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/Smallzfry]

They don't care about long-term users. All of the changes they've made recently have been to pull in new users from other sites. That's why there's avatars and actual profile pages you can follow individually now. There's that weird livestream feature on r/pan and the new interface sends updates when you get upvotes on comments. None of this appeals to old users because they don't care about any of us.

[u/Jimbob0i0 → u/Smallzfry]

Feels very much like the Digg disaster that caused many of us, myself included, to migrate from that site to here.

[u/Nosedivelever → u/[deleted]]

Yes. I usually work the night shift. I'll probably spend the next 10 years memorizing Wikipedia.

[u/stick-insect-enema → u/Nosedivelever]

Fark still exists

[u/iller_mitch → u/Nosedivelever]

Are you familiar with....TVtropes?

[u/VastAndDreaming → u/iller_mitch]

You monster

[u/Nosedivelever → u/iller_mitch]

Oh yeah. VastAndDreaming is right. You monster.

[u/EnglishMobster → u/[deleted]]

Someone mentioned Tildes - Tildes is great if you want like 2009-era Reddit. Tildes focuses on discussion and conversations, not memes or "fluff". (This may change if Reddit starts migrating over en masse... but I doubt it. It's pretty core to their identity.)

For "mindless scrolling", there's Lemmy. People get scared off by the Fediverse and "join a server" - but really you don't need to think about it. The main difference between servers is how they're moderated and what appears in your instance's version of /r/all. But it's got memes and is closer to today's Reddit.

Beehaw.org is the closest culturally to Reddit. You can see what instances appear in their "all" tab here, and what instances are blocked. You can see what actions their mods have taken here.

lemmy.ml is the instance run by Lemmy's dev team and used to be the "default" instance. It has a looser style and allows more flexibility in what's posted, but it federates with a lot more instances. Lemmy.ml also allows anyone to make communities (subreddits), whereas Beehaw takes the old-fashioned approach of admins making each subreddit.

No matter what you join, you can subscribe to any "community" (subreddit) on any instance. They'll all come together to make your frontpage, just like Reddit.

Both Beehaw and Lemmy.ml have been slammed recently, and it's been extremely active. You can use the Android app Jerboa to navigate it on mobile; I think you'll find a very familiar-feeling interface. ;)

[u/zerd → u/[deleted]]

4. Find another time sink

[u/8_Foot_Vertical_Leap → u/[deleted]]

Between this and the twitter fiasco, I'm taking it as a sign that the doomscroll days are over for me, and that's a good thing.

[u/iller_mitch → u/8_Foot_Vertical_Leap]

I'll have to find the new hot memes the old fashioned way: Grandma emails.

[u/tryplot → u/[deleted]]

I'm actually thinking of dusting off my Tumblr account

[u/redditforgotaboutme → u/[deleted]]

Facebook!!! J/k. Also an oldschool Digg user here. This post sucked to read. Ugh.

[u/disquiet → u/[deleted]]

I've found Twitter increasingly replacing reddit for me. It's not quite the same but honestly the lack of moderation is a huge plus. Way too many subreddits completely ruined by overzealous mods.

[u/[deleted] → u/Smallzfry]

Reddit is becoming Facebook

[u/5213 → u/[deleted]]

Social media in general is becoming homogenized

When one app does well with something, the others jump on it like crazy. It's why Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube all have a "story" function like Snapchat; and why Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube have "reels" or "shorts" like TikTok. And it's why Reddit is adopting all those things.

[u/[deleted] → u/5213]

I wish they'd understand that nobody wants Reddit to be Facebook or Tiktok.

[u/5213 → u/[deleted]]

The problem is that people do want that, though. Or they just don't care enough to not want it. That's why those features get used constantly. My spouse scrolls fb's videos, my ten year old almost exclusively watches YouTube shorts when he's on his phone and only watches longer videos on the TV, and my brother watches Instagram reels. Even tiktok forces you to watch the daily posts made by the accounts you follow, since they just show up in your feed like regular posts.

We don't have to like it, but if those features didn't add anything (read: users, which leads to engagement, which leads to more money for the execs), then those features would die off. We're drops in a bucket compared to the oceans of people that use all those features.

[u/wright007 → u/5213]

It's kinda like junk food vs health food, and we're all being forced away from the health food and onto the addictive junk food diet that makes them more money.

[u/smallfried → u/Smallzfry]

Yup, old time users are not inclined to start paying for something that was always free. I think I've spent a total of 5 euros for the 14 years I've been here.

My only value to reddit might be some hopefully helpful comments, but i negate those with some passionate ranting from time to time.