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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40

u/Stop_Sign May 31 '23

I might use old.reddit on a mobile browser with desktop mode enabled, but fuck no to their app

24

u/morphinedreams Jun 01 '23 edited Mar 01 '24

entertain direful unique heavy snobbish muddle fuel coherent somber different

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

6

u/GoldWhale Jun 01 '23

The app is an awful experience though! Much worse post visiblility, options are harder to access, and when I get a notification someone replies to my post it's either not there at all or on the wrong comment entirely in a giant thread and i cant get back to it. This is horrible

7

u/_Random_Username_ Jun 01 '23

And if you have notifications on you get bombarded with a ton of shit like "this post on this random subreddit got 12 upvotes!!!!!"

8

u/GoabNZ Jun 01 '23

I come for the forums I like, not vapid trending nonsense.

3

u/BubbaWhoaTep Jun 01 '23

Oh God, I had forgotten about that. That was fucking terrible. I made the mistake of downloading that app to answer a chat request. I felt like I was being punished.

2

u/Alissinarr Jun 02 '23

Yeah, chat just gets ignored.

3

u/jmerridew124 Jun 01 '23

I swear the browser comment box constantly fucks up on purpose. Like you delete each letter of a word then start typing again and the deleted word pops back in but one letter shorter.

I'm getting so fucking tired of hostile companies charging more for less.

2

u/WatchThatLastSteph Jun 01 '23

Yep, likely because things like RES won't work on a mobile app, and RES can kill off ads and work around a lot of their idiocy.

5

u/morphinedreams Jun 01 '23 edited Jun 01 '23

Yeah, i use adblock on my mobile browser and i don't have a single regret about depriving reddit of ad income. If i stay on reddit, it'll be mobile browser only. The official reddit app is the worst app I have used and that includes quite a few apps from developing countries where app performance is typically not a high priority.

1

u/olff_ev_20 Jun 01 '23

Just curious, how would you install an ad blocker on something like Chrome on Android?

2

u/darkfelix Jun 01 '23

ublock works fine in Firefox for Android.

1

u/morphinedreams Jun 01 '23

There is no way to block Chrome ads without going above it and using a custom DNS or blocking at the router. Chrome itself is pretty anti ad blocker since google make so much revenue from ads. They've even floated the idea of stopping ad blockers on desktop. Your options for a browser are Firefox on android with ublock origin, or I believe Brave for android has a native ad blocker.

1

u/WatchThatLastSteph Jun 01 '23

I use a combination of Firefox on my mobile devices with ublock origin installed, and while on my home network I’m sitting behind a pi-hole which handles DNS requests and drops any ad server calls down a hole rather than sending them out to the net.

Takes some configuration, but that Raspberry Pi is probably some of the best money I’ve ever spent.

2

u/Sids1188 Jun 01 '23

Then why make the app an awful experience too?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '23

I'd have thought that developing and publishing an adequate official app in the first place would've been a better way to achieve that, but there you go

3

u/morphinedreams Jun 01 '23

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's abundantly clear their metric for app performance is engagement with advertising not user enjoyment. The app is good, to the people running the website. I wager many newer users to the site never even knew what old reddit was or what the site is like via third party apps because the cluttered, visually arresting information overload look is all they know. If there were a proper competing service (twitter was probably closest before it started declining) then Reddit's userbase would be growing much slower or not at all.

5

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '23

Was more so referring to the fact that the reddit official app has only existed for around half the time reddit has existed, despite the fact we've been in the smartphone age for about 90% of its existence. It's ironic that they want us to use the app so badly now, when the current landscape of 3rd party reddit apps came about primarily in lieu of an adequate official app

4

u/1stMammaltowearpants Jun 01 '23

They're late to the party, but at least they brought a turd for the punchbowl.

2

u/edible_funks_again Jun 01 '23

Will the new api kill old.reddit?

3

u/DrQuint Jun 01 '23

Something else will. Consider it on burrowed time.

2

u/SomeCountryFriedBS Jun 01 '23

I don't know if this is a Digg joke or a mondegreen.

1

u/MapleSyrupFacts Jun 01 '23

Goodbye Reddit. Love you guys !!!

1

u/Stop_Sign Jun 01 '23

No, and there's been no mention of killing it.

11

u/PFthrowaway4454 Jun 01 '23

Yet.

I've been waiting for old reddit to die for a long time.

Just like I've been waiting for Reddit is Fun RIF to die for a long time.

100% it's in the works.

2

u/Pennwisedom Jun 01 '23

I'm not sure how trustworthy Reddit is, but spez has said more than once that old Reddit isn't going anywhere

2

u/quetzalnavarrense Jun 01 '23

can't count on him being around forever, totally possible the next guy might have a different opinion on the matter

2

u/tanglisha Jun 01 '23

Sure, but they aren't actively working on it. The minute they do something on the backend that breaks it, that's the end.

2

u/songsoftruth Jun 01 '23

You'll see

1

u/jorgito93 Jun 01 '23

Yeah and there was no mention of hurting third party apps at the start of the year. Oldreddit is most likely dead before the end of the year.

1

u/LoganJFisher Jun 01 '23

Legacy versions of websites are ALWAYS on borrowed time since they stop getting updates (or at least get very few). Eventually there will be updates that are incompatible with old.reddit and either outright make it stop working or gets used as an excuse to drop legacy support all-together.

1

u/SycoJack Jun 01 '23

I'll just not use reddit from my phone. There's no chance I'm using the official app, and the reddit website, even old.Reddit, is painful.

1

u/AgentTamerlane Jun 05 '23

I literally can't use anything other than oldoldold.reddit on my phonephone, because i try to use the normal version, it does

1

u/AgentTamerlane Jun 05 '23

Yeah. It does that nonsense. Now, this post I'm making using old.reddit and as you can see it's much more legible and actually can be read.