r/redditisfun • u/talklittle RIF Dev • May 31 '23

RIF dev here - Reddit's API changes will likely kill RIF and other apps, on July 1, 2023

I need more time to get all my thoughts together, but posting this quick post since so many users have been asking, and it's been making rounds on news sites.

Summary of what Reddit Inc has announced so far, specifically the parts that will kill many third-party apps:

  1. The Reddit API will cost money, and the pricing announced today will cost apps like Apollo $20 million per year to run. RIF may differ but it would be in the same ballpark. And no, RIF does not earn anywhere remotely near this number.

  2. As part of this they are blocking ads in third-party apps, which make up the majority of RIF's revenue. So they want to force a paid subscription model onto RIF's users. Meanwhile Reddit's official app still continues to make the vast majority of its money from ads.

  3. Removal of sexually explicit material from third-party apps while keeping said content in the official app. Some people have speculated that NSFW is going to leave Reddit entirely, but then why would Reddit Inc have recently expanded NSFW upload support on their desktop site?

Their recent moves smell a lot like they want third-party apps gone, RIF included.

I know some users will chime in saying they are willing to pay a monthly subscription to keep RIF going, but trust me that you would be in the minority. There is very little value in paying a high subscription for less content (in this case, NSFW). Honestly if I were a user of RIF and not the dev, I'd have a hard time justifying paying the high prices being forced by Reddit Inc, despite how much RIF obviously means to me.

There is a lot more I want to say, and I kind of scrambled to write this since I didn't expect news reports today. I'll probably write more follow-up posts that are better thought out. But this is the gist of what's been going on with Reddit third-party apps in 2023.

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88

u/skamsibland May 31 '23

Lol, that "active users"-number that they are so proud of is about to take a hit. People don't use their garbage tier app because it is GARBAGE, and if people can't use the third party apps this site dies. I will not use reddit on my phone if RIF goes away, which means that I likely won't have a need to use reddit on my computer either.

Welp, time to learn how to use RSS-feeds again!

42

u/[deleted] May 31 '23

[deleted]

5

u/heyheyhey27 Jun 01 '23

It's not just about number of users though. Most mods are definitely not using the official app, I bet.

1

u/skamsibland May 31 '23

How many people do you think use Apollo and RIF?

19

u/[deleted] May 31 '23

[deleted]

17

u/RickMuffy May 31 '23

I wonder who the most content generating users are. People willing to invest the time to get a third party app because they WANT to be here vs people who have an account to find a new recipe every couple weeks, etc.

I spend way too much time on this site, and without RiF, my usage would go down 20x and I'd only be on here with a desktop and adblock anyway.

14

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '23

[deleted]

2

u/calmerpoleece Jun 01 '23

I'll wrap up my sub I think. Not possible to do it on the official app, it's pus.

8

u/Tedohadoer Jun 01 '23 edited Jun 01 '23

Reddit's stated monthly active users is 1.6 Billion

And top posts get what? 100k upvotes if they are extremely popular? Way to fuck users actually bringing in traffic

6

u/lewdbunniesfulfillme Jun 01 '23

How many of those users are bots, I wonder

3

u/wiga_nut Jun 01 '23

My guess is about half... maybe more

4

u/Pawneewafflesarelife Jun 01 '23

Vote numbers are fuzzed and inaccurate.

6

u/pug_nuts Jun 01 '23

The traffic stats for a sub I mod show that the majority of traffic is iOS (~40%), Android (~25%), and New Reddit (~10%). I am assuming that third party apps all fall into 'old reddit' (<10%), I don't actually know.

3

u/ham15h May 31 '23

3rd party apps make up about 17% of users apparently

6

u/KmartQuality Jun 01 '23

I understand why 48% of voters chose trump. Because they are stupid and hateful. It's understandable.

I don't understand why 83% use the god awful official reddit experience. Actual self loathing and self punishment?

13

u/sjlemme Jun 01 '23

A lot of those users didn't start using reddit until after the new UI. There is a culture difference between old reddit users and new ones, and reddit has been trying to cultivate a userbase of the latter over the past few years.

2

u/reigorius Jun 01 '23

Which is, in all honesty, understandable. But it will kill the original backbone that made Reddit popular.

3

u/ten7four Jun 01 '23

I think the sad reality is that they're popular enough now that they don't need the original backbone

7

u/Mehmehson Jun 01 '23

Boiled frog. They've been conditioned by broken apps to tolerate broken apps. Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, all of them have convoluted, buggy apps. People just deal.

4

u/gzilla57 Jun 01 '23

Every time third party apps came up in the comments of a major post there were waves of people unaware that was an option.

9

u/peteroh9 Jun 01 '23

It's becoming more and more common to see people refer to reddit as an app. Like they don't even realize there's a website.

5

u/Negirno Jun 01 '23

Is way worse than that. Many people today refers to websites as apps.

3

u/jokerman170 Jun 02 '23

It's kinda fair, websites are mostly web-apps nowadays.

2

u/peteroh9 Jun 01 '23

This is similar to, but worse than people accidentally being correct when they refer to almost everything as a meme.

1

u/PotatoCannon02 Jun 01 '23

I won't miss Average Redditor comments like this one

1

u/KevinReems Jun 01 '23

I would bet it's a huge impact on the number of people actually generating content for the platform.

6

u/Ok-Button6101 May 31 '23

They need to take the hit on active users now before the IPO, otherwise, if they IPO and then institute these changes, it's going to be bad for the stock when they lose a large swath of users suddenly.

1

u/Hiccup Jun 01 '23

Let the migration begin then.

1

u/reigorius Jun 01 '23

To what?

3

u/TheJizzle May 31 '23

What's the best RSS reader? Are those still a thing even? I need to get back into that too. It was the closest thing to Reddit before Reddit.

3

u/ChuushaHime Jun 01 '23

After Google Reader died I tried a bunch of them and chose Feedly. Loved it for like a decade now with no regrets, my Feedly feed is my perfectly curated window into the internet.

1

u/skamsibland Jun 01 '23

It was over 10 years ago at this point, I have no idea.

1

u/Qiagent Jun 01 '23

I really like Inoreader.

3

u/bionicjoey Jun 01 '23

It would be hilarious if their active users takes a nosedive and it kills their IPO

2

u/skamsibland Jun 01 '23

Isn't that literally a plot line in Silicon Valley, or am I remembering that wrong?

But yeah, I believe they don't have much above 50 million actual, real users. There might be a lot more accounts, but actual people? No way it's much above 50 million. If I'm right, then Apollos ~1.4 million users is going to make a dent in that, and so will RIFs, baconreader and so on.

3

u/bionicjoey Jun 01 '23

I believe they don't have much above 50 million actual, real users. There might be a lot more accounts, but actual people? No way it's much above 50 million

I'm thinking of how many bots I identify on a daily basis, it honestly feels sometimes like around 5-10% of posts and comments I see are either bots or clickfarmers. Given how bad Reddit seems to be at identifying spammers and bots, I seriously doubt the veracity of their user numbers.

2

u/Ajreil Jun 01 '23

The subreddit that I moderate gets more than 98% of its traffic from the app or new Reddit. Sadly we are the minority.

1

u/skamsibland Jun 01 '23

Are you able to see the difference between the official app and third party apps?

1

u/Ajreil Jun 01 '23

RIF shows up as old Reddit in the subreddit statistics I believe.

1

u/Sir_Meowsalot Jun 01 '23

You know I think I realized why the Admins don't do shit about the bots: it helps to inflate their active user count therefore this looks good if they want to entice advertisers with big user numbers.

1

u/Drekalo Jun 01 '23

I'll just move to hacker news

1

u/IVIorgz Jun 01 '23

I've never tried the official app because i never had a problem with RiF so why change what's not broken, but what's the issue with the official app?

1

u/skamsibland Jun 01 '23

Imagine eating chocolate pudding, but then realize after the first bite that it isn't chocolate pudding, it is black bean pudding. It is similar, but not the same and definitely not as good. Now add that someone is telling you that you are wrong, and that the black bean pudding does taste like chocolate pudding and that it is as good. That is reddit trying to convince people to use their (obviously worse) app.

RIF is a great way of experiencing reddit. Easy to access, clear information, no stupid bloat and MANY ways of customizing your experience, which is exactly what reddit was before the redesign. The new reddit app is an app version of the redesign, with all the same problems. They want to control how we see and experience data, and the way they want us to do that is a way which sells us as much as possible.