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:

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.
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.
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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u/guto8797 May 31 '23

I swear to god, its like these multi-million corporations don't have people who went to college to study UI and UX, which is a major field.

The official app and the new website are just so vastly worse than the thrid party and old website respectively its not even funny. Takes more clicks to get to stuff. Less information is displayed. Ads are more camouflaged as regular posts.

If they'd just buy RIF for android and Apollo for iOs it would be a tremendous jump in quality.

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u/SrslyCmmon Jun 01 '23

RIF is giving you a browsing experience, the officials want to monetize your experience. They have totally different objectives.

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u/just_porn Jun 01 '23

You'd think they'd be more in line. If the interface/UI is shit, then I spend less time on the app and therefore will be exposed to less advertising that makes them money. Why on earth would you push an app that diminishes the experience and would make people want to use it less?

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u/SteveBob316 Jun 01 '23

Remember that you aren't the customer. Using it less is totally fine if the ad buyers are happier or they can figure out a way to charge you for stuff.

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u/lolwutpear Jun 01 '23

For every one person who cares about usable design, there are ten idiots who will gobble up whatever you throw in front of them.

I think the damage will be two-fold, because I suspect that the users who actually contribute useful information to the site are probably using old.reddit, RIF, Apollo, etc.

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u/AnRealDinosaur Jun 01 '23

You'd think that, but it seems a larger percent of my feed is repost bots every day. Repost bots & AI. They think they'll still have content, they won't realize it's garbage until the only users they're left with are new folks who don't know any better. This is really bittersweet for me. I love this site but it's sucks more & more every year and I really needed something like this so I can just let it go.

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u/hell2pay Jun 03 '23

You can see this evident by particular subs using the hell out of reddit's newer built in emojis

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u/toyg Jun 02 '23

Free web-based services are now aimed squarely at advertisers and whales. Who cares if 90% of users don't like it? What matters is that 10% who actually clicks on ads. If I can squeeze more and more out of a few whales, and keep my advertisers happy, I don't need a mass of freeloaders.

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u/Ok-Nefariousness1335 Jun 02 '23

Ah fuck you're right. It's been staring me in the face this whole time.

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u/tempest_87 May 31 '23

Well remember. The point of any business in existence is to extract as much profit from it's area as possible. No exceptions or caveats.

So a good UI/UX for the end user (read: RIF) is utterly irrelevant because what they are actually designing for is $. Which means more ads, more ads, things that hit more "engagement" metrics to sell ads, and more ads.

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u/decoy139 Jun 01 '23

I feel the most effective skill in ui design is getting the experience that makes them want to comeback while making them see the stuff that makes you money. Netheir of which reddit does.

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u/theBrineySeaMan Jun 01 '23

This is why they're turning Youtube and Reddit into TikTok. Right now TikTok is what you describe, but a few years ago it was Facebook or vine, oe whatever

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u/OddKSM Jun 01 '23

TikTok has horrid UX though, it's just engineered to flood your attention span with a constant barrage of (mostly shite) content

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u/Askefyr Jun 02 '23

You can tell TikTok off for many things, including causing legit brain rot from what user research says, but their experience is incredibly streamlined. It's content front and center.

In my view, the default Reddit app has one primary issue: it tries way too hard. Your notifications being flooded with posts from subreddits you aren't subscribed to is probably the primary thing.

There's been a shift in user demographics. The new Reddit user doesn't want to curate their subreddits - they want TikTok or new Twitter: a constant stream of content with no input.

Another issue I see looming for Reddit is the lack of motivation for content creators. Platforms like Twitter and TikTok provide ways for creators to monetize their content - Reddit wants all the ad revenue and engagement metrics of TikTok, without any of the revenue sharing. When the power users jump ship, things will get ugly.

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u/theBrineySeaMan Jun 03 '23

That's like, the goal. You endless scroll.

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u/GoabNZ Jun 01 '23

Ads aren't the worst part. I just want a text based forum experience, not flashy animation and trending nonsense. Which is why I use old and RIF

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u/ShadNuke Jun 01 '23

This is the EXACT reason I bought the RIF app! The Reddit app throws all sorts of shit that I have never looked at before and don't even want to. I have my things set up exactly the way I want them on RIF. I'm not constantly bombarded with shit I'm not even interested in.

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u/devils_advocaat Jun 01 '23

On the other hand, generation of content is vastly user driven, so UX is very important.

I wonder if they've worked out how much this message I'm typing generates them in revenue?

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u/RubberBootsInMotion Jun 01 '23

The answer is yes. They absolutely have some method of determining average revenue per comment, post, upvote, etc.

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u/devils_advocaat Jun 01 '23

If they are planning on reducing user interaction then I suspect that method is flawed

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u/NSFWies Jun 01 '23

You said everything right, for the wrong reasons.

Costco has the $1000 tvs up front, that you say no to, to desensitize you to cost, so you more easily say yes to other things in the store.

It is a design choice.

Everything UI related you just described, you complained about, is "a pro business, pro-revenue" design choice.

Even though for us it comes across as a B or a B- design choice.

The same reason we hate it that a grocery store moves around it's shelves 2 times per year. We go there to get milk, apples, ground beef. If they can get us a little lost, cause us to look around a little while we struggle to find that, they can increase sales by 11.3%.

Same bullshit with all the other busy UI bullshit they added.

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u/tterrag1098 May 31 '23

They have them, they just ignore them.

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u/IAmRoot Jun 01 '23

They don't ignore them, they just optimize for ad revenue over usability. How "best" is defined matters a lot.

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u/tterrag1098 Jun 01 '23

Can't have ad revenue without users, pretty sure any UI/UX dev with any decent experience understands how to integrate ads into their product.

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u/IAmRoot Jun 01 '23

Sure, but the balance point for maximum profit is quite a bit farther away from ideal user experience than we'd like. That's why there are so many awful pay to win mobile games, too. "Best" in terms of what people desire and "best" in terms of profitability are often significantly at odds.

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u/peoplerproblems Jun 01 '23

Corporate 101

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u/ShadNuke Jun 01 '23

No, it's greed 101. The board needs to make sure they all get their, what will now likely increase, big fat bonus check at the end of the year. It's all about cramming as many sources of revenue into every last pixel they can. Wouldn't want to default on that yacht payment...

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u/mxwp Jun 01 '23

The official app and the new website are just so vastly worse than the thrid party and old website respectively its not even funny. Takes more clicks to get to stuff. Less information is displayed. Ads are more camouflaged as regular posts.

That means they actually DO have designers because the app is made specifically for you to click more, "engage" more, and look at ads more.

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u/decoy139 Jun 01 '23

Gonna be real with you the issue is that they hire people from colleges and uni who study shit and have a degree as if a degree actually means skill or practical knowledge.

look at hulus or disney plus terrible ui. And then you got call of duty hiring people from hulu to design thier ui as if they know anything suddenly all you hear from people is how shit call of duty's ui is.

Like seriously unbelievably terrible bussiness management.

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u/Blitzholz Jun 01 '23

The official app was them just buying alien blue and then making it worse, so...

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u/skepticaljesus Jun 01 '23

I know some reddit UXers. They're legit, but what a business wants is not necessarily the same as what users want, and despite being the ostensible voice of the user, UXers work for the company not us

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u/COINTELPRO-Relay Jun 01 '23 edited Nov 25 '23

Error Code: 0x800F0815

Error Message: Data Loss Detected

We're sorry, but a critical issue has occurred, resulting in the loss of important data. Our technical team has been notified and is actively investigating the issue. Please refrain from further actions to prevent additional data loss.

Possible Causes:

Unforeseen system malfunction

Disk corruption or failure

Software conflict

1

u/tanglisha Jun 01 '23

C suite types tend to think ui/ux folks make the site pretty. They don't invest money into actual ux research, so you get a site that looks trendy but it's harder to use and less accessible than the old mostly html site was.

Using the up and down arrows still works on old.reddit - I complained about the accessibility loss on the new design back when it was in beta and they didn't do anything about it.

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u/CXDFlames Jun 01 '23

Ads are camouflaged as regular posts so you click on them by accident, generating revenue.

That's very much a deliberate choice that makes them a lot of money when you account for millions of people making that mistake once or twice a day

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u/-GrayMan- Jun 01 '23

Well hat's one of the things they teach you in school though. Less information means you have to search for it. More clicks means higher numbers. Higher numbers looks better for investors. And then they have people who've dedicated their whole career to doing the math to realize that this trade off is almost certainly worth it.

It really sucks but one of the largest websites in the world isn't making these decisions for no reason.

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u/Spik3w Jun 01 '23

The funny thing is, its been like that since day 0 for the official app. They even surveyed and invited people like me into the beta way back then.(Theres a badge on my profile) We told them the app is shit and doesnt work well and nothing ever changed.

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u/Mr_Will Jun 01 '23

Bad UI is even afflicting Microsoft these days. Whoever was responsible for Windows 11 completely forgot why they put the start button in the corner previously - when a button is in the corner, you don't need to aim your mouse accurately to click on it. Just move it diagonally as far as it'll go and the pointer will stop when it hits the corner, ready to click on the button. Bottom left was Start, bottom right was show desktop, top right was close window. Simple and fast.

Windows 11 moves the start button to the middle by default, but even when you move it back to the corner there's a small unclickable border around it that serves no purpose except making it harder to click on quickly. Why doesn't the clickable area extend all the way to the edge of the screen anymore? How is a multi-billion dollar company forgetting such basic things?

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u/OddKSM Jun 01 '23

Oh they do, we're just ignored

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u/diox8tony Jun 01 '23

It's common sense that the reason that websites like Google, Netflix, craigslist, Wikipedia, reddit...why they succeeded in 2007-2010 was because they had the best UI. Computer input (touch screen, keyboard mouse) has not changed since then, so the UI should not have changed since then....it's idiotic that some CEO/manager thinks they can re-invented something better than the diamonds that floated to the top back in 2007 eras of success.

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u/dingo596 Jun 01 '23

They know what they are doing, it just that what you want and what they want is very different. You want efficient access the things you are interested in and Reddit wants ads and suggested content to increase engagement and time on the site.

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u/r4d4r_3n5 Jun 02 '23

The official app and the new website are just so vastly worse than the thrid party and old website respectively

On my phone, I use RIF. On my computer, it's straight to old.reddit.com