213
votes
Reddit is going to enforce rate-limiting the API's free tier as well as charging for higher rates
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- API Update: Enterprise Level Tier for Large Scale Applications
- Published
- May 31 2023
- Word count
- 530 words
Apollo dev's conversation with Reddit devs and thoughts: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/
I just bought Apollo Ultra Lifetime during the Easter sale which was days before reddit first announced vague plans to start charging for API access. I figured it was a move to price out third party apps and today pretty much confirms it.
It sucks I've spent $45 on an app that's probably going to be forced to shutter but the death of 3rd party apps won't magically make me want to use the official app. If anything, I'll have reason to resent it beyond just being a terrible app. I'm primarily a desktop user (old reddit) anyway. So to put it crudely, I'll just browse tildes or news sites when I'm sitting on the can instead.
Having said that, I imagine it's only a matter of months until old reddit is shut down too and when that happens I'll move on completely. I quit Facebook and Instagram cold turkey three years ago without a second thought, I can quit reddit too. Just because I like the site and it's been part of my daily routine for years doesn't mean I'm gonna stick around when it becomes too inconvenient to use.
I urge you to talk to Christian, an eminently reasonable person, about your purchase. There may be something they can do.
Yeah, I thought about doing that as soon as reddit announced upcoming changes to the API because as I said above, it was literally days after I paid for it, and I figured reddit was about to slow-walk killing off third party apps.
But ultimately I'm not really concerned about the money. It's the most I've ever paid for a mobile app but reddit's got him bent over a barrel and I've already received enough quality use over the years to consider getting screwed on my Ultra Lifetime purchase as a "very generous tip" for his dev work. It'd be a different story if it were something he could control.
There are going to be so many unforeseen side effects from this move, I'm almost looking forward to watching the show.
It'd be a lot better one if the users still controlled the frontpage though.
Reddit keeps trying to lose me, but I somehow hang on.
These draconian prices will be the end of BaconReader, an app I paid for and the only way I open Reddit on mobile.
I wonder: for whom will those prices be worth it? Is it just an attempt to end third parties?
Also, there will be no adult content on third party apps. Now that change I fully support, as I didn't even know Reddit had such awful, awful things.
Not only have they banned NSFW on third party apps, Imgur announced they were banning and removing it all, which will effectively nuke huge portions of it across reddit and the web (upside/downside depends on your views). Reddit then recently announced that they're going to officially allow (it's been possible through loopholes for awhile) NSFW content uploaded to reddit's image hosting (static images only, no gifs/videos yet).
My opinion/prediction remains the same.
At this point, I just hope we look back on all this and feel grateful that it lit a fire under someone's ass to make the next paradigm for a forum community. I don't know how long it will take, but I trust it'll happen.
So I guess I’ll be the one to ask… is there porn on here yet? I need a new… outlet
No, and there won't be.
That makes me a sad panda
As a mod of NSFW subs over on reddit, it's fine.
This isn't meant to be a reddit replacement and porn, with very few exceptions, is extremely low effort content that doesn't have a place here. There's plenty of porn to be found on the internet elsewhere.
Porn introduces way too many legal and ethical issues for a smaller site like Tildes. It’s also another low-effort, low-quality (in the context of a discussion-based website) type of content (I remember Deimos calling that, memes, and images “fluff”) that ends up making the website worse in the long run.
Yeah, thats unfortunate. User curation of content was one of the largest benefits of the aggregation scheme. News, adult content filtering, and knowledge sharing were my 3 top uses for Reddit.
Telegram > Reddit for NSFW content.
It feels much harder to discover than it was on Reddit, though.
As much as I hate it, I guess I'll be keeping Twitter around for NSFW content since they seem to be the last of the majors that are allowing it. Even then, most of the Twitter porn I've found, I first found on NSFW Reddit.
I know it's not for every site, but I'm getting tired of porn getting so aggressively siloed off to its own sites, as it's easier for the anti porn crusaders to go after those than something the size of Twitter or Reddit. Plus, I think having it in a section of a mainstream social site ironically provides better protection against illegal content, as there's the pressure to keep advertisers on the SFW side of these sites (see the r/jailbait debacle years ago).
I don't want or expect Tildes to ever allow it, it would just be nice to have a site where I can get both adult and regular content in one place.
Honestly I was able to discover some pretty niche stuff without any real effort and the browsing experience for video / galleries is better on Telegram than Reddit, even with Apollo, could ever match.
Plus there’s no sad / cringe comments to wade through lol.
If you find even one or two good channels that repost content, click “upstream” and you’ll quickly find what you need.
Really? Tell me more…
Reddit used to have much worse things. I remember them cleaning up stuff like r/jailbait, other various subreddits with underage pornography, and quarantining other things as well. Honestly it was shocking when I found out they even had that. This was around 10 years ago, though.
Wow, that was ten years ago... time flies.
Worth noting that reddit only had a problem with subs like /r/jailbait after widespread media attention. They were perfectly fine with it being one of the top viewed subs and bringing in boatloads of traffic by being the number one result in google searches. Had no problem with the creator of the sub having a direct line to the admins for years, building the mod tools and guides still used to this day, and made awards specifically for him (both physical and site badges). Had no problem with him running dozens of the top SFW subs either.
Without those subs they'd rather people forget, reddit simply wouldn't exist today.
I should probably have used a sarcasm tag, I have this thing where I think a sarcasm tag is contrary to the very concept of sarcasm.
But I digress.
I am very aware of all of Reddit's obscenities, I'm afraid :P
I'm with you on sarcasm tags. I understand why people feel the need to be unambiguous with sarcasm in a purely text-based medium, but if your sarcasm can't be detected, then it probably wasn't constructed well enough to be worth it.
My policy is that sarcasm simply cannot work in online forums. Sometimes I go against my own advice :P
However, sarcasm can work in a text medium provided that the author have greater control of the context where it is used. Such is the case of literature, for example. A work of fiction produces its own context.
I think we're butting up against the difference between sarcasm and satire. An example of this difference would be Jonathan Swift, particularly in his "A Modest Proposal," which is a satirical piece that advocates for the literal cannibalization of Irish infants by English colonialists and the wealthy landowners in Ireland that were propped up by them. He is fairly explicit in his argument that his thesis is really the literal logical extension of the figurative cannibalization of colonialism, but he never really breaks kayfabe, so to speak.
A modern Internet arguer might make the same sort of comparison, but we're much more likely to employ sarcasm rather than satire, though the distinction isn't an easy one to objectively delineate. Part of it may be that satire is inherently metaphorical, whereas sarcasm is generally more straightforwardly ironic. A satirist will often employ a logical structure similar to the logic of the social reality it is actually referencing, in the hope that the obvious absurdity of the satirical logic will shine light on the absurdity of the referent.
Part of it may lie in intent, as it seems to me that sarcasm is more likely to be mean-spirited rather than pedagogic. A satirist is usually intending to inform and elicit contemplation of an unexamined social reality, while someone employing sarcasm is more likely to simply be mocking the person with whom they're communicating.
As for the use of flags, in both cases direct signposting is nearly pointless. Satire is usually robbed of its efficacy by direct signposting, while if you need to signpost sarcasm, you're simply not doing a very good job of it.
I think lou is right on this one. Getting sarcasm to work in a semi/fully anonymous forum doesn't work very well because so much of what makes sarcasm work is context outside of the specific message.
For example, if Alice and Bob are good friends and good naturedly poke fun at each other, then Alice saying something hyperbolic to Bob is fine. Everyone involved understands the intent even if it isn't explicit in the language used. If Eve overhears their conversation, she might feel a need to step in to defend against Alice's hyperbolic speech because she doesn't have the context that this is a thing that happens regulalrly and is enjoyed by both Alice and Bob.
Semi/fully anonymous forums are like being Eve, but on steroids. There's no way to know exactly who your audience is (since it's public), and there's a lot less fidelity in the feedback received (because text is less dense than an in person conversation). This leads to it being better to avoid sarcasm if possible since it's easy to misinterpret as malice.
I got hooked on Reddit over 10 years ago when the discussion quality was higher and it was a great way to discover things. Now though, it kinda feels like the magic is gone and I mostly use it as a time sink.
There are a few niche communities I might hang on to, but overall this has me thinking I need to find better ways to spend time, as well as better places to find news/new content.
Not even necessarily that for me, rather with the lack of useful discussion as a result of the sheer volume of comments and links blasting any but the smallest of subreddits, it's really more of a user-generated RSS feed, not a slashdot-style link discussion site.
Where are the better places to get news? It's basically the last aspect of Reddit I'm not sure how to replace. I specifically value the commentary on each story, since knowledgeable members of the related communities tend to provide insight.
Are you in the U.S.?
My general advice is:
Notice how most of those are reading, not listening or watching. It's a lot easier to sensationalize audiovisual content. That's not to say it's impossible to sensationalize written works, but the worst stuff is likely to have a video associated with it. Avoid cable news at all costs.
I mainly only post in the canadian coins, coin roll hunting and metal detecting subreddits, and its low effort images of what I found, reddit dosnt give a good way to post a gallery and a text comment, I have to post the gallery and then make a comment in the thread and hope it gets upvoted to the top
I'll keep using on my Desktop as long as old Reddit is there. By the look of it it may be next on the chopping block.
On mobile though, Reddit is dead to me.
That's where I'm at. I spend 40 hours/week in front of a desktop, and that's plenty of time to check in on old reddit as long as it still exists.
Best guess is that same as Twitter, with the advent of AI and the use of gigantic language engines, people realized that internet conversation is valuable, and so decided they could finally make money off their websites. End of third party clients is acceptable loss/more eyes on the official clients.
I believe it's the other way around. They've been eyeing up ways to kill off third-party apps for a long time. Their first approach was to make all of those new "features" exclusive to the official apps as a way to drive people to use them... except nobody really cares about another chat platform, or rspan, or any of the other things they tried.
They've been working on a new developer platform for over a year, and I expected them to use the completion of that to officially depreciate the API. But I think they just saw this as an opening to get the end result they wanted in the first place.
If you don't want adult content, don't go to the places with adult content. I can't imagine it's existence hampered your experience if you didn't know it was there.
While I do wish there was more control over dangerous or illegal adult content, Reddit has been a catalyst for generating quality, consentual, and especially niche adult content by significantly lowering the barrier to entry and amplifying distribution to specifically interested users, similar to the benefits it provided to non-adult content.
Adult content has a way of crowding other things out. I’m not categorically against it, but I’d prefer to occasionally see some titties and have it be a nice surprise rather than just being a regular fixture on the feed. But when a feed has adult content, it has a way of accruing a lot of upvotes and that stuff ends up outcompeting most other higher value stuff.
Really it’s the same dynamic as memes, but it has the additional stress point of showing immoral or illegal content.
Thats a very fair point. I've been lucky enough to not encounter adult content when I wasn't explicitly seeking it, and the ability to strictly compartmentalize it was one of the aspects I valued. I wouldn't want to see it stifle other content.
Honestly would love the idea of using Apollo for Tildes. I only browse Reddit on mobile and loathe to use it on desktop. Christian’s front end platform is a goldmine for a Reddit alternative to explode onto the scene right now.
A lot of third party clients for Twitter pivoted to Mastodon after that exodus. Not sure if there is a hot equivalent to Reddit that a lot of these devs can pivot to. (Lemmy?) Our own @talklittle has a project going for a mobile application for Tildes though, maybe it might have some competition in the future?
Im thinking instead of spending 24/7 on reddit, to divy up my time amongst a few sites, like tildes, mastodon so far
I'm already a long time member of shroomery, but its really gone downhill since covid, with a split of the left and right
10 years ago shroomery had more traffic too, now no one posts in the pub, all the traffic is focused on the mushroom cultivation forum
I just bought a supporter account on shroo.wry so I could create my own subforum, Treasure Hunting, Im going to try and steal traffic from a few subreddits like coin roll hunting, metal detecting and magnet fishing
I can't even imagine the level of frustration the 3rd party apps developers must be going through, it's some Google-Customer-Support level of apathy from the Reddit executive team.
This is just really unfortunate; I don't want to leave Reddit, but their first-party experience (and their modding experience, especially) is just. so. bad.
So I'm here, now, I guess. We'll see if it sticks. Hopefully it does, because there don't seem to be any other good alternatives.
I say this as a long-time Tilderino, and someone who loves this site: this isn't a viable Reddit alternative as Reddit exists right now. It doesn't scratch the same itches that Reddit does; there are almost zero low effort comments, and almost everything is set to encourage people to take part in good faith and in relative depth. Reddit is broad but shallow; Tildes is narrow but deep. It's much more in line with how Reddit was years ago.
These are all serious pros for me, honestly. Yeah, some of those low-effort comments are genuinely hilarious, but 99.9% of those comments are just noise.
Part of this is nostalgia for the more tight-nit forum days where everyone knew everyone (still miss ~2003 GameFAQs), but I'm perfectly content with a slower platform with more insightful discussion. God knows I'll have more free time.
I left Facebook for nothing, and my mental health improved overall, among other things, so I'm hoping decreased exposure to Reddit will accomplish the same thing.
I think of them all, generally, as pros as well, but there are a few associated things to think about, and each of these are also more complicated than just pro or con; they're not good all the time, they're not bad all the time, they just are.
There is generally not as much site content. This means that you can consume everything in a single visit and not miss out on much. This means you don't really veg out and doomscroll, but it also means that you can actually just run out of current content.
Some type of content are just not available at all. There are some communities that I enjoy that don't have an analog here and generally cannot exist because of the nature of this site. An example might be r/BestOfRedditorUpdates where you can read a fair amount of creative writing exercises, but also a fair amount of actually interesting things that happen to people. Another example: there's no videos of, say, cats doing cute things. For me that's great - I downvote every cat picture I see on reddit - but other people might love that sort of thing. So some content just will not ever exist here and if it's your particular jam, then you have to fill that somewhere else.
I don't laugh that often here. That's not to say that there aren't funny people or funny comments ever, but that most days do not trend towards humour. I like to laugh, and one might guess from looking through my comment history that I was a seriously minded person, but I laugh all the time about almost everything. At an oncology appointment with my dad the other day, we were talking about tools, and he was asking me why I didn't have a specific tool, and I said, "Well, all I really have to do to get one is... wait." And it took him a sec, but there was a lot of laughter, despite the relative seriousness. But on Tildes, I usually try not to crack jokes, and I think most people are the same, though @NoblePath legitimately made me laugh out loud in the introductions thread a little while ago, which was notable enough that I still remember it.
This is generally controversial, but I find that the tech content here is relatively lacking; numerous other people find it overwhelming. This is related to the breadth of content available, but I go to other locations for most tech news.
If any of these are things that you value, then you probably want to look at also dipping a toe in other communities, and I think that doing so is important, because one of the things that has made Reddit suck is the idea that it can be for everyone. When you make your site for everyone, it's for nobody.
I live for these kinds of shout outs. Best to your family. Hope your dad gets through with grace and ease.
So I haven't dug too far into the thesis of the site yet, but is there anything saying there can't be these things? Does anything expressly prohibit a ~cats beyond a lack of current demand?
The greatest strength of Reddit (and what makes it so hard to replace) is the capacity for any random user to simply start their own community about whatever topic they want, but I don't see why there's any inherent reason Tildes can't do that, beyond simply not being implemented.
Yes, the documents on the Philosophy of Tildes are probably a good place to look into what this site is more about. I think that I actually summed it up pretty well with "narrow but deep" and if you add in "don't be a jerk" then that's a pretty effective tl;dr but generally people will not have the ability to make groups, and ~cats will probably never be a thing here.
I guess I should rephrase the question - I get from a conceptual standpoint that they aren't looking for an image/meme aggregation service and that an image-focused ~aww isn't going to happen, but as far as ~cats as a topic of interest, or any other other more narrowly-focused subgroup-of-a-group — ~paleontology or ~autorepair or ~cooking — I don't see anything in that link that precludes the existence of those communities?
Or did you mean specifically that randos won't be able to create new communities and they have to be curated by site admins?
Edit: yes, the latter: https://docs.tildes.net/instructions/tildes-groups#creating-groups
Not who you asked, but I think this comment of mine from below about groups should address most of what you're asking:
And as far as cat topics specifically are concerned, there isn't likely to be a photo/picture/meme focused group anywhere here on Tildes, let alone one dedicated solely to cats, but there are topics about cats, and those will continue to be allowed. See: https://tildes.net/?tag=cats :)
Yeah, I caught that after I posted and edited the link in at the bottom. I hadn't realized tags were a thing in that context, and I think that's a system that makes sense.
Potential Tildes inside joke ahead:
I mean... are we 100% sure that's true Polkaroo?
One thing you'll notice is that it takes a bit of time to unlearn some of the habits around assuming bad faith when arguing with someone that are easy to develop after spending too much time on Reddit.
It took a while for me to stop having that kind of familiar "Oh here we go, one of those types of people" reactions when certain takes or topics came up. Since the venue is smaller, and people have known each other for longer, perspectives tend to be more nuanced and saying something that people disagree with doesn't feel quite as much like having a turn in the barrel to be the designated whipping boy.
I wouldn't even say that. The site culture is pretty distinct, in part due to the lack of image posts. I when I think of "classic" reddit, when it first started to take off post-Digg exodus, I think of rage comics and DogFort or Cheezburger cat memes as much as interesting articles. Tildes intentionally doesn't have that, and after seeing how that stuff tends to crowd out everything else I don't think any site today can strike that same sort of balance for long.
A lot of us are just trying to chase that initial high of the late aughts/early-2010s internet before the influx of people with smartphones drowned it in low effort content and "growth hackers" and VCs shitted it up with cash grabs and engagement bait.
Nothing gets me high like forum signatures and 200 pages of multiple concurrent conversations squashed into a single thread. ;)
One of the forums I'm on has a few ongoing threads that we use for topic consolidation. We've got a handful in the thousands of pages.
FIRST!
bump
I should stipulate that when I talk about "old reddit" I mean before the Digg exodus (I started using Reddit in 2005), so I mean that the feel of this site hearkens back to the days of Reddit circa 2006 - 2009. Even so, it's better than reddit was at that time, from the stance of what is and isn't allowed.
Same - I was just invited and I'm still basically looking around (this is literally my first comment) and checking what I can do here, but this looks good! I hope at least some of the communities I'm a part of migrate here, because I'm definitely not using the official app(tried it and it was dreadful), and 90%+ of my reddit use is on my phone...
There are some niche subreddits that I can't find elsewhere and I will keep using it, but without Apollo user experience is going to get worse on mobile.
For everyone bothered by this decision and in a financial place to do so, consider donating to Tildes and supporting this site, its community, and its ideals.
Are there any planned efforts by Tildes to recruit the Reddit refugees? This is an opportune time
I can't speak for @Deimos, but the Tildes 5th Birthday invite thread is still up on /r/tildes, and I have sent out a bunch of new invites over the last 24 hours to people who requested them there. I have no intention of promoting Tildes anywhere else on reddit though, since IMO it's better if people find out about Tildes organically, out of genuine interest in a safe (open-source, non-profit) alternative, and not just to get away from the latest reddit outrage. Way too many reddit alternatives have become overwhelmed by hatespeech and bigots because of them trying to entice whoever they can, in as large of numbers as they can, whenever there is a reddit exodus.
I'm one of those invites. I can't remember how long ago I found this place, but figured I'd give it a shot. It reminds me a lot of the early days of Reddit. The community is so much better and nuanced.
I’m one of those invited!
Been here all of 3 minutes so far and like it already.
Is there an iOS app for tildes?
Tildes is (probably) always going to be a website first and foremost, but one of the regulars, @talklittle, is working on their own mobile client for iOS and Android called Three Cheers: https://tild.es/157v
Is this the same talklittle that created RIF?
Yes, the same.
I like Tildes because it resonates with how I feel the Internet should be: one well-run community among many. One person doesn't have to feel locked into any given platform. They can freely participate in however many they want.
There are too many ways a monolithic online community can fail, often resulting from growing too fast. Sometimes it won't die, but it will trundle along with all the problems it accumulates. Even with the best-intentioned admin team, a site can be killed by its userbase, intentionally or not.
So naturally, I'm not planning to plug Tildes to the comparatively large RIF userbase. I've been wavering on whether or not I should, and have decided it would probably not generate a great result for Tildes.
Let people discover Tildes organically, and the eventual existence of an app for Tildes will help keep people longer, if they would have been a good fit already. I wouldn't want to nudge people over with any misconceptions of this being a Reddit replacement.
I think a few people from the RIF subreddit found their way here after seeing your post anyway. I know reddit's whole API thing caused me to look back at reddit alternatives too. I had a Tildes account from a couple years ago but haven't kept up on the site.
I do think having a Tildes app on my phone would help keep it on my mind more and get me to check in more often. And it's pretty cool to know that the developer of my all time favorite Reddit app is working on one for this site. I'm sure it'll be good.
Same here. I've had a Tildes account for years now but fell out of the habit of checking it in favor of going back to Reddit. If I had an app I could use like I do now for Reddit I'd definitely be more plugged in.
I have been using RIF for years and really appreciate all the work you have put into it. The api changes are going to make me quit Reddit for good and I am sad this looks to be the end of 3rd party apps in general.
While browsing one of the myriad of reddit alternative threads I saw tildes.net mentioned. That led me to the invite request thread in Reddit.
I understand to tildes is different than the vast majority of reddit so I understand your decision to not try to pull the main RiF community. However most of the subreddits I enjoyed either lurking or contributing to are closer to this format and I am getting the good vibes of old forums I used to frequent.
That long and unasked for background being said, I usually parse these things via mobile so I look forward to when your alpha app moves forward to beta status.
Personally, I think Tildes runs great on the web and the layout on mobile is just fine. I'm not sure I'd want an app, but I'd be curious to hear what enhancements you think an app would provide (aside from notifications I guess), that the web doesn't.
For a mostly-text site like Tildes, I actually agree that there is not too drastic a difference between web and native.
Oh, unless you're using a tablet. Multi-pane mode in tablet is probably not going to be available on web.
The one thing off the top of my head that is a hands-down improvement is the link sharing experience. I don't think "bookmarklets" are a thing on mobile, so AFAIK there's not a quick way to share a link to Tildes, beyond: copy link, open Tildes in a tab, navigate to the ~group you want, click Submit, paste link; then maybe tab back and copy the title and tab back to paste the title.
Maybe solved if you're using Firefox and there was a mobile-friendly extension to help with link sharing.
Versus with an app it's: tap the browser's Share button, pick the app, select a group to submit to. Done; the link and title are automatically filled in.
Otherwise it's mostly preference. What one person may see as a benefit, another may dislike:
So I hope the app will be useful to some people, but I certainly won't be expending much effort to convince people who prefer the website, or other hypothetical apps that might crop up in the future. As long as people are able to access the same content, the frontend should be whatever the person likes.
I'm assuming your parsing Tildes html because there's no public API? Is there not a similar path forward for Reddit? (I don't do any web programming, so I really have no idea).
Yes, I'm parsing Tildes HTML.
On Reddit it would be absolutely possible, technically speaking. You might find yourself playing whack-a-mole as the Reddit engineers would probably be ordered to continually change up the DOM just to break scrapers. Someone could host an unofficial Reddit API so they (or an AI helper?) could react to such changes swiftly.
However it would have to be done smartly and I'm not condoning it as Reddit's lawyers would be all over your ass if you tried to repackage their API via scraping.
As a long-time (and soon to be former...) RIF golden platinum user, I'd really like to thank you a lot for maintaining your amazing app for so many years. I can't even imagine how much time I've spent with it in total. All these years of daily use, without ads, for just an one-time ~3€ donation to you. Your app has given me so much entertainment all these years that, jokes aside, these 3€ are basically nothing compared to its value for me.
Very excited for your upcoming app, even if it takes months to release — which it probably will.
Is there any chance us RIF Golden Platinum users could be beta testers for your app?
Thanks for asking. I'll post a public alpha release of "Three Cheers for Tildes" to ~tildes when it is ready sometime this year. As "alpha" implies, it will be missing important features, but I will try to get the first alpha in a condition where the core functionality like the default feeds, comments, and submitting topics are working.
Thrilled to hear; I'm happy to throw some more Google Opinion Rewards money at you after years of enjoying RIF
It might be, never sure if they brought it up.
Someone down thread mentioned that it was the same person.
No app, but tbh, it's not too bad in a mobile browser.
Nice to see you back on Tildes, Parliament. Haven't seen you around much the last while. What you been up to? :)
Howdy - I've been here the whole time! I just check in and lurk much more than I participate, but I'd say I open Tildes a few times per week.
I'm good though! I've just been busier since changing jobs 18 months ago and putting my free time into some offline hobbies. A good type of busy though. Sup with you?
Also busy. Still playing tons of games, and generally slacking. Currently swamped with sending out invites though, and pulling my hair out in frustration due to the constant rate limiting on reddit. Other than that, Diablo IV is out in 2 hours... which I've already preinstalled, and I'm excited for. So I'm looking forwards to that. :)
Glad to hear you're doing good too though... even if you are only a lurker these days. :P
I still have 758 invites lol. It'll be cool to bring in some fresh faces without having to worry about opening up a flood gate.
I hope you enjoy a weekend of gaming! I stay about 10 years behind modern gaming, so I'm just getting into TW: Rome 2
Unlikely, unfortunately. Got a few hours more played in Diablo this morning with a buddy, but now I'm settling in to hand out a few hundred more invites again. And the rate they're coming in is definitely still way faster than I can send them out due to all the timeouts... so my weekend is probably going to be spent mostly listening to music, watching YouTube videos, and sending out as many invites as I can in between the timeouts.
p.s. If you want to be made a mod on /r/tildes again, even if only temporarily to get rid of all those excess invites, let me know. I wouldn't say no to more help at this point. ;)
Oh wait, I see. You're still rate-limited on PMs.
I can't believe I'm about to ask this question, but I haven't been a mod in 5 years now and have to. Is making me a mod what would get me past the rate limiting within /r/tildes? If you add me right now, I'll do it for the next hour.
Nah rate limit would still apply. It would mostly just allow you to remove comments you have sent invites to, so you don't have to also reply to all of them saying "sent" or whatever, so we don't accidentally double up on invites.
p.s. I am working my way up from the bottom of the new sort, starting with the oldest comments first. So if you want to join in, I would suggest picking a random spot somewhere in the middle and working from there.
I made a new top-level comment asking people to tell me something about themselves then I'll PM them an invite. I'll just handle the requests that come in response to that comment as I can. Don't worry about those. The first response was someone who likes craft beer!
Hah. Serendipity. :P I sent you a mod invite, BTW.
BTW, feel free to pin that new comment of yours now that you're a mod again. And you can always un-ping and lock it if you get overwhelmed or need a break too.
Just sent 2 out to the most recent comments in that thread.
Welcome! BTW, I hope my comment didn't read as if I was disparaging all the new people who recently joined, such as yourself. That was not my intent. I just wanted to point out that promoting Tildes during an exodus is rife with potential issues, and I would prefer Tildes avoid those as much as possible, even if that means slower growth. :)
Hi, it me. I'm one of those people.
God, everything about this. We don't need another Voat.
It's kinda funny to look back on the week-long period where I thought Voat (or whatever it was first named - Woahverse, maybe?) could be a viable alternative to reddit. I talked to the creator, gave a ton of feedback/ideas, and started posting music since I was a reddit music mod at the time. Pretty sure it went to shit within a few months after that.
I was totally on board initially because it was apparent even then what the long-term problems with Reddit were going to be, and that we needed viable alternatives, but it became apparent really quickly the kind of people that were headed there, and... no, thank you.
"Free speech" has become a gigantic red flag when it comes to online forums.
I think there's something to be said about the reasons a breakaway was created. Voat was explicitly created at a time that Reddit was making its first efforts at cracking down on hate speech.
Tildes also has a defense against Voat's problem in the limited number of communities and inability to create new ones by users; it allows normal content to crowd out hate, and avoids the concentrated communities of bad faith users that Reddit tends to create.
I am also one of those invites, just got the code today in fact! I'm loving the minimalist and straight to the "point" design.
I'm one of these people too! One of the big things keeping me on Reddit (on my computer at least) is the old Reddit UI. There's just something about its simplicity. So far, I think Tildes is the closest thing I've seen to an old Reddit UI on a competitor. I've come to Tildes a few times but went back to Reddit since I couldn't participate in the discussions. Now that I've got an account, I might start using Tildes more.
Time to work on those collaborative moderation mechanisms that Deimos originally envisioned?
That's basically what the comment labels are. But if you're referring to the trust system, then perhaps. We will have to see what happens. So far I've only sent out about 100 invites over the last 24 hours though, so I don't think anything drastic will be required to handle that many new users. Especially since the majority of those users had reasonably old reddit accounts, and quite a few had very old (12+ years) ones, so I don't think anyone new is likely to cause much trouble.
If registration was about to be completely opened up then the trust system would probably need to be in place first. If we got thousands of invite requests then maybe we would need the trust system in place to help handle that too... But we've survived huge waves like that before without needing it, so <shrug>.
p.s. The first step in the trust system is already in place with the label weight system. Right now everyone has a weight of 0.5 (IIRC). So all it would require to enable "trust" would be to adjust the weight based on account age, for certain users with good reputations, or some other factors, in order to give those users labels more impact when applied to others comments.
Aaaaaaaand I spoke too soon. 300+ new invite requests since I went to bed last night, and still climbing every second. Good thing Diablo IV early access doesn't open up until 7pm tonight. Hopefully I can get through them all before then. But reddit has started rate limiting my PMs now, so probably not. :(
You're a champ for handling all those. I saw the request thread this morning and was amazed at how many people were still commenting.
❤️ :)
Would it be beneficial to create an "intake spreadsheet" to manage the requests? We can assign an invite code to each requestor and then Tilderinos with Reddit accounts can volunteer to send them out to avoid the rate limit on any individual account. You'd just have to make a post with the usernames of the volunteers so people know which PMs to trust.
Prob easier to just make a few more trustworthy people mods at /r/tildes, and give them a shit ton of invites. They could pick a specific spot in the queue to start handing them out, removing comments as they go (to avoid doubling up). That's how we did it before when we got a huge invite wave. But ATM I can handle it. I've done a few thousand invites on my own over the course of a single day several times before. The rate limiting is the only annoying part. But meh. I'm just chilling, watching YouTube, and handing out invites as I go. Having many screens helps a lot. ;)
Glad you have a handle on it. Take my energy if you need it.
༼ つ _ ༽つ. ༼ つ _ ༽つ
Colin Robinson energy vampire powers activate! :)
Thanks for the invite by the way, I'm having a great time!
I was taking a look at the development history of Tildes on Gitlab and it seemed like there have been relatively few commits recently; 1 commit to remove Stripe as a payment method because of fraud a few weeks ago, and then the next commit is a year old. Is the developer not as active any more? If that's the case, it seems unlikely there will be algorithm changes to handle the influx.
There aren't really any algorithms to change. We don't have a "hot", "rising", "best" or "popular" type sorting system like reddit. And even our Activity sorts are pretty basic. They're just a bump mechanic triggered by new comments, similar to the forums of old, with a few minor tweaks.
And the reason for that is because Let users make their own decisions about what they want to see is one of the core philosophies here.
Yup, I had read through all the philosophy documents; it was very interesting. I guess I was unclear, I was more speaking about the trust system and enabling more community moderation.
Regarding community moderation, as I said above, that's basically what the comment labels are. They can be applied by users and they can have an effect on the comment sorting, and various other things (like Malice reporting the comment to Deimos so he can review it and take appropriate administrative action). Whether Deimos decides to flesh the system out more, implementing trust, and tweaking the weights I can't say though. I suspect if it was ever really required to handle the influx, and prevent Tildes from imploding or being overwhelmed by misbehaving users, he would likely start working on it though. But things have been going reasonably well as is, even after past giant influxes, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I was wondering why I couldn't find an equivalent to "hot" in the messages sorting.
I'm dusting off my old account for this. I'd like to be using reddit less anyway, so if I can switch to a less toxic alternative for good I'll take it.
Don't worry, here we come.
I just got here. I like the clean layout and chill user base.
Same here. We'll all figure this out together.
People are starting to post invites to here on reddit. I grabbed one myself. Definitely bracing for the end of reddit.
I'm here because someone on Reddit offered invites for those that asked. Not sure how much of a planned effort it is but it seems that thread alone brought several of us to Tildes.
The Apollo dev just announced Apollo will shut down June 30: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/
Very worthwhile, but sad, read with a lot of information about Reddit Inc's treatment of developers.
Brief post about RIF's shutdown will be incoming shortly. Full goodbye post at a later date. Will shut off same day as Apollo.
Sad day. Thanks for all your work on the app over the years. Hopefully RIF legacy can live on with other platforms like Tildes, mastodon/fediverse, etc.
Rip to all the third party clients out there (Sync for life). But good news for all the mobile folks who wanted to cut down on their reddit usage.
Although, a space on my phone launcher might have opened up, @talklittle...
This page works so well mobile as it's actually well-written, I don't really see the need for a mobile client to begin with. Just add a shortcut to the home screen, and you're g2g.
I made a lite app in hermit to give me a little more control over a regular browser and it's working great. Only improvement I could see from an actual mobile app is maybe vote/reply buttons that are more reasonably sized on my screen without making the comment text too big
That's true, but there's definitely little quality of life things an app could provide. Like showing linked images as modals instead of in a new tab, or improving the sharing experience on mobile. But you're right, the site on mobile is pretty great as is.
Hello from reddit! Just revived my old tildes account created 5 years ago during I don't remember which debacle reddit was having. This time I believe reddit is finally putting the final nail on the coffin. Third party apps were the most part of why so many old-schoolers stayed despite reddit making greedy decision after greedy decision.
Echoing your comment. I loved the idea of tildes back when, but browsing habits die hard. When Sync goes dark, I don't know if I'll be able to roll with the punch. I'll miss my blend of informative, special-interest and light/joke subs. But there's no substantial advantage to having the same user profile on the same website for serious discussions and pithy comments on Prequel Trilogy memes. It's simply convenient, until it isn't.
For old school users like us, maybe. Not for the general population of Reddit though. Over 80% of users use the official app or the "new" Reddit desktop experience.
You're not wrong, but I do think the experience at Reddit will get worse because power users will begin to leave if they don't like the experience - moderators and so on. if they go, things will definitely feel worse, even if the majority of users don't end up leaving. i do wonder what that will mean for the long-term atrophy of users though.
I think the majority of power mods still do their moderation through old.reddit. I know I do. And I do think they'll eventually kill old.reddit but it won't be a shut down announcement. It'll just be them adding so many things to new reddit that eventually old.reddit doesn't work well anymore. And since it's a slow boil, they're probably betting that most of those users will slowly start to use new reddit over time out of necessity and be more willing to do so when they're not forced over in a big shutdown event.
The dev of Toolbox has suggested that its days may be limited, if for no other reason than the axing of third party apps may simply cause him to leave the platform.
I do most of my modding from Old, and will keep doing so in the short term, but if Toolbox quits working, I'll be done.
I'm going to have a lot more free time in the evenings, though, because there is 0% chance I'll give up RIF for the official app; I'd sooner find something else to do with my time entirely.
Yeah agreed. I can't imagine modding a sub of any significant size without toolbox or RIF.
AFAIK the ones who use Old Reddit are disproportionately moderators and power users. The site might still chug along without them, but it definitely won't be the same.
But the site itself is too dog slow and clunky to actually attract mainstream audiences though. I don't know who will be left.
I'd like to grow a backbone and say that this will make me quit, but it won't. I've carefully curated a list of subreddits that I follow and I do not have the general disdain people have for reddit because I do not get out of my bubble. I like using the service but I like using it on my own terms, which is with Apollo.
I have not tried reddit's official app, but I can't imagine it'd be a better experience. It will likely be 10 times the size of Apollo, with a lot of privacy breaking tracking to show me more ads and it will be nowhere near as customizable.
I'd like to use another service that respects their users' choice, but there just isn't an alternative for reddit.
It will make me quit Reddit on Mobile and as long as old reddit is there I'll use it on my desktop. New reddit is useless to me, I really tried to use it but it's awful.
I heard that these new changes will be killing old.reddit.com too, but I'm not sure how reliable that information is.
Not reliable at all, they might move to kill of old reddit but not in the short term. The reason for that is simple, they haven't manage to convince enough mods to move over to new reddit. There are actually admin backed stats about it, don't ask me to dig them up please.
Over the past year or so (maybe longer) they have drastically upped their game of trying to convince mods to jump over to new reddit.
I am sure that once the amount of mods using new reddit jumps over a certain threshold, someone from the business will see it as an opportunity to start shutting down old reddit. But as of now we haven't reached such a threshold yet.
I'm of the opinion that they'll be shutting down old reddit a couple of months after all of the dust settles from this API change, with their IPO a few months after that.
Much like killing off third-party apps, it's pretty much something they need to do before the IPO. Third-party apps would be seen by investors as leaving money on the table and paying for competition against their own apps. Maintaining old reddit is supporting a large amount of redundant infrastructure.
Investors simply won't care if the site's vital volunteer moderators and biggest contributors use third-party apps and old reddit... they'll just see it as inefficient use of their resources.
So they're killing third-party apps—and I'm betting old reddit—ahead of the IPO because the inevitable controversy and negative press of doing it after will hurt the stock price and piss off stockholders.
They've waited at long as possible to do this, but honestly anyone who is still using third-party apps and old reddit well probably never switch voluntarily. They're going to rip those bandaids off now, while the inevitable news coverage won't have a stock ticker to include in the articles.
So I'm guessing IPO will be late Q4-2023 or early Q1-2024. Long enough that this controversy won't be fresh in investors' minds, but not long enough for any significant drops in traffic and users due to declining quality after a hypothetical exodus of moderators and long-time users (assuming worst-case scenario).
I remember seeing that somebody was working on an app for tildes at one point recently.
I really hope I get an excuse to come on here more, and reddit killing rif is fun would be a great start.
The developer of RiF is the one working on the app for Tildes.
This makes my decision to sign up here 100 times better. RiF has been my primary method for using Reddit for years now, so I'm confident that this will work out.
How the hell did I not notice this when he first posted it??
Oh??? Very exciting time to be alive.
https://tildes.net/~tildes/157v/im_working_on_a_mobile_app_for_tildes_three_cheers_for_tildes
Reddit's Recently Announced API Changes, and the future of the /r/blind subreddit.
Yep, that's me. And since then I've had even more calls with Reddit leadership, and it was just as fruitful as the first calls.
Since I think you might be the best person to ask; How well does Tildes work using a screen reader? Is there anything you can think of that would help improve the accessibility of the site for visually impaired people? Asking so if there is anything that can be done, I can add the appropriate feature request issues to Tildes Gitlab.
I know you guys mentioned maybe not mass moving entire subs here, and tildes isn't
that, but the loss of a gathering place for /r/blind would be totally awful: sighted folks have any number of alternatives but far fewer choices for the sight impaired.@itsthejoker, Would the community like to have their own tildes clone? Would they want to join us?
Yeah, of all the consequences of the API changes, hearing how it would negatively effect all the visually impaired users concerns me the most. So while we're not really able to migrate entire subreddits, I would still gladly hand out invites to any who ask for one from /r/blind.
The screws keep tightening. I still use reddit for a few important things- and I don't want to lose those- but at the same time I kinda want to just block reddit at DNS level and leave them behind for good.
Previous conversation about Reddit's API changes: https://tild.es/154m
I haven't noticed any indication in the various announcements and posts that creating an app and letting users provide their own API key isn't a viable route to avoiding these massive API bills on the part of developers. 100 queries per minute seems like it wouldn't pose a problem for an individual user using an app with their own API key and logging in via Oauth.
Am I missing something? Is creating API keys going to be locked down and unavailable to the general public?
That should work, and I expect there’ll be FOSS clients that work like that popping up. But it’s not really feasible for the paid apps. If you need a users API key, you’re already limiting yourself to an extreme minority.
I expect there’s enough hobbyist and developers that use Reddit to make a mostly functional 3rd party client without any plans of monetizing.
But it’s pretty doomed for Apollo and the like.
That was my immediate thought as well. The process of getting API keys isn't currently hard although I'm sure if millions of users started doing it they'd do something about that.
I'd still pay a few quid for a decent app to put those keys into, be that Apollo or Boost or whatever. In fact, I'm rather more inclined to pay now than before (I had previously paid for Slide which just kinda died a while ago)
I seem to remember that exact thing happening with the YouTube app for Kodi when YT tightened up API access for third party apps. Took for bloody ever to type an API key/password pair in using a remote control and onscreen keyboard, but it worked.
I just saw an adult man with his family walking through a large US city in an Apollo shirt yesterday. Couldn't believe it. We love Apollo.
Long time user of boost and old reddit. Time is ticking for me I guess.
It really sucks. The sad reality though, is that reddit doesn't need old users like us. They want young users they can monetize and chase trends with. The vast majority of reddit users today use the official app or new reddit on desktop and came to reddit after the redesign and new mobile app released. They don't know old reddit and most users don't even know 3rd party apps for reddit exist.
I hate it, but it's the reality. The only reason Reddit hasn't done this before now and still hasn't killed old.reddit is because a lot of their power mods still use both of those interfaces. As soon as that's no longer the case or ALL of their mod tools are available in the official app/site then they'll kill old.reddit, too. They're already adding new mod tools to new reddit, but not old reddit.
I’ve thought about this idea before, but it didn’t really crystallize for me until right now.
With data harvesting at scale, it makes sense that the older you get, the more complete the data set on you is. Sure they can always get more and verify some longitudinal stuff, but my guess is that it doesn’t take that long to get a relatively “finished” picture of a person via their data. Most old redditors are likely this kind of “complete” picture in the vast data sets out there, and aren’t as valuable as newer, younger users who produce novel data for more incomplete sets.
Also, it’s worth mentioning that this is all uninformed supposition on my part, so take it with some very large grains of salt, and if I’m way off the mark then let me know.
Not to mention that old reddit users from back in the day tend to be more resistant to data collection anyway. They know we're going to engage less with their Instagram stories and chat features than newer Gen Z users would. So why cater to us if we can't make them money and supporting us means the site doesn't "evolve" the way they want it to?
It actually gets more lossy because you end up spending less time online. Like Facebook probably has very good data on what I was like in college and grad school, but once I started working it gets worse and worse. As you mature and change they get less on you.
They get better again once your life starts to resemble some easily identifiable niche where you're in a state of mind to buy stuff. For example, once I became a parent suddenly all my feed is dad content. I assume this is because there's a lot of money in getting things for your kids/partner and that's one of the elusive hooks advertisers have to get at you once you're no longer in that peak consumer demo.
That’s a good point.
I was thinking of it more as Facebook figured out “who” I am a long time ago, and while they might not have the most current snapshot of me, their picture is still largely filled in because stuff like my identity, personality, temperament, etc. is all unlikely to be significantly changed. They can still probably predict a lot about me with relatively strong accuracy even if they’re lacking a current feed of data from me (which is, somewhat ironically, its own sort of data).
I mean, I don't know.
I went on FB in 2008ish and probably used it as my primary social media until maybe 2015 or so. Zuck acquired Whatsapp in 2014 which is my primary messaging app (like many/most people outside North America) and I have sporadically used Instagram since maybe 2017?
I'm pretty sure Meta is doing a good job at profiling me because they've been successively acquiring major apps that various generations of internet users rely on.
(1981 oldest cohort Millennial here)
So can people make their own groups on this site or is it just this list of defaults only? I can't see this site ever taking off if you can't create your own groups
No, users cannot create their own groups. However, subreddits and groups are not really the same thing. The groups are more like a general overall subject list, and the topic tags are more akin to subreddits, at least in terms of their specificity.
So if, for example, you want to create posts about a particular game you can just submit them in ~games with the game's name as a topic tag. Anyone who wants to see more posts about that specific game, E.g. Overwatch, can just browse that tag. And if anyone who is subscribed to ~games doesn't want to see any posts about a specific game, they can add that tag to their filters. Same goes for basically any subject, and if your submission doesn't fit well under any of the main groups, there is always ~misc for that.
If enough topics get submitted on a particular subject, to the point that they're overwhelming all the other topics in a group, a new subgroup can be created to house them (like occurred for ~health.coronavirus). And if topics on that subject stop being posted anymore, then they can all be rolled back into the parent group again. And in this way Tildes doesn't fill up with a bunch of inactive groups, like there are countless inactive subreddits.
p.s. Catching on is not really the main goal of Tildes either. This site isn't meant to fully replace or eventually overtake reddit. It's something similar, in that it's also a link aggregator, but it's different in design, philosophy, and goals. E.g. Supporting embedded videos and images might also help Tildes catch on, but doing so would go against Tildes philosophy of "In-depth content (primarily text-based) is the most important".
Is there a way to browse different tags? One huge use case for me is the discussions on r/machinelearning and r/cscareerquestions, how would i go about discovering tags like that here without just blindly adding to the url of a group that I feel like it should be in? I tried the tag "machinelearning" in tech but then had to find another post talking about chatgpt and realized the tag is "machine_learning" is there a better way to discover new tags?
Thanks for the help, this reddit API stuff blows but hopefully one of these alternatives gains momentum.
There is no giant list of tags you can browse (although maybe there should be, and I will try to remember to add that suggestion to Tildes Gitlab issues after I finish handing out all the new invites). But you can click a specific tag on a topic's page, group pages, or the front page, in order to browse around them like that. Tildes search is actually pretty decent though (give it a try), so if you want to look for specific subjects that's where you can check first, and then just click on the related tags through the results page.
IMO most tags are exactly as you would expect them to be though, so you can often just manually type them into your browser address bar after tildes.net using ?tag= followed by the tag you want. E.g. Machine learning = tildes.net?tag=machine_learning
Some types of content (like career questions) have their own somewhat unique conventions here though, and that particular kind of topic will usually have the ask tag along with the careers tag. There is currently no way to browse multiple tags combined yet, but you can just search for the combination of them in order to see topics which have those tags: https://tildes.net/search?q=ask+careers
TY!
You can enable topic tags to show on your main page via your user settings. There is a check box called "Show topic tags in listing pages (home page, groups, etc.)".
Otherwise they can always be found below the titles of every post.
TY!
Welcome to the site!
Welp, might as well get in on this.
I only use reddit on my phone through RiF. I've had an account Reddit for over 13 years. This is very sad to see. They must have lost you h with reality because their site and app have gotten so much worse. I don't understand why they don't go to a more simplified model like all the other third party apps.
I'm hoping Tildes can gain some momentum and be able to replace reddit. Reddit is going to go the way of Digg
Tildes will never replace reddit. It's more niche, still invite only for the foreseeable future, can't host images or videos, and doesn't have an app yet.
That said, I think that's a good thing. It'd be nice to see a bunch of alternatives pop up instead of one becoming super dominant again.
For those of us that only/primarily use old.reddit - here's an announcement from RES: https://www.reddit.com/r/RESAnnouncements/comments/141hyv3/announcement_res_reddits_upcoming_api_changes/
If RES stops working, I won't even wait for old.reddit to be killed.
I'm on reddit a very unhealthy amount every day. If they not only prevent third party apps from functioning, but also ruin old.reddit... I'm not sure what can replace it
What a bummer. Not a whole lot more to say that hasn't been said, but if they commit to this, that'll be the end of reddit on my phone. Probably for the best. And when they get rid of old.reddit, that'll be it for reddit. I've been using rif is Fun for like 7 years? No interest in using their garbage app.
I wonder how viable it would be to redo the Apollo backend to point to a fork of an ActivityPub based Reddit clone they set up. I assume the API calls would be entirely different but Apollo already has a strong install base. Communicating the change and swapping it out for a Reddit-like wouldn’t be too bad as long as they didn’t do something shady like auto-renew the subscription.
The closest thing would be to make a client for https://lemmy.ml/ , similar to how a bunch of third party clients for Twitter jumped ship to Mastodon. I don't see Lemmy going into critical mass any time soon, but this would be the sort of shakeup that makes things like this possible.
I was actually thinking they could do their own "Apollo" service that was an independent fork. I guess that would introduce all the headaches with moderation and administration beyond just building a client and UI though.
I hate this. RIF was the main way I used reddit on mobile for over 11 years. The end result of this for me is I'll spend less time on reddit and less time moderating my subreddits if I can only do it via my desktop browser. And the moment old.reddit is gone, I'm gone from that site completely, too.
I just came over from reddit after reading that news. My guess is they won't budge even with bad press since the goal is to get everyone on the official app since they can earn more from data harvesting.
This is not about API but also about NSFW, will Tildes allow NSFW content as well as Reddit used to?, I still find Tildes a secondary alternative as I find HN or Lobster. There is not a real alternative as Reddit was when Digg shot itself in the foot.
That depend on what you mean by NSFW content. There is a NSFW tag that covers things posted here that are not necessarily appropriate for consumption by people at work. But as for porn, from an old comment of @Deimos.
https://tildes.net/~tildes/13o/on_nsfw_content_rules#comment-7o7
I seem to recall him making a more definitive "No, porn will not be allowed" comment somewhere, but I can't find it now. I also thought it was mentioned in the Tildes docs somewhere too, but I couldn't find any mention of it there either. So some clarification from @Deimos may be required here.
p.s. AFAIK embedded images and videos are never going to be supported here though, so it doesn't seem likely that porn content would catch on here like it did at reddit, even if it were allowed to be posted.
That's something I did not know, I think I agree with @Deimos if he wants to make Tildes of its own without porn, I do not expect Tildes become a full Reddit alternative for other reasons as well though.
Just as with the major twitter clients being borked after all of this, I think the major reddit application developers should take the already existing API they have built in their applications, and create a competing service. This could be a great way to really grow as a developer and moving forward, just a drop in replacement server for their apps.
Is this technically feasible? Yes. Would this be hard to fully pull off, absolutely. High risk (involvement) with definitely high rewards.
Lemmy would probably be the easiest sell, as it's already activity pub compatible, and has an existing community. I guess Tumblr might go through a renaissance once it becomes fediverse compatible, or something comes out of nowhere, but Twitter was a major player in the third party client market, until it wasn't , and I don't see a replacement service for Reddit that has that sort of critical mass.
I don't see any of the federated services catching on; the barrier to entry is just too high. I'm technically literate and noped out at Lemmy's homepage.
I agree. As much as I want a decentralized future, I don't see it taking off any time soon. No matter how easy people make it for end users, the second they start talking about federation, nodes/servers, or how interconnectivity works people's eyes will glaze over.
The funny part is that you don't actually need to talk about any of that shit to get a user in. Users want content, they don't care how it gets there. I don't know why techies have this compulsive need to show everyone how they make the sausage. Some of us find that interesting, but most people do not.
I have same thoughts but I will add Nostr as another upcoming player.
Nostr has great potential, but it's far from ready.
Long-time user of RiF is fun, very sad that Reddit is intent on killing third-party apps despite what they say, said apps make the mobile experience so much better. If and when Reddit decide to kill old.reddit I'll probably be gone for good...
Considering how I still use Reddit (mainly for tech-related subreddits), not really sure if there's any reason for me to continue using it if the mobile apps I use, Infinity on Android and Slide on iOS, go down. Obviously the developers can't afford paying thousands or millions for API requests, and I can't imagine many users would be willing to pay for their own API keys if it is an option. Unfortunately, only the vocal minority is going to continue supporting these apps with subscriptions or paying for API keys themselves, and that probably won't be enough.
I'll hold out some hope that Reddit will lower the prices to something realistic for the developers to pay, but I don't expect for that day to come unless they do it for PR reasons. Furthermore, I really hope this isn't setting a precedent for them eventually shutting down old reddit.
From what I recall, the CEO change that happened in circa ~2016 (Pao or something I guess) was when things started going downwards. Reddit ceased to be a community and started becoming an ad revenue capitalist machine from then on. This is what the attitude of new management seems and unless some drastic change happens at top, I don't see Reddit becoming any good.
Its a shame, I have been a long time reddit user, just over 9 years, and I would say 90% of my browsing is done on Apollo. Mobile apps are just a lot more intuitive for me to use and navigate, probably because I am gen z (albeit on the older end) and the majority of my time on the internet has been on my phone and through mobile apps.
What a wild 24 hours. Our little collective has also been getting swamped with new users. We're nearing 1000 new members already 🫠
If we're taking bets, I'll take the long shot of Reddit leaving pretty much everything as is but charging for API access for porn subs. Please label this as noise :)
I wont be sure of that. Pushshift is gone already.
yeah, its not a good bet -- but someone has to take it.
Actually, according to a lot of the devs who are doing it, the API is restricting a lot of stuff on the free tiers, and anything NSFW isn't going through the API on any of the tiers at all.
In layman's terms, there will be no more NSFW for any third-party apps. If you want to be horni, you have to do it on the official site or the official app. It's most likely also the first step that Reddit is making towards removing all porn off the site in it's entirely.
They've been opaque about their eventual plans for NSFW. The confounding factor is that they recently added support for NSFW uploads in web browsers despite the decision to block it in third-party apps.
Huh. Guess I might have cared if I was still on Reddit.