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It's July 1st, my third party app still works to visit Reddit?
Anyone else not having problems, the app I use is Infinity, I can still acsess 100% of everything, even NSFW
Did reddit cave? Or they just havnt flicked the switch yet?
Just checked and BaconReader is out with a message saying:
“Request Failed: client error (429)”
I downloaded the official app and it was traumatic. Every 3-4 post a promoted one, infinity scrolling, less control over what the content I was consuming. More Instagram than old Reddit.
Happy with Tildes :-) and the old school experience
Downloading and installing the Reddit app gives them numbers they will use to validate their value during their IPO (i.e. over 1000000 app downloads in July). If youre interested in the official app but looking to avoid support of Reddit, you might seek out videos or photos of the app instead
Good to know! And thank you for the extra context/clarity. I just uninstalled- was curious about the experience (puke emoji).
Like going from a golf course (still artificial but a pretty garden) to a crowded mall (more artificial and filled with fast food and fast fashion shitty vibe)
Rip baconreader. I bought premium years ago. It has been the way I experienced reddit for many years. Well worth the money.
If I was making a major change to how my API works I wouldn't do it on a friday night/saturday morning. I'd do it on a monday. Because it's never a case of flick a switch and walk away, there's always some fires to fight and I'd rather spend my weekends on the beach than in work. But perhaps that's just me.
Also, staged rollouts are a thing when you're as big as Reddit. It's not like they've got just one API server in a single location.
The API change isn't a shutdown either, it's that the apps using it will start accruing usage charges. RIF stopped working at midnight GMT this morning because the app itself was updated to stop working.
The API is still there, it is just priced out of existence for any reasonable use cases.
Rif is still working for me. It signed me out so I can't comment or anything, but I can still browse with it. I clicked on it just to see. Last night I got the error code.
Same here, but I'm going to stop using it. Muscle memory had me voting on comments every few seconds and getting the login message.
But presumably they had to roll out changes to track API usage and to bill for them.
Boost still works too, haven't checked NSFW. Developer said it will shutdown too, though.
Diffferent timezones, maybe?
same for me, NSFW also works.
Boost isn't working for me as of 8am Pacific time.
I'm central European summer time and it still works.
Still working 12PM EST.
Several apps simply negotiated with reddit and came to agreements. Here are 3 examples:
Relay
Narwhal
Now
A couple of loud-mouthed developers have been getting all the attention. I doubt they've been negotiating in good faith, judging by their public comments. These have also, unsurprisingly, been the best apps and the ones making by far the most money.
Edit: Here's admin confirmation they've made commercial agreements
Or.... the negative backlash surrounding those apps made reddit back paddle a bit with the developers they were still in contact with and gave them slightly more lenient timeframes. Or somewhere in between what you said and what I am saying. I am not sure why so often it has to be so binary.
What also stands out to me in the communication in the announcements you link is how vague they are about it. It is clear they have been given some sort of grace period, it is also clear they aren't really allowed to talk about it much in detail.
I can't go into details due to NDAs relating to different private mod/developer areas on Reddit, but I can categorically deny that this is the order of events. It just didn't happen in that order.
It's the other way around: there was significant and clear communication that admin would listen to individual developers and try to cater to their needs.
This leads me to say that I don't think these developers have been negotiating in good faith. I have clear evidence they haven't been communicating in good faith and have said things that are directly false about the situation.
Okay. Hi. I'm not a single bit surprised Reddit Inc is, behind NDA, apparently disparaging developers in order to persuade moderators to keep working on their platform for free.
Unfortunate that you can't lay out any specifics. So how about I tell my side, and you can point out which points you believe are false?
Note that throughout this ordeal I have been in close contact with several of the top third-party app developers. We shared notes.
Please feel free to point out which parts are false:
It was a sad day yesterday when I got the 429 error code when I opened rif. I'm sorry that it is gone, but look forward to your discussion here and the thought of a similar app for here!
Now onto your content. I followed this peripherally, so you probably are more knowledge on this topic than I am. I have to wonder if the "good faith" aspects that the above poster were with regards to profit sharing (read, giving most profits to reddit), sharing user data, etc.
I also find it interesting that they said they have evidence of devs (you) lying and arguing in bad faith. From what I can see in the public facing side of the conversation, Reddit admin lied in public and the devs had evidence. Hard to believe it's the other way, but I'd like to see his/her evidence if it exists.
Reddit have also lied in public. That doesn't mean the other side has spoken truthfully and candidly without spinning things to their favor knowing that there are things the other party categorically don't comment on in public.
Spez' comments in particular have been an absolute disgrace.
I hope you understand why I won't break NDAs to satisfy the curiosity of folks on an online forum, potentially opening myself to serious legal ramifications.
Hmm... On the one hand, we have a well-known and respected member of this community, who has a history of speaking openly and plainly, and who we all know for a fact was deeply involved in the events under discussion.
On the other, we have some random person who claims to have insider information that they can't divulge or support with evidence, casting aspersions on the character of the first.
I wonder whom we should trust?
I appreciate your dissention in this post. There is a lot of anti-reddit stuff here, so it's nice to see someone providing a different perspective, especially someone providing detailed and well-thought out responses that you are!
I have only seen the public statements of spez, Apollo, and RIF. From those, my opinion is that the devs have been communicating in good faith and reddit has not. Obviously this comes due to spez's obvious lies and therefore doubting everything he says and trusting everything the devs say. The devs have a vested interested in looking like the good guy, so that's how it's coming across to me.
If satisfying my curiosity will break the NDA, then I can't blame you. I had hoped that it wouldn't, but that was an unlikely hope.
I want to reiterate that my comment specifically deals with the following, not all developers and not all apps.
I have not seen reddit say this. Reddit has outlined that they will charge regular API usage fees, but have not said they'd care about how these fees are paid. One developer specifically asked if they could run on a "donations only model" to which reddit in summary answered "you can do whatever you want".
Is anyone really surprised that any platform would react to their ads paying their bills being replaced by ads paying someone else's bills?
It's shitty that reddit have lied and misconstrued events in public (see: Spez's comments). It's shitty that they haven't answered you or others. It's unprofessional and simply inexcusable for a company of their size. However, we all know the explanation to this and why they don't want to say so in public as they're navigating a self-made pr-nightmare. We can agree to that basic common sense, right?
Again, a third party switching out native ads for their own ads, can we really in good faith say that's a sensible demand, or are reasonable conditions for a business to deliver an API-service? This answer is clearly no.
Again, it's shitty reddit haven't answered. They should. They should be honest about this and haven't. At the same time, all developers know this. What do they have to gain from saying this so it can be used in public to bash them? It's shitty, but makes business sense.
I have never seen reddit comment on financials outside documents relating to possible IPO. It only makes sense that they don't start engaging with these types of arguments, even when dealing with folks under NDAs. Their future opportunity cost is also a calculation only they can make based on the assumptions they have internally for how successfully they'll monetize future users.
I too think that their API pricing is ridiculous. However, that's up to them to determine. What they charge is also not a business calculation based on opportunity costs: it's a business calculation based on how much money they think they can get away with charging. That's how every business tries to maximize profits. Many companies, also huge ones, miss their marks widely when they try to monetize new services. Reddit has been terrible at making these calculations in the past (like with all the failed monetization attempts they''ve made over the years. Remember their NFT programs and "profit sharing through their own cryptocurrency cum reputation system"?
I (naturally) haven't been party to these negotiations between individual apps and reddit inc. I don't know if this is true or not.
This is simply untrue. Several reddit apps have been making good money. Yes, users would have to bear costs, but it would seriously cut into the large monthly profits of some small-developer apps if they don't choose to take a cut into their profits, but choose to pass the costs in their entirety onto their users.
This is not a matter for reddit. This is a matter for each app developer running their for-profit reddit-adjacent business.
Again, I haven't been party to all these negotiations. I don't know whether these claims are true or false.
Eagerly awaiting a response to this. I don't think there will be a satisfactory one though.
For what it's worth, that user is replying to comments now.
It's all still fishy IMO. The way they keep dropping the """NDA""" as if it's a flex is very... I don't want to say cringe, but, it's cringe. I don't know why they're going to bat so hard for reddit leadership.
It feels cringe because the more professional option would be to say nothing at all. I’ve worked for very large corporations in the past that occasionally make the rounds on social media - rather than say “I know stuff but can’t say, sorry NDA” you simply don’t comment at all and just keep scrolling. It’s not worth the headache anyway.
Yeah. tbh it kinda feels like it's less about actual facts or substance, and more about "I'm a very special boy, I'm privy to info you're not privy to, trust me bro, I'm right and you're wrong. neener neener neener!"
I guess it's good to know that not even Tildes is immune to this kind of pointless dick measuring, lol.
Ah yes, the admins very generously offered to cater by adjusting pricing, including ads in their API, and clearly communicating with plenty of notice as they helped developers adjust.
Oh wait.
"We promise to listen and try to cater to your needs, except for all of the things that you actually need."
And you think it's developers like @talklittle who haven't been communicating in good faith.
Especially with the absurd accusation that it's developers who haven't been communicating in good faith.
It's gaslighting on a Trumpian level.
Saying "I have evidence that proves my argument but I'm not allowed to talk about that evidence, but I'm right anyway" is not arguing in good faith.
On a related note, it's not even being a good steward of an NDA. If you've signed an NDA and you then go onto the internet and voluntarily claim that you've signed an NDA but can't tell anyone about it, then start arguing about information related to the NDA - that's being an irresponsible and immature custodian of information that's been entrusted to you.
If you can't make your points without falling back on an NDA, then you shouldn't even bring up that you've signed an NDA or engage in debate. It's not good for healthy debate, and it shows you can't be trusted with protecting sensitive information because you're going to start blabbering about how you know sensitive information.
So you'd rather I was just silent and let the narrative I know to be misconstrued continue to go unchallenged?
What do you think I have to gain from predictably getting piled on for not conforming to the narrative anyone would expect in this thread? Having been on tildes and reddit for years, seeing the influx of new users disillusioned with reddit, what ulterior motive do you think I have?
Do my comments on the site over the years lend you to believe I'm a planted shill that's just been participating on tildes for many years to have cover to defend reddit inc. at some critical juncture in the future? With that level of effort, is this this the time and place to do that?
I hope Occam's razor leads anyone reading this to draw a pretty clear conclusion.
I didn't say anything about you being a shill or that you have any sort of bias towards reddit, nor did I make any claim about you having an ulterior motive. You're putting words into my mouth. I gave no thought or mention about what you may or may not have to gain because I don't care. It's irrelevant to the discussion.
I said two things.
1: If the only evidence you have is locked away in an NDA, then you don't simply cannot engage in honest debate. Claims require evidence, and evidence requires presentation. If you cannot present the evidence to a claim, you don't have a claim.
2: You are being irresponsible with the information you've been entrusted with if you voluntarily say "I have evidence that proves you wrong about this specific thing you are claiming, and that information is in an NDA." Now we know the general that nature of what's in your NDA. While that alone won't violate low-level/generic NDAs, it does demonstrate your propensity to be rather loose with the information you've been entrusted with.
To answer your question:
Yes. This what it means to be a responsible custodian of sensitive information. Your personal beliefs must be taken out of the picture, unless laws are being violated. You signed an NDA and promised to be a custodian of information. But now you're out here blabbering about the nature of your NDA because someone said something that you believe is factually inaccurate. By telling everyone on the internet that information protected by an NDA contradicts a specific claim, you've revealed some information about what's in the NDA. INFOSEC requires custodians to reduce the surface area of social attacks. Best practice to accomplish this is not even revealing that you've signed an NDA or know anything about any information related to the NDA. If that layer is penetrated, the next advised defense is to simply be uninteresting and uninterested. But you went out here and just volunteered all of that, going against best practices of INFOSEC. The responsible way to handle this is to remain silent about your NDA unless confronted directly in such a way that you cannot talk around it or deflect interest. But nobody asked you anything about an NDA.
So yes. If you believe the narrative is wrong, it doesn't matter. Unless there is criminal behavior or egregious breeches of ethics, NDAs take priority over whether or not someone is wrong on the internet.
Present real, actionable evidence, or don't make the claim.
The conditions in NDAs are different, and sometimes specific. Some have exceptions relating to when things become public knowledge elsewhere. Some don't apply to anything and everything.
This is one of those situations where an NDA isn't about disclosing anything in perpetuity without exceptions.
In my field of work day-to-day (not related to reddit), it's extremely, extremely common that NDAs require you to make others aware that you're under NDA when talking about things adjacent to what's behind the NDA.
It's simply not true that common practice is to be irrationally over-secretive.
We'll just have to disagree about that.
I didn't mean to suggest you've accused me of being a shill. You haven't.
What could my other aims for sharing this be rather than wanting to have a more nuanced discussion on the issue, and not feeling comfortable that huge discussions are going on based on wrong premises?
I struggle to see other explanations than being a huge shill, which again, I think my account shows isn't the right assumption to make in this instance. Then what do I gain from lying or misconstruing this situation?
What do reddit and the other parties have to win or lose from lying or misconstruing the situation?
I think that can be useful context for judging the claims I'm making.
How about Hitchen's razor?
I've seen a lot more evidence of Reddit's bad faith dealings than anything for any third party developers. Apollo's dev released his emails and phone calls with reddit, and allowed Spez full permission to publish any evidence that would disprove his claims of trying to work with reddit. Spez showed zilch.
You've got "Trust me bro."
Hitchen's razor presupposes a belief in evidentialism. It implies that all faith-based beliefs are unjustified (and necessarily that reason is the only way of knowing, which defies at least one of my basic beliefs in how I experience how my own mind works).
There are an absolute host of issues with applying evidentialism, both because we as humans don't determine our beliefs through reason alone; there are many other ways of knowing.
Secondly, there are a host of claims that must be true but that are by definition unprovable. In a couple extremely basic examples:
Anyone can quickly google the huge misguided implications of applying Hitchen's razor to discourse. Here's one pretty basic and short analysis that provies a ton of other issues
Interestingly, the second part of your comment itself breaks with Hitchen's razor: several of the major claims made about the recordings and emails aren't actually evidenced in the recordings.
By Hitchen's razor, you can dismiss these central claims because they aren't evidenced. Sure, there's some circumstantial context, but that can be misconstrued (as in my experience it has been).
You've also got "trust me bro", except it's from a directly involved party that has everything to gain and nothing to lose (from an entirely lost position) in the form of a developer.
Trust is a basic principle, a premise necessary to functioning in modern society. The world is too complex not to trust others on a host of issues. We trust others and the systems of society with our lives countless times a day.
Societies that lose trust, well they end up doing rather poorly.
(See also my other comments in this post)
The simplest explanation for this is that reddit's team picked a few darling apps that they chose for their own reasons, and offered them a backchannel under NDA hoping to convert them into the primary third party apps. They then ceased communication with any developers who were not part of the chosen group. Reddit gets a couple of token apps, the ability to claim to be the good guys, and the rest of the clients get flushed.
On the App Store, Narwhal for instance has 12,962 reviews. Apollo has 172,832. Narwhal was around before Apollo - I used it before Apollo came out. The scales of use are nowhere near the same. Apollo is impacted much more by the pricing changes because they have far more users, requiring more API usage, incurring more fees. Narwhal is saying they will charge $4-$7/month as a subscription. I hope this works out for them and they aren’t stuck with a massive bill.
As I understand it, several developers asked for the deadline to get pushed back and that was rejected. Along with the easily falsifiable claims made by Reddit about Apollo and other apps, there was little reason for developers to have faith and trust in Reddit to abide by anything after that point.
As far as admins trying to listen to developers and cater to their needs, there were clear instances of developers having tried to reach out to Reddit and were ignored for weeks until the AMA by Spez. This doesn’t seem like the reality of the situation, even though Reddit maybe claimed otherwise?
So your source is effectively "trust me bro"?
Yeah, I'm gonna stay skeptical here. Especially given the track record of reddit leadership, it is hard for me to be sympathetic to their "side".
With all due respect:
There is no doubt in my mind that some of these app developers might not have communicated in the way reddit "as a business" expects to communicate with other business. But that would be down to the fact that these are not business with a team behind it, but individual people who are not practiced in business speak and negotiations. If reddit truly had wanted to work with all third party developers, they wouldn't have set arbitrary standard for communications and shown some patience at these individuals not being outright diplomatic in expressing their needs and views.
In summary, from everything I have seen and heard, it doesn't look like bad faith negotiations from the third party developers. In fact, the bad faith argument seems to be more applicable to reddit. If not bad faith, just outright disinterest and laziness in trying to make these relationships work.
Of course, it is entirely possible I have completely fallen for a coordinated media campaign from these third party developers against reddit. But given the information I myself am privy to and simply applying Occam's Razor I really can't come to that conclusion, no matter how hard I try.
Honestly, not knowing what's going into these deals and the secrecy surrounding them makes me extremely reticent to use any of the few third party clients that've been allowed to continue to exist. If Reddit's goal was to inspire distrust in third party clients, this might be an effective way to do it… doesn't do anything to increase trust in the official app, though, and will lead a lot of people to quit Reddit all together.
Reddit flat out lied, especially Spez. Admin are having a hard time dealing with the mess he double down on and left them with.
I appreciate this precise formulation here. Reddit clearly misconstrued things from those situations, as is my recollection of how several developers have construed parts of those same dialogues and conversations. There is context outside of recordings of single interactions and meetings.
I agree with this. However, how far into "we're being threatened here"-territory do you go before that stops being a reasonable standard? When is enough enough anda reasonable party, even though they're not super business savvy, and have gone onto being someone you cannot work with? Especially as bridges are being burned in public instead of attempted to deal with bilaterally.
Would you burn all bridges before you've attempted good-faith negotiations, or is that a sign that you simply won't comply and have decided you're shutting down?
Again, what cards to the third party apps have on their hands in negotiations with reddit on this topic? How much have they overplayed their hands? What are reasonable compromises seen from reddit's point of view? How for is that always going to be from what these developers would accept?
Reddit must have known that several third party apps would close over these changes, irrespective of detailed specifics/price points etc. That's been part of their calculation the whole time.
Again, I appreciate your thoughtful comment.
Let me be very clear here about the timeline as I have it available to me.
I specifically want to draw your attention to this bit
Let me know if you already consider this "burning bridges" or not? Because to me the entire post reads as a concerned developer who merely points out that the prices as given seem high and also has been given an OK on posting about it online.
Now, back to the call I had with reddit on June the 7th. In this call Steve went out of his way to burn any bridges with Apollo by basically out of the blue starting to rant about how supposedly "guy behind the scenes is coercing reddit. He's threatening reddit". Which as it later turns out has not happened in the way Steve claimed it did happen.
This is by now public information, Steve (semi) publicly started burning bridges before any of these devs did. Reddit started burning bridges before any of these devs did.
Frankly, I am not sure what your background is. You claim to be behind an NDA, someone else already pointed out how using that as an argument is semi bad faith arguing to begin with. But given how quick you are now to go back and be less resolute about your initial statement of
It seems to me that even if you are bound by an NDA you didn't make your initial statement based on a factual basis. So I also think that this pretty much concludes this discussion.
Sorry, your timeline is wrong.
The first discussions relating to these proposed changes were not made on May 31st 2023 to a single developer.
Again I don't know what information has been shared with other when.
I can probably get away with saying that I specifically asked a reddit representative about pricing prior to 2023 and got an answer not inconsistent with the API call pricing now available, and exceptions for several types of apps.
Again, I don't know what has gone on in other private conversations, but I cannot have been the only person to ask about pricing and to get a ballpark answer prior to 2023. That's beyond my belief. I don't think I'm that special. Several others have had access to the conversation I was a part of as it was ongoing.
When did I go back on that? I still firmly believe that. You cannot determine what I believe and don't. You probably shouldn't make assertions about what others mean or don't mean without those actual changes in opinion actually being written out in the comments made. It's a recipe for misunderstandings.
I still firmly believe the discussion has been concluded. The timeline is correct in as far as publicly available information goes and as far as it is relevant to the context of you making claims about burning bridges. The rest is hardly relevant, and I invite you to go back to what you wrote if you are at this point confused.
If you want to believe this all came out of the blue in a single-developer call with reddit on May 31st because that's the earliest publicly available point on your timeline, that's up to you.
I think all developers read this public April 18th post that in part said:
I'm convinced they probably also read the Developer terms linked that even more clearly state that
If my livelihood or brainchild depended on these terms, I most certainly would ask about more details. The thing I'd be the very most worried about is the pricing. I'd ask about that.
And in that last linked document, there's a ton of things that affect so many of these apps we're talking about.
To me it sounds absolutely preposterous that some of us were given hints about pricing and others supposedly weren't. For weeks, which a reasonable developer would badger reddit inc,. about because it would determine if they'd have to make huge fundamental changes to their app.
The bold part specifically is what I and others, have been disputing. That part of the discussion is, as far as I am concerned, very much concluded.
These are two distinct things. There's no need to be accusatory. You could simply have asked for an explanation.
I haven't been party to the negotiations between individual developers and admin inc. I don't know what's happened in those negotiations. Yes, there have been some retellings. Both parties clearly have motives for having things spin their way in public because that gives leverage in the situation, especially if things are going poorly for you.
Reddit isn't the party standing to lose everything here, the developers are the ones with their backs against the wall. They're the ones who're in a position to grasp at any straws and go too far. It's their livelihoods and passion projects that are at stake.
This is different. There are specific examples of this from several publicly vocal developers of different apps. They are business savvy people, but have been communicating things that do not make any basic business sense.
They know they will garner sympathy for those statements even though they're making them against better judgement and insincerely. And that's just relating to public commentary. I'm not super involved in this situation. I've never used reddit apps in the 15 years I've been on the site. I haven't saved a bunch of links and stuff because frankly, I have better things to do with my time, as do you. See other comments in this thread for slightly more elaboration.
I used to use Relay, even paid for it, but I just can't afford any type of subscription. Really sad that even if Reddit make a deal, it'll still force people off their platform.
Weird, iwonder why infinity still works, and still can acsess sexually explicit nsfw posts
In the Relay post I see mention of NSFW posts being visible until July 6th. So it may just be a matter of time until that disappears.
RIF still works as well, to my surprise. I'm sure it will be dead before the day is over though.
My RIF stopped working hours ago!
Same here. It was still the 30th in my time zone, too.
RIF stopped working for me while logged in to my account, but once I logged out it started loading pages again.
Tested it with a few subreddits and also checking new to make sure I wasn't just seeing cached stuff.
It's still working for me like this at the time of this post.
Same thing happened to me! It wasn't working for some time. I then used RIF to view Lemmy for fun since someone said they were using it to view Tildes. I got there through the goodbye link. I was then suddenly logged out, and all of a sudden the app was working again.
It's still working now.
Weird, I wonder why that is.
Are you logged in? I just opened the app and it gave me the error code, but one of the others (I think bacon reader) I just installed and it showed the front page like normal, I logged out of RiF and can see everything as normal.
Weird. Being able to read only was supposed to be the entire reason for the API change, because AI was reading a ton of data to train their models. Now after the API change it still works...
Look at me. We are the AI now.
Yep, logged out. I figured lurkers would be cut off too, but I guess not just yet.
I was surprised it stayed up, I'll continue to use it while I can, I don't imagine it will be much longer.
RIF still works only because I'm pretty sure it's just pulling the old website and reformatting it without the API. It fails with an API error when you try to login.
RIF still works for me too. I was automatically logged out this morning but I can still browse. No error messages... yet.
I use the Slide app, which technically was marked abandonware last year I believe, but as of this morning it still worked for me.
Granted, since mid-June I've scrolled Reddit (via Slide) WAY less than I used to, as my frontpage is just filled with "AITA" styles of posts and that's not what I used to use Reddit for (primarily my local city's subreddit, trying to conceive/parenting/pregnancy subs, news & politics, and the random "did you know" fun fact type of posts I used to see on my frontpage).
I will probably only use it on the computer going forward -- but I saved a LOT of old threads to my guest account on Slide that I would like to sort through before I delete it.
I use RiF. As of this morning, I can use the app if I'm logged out of my account. If I'm logged in I get an error message.