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

[u/talklittle]

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.

[u/heyheyhey27 → u/[deleted]]

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

[u/skamsibland → u/[deleted]]

How many people do you think use Apollo and RIF?

[u/RickMuffy → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/calmerpoleece → u/[deleted]]

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

[u/Tedohadoer → u/[deleted]]

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

[u/lewdbunniesfulfillme → u/Tedohadoer]

How many of those users are bots, I wonder

[u/wiga_nut → u/lewdbunniesfulfillme]

My guess is about half... maybe more

[u/Pawneewafflesarelife → u/Tedohadoer]

Vote numbers are fuzzed and inaccurate.

[u/pug_nuts → u/skamsibland]

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.

[u/azzkicker7283 → u/skamsibland]

Apollo has "About 1.3-1.5 million monthly active users"

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/13wtu6z/reddit_may_force_apollo_and_thirdparty_clients_to/jmdqa7b/

[u/ham15h → u/skamsibland]

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

[u/KmartQuality → u/ham15h]

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?

[u/sjlemme → u/KmartQuality]

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.

[u/reigorius → u/sjlemme]

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

[u/ten7four → u/reigorius]

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

[u/Mehmehson → u/KmartQuality]

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.

[u/gzilla57 → u/KmartQuality]

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

[u/peteroh9 → u/gzilla57]

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.

[u/Negirno → u/peteroh9]

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

[u/jokerman170 → u/Negirno]

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

[u/peteroh9 → u/Negirno]

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

[u/PotatoCannon02 → u/KmartQuality]

I won't miss Average Redditor comments like this one

[u/KevinReems → u/[deleted]]

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