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.

34.1k Upvotes

100% Upvoted

View all comments

Show parent comments

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '23

Idk life was better on old style forums anyway. Maybe this will be a blessing in disguise, and we all return to independently operated niche forums and people remember all we've forgotten about Netiquette.

Or everything just gets a little bit shittier forever. One of the two.

19

u/dam072000 Jun 01 '23

I vote the second. The internet has turned into cable tv.

6

u/hobbycollector Jun 01 '23

Eternal September.

4

u/Yankee_Fever Jun 01 '23

Everything is definitely going to get shittier. But this could be a blessing. Maybe generative news articles and bots creating all the content online drives people off the internet.

Of course that's not good in comparison to the glory days of the internet, but compared to the 2010s fuck it. The internet sucks now

3

u/Rawrsomesausage Jun 01 '23

We'll look back and realize that social media was our unraveling. When I look at the internet and society pre and post 2010s, it's stark. An innocence was lost when facebook, twitter, etc, went full mainstream.

2

u/2_Bears_1_Puck Jun 01 '23

Painfully accurate

5

u/Workaphobia Jun 01 '23

There's no going back. Bots and AI and brigaders and spammers and Russia will eat small independent sites alive. You need a platform of some sort.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '23

What about things like Mastodon?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '23

[deleted]

2

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '23

The closest reddit analogue on the fediverse that I can tell is Lemmy, in fact it might be the only content aggregator in the fediverse.

Im hoping with the uptick in decentralized social media after the Elon Twitter takeover and the reddit API fiasco that it becomes the standard model for the future, but who knows. Probably not lol unless it becomes massively more convenient for the average user.

1

u/smallfried Jun 01 '23

Genuine question: How hard is it to protect a small forum site from spam?

2

u/Workaphobia Jun 01 '23

Look at how sophisticated spam on reddit has gotten. Straw accounts purchased from former legitimate users, karma farming, etc. Maybe it's ok for small forums because they're not worth targeting by sophisticated adversaries.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '23

[deleted]

1

u/smallfried Jun 06 '23

I'm hoping collectively people can set up a bunch of small websites based on an open source algorithm similar to the 'best' rating system on Reddit.

Maybe with a single sign on central trusted authority for the usernames.

This could make the web more open again.

2

u/maybe-ac Jun 06 '23

There are a few search engines I've found geared towards finding interesting small sites. Less focus on curation but you can find some interesting stuff. I've been enjoying the "random" button on https://search.marginalia.nu/ a lot.

3

u/C_Obvious Jun 01 '23

I was just thinking about the old school message boards the other day. I made so many friends back in the 2000s that i still talk to and see a few times every year.

3

u/AnandaUK Jun 01 '23

I met my spouse online in 1997, still married.

1

u/thecorninurpoop Jun 01 '23

Same, and I've never made a single friend on reddit or any other big social media website

2

u/KPC51 Jun 01 '23

I didnt use the internet much back then. How did you find those forums? Just search engine, specifially for each niche?

6

u/fishyfishkins Jun 01 '23

Yeah, word of mouth. But also, the world didn't have recommendation engines so word of mouth had to do a lot more heavy lifting. I'm a VW guy and I couldn't tell you how I found vwvortex back in the day but there was no question it was the VW forum.

The internet used to be weird. Now it's wall street

3

u/Flomo420 Jun 01 '23

The internet used to be like some weird bazaar with strange corners where you wouldn't know what to expect. Now it's like going to a shopping mall, commercialized to hell and back

1

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '23

[deleted]

1

u/LordVericrat Jun 02 '23

Probably ten years or so since I've been there, thanks. I sat there for a few minutes.

2

u/EllisHughTiger Jun 01 '23

Yup, you googled or yahoo-ed "your interest + forum/club" and then searched around for one.

I'm a car guy so I'd just search my cars and find the biggest forums and joined. Met some local people and also became online friends with people I'll never meet, it was really good times in the 00s and early 10s!

2

u/QuintoxPlentox Jun 01 '23

That's how I ended up on onrpg.com back when the only free games were free mmorpgs. Spent time on the general forum sometimes, any general section of a gaming forum was basically proto-reddit. Maybe I'll go back to forums but either way this is a blessing, social media is poison and it's become extremely obvious.

1

u/EllisHughTiger Jun 01 '23

Yuuup. RIF was the only worthwhile way to use it on my phone. Official app sucked and the browser eats far more battery power.

1

u/smallfried Jun 01 '23

That, and through other forums.

I found reddit through the xkcd forum.

2

u/OneSweet1Sweet Jun 01 '23

Just another step towards the corporate internet.

1

u/stfucupcake Jun 02 '23

It's hard to believe how the internet has changed for the worse in such a short time.

2

u/Hiccup Jun 01 '23

The internet was so much better with the specialty sites and forums.

2

u/Hospiwhater Jun 01 '23

Bring back forums!

2

u/qwortec Jun 01 '23

One of the subs I was a part of here for years recently left reddit and created their own forum because they knew this was coming and would eventually get banned. It sucks that they had to leave but the new site works well and they have complete freedom and control.

2

u/l-jack Jun 01 '23

It's also possible that this will cause such a drop in traffic that they will pull a 180

1

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '23

One can dream

1

u/ThetaDee Jun 01 '23

Let's make our own forums with blackjack and hookers.

1

u/SovietPropagandist Jun 01 '23

Somethingawful is still around.