I can feel my phone heat up if I try to browse Reddit with any of the official options other than old Reddit

The website is actually pretty de-HAVE YOU TRIED USING THE REDDIT APP? IT'S THE BEST EXPERIENCE-cent.

I still can’t believe this is a thing that has survived this long. I look forward to Reddit’s replacement if paid third-party API usage doesn’t pan out.

https://pdx.su/blog/2023-04-06-rip-reddit-compact/

They just killed i.reddit.com, the old mobile site. I am fully expecting old.reddit.com to be killed off in the near future as well.

It's unfortunate. The redesign is hamstrung on mobile. Sporadic comments are collapsed and can't be opened. Viewing whole threads is disabled. Normal text posts are occasionally presented as "NSFW" on the site, and demand you download the app (despite being fine on old.reddit.com). Occasional A/B tests even prevent any use of the site at all, mandating the app with a full page blocker.

Genuinely some of the shadiest dark patterns I have ever seen. The worst behavior has been behind A/B tests for years at this point, presumably to make it harder to accuse them of this crap.

What I hear:

1. We DO want to make a ton of money off of this 2. We will make you pay for the API access but still block things like NSFW 3. Because we still want users to use our shitty app and site for ad revenue 4. We haven’t even thought of what parts of the API you will and will not get access to 5. We really wanted to frame all of this positively so we pretend it’s reasonable costs, as if API users would cost more than having those people use reddits own api on their website.

I guarantee they won’t offer any better service, just demand payment now, will continue to make their site shittier, but increase pricing year on year.

6. We haven't even thought about the pricing yet

> if API users would cost more than having those people use reddits own api on their website

Well, yes? 3rd party app users don’t allow monetisation or ads.

So, where is everyone headed next?

We all know reddit has been on a slow decline for years now, and things are unlikely to improve as they head towards IPO.

Is there a good alternative yet for those of us who have little to no use for the viral front page content and whose primary use of reddit is interacting with niche communities, essentially using the site as a poor replacement for the dedicated forums from decades back?

Lemmy looked interesting last time I checked it out, but didn't quite seem to be taking off, an the dev team's censorship issues, even if they have been resolved, are troubling.

I've been returning to forums, myself. I'll give mastodon a try at some point.

What originally drew me to reddit (10+ years ago) was the dense front page of geek-adjacent content, which I could customize to be made up of communities focused on niches I enjoy.

Reddit's default front page is now more like MSN News, and the content quality of the niche subreddits I found back then seems to have really dropped - especially subreddits like /r/vinyl that exploded in popularity.

Meanwhile, forums like the Steve Hoffman Forum never went away, and maybe have become more of a filtered, high quality niche for their particular brand of content, at the same time those reddit communities grew massively and dropped in quality. If I want to find a great version of a specific album, I can just search the Hoffman forum, and find a single dozens of pages long discussion about it by experts, on a board that requires everyone to put their system hardware in their profile before commenting on sound. The alternative on reddit is maybe finding a 5 year old post with obsolete recommendations, or asking my own question that's deleted by a moderator and sent to a megathread where it will be ignored.

Likewise if I'm looking up a new film stock on Photrio - reddit is a great place to see a bunch of pictures taken on that stock, that were maybe edited, manipulated, overexposed, etc. I might as well just go to Instagram. Photrio will find me a thread where a community of dedicated geeks have studied every aspect in explicit detail and held each other to high standards of analysis.

The biggest thing missing from those forums, I think, is that dense front page effect - the mass saturation of varying content that changes almost every time I visit. But on the other hand, those forums don't have the same prevailing community zeitgeist of toxicity, cynicism, outrage, and knowitall contrarianism. Stepping away from reddit has led me to realize the dense front page created by that community is toxic for my mental health, and what's drawing me to try Mastodon is the idea that I might be able to find a good alternative.

Or hey, maybe I'll just go outside more. The experience has me reflecting on my use of HN too. It's largely replaced Reddit as my go-to 'refresh feed,' but I find myself closing discussions with regularity when I realize they're full of non-experts speculating to each other and tweaking the same emotion-knobs that drove my unhealthy engagement with Reddit. But I think on HN, it's easy enough to learn to just avoid the sorts of emotionally charged threads where that kind of "discussion" occurs. On reddit, it feels like that's every thread, about anything.

Yep. Reddit just pulled a twitter. .

Remember years ago when twitter pulled the same on clients. Slowly there weren't any third party clients left when back in 2010, there were many?

Yeah. Knew this day was coming so let's hope this kills reddit

Why would you hope this kills reddit? Wtf is wrong with you to think that a company charging for access to their resources warrants it being destroyed?

They seem to be acting in good faith and giving people plenty of heads up. If the pricing is reasonable, it’s more than fair to have third parties pay for access. Apps running on reddit itself will not have to pay.

I hope to fucking god this kills Reddit, because Reddit itself provides no value.

- It's a glorified PhpBB, there's nothing brand new about Reddit.

- The comments they're making you pay for are mine, are yours, put out for free on a publicly visible website. Reddit sits down and wants to collect money from being a database?

- Reddit wants to have its cake and eat it too. their content is valuable because people are out there being mods, for free.

- Warning people in advance isn't acting in good faith. It's telling them there going to get fucked anyways, but hey, now you can plan for it!

- Their app is utter dogshit. The mobile options will now be their dogshit app, for free, or quality third party apps that will soon start charging monthly to pay for the costs. This is a way to kill third party apps, make no mistake.

remember how a few short years ago reddit would guilt shame people into paying for "server costs" on a daily basis by buying awards?

People were literally paying to keep reddit afloat for their own use. Now they are reversing course and saying "well there are costs to pay".

the fuck is wrong with them. Users kept reddit afloat for all its life because they enjoyed it and got utility out of it. They paid for the access to all of reddit, api and all by awards and suddenly they want to charge money? what were people doing earlier?

No one asked reddit to selfhost images and videos. Remove that and you can get back to 10 year old reddit in an instant but no. They want to bring algorithmic video recommendations ala tiktok. utter shit

No user is paid to post content and no mod is paid to moderate content

shouldnt mods be paid to do the work of reddit, in moderating reddit subs?

Wouldn't this mean that all mods should be chosen by Reddit? They would also have to go through the usual processes (verify identity for taxation and age, ensure not a citizen of an embargoed nation, etc)

I know the argument is that content generates revenue for Reddit, but there's no shortage of subs where the mods actively suppress content that doesn't fit the subreddit's goals. In that case, the mods are working against Reddit's interests, and "working for" the subreddit.

i have been a mod for half a dozen for the past 8 years. the general expectation was "everyone is doing this out of passion and everyone is enjoying the result."

why should i bother now? i am doing unpaid labour for reddit and they are no less charging for the time i put in so why should i not be reimbursed?

It did not kill twitter then, it will not kill Reddit now

Reddit is doing a good job of killing itself. Ive been a reddit user for at least 15 years and I have watch it turn from a smart, bright and informative community to a over confidently stupid cargo cultish, narcissistic dumpster fire. I rarely visit it anymore because it s just awful.

Since most Reddit communities are opt-in this is mostly a question of smelling shit everywhere you go: time to check your shoe.

I checked my shoe and it seems like I stepped in some reddit and it smells like you.

You clearly haven't spent much time on reddit or you are part of the problem, but unless you are in a super niche subreddit with 5 people there is no escape. "tourist" like to go to subs (like the tech subs for example) they know nothing about and with great confidence spew out snarky, condescending bullshit. It's no longer about sharing and debating information it is about being "right" even if they are incorrect. Maybe I have just grown up and moved on to more mature communities where these problems don't exist

Reddit was always this, you were just out of the know when you were underneath somebody else's shoe. There's a reason why all the communities Redditors reposted from grew to vehemently hate the site and its community.

But, that being said, I really have to agree that it has degraded. The last time (years ago now) I asked a question on a tech related subreddit, almost all of the answers I got were upvote farming in some way.

Some were commenting for the sake of commenting even if it didn't answer the question. Some were telling me outright lies and stories that were not possible with with both what I and they were describing. This attitude was always prevalent, but its spread to every part of the site except for the smallest and most policed communities, at which point you may as well just stop using it and speak to your friends.

Apparently a lot of us have shoe issue then. The average quality of Reddit is quite low. It’s upvoting/downvoting at its worst. I regularly go through phases where I question the value HN brings to me and that’s despite it having far better moderation. Reddit is a lost cause.

To be fair, since Reddit wants to go all in on "growth & engagement" as opposed to a sustainable, paid model where users pay for the service, there is always going to be a faint smell of shit (in the form of spam, dark patterns and optimizing for trashy clickbait instead of longform, thoughtful discussions) no matter where you go.

Pithy, but moronic. I fail to see how a community being opt-in supposedly prevents any of the things the original commenter listed.

I browse it on Teddit, which I suspect won't be for too much longer. Reddit took their success and got complacent with VC money, and the end users have to pay for it in the form of erratic policy change.

https://www.theverge.com/2013/2/23/4021380/falcon-for-androi...

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/new-a...

so they leveleraged third party clients when they were unknown and suddenly they want those same apps to play by their rules and some years down the line completely pull the plug when their work is done. nice

Twitter clients were free and were doing very well until February 2023, when Musk shut the API down.

You apparently don't remember 10 years ago when Twitter was killing all the most popular third party twitter clients with its stingy token limit

https://www.androidpolice.com/2013/02/23/falcon-pro-hits-100...

I haven't used third party clients on Twitter for about a decade because the API was so limited nobody could make a fully-featured app.

I resisted third party reddit apps for a while and finally landed on apollo for what ever reason, only ever needing/wanting the free version. I will not be paying for apollo or any reddit app, I just don't need that. So I guess this is a good thing to ween me off of browsing reddit on my phone when I am bored.

> For NSFW content, [...] but thought that it would no longer be possible to access via the API

good luck reddit

I can understand makind the API paid, but why disable NSFW for said users if no malicious intent? Afraid of payment providers?

NSFW has been a thorn in their side ever since going public, yes. Mostly because investors are morons.

Reddit has not yet gone public tho?

They have been saying for years that they will do an IPO but, as is typical of the place, so far apart from statements nothing has ever been seen

Do investors specifically take issue with nsfw content? I don't understand the relationship

Visa and Mastercard take issue with it.

Apple takes issue with it.

Maybe they want to stop NSFW content creators using post scheduling apps to post their content on dozens of subreddits at once.

I have Relay Pro on Android. I really like it and didn't mind paying for it, but it ain't like I'd pay a subscription for it, and especially not if its for some neutered version. Guess this is what kills reddit for me, its been coming for a long time anyways

Oof. Apollo is the only usable Reddit client.

Relay is good too!

RiF

I've had good mileage with Boost. Had will be a key word.

I was an early adopter of Apollo and it's probably my most-used phone app. I'm hopeful this will go well, but what happened with Twitter is hard to ignore.

I would consider paying for access depending on the cost but if they wholesale ban NSFW content from the API then I'll probably be done. Way too many posts are marked as NSFW which aren't or only mildly so and I don't want a filtered feed.

I also refuse to use the official mobile apps or the website as they both are horrible. Reddit will move to the same place in my life as Twitter where I only go there to read some linked content but I no longer really participate.

I wonder if third-party apps can transition to parsing the website instead of using the API. I think that's how NewPipe works with YouTube, at least.

That's correct, but it's not possible until mobile gatekeepers such as Apple/Google allow this practice.

F-Droid won't mind.

Every social network API has a growth phase and a mature phase

once the growth levels off , the API is a huge liability . Support , ops cost and security risk.

If i were reddit i would charge a lot or sunset

It’s not a charity

It’s a community. Reddit is nothing without its users, see also Twitter. Squeezing all profit out and alienating your users is a classic accountant move that never ends well.

Yep, they are going to Digg their own grave with this move.

The unfortunate thing is that screwjob conscious tech people aren't the majority of the internet anymore. Most people are consumers who have been groomed into believing being constantly restricted and annoyed is the acceptable norm, see Google's constant redesigns of Youtube.

People will tolerate this until the site becomes literally unusable, because no other site can provide it at scale.

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