Relay for Reddit app stays as one of the few remaining third party apps for Reddit and they are forced to go to a subscription model but the cost of such a subscription is related to how many API calls per user are done.
This screenshot was taken from the yet working patched Sync for Reddit app.
Your users shouldn’t even really need to know what an API is, much less be rationing requests like it’s early SMS plans or something, geez.
And mind you, the only reason early SMS messages were so expensive was… because they could. The SMS protocol literally piggybacks on existing handshake datastreams already present in the GSM standard and only requires adding a small message handling server to a carrier’s network. But because it was new and a novelty, and little to no competition existed in the cellular space, cellular companies (being the money grabbing corporations they are) would charge exorbitant rates for this add-on service that cost almost nothing to provide. Which is effectively reddit’s stance too… fuck you, pay me.
That’s messed up. I wouldn’t put up with that shit. It’s like counting digital calories
The message should shift from pressuring Reddit to change to pressuring users to leave. Reddit is fully aware of the consequences of their actions and won’t do a 180 and start acting in the best interests of their users again. They’re in too deep.
Users of Reddit should accept the fact that no social media is worth micro-managing every button press in fear of incurring a cost of any kind. I’m sure Relay’s devs are doing the best they can, but the users need to take a look in the mirror and ask themselves if they’re going to let a tech company push them around like this for the sake of internet content.
Their bullshit AMA about third party apps and general “it’ll all blow over in a week” attitude should’ve made that apparent to more people. It’s why I left as soon as RIF stopped working, and why many of us are here now.
I’ll never give that shitshow of a website any traffic again
Yeah, I was planning on doing the same, leaving when RIF shut down. Though I came to the same realization that you did, and just left a week early, because it felt wrong to delay the inevitable and sink time into a platform I knew I wouldn’t be using in a week’s time. I’m glad that a lot of people came to the same realization as well, and hopefully a lot more Reddit users do too. Social media addiction is a bitch.
It was obvious right from the outset that Reddit’s assertions as to the costs and motivations were not remotely genuine.
There was a comment early on to the effect of “it should only cost about $1 per user per month”. Were that in fact the case, they could easily have added their own payment method to collect said dollar directly from users, allowing API / 3rd-party client access on a per-account basis. No weird limitations, just the experience you were already enjoying for a nominal fee.
The whole principle was from the outset pants-on-head idiotic, and it’s clear the few times I have been to Reddit since that both the quality and quantity of content has noticeably reduced. Who could have predicted that the “freeloading” 3rd-party app users were the ones providing the bulk of the content (y’know, that content that, for all purposes, is Reddit, and they get to sell ads against).
Reddit’s only allowing a handful of these apps to limp along for now to keep up the fiction that they didn’t kill 3rd-party apps altogether. These devs are doing all this work to eke out revenue models based on hypothetical costs that can change any time Reddit updates their APIs, changes API call pricing, or updates the site’s functionality. Reddit’s management was completely unrepentant about lying to and about 3rd-party devs just a couple of months ago, and all of the risk around underestimating API costs are on these devs. I hope that none of them get billed or sued into bankruptcy over this.
I am still astonished that there are people over there still dealing with this shit.
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