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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u/YEETMANdaMAN May 31 '23 edited Jul 01 '23

FUCK YOU GREEDY LITTLE PIG BOY u/SPEZ, I NUKED MY 7 YEAR COMMENT HISTORY JUST FOR YOU -- mass edited with redact.dev

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u/pgm_01 May 31 '23

Can be done either way. I used a seperate app that was a wrapper for Facebook years ago when my crappy phone didn't have enough storage for the official Facebook app and there was no light version.

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u/YEETMANdaMAN May 31 '23 edited Jul 01 '23

FUCK YOU GREEDY LITTLE PIG BOY u/SPEZ, I NUKED MY 7 YEAR COMMENT HISTORY JUST FOR YOU -- mass edited with redact.dev

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u/sohou Jun 01 '23

There are two major sides to the current app. The client (the way the information is displayed, how the user interacts with the app, etc) and the API (the source of the data, which is then displayed in the aforementioned client). Theoretically, you could use a web scrapper to collect the same data as the API would give you. The difference is that instead of collecting data from the API, you would collect data from another client (a free one, ie the official Reddit client).

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u/Top_Account3643 Jun 01 '23

It would most likely be collecting data from the web client

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u/kiradotee Jun 01 '23

Although it would very likely add huge delays to data processing. It's much quicker to access data through an API than web scraping.