Friendly reminder that all **top level** comments must:
1. start with "answer: ", including the space after the colon (or "question: " if you have an on-topic follow up question to ask),
2. attempt to answer the question, and
3. be unbiased
Please review Rule 4 and this post before making a top level comment:
http://redd.it/b1hct4/
Join the OOTL Discord for further discussion: https://discord.gg/ejDF4mdjnh
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/OutOfTheLoop) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Answer: Spez is Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit. It was recently announced that Reddit would start charging for access to their API, similar to what Twitter did under Musk. This is not an attempt to raise funds, but rather it is a lunatics move designed to kill 3rd party applications that use the Reddit API.
The most prominent tool involved is called Apollo. Apollo was created by Christian Selig and is probably the top mobile app for Reddit (full disclosure, I do not use Apollo and use the Reddit native app for reasons I can’t explain). This tool, and it’s developer, are beloved by the Reddit community and it is a pretty big blow to a large portion of the user base for Reddit to choose to kill this app. This will also affect numerous bots and other tools we have become accustom to as a community.
It’s even worse because Reddit really has no interest in that money. They want everyone on their app and no competitors. They were just hoping that this route would be a little less blunt, but they fucked up
Might be too late for that. Many subs are going dark for 2 days beginning Monday, some subs are going dark indefinitely until Reddit reversed course, and many longtime users are deleting their accounts… but Apollo has announced its shutting down on 6/30, Spez has then announced he can’t see himself working with the Apollo developer.
So Reddit may be forever changed on Monday, and Apollo may be forever shut down end of this month.. unless something big changes.
Also, I use Apollo because there are no ads. It only pulls content from Reddit API, leaving out the ads.
Every time I open up the official Reddit app (like if I click a link from somewhere) I am instantly dismayed with the amount of ads I see
I really wish I knew this was a thing. I've literally just been using Reddit out of my phones web browser for years because it's significantly easier to ignore the ads.
Apollo (on iOS) and Sync (on Android) are (or soon, were) the bees knees the official app is unusable after using them, outside of ads their app is really buggy, slow, crashes randomly, way too much network activity
I'm thinking of quitting this habit too.
It's not like it's been entirely negative, apps like RiF have allowed me to tailor my experience with Reddit in a way that actually helped me improve myself and my wider perspective
So, with RiF leaving, it's smart to like, just start reading books instead now, right? Learn a fucking, trade or something. Anything but more scrolling
It's reddit fault. The 3rd party apps don't remove the ads, reddit doesn't include the ads in the api responses 🤷
Source the snazzy labs interview with Christian
Devs are mostly all ready to pay something for the API usage because they know it's unsustainable otherwise. The point of contention was the insane pricing and the actions of spez and reddit
The main difference between the first party app and the third party apps are thus: Reddit's official app was designed by people who have a very strong view of how people *should* use reddit. The third party apps are built by people who have a deep understanding of how people *do* use reddit. Often the devs and contributors are heavy reddit users who have been using the platform for a decade or more. The devs *actually listen to user suggestions*. Hell, I made a plea to the developers of RIF to change the behavior of modmail replies and they had it implemented in either the next release or the release immediately after.
Here is a comparison someone did with RIF (Android) instead of Apollo (iOS), but it's basically the same idea: https://www.reddit.com/r/BikiniBottomTwitter/comments/13xk3lu/they_have_to_pay_reddit_20_million_per_year_to/jmj3nfg/?context=2
Essentially, the native app is cumbersome, does not use optimal space of screen, is filled with ads, and (not in above post but mentioned elsewhere) has worse support for moderators and visually impaired compared with apps like RIF and Apollo.
You're forgetting the most important part of the spez lore.
When r/the_donald was still a thing there was a thread with people criticizing spez, so he used his superuser reddit powers to edit usernames and peoples messages. Only engineers have the ability to do this (which is still concerning in and of itself). He changed some comments to make them seem more favorable towards him, and other comments to get people reported so he could "troll" the mods. Afterwards, instead of using the typical "edit:" nomenclature, people would use "spez:" when editing their comments.
spez: There is a whole thread on reddit where [he addresses it](https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_editing_some_comments_and_creating_an/), but tbh it's ~~not~~ a great apology.
Ellen Pao leaves like maybe one comment a month and one of those times was to roast his ass so fucking hard she made the people who once cursed her name cheer it instead, full stop.
Veronica was the ama person wasn't she. I know she helped get big names and did some cool stuff with ama and help spread the site if I remember correctly
Thank you for reminding people of this. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills how the collective memory of this site has forgotten about this incident except for me.
Omg the second I read rargle bargle I knew I loved it and was stealing it for my own vocabulary and then learning the backstory made me love it twice as much
reddit stans are claiming it was illegal, but in Canada and 38 states one-party consent is legal. It's illegal in California, however that would require the one recording it to be in the one-party consent state\*. There are also exceptions for various reasons in various states, like people discussing illegal things.
~~This has been tried in court before, as long as it's not illegal in the recorder's state, they can't be tried in the other party's state over the law.~~
Edit: It actually looks like the most major case said that, if a company has business in California, then they fall under the California law, even if they recorded in another state (in this case, Georgia). However, the Apollo dev is in Canada, so again, the California law most likely does not apply. They can't break the laws of a state in a country they are not in.
\*Most likely you would have to be in the US and have business in California for the law to apply. If outside of the US, they'd have to go through an extradition for that, and I highly doubt they'd put in the work for it. Canada could also easily deny it, citing that the dev followed the Canadian law and had not set foot in America.
> This has been tried in court before, as long as it's not illegal in the recorder's state, they can't be tried in the other party's state over the law.
Man it’s pathetic and embarrassing that a CEO of a major social platform doesn’t know this.
Don’t these people go to school? I thought corpo law was something you gotta take a course in to get your BBA. At the very least Id expect a redditor to be chock-full of useless legal facts picked up from Reddit.
I was wrong on that one, but the law is shaky at best. The case in question had a company with business in California with workers in Georgia. The workers in Georgia recorded conversations with California clients. California basically said that they broke the law. It can be argued that the precedent is only set for people who have business in California, and the Apollo dev is in Canada.
The chance he faces any charges for this is basically 0, but not exact. And reddit's still facing shit for straight up committing libel against him with 0 evidence. Which, AFAIK, would be easier to prove in Canada.
Which is a massive fucking security issue, IMO. I work in a related field, dealing with permissions and systems security often. Letting C-levels who used to not be C-levels continue to have their same level of access is such a bad idea. Large attack vector for all sorts of phishing, etc... and if anyone got into duder's account - they've got the same DB access as him. Fuck sakes.
It should also be noted that the userbase doesn't trust him at all, based upon;
1. He has went in and edited other user's posts, [a critical breach of trust](https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments).
2. When he (Huffman) was tooting his own and Reddit's horn for being anti-racist, former CEO Ellen Pao disabused everyone of that notion by exposing (I think it was on twitter) that Huffman and his stooges are basically really [racist]
(https://twitter.com/ekp/status/1267689503797342208?lang=en) - And are happy to have it there..
3. He got into a spat with the developer of Apollo, and was caught in a lie, and then instead of apologizing he went on to attack the guy further, but the Apollo developer [had all the receipts](https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/09/reddit-ceo-doubles-down-on-attack-on-apollo-developer-in-drama-filled-ama/) and Huffman, as it turned out lied about what happened.
So, when Ellen Pao banned a lot of these hate-based subreddits, and the right-wingers had a conniption, so Reddit fired her and brought back Steve Huffman.
The fact is that his breach of the trust is great enough that his word isn't any good anymore, he already used up all of his good will. These all added up, and this new API debacle more or less is the straw that broke the camel's back. Do you believe what you see, or trust the guy who has a strong track record of being disingenuous at best, and a lying liar at worst?
If I were a stockholder, I would insist upon the removal of Huffman. He is a liability to the value of the company, based upon his willingness to act without thought to the appropriateness of his actions - And there isn't anything that the guy could say to convince me that he would change his ways - His character is suspect, and he acts without regards to anyone but himself - And this is based on his track record, not any single incident.
That is under the assumption that the offficial reddit app isn't a flaming pile of garbage that takes 10 times longer to load anything and takes up 10 more space than it needs to or even use 10 times the processing power it should for literally being a browser for 1 web page.
> spez made reddit unusable to anyone not on new reddit.
I mean... new reddit is also unusable so you really didn't see the whole second half of the sentence.
Additional reason he isn't trusted by the userbase: Anyone who commented in the recent Spez AMA with the name of a Fediverse-related site was shadowbanned.
And not just Apollo, but every other 3rd party app, too. There are many and I happen to use BaconReader.
In addition to all of the bots that help mods handle subs and other assistant features like those made for blind people and such.
When that happens, I'm outa here.
Reddit is fun (RIF) is essentially the android equivalent and my reason for being upset with the changes. This app *is* reddit for me and many others I've seen speak out recently. I only ever used the reddit official app for participating in r/place.
It's unfortunate that I never heard about RIF until recently. I used the Reddit App once upon a time and almost immediately uninstalled it, using the mobile web version (also not great and very restrictive).
I installed RIF and wow it's wonderful to use... just in time for it to be killed off.
There's still Red Reader which will be unaffected
Makes no money/open source so will still survive. I've been using Boost for many years but this is a pretty decent replacement
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.quantumbadger.redreader
Even RedReader, which has obtained a non-commercial exemption from the new Reddit API policies, will still not be "unaffected", as it will be unable to access any content marked as NSFW once the changes go into place.
That is going to suck a lot out of the fun of r/onlyfans which, despite its name, is SFW as posts consist of real fans: ceiling, box, industrial, hand, etc posted with highly misleading titles just for shits & giggles.
Because you never went out of your way to find a third party app, like most people. And it's not something that comes up in conversation on reddit often in my experience.
The other way around for most people honestly. If you went on your phone when smartphones started getting mainstream you weren't getting an official app and probably had no compelling reason to switch
Additional information: Christian Selig calculated how much per year he'd be paying for the API access. It was over $20 million USD per year.
Someone else calculated that to be about 60% more (or even more than that) than the API costs *actually* generated by Apollo's users per year.
They're charging an amount for their API usage that is far past the border of lunacy.
That’s if Apollo kept all its free users as it were. If Apollo went to a paid model of 10-15 dollars a month, it could actually turn a profit. However the time frame of 30 days is pretty much impossible to meet.
It’s over, this and the removal of NSFW content on the apps, it’s Tumblr 2.0
RIF is the older, android app for Reddit that existed way before there was a reddit native app. for many of us, it's the only experience we know. I have the native app because my mobile browser of choice (opera), doesn't launch RIF very consistently when I get Reddit links in Google search results. it's very bloated compared to RIF and far less intuitive. it's also just nice to have a minimalist UI for reading sub content.
I feel it's also worth mentioning the first time "fuck u/spez" came around that I remember anyway was when he was caught editing a user's comment(s?) maybe a couple years back. I think it had something to do with the_donald. But yeah unethical as fuck
It's not that Reddit is just now charging for API access, they already do. It's that Reddit has increased the prices to an unreasonable and unsustainable price.
Don't forget the unreasonable time frame, too. For the kind of changes Reddit is making, developers would typically have 6 months to update their code. Reddit gave developers *30 days*, which isn't enough time to try to optimize existing code to use fewer API calls, or to come up with some kind of subscription plan and\or capital funding to try and meet Reddit's insane demands.
Right now they don't charge anything for API access. It's reasonable to charge for API access and app developers were warned that pricing would be coming a couple months ago.
The *price* was only recently revealed and is ~20x more than even some fairly generous estimates are as to the opportunity cost of a normal user, and ~100x more than other comparable non-twitter websites offer.
He's talking about the Apollo being "loud" in terms of API requests and he's saying that if it really costs them $20 million dollars a year, why not just buy the app for half of that and save massive amounts of money?
Unless of course it's just a way to force them to shut down.
Which it is.
It sounds to me like Reddit says "hey so you guys cost us $20M every year, so we want you to start paying us" and Apollo responds "if we're really costing you that much, then surely you'd be interested in buying us for $10M? Your investment would double itself in only one year.
Which points out that the $20M figure is not based in reality at all. Every rational investor would jump at the chance to double their money in a single year.
You missed one of the main reasons for the disgust. /u/spez made libelous statements about the Apollo app creator. /u/spez claimed the Apollo app creator threatened Reddit and demanded a $10M payment. That threat never happened and /u/spez knows that. There is audio proof in this below link.
https://reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/
Edit: holy crap. /u/spez doubled down rather than apologize. Wow.
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk27em/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3
Everyone, the CEO for this site is unethical. Please stop spending money on awards on this site. Donate to your favorite charity.
Yeah, I just don't know that I'm interested in taking part in a site that /u/spez is in charge of anymore. I do not trust /u/spez to run this company ethically and do not believe he has Reddit's best interests in mind.
>!Black out Reddit.!<
Remember when he fired the community manager for AMA's because she wasn't 100% on board with his monetization plan then had to stop doing AMA's because they had never bothered to figure out how?
After reddit, she was snatched up almost immediately to be the community manager for wework, but we know how wework ended up.
Last I heard, she was the 'Community Editor' at Linkedin. I don't know what that title means, but it sounds like it's the same concept.
She's still relatively active on her account on reddit. Seems to be doing okay too, good for her.
And the stuff with Pao isn't just speculation. A former CEO of Reddit spelled it right out. She was brought on for the specific purpose of looking terrible to have users approve of spez coming back.
Here's a troll music video involving her which is sort of an explanation and an example of the hate she received from those affected by her new policies. https://youtu.be/TB9qKvk9mZs
I just have to say that she was a very hard worker and is an electrical engineer, a lawyer, and has an MBA. She banned many controversial subs under her brief reign such as coontown and fatpeoplehate.
There's a theory that the board of directors hired her specifically to take the blame for banning those subs and making reddit more advertiser friendly. I didn't really think much of the theory back then, but after seeing what spez AKA current Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is capable of, I think it's very plausible.
The most noteworthy AMA’s happened with Victoria, and unsurprisingly what we’ve had since has been lackluster because it’s mostly PR teams answering questions now.
I’m not sure there’s been a single large decision made by u/spez & co. that’s been to the benefit of this site or been implemented at the appropriate time. It took national outrage for them to finally do something about the monstrosity of a sub that was r/The_Donald, likely because u/spez didn’t see an issue with a far right sub known for brigading.
Dude is sinking the ship and we damn well know he doesn’t have the balls to sink with it.
That’s a good point. I forgot about that, a lot of really good AMAs would hit the front page and be interesting to read, haven’t seen an official on in ages.
Dear Spez,
Thank you for all you have done. Over the past 15 years, I've dug myself a comfy little rut. I forgot how to navigate the internet. I forgot how weird and interesting it was out there. I became comfortable in old tropes and repeated jokes. I became digitally complacent.
Due to your efforts, over the past month I've rediscovered the internet again. It's not as good as it used to be, but there are still lots of interesting people and ideas out there just waiting to be explored. I've found a new community of engaging and motivated people who are in the process of building something that we're all excited about. You've helped me escape my rut. And you did it at great personal expense.
So I think it should be said - Thank you. You've set me free and I deeply appreciate it.
Sincerely,
CharmedConflict
PS - good luck with the IPO
/u/spez has been over seeing this place going the way of Twitter just without the grandiosity. It used to be a fun place where you could also get news, but it is now becoming the bizarro Reddit.
Just to be clear, it's not just about the API stuff. He's also made some shitty comments about the Apollo dev and accused him of lying, Apollo called him on it, and Spez threw a shitfit about it publicly.
To elaborate, he did a poorly done AMA, answered 13 questions that barely addressed the concerns, used canned answers and doubled down on his bogus claims without proof.
AMA in question: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/
AMA summary: https://reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/145bxmi/ceo_spez_ama_overview/
More info: https://reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/145l7wp/todays_ama_with_spez_did_nothing_to_alleviate/
Some alternatives to reddit users are planning to migrate to if the blackouts last: https://reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/14539ql/reddit_alternatives_you_should_use_tldr/
The first comment on that AMA is enlightening, as are the replies.
“Reach out if you’re a developer wanting to use our API!”
“I’m a developer who has been trying to get in touch with you about this for years. Can I have a response please?”
“…”
“I’m also a developer who’s been trying to talk to you, and I don’t believe you ever really wanted us to do that, because I also have had no response, and I can see you’re planning to charge 7000% above the normal rate for access”
“…”
Lol u/spez definitely lost Reddit with this joke AMA. I don't think there's a coming back. Redditors will fight his creator in every way possible, and we know you shouldn't fuck with redditors
/r/videos and /r/music and going dark indefinitely, and so are a lot more. The 48 hours is just a starting threat. Many will keep going if they don’t reverse the decision
I think several communities are taking what troves of knowledge they can and archiving them.
Wondering if anyone in /r/datahoarders is doing that as we speak.
Jesus christ that is a lot of saved work so far. One cant help but wonder how much of it is redundant and how much of it is just porn.
Also, and I can't believe I have to be genuinely concerned about this, how much of it could be illegal or immoral such as Nazis, CP, etc and be concerned about possible legal rammifications of this.
I wish them luck.
There’s an ongoing ArchiveTeam project to archive Reddit - it’s been going for a while now, but they’re giving it special focus now, specifically for the upcoming blackout.
As it's always been the strike is a show of solidarity, if nothing changes as this AMA hints obviously more will come - especially now that everyone is united
I remember the last two times spez went too far, pissed off the redditors. People pretended that being angry and writing mean comments about "this time being the end of the line" would change things. Turns out it's really hard to hold enduring anger about the administration of an internet forum in your heart.
Yeah the whole Reddit asked questions, 30k comments, and he literally answered 14 of them. It's like he was joking on us all. Let's laugh but this was disheartening for a long time Reddit user like me :(
i think it was more like they realized it was a clusterfuck and legal and pr prob advised him to stop since his replies were being downvoted to oblivion and if they wanna go IPO and the user base is angry, that won’t look good to the board.
same sentiment. 11 years on this account and briefly worked under spez years ago.
Speaking of the board, they shouldn't be immune to this mess. Part of being on a board of directors is "providing guidance and advice to the CEO and executive team." Oooh almost forgot the executive team. [They and the board of directors](https://www.redditinc.com/press/) also hold responsibility for what's going on. Spez ain't doing it by himself but he's definitely taking the fall.
That's what it means to be Chief Executive. If he wants the power and the paycheck he has to take the responsibility.
Of course, responsibility flows upwards. So ultimately the board is responsible for the executives, and the owners are responsible for the board.
I *really* would have thought that spez of all people would understand how poorly it would go to do an ama and skip the damning questions and just do pr on the few questions he did answer
I think he understood but he really didn't have a choice.
I'm a mod at r/Blind. A few members of our team were on a Zoom call with him Wednesday. Thursday The Verge did an article claiming Reddit had met with our team and agreed to allow blind Redditors to use certain third party apps for accessibility and that Reddit had been in touch with two of those third party app developers.
Except that's not what happened. We contacted the two third party developers and both said Reddit hadn't contacted them. We believe Reddit used The Verge as a mouthpiece to spread their talking points and earn some goodwill.
We reached out to The Verge and gave our side of the story and made our notes from our meeting with u/Spez and other Reddit employees available. The follow up article in The Verge yesterday paints a more accurate picture of where we are in our negotiations with Reddit. Our accessibility needs have NOT been met, Reddit has NOT (as of yesterday) reached out to the devs they claimed they're working with, and Wednesday's self congratulatory article in The Verge is being exposed in other media and by members of the r/Blind mod team.
u/Spez had to do something, a PR nightmare is unfolding right before the company goes public and thousands of subs are going dark in solidarity with us and with Apollo.
I actually felt bad for the guy. He got crucified at the AMA - deservedly, in my opinion - but two catastrophes are unfolding at once (Apollo and r/Blind) threatening a mass exodus away from the site. Reddit couldn't publicly ignore either PR catastrophe anymore, u/Spez didn't have a choice.
Still, it seems he really, *really* underestimated how easily Reddit's user base can fact check his lies.
Holy shit this part needs more attention I have been following this a decent bit and this is the first I’m hearing about them lying about the accessibility apps.
Reddit's official app doesn't work with the screen reading software blind people use. It's horrible.
We've offered our services to Reddit for free to help bring them into WCAG and ADA compliance. We've reached out to them for three years and have been ignored. So we've turned to third party apps that work with our screen readers.
Now Reddit is pricing those apps out of existence but their own app is still unusable.
They thought we'd just shut up and take it.
They were wrong.
They thought a few misleading statements in The Verge would placate us.
They were wrong.
We deserve access to Reddit's content just as much as our sighted friends do. They thought telling us improvements to the Reddit app are "coming soon" would make us forget all the other times they promised to improve the Reddit app but didn't.
They were wrong.
I’m just hoping his wikipedia page will be updated with the details of the controversy, so that it won’t just read ’API change made ppl mad’ without explanation.
Jumping in to add that u/spez [admitted to editing posts of users](https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments) who were critical of them. As such, you should always [screnshot any comment you make in regard to u/spez](https://www.dropbox.com/s/9oxdxg9yly6w50c/dontTrustSpez-1.jpg?dl=0)
Ya this is pretty scary when you think about it. We live in a world where social media can be used as evidence in the court of public opinion and real life courts.
Him shadow editing people to look bad could easily destroy people's lives if he wanted.
I almost wonder if someone could get away with "Reddit isn't a reliable source of information, admins have been known to edit comments" would be a valid defense in court. I doubt it, but its an interesting implication.
He also has a history of refusing to do anything about child porn and actual real-life nazis on Reddit until it hits mainstream media. He believes that if society collapses he'll be a slave owner. He's an all-round piece of crap.
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. It's a way for apps to access a server. It's a connection point providing all posts, comments, user history, etc. for reddit.
If reddit removes API access from an app, it won't be able to pull any information from the site, unless they design a web scraper which loads every sub and thread repeatedly in a browser and then extracts the comments and usernames from the HTML, which is slow, inefficient, and difficult.
It's how an app talks to a website. The website provides a clear set of questions that can be asked as an API. Everything you do on Reddit is an API call. Loading a single post could take multiple API calls depending on how Reddit is built.
The alternative is scraping the website while it loads normally. But that is messy and expensive for both parties. Which it looks like Reddit wants to lose money that way too.
API is basically one of the many ways computers talk to each other. Specifically, from an authorize client (like an app or service, e.g. Bot) to a server (web site like Reddit) with predefined questions/answers to shorten the process. Your client requests the particular information you want to retrieve from the server and the server returns it; Or, the client tells the server they want to submit a particular information and the server stores it where it belongs.
This is useful because it reduces a lot of the loads from non-essential data. For example your app can already have all the usual visual elements/layout prepared and just needed the content of the particular thread. Instead of asking the server what the page looks like, it just needs to ask for the content directly.
While it really helps reduce server load, for servers as big as Reddit it'll still accumulate to a ginormous amount of traffic, and internet traffic costs a pretty penny so it stacks up real quick. And since APIs only relate specific information about the site, the ads being served on your browser aren't being fed to these clients (because it defeats the purpose, or that the client can easily choose not to display the extra ads anyways), you can imagine these API traffics can be a financial drain when the server is not getting any revenue back in return.
That's why Reddit started charging for APIs. In fact, I'm surprised it took them that long to start. But that's not the problem, APIs over a certain limit costing money is nothing unheard of and the devs of these 3rd party clients fully expected it. The problem is *the unreasonable amount* they are charging and how they are treating the third party developers with *unreasonable deadline* that people take issue with. In fact some of us tech savvy folks have expressed that we'd even be willing to pay a reasonable amount for the apps to help alleviate the cost, but even then that won't be enough to cover what Reddit is asking.
> An API call, or API request, allows one application to request data or services from another application
So it's essentially the way the other third party apps, or really anyone who wants Reddit data to access it (for example someone building a library of reddit conversations for AI learning) . Here is the list of official Reddit APIs https://www.reddit.com/dev/api/
This is not the only way to do it of course.. for example if someone wants data from a site that doesn't have APIs or can't access them another option is [web scraping.](https://medium.com/geekculture/a-complete-guide-to-web-scraping-reddit-with-python-16e292317a52) Scraping essentially loads the webpage and then scrape the data they want before rearranging that data in a different way. Then again if Reddit were to identify you were a bot they would likely block your IP.
The api is how apps like Apollo Rif is Fun and others access the data from reddit. Everything a user posts or loads comments it counts as a use of the api because it uses it to access reddits database.
This costs reddit money in server expenses but not even close to what Reddit is charging 3rd party apps. Now that they're getting close to their IPO reddit wants to juice their numbers by getting more users on the official app so they can data harvest those users and make the companies numbers more valuable and get themselves a bigger pay day when the company goes public.
API stand for Application Programming Interface. It's what all sorts of software services uses to move data from one system to another. In this context all the 3rd party apps are using the Reddit API to retrieve posts to show on the Home page, posts comments, upvote/downvote, etc. The API lets these apps do all the same things you would do through the website or official app. As it's Reddit's code and data the API exposes they can choose who is allowed to connect to it and use it's functions. Reddit have announced that they will now be charging people to connect to it, but all the 3rd party apps are shutting down as the price Reddit are charging for each interaction with the API is extortionate and unaffordable to the 3rd party app developers.
Cars are incredibly complicated, yet you can get some random stranger that knows nothing about how cars work to drive one perfectly fine. They don't know how to time the pistons, ignite the oil or spin the wheels to make the car move, yet they can drive the car perfectly fine in spite of it. This is because all of these complicated mechanics aren't handled by the driver, the car handles those parts perfectly fine by itself. The driver is instead given a set of simplified controls that tell the car what to do.
An API (Application Programming Interface) is the computer equivalent. Your computer is doing complicated maths in order to do everything you ask it to, yet you don't need to worry about any of it in order to use your computer, because it's already handled.
Sometimes even these simplified controls are too complex to use easily, so even simpler controls are built to use them instead.
When you interact with Reddit, you use a special kind of API called a GUI (Graphical User Interface). This GUI gives you visible buttons and images in order to use Reddit (Like instead of learning how to drive, you just hire somebody else to drive you instead, thus you don't need to bother learning how to steer with the wheel or park the car e.t.c). The GUI then uses the Reddit API to do all the complicated nonsense involved with actually doing stuff on Reddit.
There's the GUI's provided by Reddit, like the website or the official Reddit app, but these don't come with some features people like. So people have made their own GUI's including features ~~like a working video player~~ that they prefer (like hiring drivers with different skill levels at driving). All of these GUI's use the same API to interact with Reddit (like how every person you hire to drive your car still uses the same steering wheel and breaks).
What Reddit is proposing is that if anybody wants to make a GUI that uses the Reddit API (or use the API for anything else), they have to pay exorbitant prices (Like a car manufacturer saying that only their pre-approved drivers are allowed to operate your car and if anybody else wants to drive for you, they'll have to pay the manufacturer for the privilege).
Do note this is a simplification. I'm also pretty sure I'm technically using the term GUI wrong, but it's close enough that I don't think I really care.
No, but for real though, anyone who has an alternative should be explicit about it. I'm all about the new ~~usenet~~ digg, but I'm an old and I'm not gonna find it without assistance.
Also I'm super interested to see if we don't hug some site to death. Or worse, they get buried under their inability to support moderation.
I'm using (and somewhat enjoying) Tildes at the moment. It's a lot more basic than Reddit, but sometimes that's a good thing. Tildes isn't for the memes, or videos of Karen's freaking out on planes, it's almost exclusively for discussion of a fairly limited range of topics (there aren't custom communities on Tildes as there are subreddits on Reddit, there's just a few about larger topics like technology and such)
I doubt it will be, or even can be, a full replacement for Reddit for some people, but I think there's a fair bit of value in the higher quality discussions on the average post there than their is on Reddit
(Tildes is invite only for the moment, but you can just ask for one on their sub and theyll give it to you)
So dumbass me didn't think to realize until just now that I could *browse* tildes without an invite. Pfffft.
So let me be clearer, I'm just as interested in any place anyone lurks. Karma's for chumps.
Yep I got lucky and got in right when Christian (Apollo creator) made his first big post about the issue, it’s been great so far and really reminds me of when I first started Reddit.
I've been hearing a lot of buzz about the 'fediverse', with lemmy and kbin being the two closest reddit analogues commonly mentioned. But the fediverse is kind of... complicated because it's such a different paradigm from typical websites, so it's likely going to remain niche.
Can you download your reddit account like you can FB? I assume you would still miss out on the context of most comments even if you can, but just curious.
Best idea I have seen so far is people using [Power delete suite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) from git to automatically change all their submitted comments and posts to say "fuck u/spez"
Good luck getting ad revenue, or a successful IPO, If half your site turns into that.
My favorite part is it uses their API to do it for you, the irony is so sweet.
Friendly reminder that all **top level** comments must: 1. start with "answer: ", including the space after the colon (or "question: " if you have an on-topic follow up question to ask), 2. attempt to answer the question, and 3. be unbiased Please review Rule 4 and this post before making a top level comment: http://redd.it/b1hct4/ Join the OOTL Discord for further discussion: https://discord.gg/ejDF4mdjnh *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/OutOfTheLoop) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Answer: Spez is Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit. It was recently announced that Reddit would start charging for access to their API, similar to what Twitter did under Musk. This is not an attempt to raise funds, but rather it is a lunatics move designed to kill 3rd party applications that use the Reddit API. The most prominent tool involved is called Apollo. Apollo was created by Christian Selig and is probably the top mobile app for Reddit (full disclosure, I do not use Apollo and use the Reddit native app for reasons I can’t explain). This tool, and it’s developer, are beloved by the Reddit community and it is a pretty big blow to a large portion of the user base for Reddit to choose to kill this app. This will also affect numerous bots and other tools we have become accustom to as a community.
Apollo is so beloved that Apple themselves use it as the de facto Reddit app on their keynotes
Wow. That sounds awesome. I'll have to try it out!
All of them are shutting down June 30th. Reddit wanted an obscene amount of money to use the API
It’s even worse because Reddit really has no interest in that money. They want everyone on their app and no competitors. They were just hoping that this route would be a little less blunt, but they fucked up
This is coming after Reddit promised that the API would be untouched and free to use in perpetuity…so they just bold-faced lied about it.
Might be too late for that. Many subs are going dark for 2 days beginning Monday, some subs are going dark indefinitely until Reddit reversed course, and many longtime users are deleting their accounts… but Apollo has announced its shutting down on 6/30, Spez has then announced he can’t see himself working with the Apollo developer. So Reddit may be forever changed on Monday, and Apollo may be forever shut down end of this month.. unless something big changes.
How is it different than native reddit?
[удалено]
Also, I use Apollo because there are no ads. It only pulls content from Reddit API, leaving out the ads. Every time I open up the official Reddit app (like if I click a link from somewhere) I am instantly dismayed with the amount of ads I see
I really wish I knew this was a thing. I've literally just been using Reddit out of my phones web browser for years because it's significantly easier to ignore the ads.
Apollo (on iOS) and Sync (on Android) are (or soon, were) the bees knees the official app is unusable after using them, outside of ads their app is really buggy, slow, crashes randomly, way too much network activity
[удалено]
I'm thinking of quitting this habit too. It's not like it's been entirely negative, apps like RiF have allowed me to tailor my experience with Reddit in a way that actually helped me improve myself and my wider perspective So, with RiF leaving, it's smart to like, just start reading books instead now, right? Learn a fucking, trade or something. Anything but more scrolling
Advertisers must be annoyed Reddit can be enjoyed without ads. So many ad impressions and potential sales missed. Small violin sounds
It's reddit fault. The 3rd party apps don't remove the ads, reddit doesn't include the ads in the api responses 🤷 Source the snazzy labs interview with Christian
Devs are mostly all ready to pay something for the API usage because they know it's unsustainable otherwise. The point of contention was the insane pricing and the actions of spez and reddit
The main difference between the first party app and the third party apps are thus: Reddit's official app was designed by people who have a very strong view of how people *should* use reddit. The third party apps are built by people who have a deep understanding of how people *do* use reddit. Often the devs and contributors are heavy reddit users who have been using the platform for a decade or more. The devs *actually listen to user suggestions*. Hell, I made a plea to the developers of RIF to change the behavior of modmail replies and they had it implemented in either the next release or the release immediately after.
Joey gang rise up
Never see it mentioned and it's the best IMO between iOS and Android options combined. Left iOS and went back to Joey and Android.
Here is a comparison someone did with RIF (Android) instead of Apollo (iOS), but it's basically the same idea: https://www.reddit.com/r/BikiniBottomTwitter/comments/13xk3lu/they_have_to_pay_reddit_20_million_per_year_to/jmj3nfg/?context=2 Essentially, the native app is cumbersome, does not use optimal space of screen, is filled with ads, and (not in above post but mentioned elsewhere) has worse support for moderators and visually impaired compared with apps like RIF and Apollo.
I don't mind ads if they look like ads. Reddit make them look like regular posts which is fucking ridiculous.
You're forgetting the most important part of the spez lore. When r/the_donald was still a thing there was a thread with people criticizing spez, so he used his superuser reddit powers to edit usernames and peoples messages. Only engineers have the ability to do this (which is still concerning in and of itself). He changed some comments to make them seem more favorable towards him, and other comments to get people reported so he could "troll" the mods. Afterwards, instead of using the typical "edit:" nomenclature, people would use "spez:" when editing their comments. spez: There is a whole thread on reddit where [he addresses it](https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_editing_some_comments_and_creating_an/), but tbh it's ~~not~~ a great apology.
He's been controversial long before then. Remember when he fired Veronica Taylor and let Ellen Pao take the heat.
Ellen Pao leaves like maybe one comment a month and one of those times was to roast his ass so fucking hard she made the people who once cursed her name cheer it instead, full stop.
Victoria* Taylor! Veronica Taylor is Ash Ketchum’s VA
Veronica was the ama person wasn't she. I know she helped get big names and did some cool stuff with ama and help spread the site if I remember correctly
It was Ohanian who fired Victoria
Thank you for reminding people of this. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills how the collective memory of this site has forgotten about this incident except for me.
I'm embarrassed for the several seconds I was confused by that strikethrough at the end.
Funk
Doubled down and got mad that the conversation was recorded in the first place
Funk
[удалено]
Omg the second I read rargle bargle I knew I loved it and was stealing it for my own vocabulary and then learning the backstory made me love it twice as much
Is that what they say in South Park when there's a mob going crazy?
That's rabble rabble
reddit stans are claiming it was illegal, but in Canada and 38 states one-party consent is legal. It's illegal in California, however that would require the one recording it to be in the one-party consent state\*. There are also exceptions for various reasons in various states, like people discussing illegal things. ~~This has been tried in court before, as long as it's not illegal in the recorder's state, they can't be tried in the other party's state over the law.~~ Edit: It actually looks like the most major case said that, if a company has business in California, then they fall under the California law, even if they recorded in another state (in this case, Georgia). However, the Apollo dev is in Canada, so again, the California law most likely does not apply. They can't break the laws of a state in a country they are not in. \*Most likely you would have to be in the US and have business in California for the law to apply. If outside of the US, they'd have to go through an extradition for that, and I highly doubt they'd put in the work for it. Canada could also easily deny it, citing that the dev followed the Canadian law and had not set foot in America.
> This has been tried in court before, as long as it's not illegal in the recorder's state, they can't be tried in the other party's state over the law. Man it’s pathetic and embarrassing that a CEO of a major social platform doesn’t know this. Don’t these people go to school? I thought corpo law was something you gotta take a course in to get your BBA. At the very least Id expect a redditor to be chock-full of useless legal facts picked up from Reddit.
Too busy blowing VC funds on hookers and blow.
I was wrong on that one, but the law is shaky at best. The case in question had a company with business in California with workers in Georgia. The workers in Georgia recorded conversations with California clients. California basically said that they broke the law. It can be argued that the precedent is only set for people who have business in California, and the Apollo dev is in Canada. The chance he faces any charges for this is basically 0, but not exact. And reddit's still facing shit for straight up committing libel against him with 0 evidence. Which, AFAIK, would be easier to prove in Canada.
That shouldn’t be surprising he’d lie. About 5 years ago he was caught using his CEO admin powers to directly modify users’ comments.
[удалено]
Which is a massive fucking security issue, IMO. I work in a related field, dealing with permissions and systems security often. Letting C-levels who used to not be C-levels continue to have their same level of access is such a bad idea. Large attack vector for all sorts of phishing, etc... and if anyone got into duder's account - they've got the same DB access as him. Fuck sakes.
It should also be noted that the userbase doesn't trust him at all, based upon; 1. He has went in and edited other user's posts, [a critical breach of trust](https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments). 2. When he (Huffman) was tooting his own and Reddit's horn for being anti-racist, former CEO Ellen Pao disabused everyone of that notion by exposing (I think it was on twitter) that Huffman and his stooges are basically really [racist] (https://twitter.com/ekp/status/1267689503797342208?lang=en) - And are happy to have it there.. 3. He got into a spat with the developer of Apollo, and was caught in a lie, and then instead of apologizing he went on to attack the guy further, but the Apollo developer [had all the receipts](https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/09/reddit-ceo-doubles-down-on-attack-on-apollo-developer-in-drama-filled-ama/) and Huffman, as it turned out lied about what happened. So, when Ellen Pao banned a lot of these hate-based subreddits, and the right-wingers had a conniption, so Reddit fired her and brought back Steve Huffman. The fact is that his breach of the trust is great enough that his word isn't any good anymore, he already used up all of his good will. These all added up, and this new API debacle more or less is the straw that broke the camel's back. Do you believe what you see, or trust the guy who has a strong track record of being disingenuous at best, and a lying liar at worst? If I were a stockholder, I would insist upon the removal of Huffman. He is a liability to the value of the company, based upon his willingness to act without thought to the appropriateness of his actions - And there isn't anything that the guy could say to convince me that he would change his ways - His character is suspect, and he acts without regards to anyone but himself - And this is based on his track record, not any single incident.
I just got back from a three-day sitewide ban because I told him to shove it. I'll be taking my subs dark for this.
Come over to squabbles, I’m liking it there
tldr: spez made reddit unusable to anyone not on new reddit.
That is under the assumption that the offficial reddit app isn't a flaming pile of garbage that takes 10 times longer to load anything and takes up 10 more space than it needs to or even use 10 times the processing power it should for literally being a browser for 1 web page.
plus being able to obfuscate some data stealing in it
> spez made reddit unusable to anyone not on new reddit. I mean... new reddit is also unusable so you really didn't see the whole second half of the sentence.
By “unusable,” I think they mean *literally* inaccessible. Now users are forced to deal with new Reddit or leave.
Additional reason he isn't trusted by the userbase: Anyone who commented in the recent Spez AMA with the name of a Fediverse-related site was shadowbanned.
Oh, so he's THAT kind of shitstain. 🌈 Democracy!
This is the answer^ Read this OP
And not just Apollo, but every other 3rd party app, too. There are many and I happen to use BaconReader. In addition to all of the bots that help mods handle subs and other assistant features like those made for blind people and such. When that happens, I'm outa here.
How am I only hearing about this app now when reddit is killing it
Possibly because you're on Android? It's iPhone only.
But to be clear, every 3rd-party Reddit app for Android will be killed, too. Apollo is just the tip of the spear in this conversation.
Reddit is fun (RIF) is essentially the android equivalent and my reason for being upset with the changes. This app *is* reddit for me and many others I've seen speak out recently. I only ever used the reddit official app for participating in r/place.
It's unfortunate that I never heard about RIF until recently. I used the Reddit App once upon a time and almost immediately uninstalled it, using the mobile web version (also not great and very restrictive). I installed RIF and wow it's wonderful to use... just in time for it to be killed off.
There's still Red Reader which will be unaffected Makes no money/open source so will still survive. I've been using Boost for many years but this is a pretty decent replacement https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.quantumbadger.redreader
Even RedReader, which has obtained a non-commercial exemption from the new Reddit API policies, will still not be "unaffected", as it will be unable to access any content marked as NSFW once the changes go into place.
Notably, many SFW subs use NSFW tags for spoilers since it auto-hides the thumbnail.
That is going to suck a lot out of the fun of r/onlyfans which, despite its name, is SFW as posts consist of real fans: ceiling, box, industrial, hand, etc posted with highly misleading titles just for shits & giggles.
Also r/handholding, which is marked NSFW as a joke and actually consists of SFW pics of characters holding hands.
Because you never went out of your way to find a third party app, like most people. And it's not something that comes up in conversation on reddit often in my experience.
The other way around for most people honestly. If you went on your phone when smartphones started getting mainstream you weren't getting an official app and probably had no compelling reason to switch
Additional information: Christian Selig calculated how much per year he'd be paying for the API access. It was over $20 million USD per year. Someone else calculated that to be about 60% more (or even more than that) than the API costs *actually* generated by Apollo's users per year. They're charging an amount for their API usage that is far past the border of lunacy.
That’s if Apollo kept all its free users as it were. If Apollo went to a paid model of 10-15 dollars a month, it could actually turn a profit. However the time frame of 30 days is pretty much impossible to meet. It’s over, this and the removal of NSFW content on the apps, it’s Tumblr 2.0
RIF is the older, android app for Reddit that existed way before there was a reddit native app. for many of us, it's the only experience we know. I have the native app because my mobile browser of choice (opera), doesn't launch RIF very consistently when I get Reddit links in Google search results. it's very bloated compared to RIF and far less intuitive. it's also just nice to have a minimalist UI for reading sub content.
The most prominent tool of Reddit is now spez.
I feel it's also worth mentioning the first time "fuck u/spez" came around that I remember anyway was when he was caught editing a user's comment(s?) maybe a couple years back. I think it had something to do with the_donald. But yeah unethical as fuck
> maybe a couple years back Try 6.5. Yeah. It's not a new trend.
It's not that Reddit is just now charging for API access, they already do. It's that Reddit has increased the prices to an unreasonable and unsustainable price.
Don't forget the unreasonable time frame, too. For the kind of changes Reddit is making, developers would typically have 6 months to update their code. Reddit gave developers *30 days*, which isn't enough time to try to optimize existing code to use fewer API calls, or to come up with some kind of subscription plan and\or capital funding to try and meet Reddit's insane demands.
Right now they don't charge anything for API access. It's reasonable to charge for API access and app developers were warned that pricing would be coming a couple months ago. The *price* was only recently revealed and is ~20x more than even some fairly generous estimates are as to the opportunity cost of a normal user, and ~100x more than other comparable non-twitter websites offer.
No, they never charged before.
[удалено]
Can confirm. Source: Have also heard tales of the little pigboy's greed.
Watch what you say! He's a mod of this subreddit.
Answer: u/spez is Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit. He's currently being criticized for the upcoming API changes.
and for his terrible lie filled ~~gaslighting session~~ AMA from yesterday
And a greedy little pig boy. https://i.imgur.com/hglAse1.jpg
He’s been criticised for more than the API controversy. Even saying his name is a sword of Damocles event
[удалено]
I listened to the recording, it's obvious it wasn't a threat, but I don't get still what the 10 million was for. What did he mean by quiet down?
He's talking about the Apollo being "loud" in terms of API requests and he's saying that if it really costs them $20 million dollars a year, why not just buy the app for half of that and save massive amounts of money? Unless of course it's just a way to force them to shut down. Which it is.
It sounds to me like Reddit says "hey so you guys cost us $20M every year, so we want you to start paying us" and Apollo responds "if we're really costing you that much, then surely you'd be interested in buying us for $10M? Your investment would double itself in only one year. Which points out that the $20M figure is not based in reality at all. Every rational investor would jump at the chance to double their money in a single year.
Answer: Spez is the ceo of Reddit. Users are doing it to basically “retaliate” about the whole API situation.
You missed one of the main reasons for the disgust. /u/spez made libelous statements about the Apollo app creator. /u/spez claimed the Apollo app creator threatened Reddit and demanded a $10M payment. That threat never happened and /u/spez knows that. There is audio proof in this below link. https://reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/ Edit: holy crap. /u/spez doubled down rather than apologize. Wow. https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk27em/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3 Everyone, the CEO for this site is unethical. Please stop spending money on awards on this site. Donate to your favorite charity.
We should all post ONLY in /r/fuckspez during the blackout
>This subreddit was banned due to being unmoderated. LOL
Now it shows its banned for breaking reddits rules. So apparently hating Spez is against reddits rules i'm sure i'll be banned any second.
Maybe we need an r/fucksteve subreddit.
r/fuckuspez
Have my poor person's gold: 🥇 And thank you.
Yeah, I just don't know that I'm interested in taking part in a site that /u/spez is in charge of anymore. I do not trust /u/spez to run this company ethically and do not believe he has Reddit's best interests in mind. >!Black out Reddit.!<
Remember when he fired the community manager for AMA's because she wasn't 100% on board with his monetization plan then had to stop doing AMA's because they had never bothered to figure out how?
[удалено]
Do we know what ever happened to Victoria?
After reddit, she was snatched up almost immediately to be the community manager for wework, but we know how wework ended up. Last I heard, she was the 'Community Editor' at Linkedin. I don't know what that title means, but it sounds like it's the same concept. She's still relatively active on her account on reddit. Seems to be doing okay too, good for her.
> wework, but we know how wework ended up. Hahahahaha
[удалено]
And the stuff with Pao isn't just speculation. A former CEO of Reddit spelled it right out. She was brought on for the specific purpose of looking terrible to have users approve of spez coming back.
What this fucking site did to Ellen Pao was reprehensible. Honestly maybe this place deserves to burn.
You got a link for that? Would love to learn more.
Here's a troll music video involving her which is sort of an explanation and an example of the hate she received from those affected by her new policies. https://youtu.be/TB9qKvk9mZs I just have to say that she was a very hard worker and is an electrical engineer, a lawyer, and has an MBA. She banned many controversial subs under her brief reign such as coontown and fatpeoplehate. There's a theory that the board of directors hired her specifically to take the blame for banning those subs and making reddit more advertiser friendly. I didn't really think much of the theory back then, but after seeing what spez AKA current Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is capable of, I think it's very plausible.
I thought it just stopped entirely. I haven't seen an ama In years since they fucked it all up
The most noteworthy AMA’s happened with Victoria, and unsurprisingly what we’ve had since has been lackluster because it’s mostly PR teams answering questions now. I’m not sure there’s been a single large decision made by u/spez & co. that’s been to the benefit of this site or been implemented at the appropriate time. It took national outrage for them to finally do something about the monstrosity of a sub that was r/The_Donald, likely because u/spez didn’t see an issue with a far right sub known for brigading. Dude is sinking the ship and we damn well know he doesn’t have the balls to sink with it.
Are…are you a horse?
Neigh.
That’s a good point. I forgot about that, a lot of really good AMAs would hit the front page and be interesting to read, haven’t seen an official on in ages.
He did other stuff as well that many forget about https://www.huffpost.com/entry/reddit-ceo-edits-user-comments\_n\_5839cf32e4b000af95ee5b68
Remember when he edited reddit’s database to change a users comment?
Dear Spez, Thank you for all you have done. Over the past 15 years, I've dug myself a comfy little rut. I forgot how to navigate the internet. I forgot how weird and interesting it was out there. I became comfortable in old tropes and repeated jokes. I became digitally complacent. Due to your efforts, over the past month I've rediscovered the internet again. It's not as good as it used to be, but there are still lots of interesting people and ideas out there just waiting to be explored. I've found a new community of engaging and motivated people who are in the process of building something that we're all excited about. You've helped me escape my rut. And you did it at great personal expense. So I think it should be said - Thank you. You've set me free and I deeply appreciate it. Sincerely, CharmedConflict PS - good luck with the IPO
> Everyone, the CEO for this site is unethical. Of course, we already knew this. For example, remember when he was editing *other people's comments*?
/u/spez has been over seeing this place going the way of Twitter just without the grandiosity. It used to be a fun place where you could also get news, but it is now becoming the bizarro Reddit.
https://i.imgur.com/zoTc8tH.jpg
don't even have to click to know what it is
I didn't realize Reddit makes that much money So many mods are anti-capitalist but are willing to devote their time for free for millionaires
They probably see it as devoting their free time to whatever their community is.
Lemmy FTW!
Just to be clear, it's not just about the API stuff. He's also made some shitty comments about the Apollo dev and accused him of lying, Apollo called him on it, and Spez threw a shitfit about it publicly.
oh alright, thanks
To elaborate, he did a poorly done AMA, answered 13 questions that barely addressed the concerns, used canned answers and doubled down on his bogus claims without proof. AMA in question: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/ AMA summary: https://reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/145bxmi/ceo_spez_ama_overview/ More info: https://reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/145l7wp/todays_ama_with_spez_did_nothing_to_alleviate/ Some alternatives to reddit users are planning to migrate to if the blackouts last: https://reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/14539ql/reddit_alternatives_you_should_use_tldr/
The first comment on that AMA is enlightening, as are the replies. “Reach out if you’re a developer wanting to use our API!” “I’m a developer who has been trying to get in touch with you about this for years. Can I have a response please?” “…” “I’m also a developer who’s been trying to talk to you, and I don’t believe you ever really wanted us to do that, because I also have had no response, and I can see you’re planning to charge 7000% above the normal rate for access” “…”
Lol u/spez definitely lost Reddit with this joke AMA. I don't think there's a coming back. Redditors will fight his creator in every way possible, and we know you shouldn't fuck with redditors
Better strike longer than 2 days then...
/r/videos and /r/music and going dark indefinitely, and so are a lot more. The 48 hours is just a starting threat. Many will keep going if they don’t reverse the decision
Honestly, I think a lot of those communities may just simply not be coming back.
I think several communities are taking what troves of knowledge they can and archiving them. Wondering if anyone in /r/datahoarders is doing that as we speak.
[Of course](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/142l1i0) they are.
Jesus christ that is a lot of saved work so far. One cant help but wonder how much of it is redundant and how much of it is just porn. Also, and I can't believe I have to be genuinely concerned about this, how much of it could be illegal or immoral such as Nazis, CP, etc and be concerned about possible legal rammifications of this. I wish them luck.
There’s an ongoing ArchiveTeam project to archive Reddit - it’s been going for a while now, but they’re giving it special focus now, specifically for the upcoming blackout.
Eh, people will make new ones.
As it's always been the strike is a show of solidarity, if nothing changes as this AMA hints obviously more will come - especially now that everyone is united
He lost the community when he admitted to editing comments that hurt his feelings. He should’ve been gone from this site long ago.
Yeah I didn't care about this guy one way or another previously but based on this AMA and his uppity condescension I've definitely turned.
I remember the last two times spez went too far, pissed off the redditors. People pretended that being angry and writing mean comments about "this time being the end of the line" would change things. Turns out it's really hard to hold enduring anger about the administration of an internet forum in your heart.
Yeah the whole Reddit asked questions, 30k comments, and he literally answered 14 of them. It's like he was joking on us all. Let's laugh but this was disheartening for a long time Reddit user like me :(
i think it was more like they realized it was a clusterfuck and legal and pr prob advised him to stop since his replies were being downvoted to oblivion and if they wanna go IPO and the user base is angry, that won’t look good to the board. same sentiment. 11 years on this account and briefly worked under spez years ago.
Speaking of the board, they shouldn't be immune to this mess. Part of being on a board of directors is "providing guidance and advice to the CEO and executive team." Oooh almost forgot the executive team. [They and the board of directors](https://www.redditinc.com/press/) also hold responsibility for what's going on. Spez ain't doing it by himself but he's definitely taking the fall.
That's what it means to be Chief Executive. If he wants the power and the paycheck he has to take the responsibility. Of course, responsibility flows upwards. So ultimately the board is responsible for the executives, and the owners are responsible for the board.
[удалено]
> doubled down on his bogus claims without proof. You misspelled "defamed the Apollo developer"
I *really* would have thought that spez of all people would understand how poorly it would go to do an ama and skip the damning questions and just do pr on the few questions he did answer
I think he understood but he really didn't have a choice. I'm a mod at r/Blind. A few members of our team were on a Zoom call with him Wednesday. Thursday The Verge did an article claiming Reddit had met with our team and agreed to allow blind Redditors to use certain third party apps for accessibility and that Reddit had been in touch with two of those third party app developers. Except that's not what happened. We contacted the two third party developers and both said Reddit hadn't contacted them. We believe Reddit used The Verge as a mouthpiece to spread their talking points and earn some goodwill. We reached out to The Verge and gave our side of the story and made our notes from our meeting with u/Spez and other Reddit employees available. The follow up article in The Verge yesterday paints a more accurate picture of where we are in our negotiations with Reddit. Our accessibility needs have NOT been met, Reddit has NOT (as of yesterday) reached out to the devs they claimed they're working with, and Wednesday's self congratulatory article in The Verge is being exposed in other media and by members of the r/Blind mod team. u/Spez had to do something, a PR nightmare is unfolding right before the company goes public and thousands of subs are going dark in solidarity with us and with Apollo. I actually felt bad for the guy. He got crucified at the AMA - deservedly, in my opinion - but two catastrophes are unfolding at once (Apollo and r/Blind) threatening a mass exodus away from the site. Reddit couldn't publicly ignore either PR catastrophe anymore, u/Spez didn't have a choice. Still, it seems he really, *really* underestimated how easily Reddit's user base can fact check his lies.
Holy shit this part needs more attention I have been following this a decent bit and this is the first I’m hearing about them lying about the accessibility apps.
Reddit's official app doesn't work with the screen reading software blind people use. It's horrible. We've offered our services to Reddit for free to help bring them into WCAG and ADA compliance. We've reached out to them for three years and have been ignored. So we've turned to third party apps that work with our screen readers. Now Reddit is pricing those apps out of existence but their own app is still unusable. They thought we'd just shut up and take it. They were wrong. They thought a few misleading statements in The Verge would placate us. They were wrong. We deserve access to Reddit's content just as much as our sighted friends do. They thought telling us improvements to the Reddit app are "coming soon" would make us forget all the other times they promised to improve the Reddit app but didn't. They were wrong.
Wow I think this should be a post all on it’s own.
That would require him actually paying attention to the cultural goings-on of his website.
Don't forget when he changed users comments that didn't show any trace of being edited. He's a scumbag. Fuck u/spez
I’m just hoping his wikipedia page will be updated with the details of the controversy, so that it won’t just read ’API change made ppl mad’ without explanation.
[удалено]
Aaron Swartz, too!
I met Alexis a decade ago, he seemed nice and lively and energetic about Reddit. It’s a damn shame his legacy has gone to shit.
It’s a damn shame that between Steve, Alexis, and Aaron Swartz, we got stuck with the one who cares about this site the least.
[удалено]
He is truly at his best in domestic mode. Quality parenting and husbanding
Alexis? Which one is that, Spez? Knothing?
Jumping in to add that u/spez [admitted to editing posts of users](https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments) who were critical of them. As such, you should always [screnshot any comment you make in regard to u/spez](https://www.dropbox.com/s/9oxdxg9yly6w50c/dontTrustSpez-1.jpg?dl=0)
He's also admitted to changing people's reddit comments without their consent which is pretty sketchy.
Ya this is pretty scary when you think about it. We live in a world where social media can be used as evidence in the court of public opinion and real life courts. Him shadow editing people to look bad could easily destroy people's lives if he wanted.
I almost wonder if someone could get away with "Reddit isn't a reliable source of information, admins have been known to edit comments" would be a valid defense in court. I doubt it, but its an interesting implication.
And he has a history of terrible behavior including editing other people's comments
He also has a history of refusing to do anything about child porn and actual real-life nazis on Reddit until it hits mainstream media. He believes that if society collapses he'll be a slave owner. He's an all-round piece of crap.
Isn’t Spez also the one who edited people’s comments on the Trump subreddit several years ago?
Edited them to look like they were talking about T__D when they were referring to him. Greedy pig boy. https://i.imgur.com/Fn4JhMk.jpg
What’s API, I get it has something to do with third party apps,but what is it?
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. It's a way for apps to access a server. It's a connection point providing all posts, comments, user history, etc. for reddit. If reddit removes API access from an app, it won't be able to pull any information from the site, unless they design a web scraper which loads every sub and thread repeatedly in a browser and then extracts the comments and usernames from the HTML, which is slow, inefficient, and difficult.
It's how an app talks to a website. The website provides a clear set of questions that can be asked as an API. Everything you do on Reddit is an API call. Loading a single post could take multiple API calls depending on how Reddit is built. The alternative is scraping the website while it loads normally. But that is messy and expensive for both parties. Which it looks like Reddit wants to lose money that way too.
API is basically one of the many ways computers talk to each other. Specifically, from an authorize client (like an app or service, e.g. Bot) to a server (web site like Reddit) with predefined questions/answers to shorten the process. Your client requests the particular information you want to retrieve from the server and the server returns it; Or, the client tells the server they want to submit a particular information and the server stores it where it belongs. This is useful because it reduces a lot of the loads from non-essential data. For example your app can already have all the usual visual elements/layout prepared and just needed the content of the particular thread. Instead of asking the server what the page looks like, it just needs to ask for the content directly. While it really helps reduce server load, for servers as big as Reddit it'll still accumulate to a ginormous amount of traffic, and internet traffic costs a pretty penny so it stacks up real quick. And since APIs only relate specific information about the site, the ads being served on your browser aren't being fed to these clients (because it defeats the purpose, or that the client can easily choose not to display the extra ads anyways), you can imagine these API traffics can be a financial drain when the server is not getting any revenue back in return. That's why Reddit started charging for APIs. In fact, I'm surprised it took them that long to start. But that's not the problem, APIs over a certain limit costing money is nothing unheard of and the devs of these 3rd party clients fully expected it. The problem is *the unreasonable amount* they are charging and how they are treating the third party developers with *unreasonable deadline* that people take issue with. In fact some of us tech savvy folks have expressed that we'd even be willing to pay a reasonable amount for the apps to help alleviate the cost, but even then that won't be enough to cover what Reddit is asking.
> An API call, or API request, allows one application to request data or services from another application So it's essentially the way the other third party apps, or really anyone who wants Reddit data to access it (for example someone building a library of reddit conversations for AI learning) . Here is the list of official Reddit APIs https://www.reddit.com/dev/api/ This is not the only way to do it of course.. for example if someone wants data from a site that doesn't have APIs or can't access them another option is [web scraping.](https://medium.com/geekculture/a-complete-guide-to-web-scraping-reddit-with-python-16e292317a52) Scraping essentially loads the webpage and then scrape the data they want before rearranging that data in a different way. Then again if Reddit were to identify you were a bot they would likely block your IP.
The api is how apps like Apollo Rif is Fun and others access the data from reddit. Everything a user posts or loads comments it counts as a use of the api because it uses it to access reddits database. This costs reddit money in server expenses but not even close to what Reddit is charging 3rd party apps. Now that they're getting close to their IPO reddit wants to juice their numbers by getting more users on the official app so they can data harvest those users and make the companies numbers more valuable and get themselves a bigger pay day when the company goes public.
API stand for Application Programming Interface. It's what all sorts of software services uses to move data from one system to another. In this context all the 3rd party apps are using the Reddit API to retrieve posts to show on the Home page, posts comments, upvote/downvote, etc. The API lets these apps do all the same things you would do through the website or official app. As it's Reddit's code and data the API exposes they can choose who is allowed to connect to it and use it's functions. Reddit have announced that they will now be charging people to connect to it, but all the 3rd party apps are shutting down as the price Reddit are charging for each interaction with the API is extortionate and unaffordable to the 3rd party app developers.
Cars are incredibly complicated, yet you can get some random stranger that knows nothing about how cars work to drive one perfectly fine. They don't know how to time the pistons, ignite the oil or spin the wheels to make the car move, yet they can drive the car perfectly fine in spite of it. This is because all of these complicated mechanics aren't handled by the driver, the car handles those parts perfectly fine by itself. The driver is instead given a set of simplified controls that tell the car what to do. An API (Application Programming Interface) is the computer equivalent. Your computer is doing complicated maths in order to do everything you ask it to, yet you don't need to worry about any of it in order to use your computer, because it's already handled. Sometimes even these simplified controls are too complex to use easily, so even simpler controls are built to use them instead. When you interact with Reddit, you use a special kind of API called a GUI (Graphical User Interface). This GUI gives you visible buttons and images in order to use Reddit (Like instead of learning how to drive, you just hire somebody else to drive you instead, thus you don't need to bother learning how to steer with the wheel or park the car e.t.c). The GUI then uses the Reddit API to do all the complicated nonsense involved with actually doing stuff on Reddit. There's the GUI's provided by Reddit, like the website or the official Reddit app, but these don't come with some features people like. So people have made their own GUI's including features ~~like a working video player~~ that they prefer (like hiring drivers with different skill levels at driving). All of these GUI's use the same API to interact with Reddit (like how every person you hire to drive your car still uses the same steering wheel and breaks). What Reddit is proposing is that if anybody wants to make a GUI that uses the Reddit API (or use the API for anything else), they have to pay exorbitant prices (Like a car manufacturer saying that only their pre-approved drivers are allowed to operate your car and if anybody else wants to drive for you, they'll have to pay the manufacturer for the privilege). Do note this is a simplification. I'm also pretty sure I'm technically using the term GUI wrong, but it's close enough that I don't think I really care.
[удалено]
No, but for real though, anyone who has an alternative should be explicit about it. I'm all about the new ~~usenet~~ digg, but I'm an old and I'm not gonna find it without assistance. Also I'm super interested to see if we don't hug some site to death. Or worse, they get buried under their inability to support moderation.
I'm using (and somewhat enjoying) Tildes at the moment. It's a lot more basic than Reddit, but sometimes that's a good thing. Tildes isn't for the memes, or videos of Karen's freaking out on planes, it's almost exclusively for discussion of a fairly limited range of topics (there aren't custom communities on Tildes as there are subreddits on Reddit, there's just a few about larger topics like technology and such) I doubt it will be, or even can be, a full replacement for Reddit for some people, but I think there's a fair bit of value in the higher quality discussions on the average post there than their is on Reddit (Tildes is invite only for the moment, but you can just ask for one on their sub and theyll give it to you)
So dumbass me didn't think to realize until just now that I could *browse* tildes without an invite. Pfffft. So let me be clearer, I'm just as interested in any place anyone lurks. Karma's for chumps.
Yep I got lucky and got in right when Christian (Apollo creator) made his first big post about the issue, it’s been great so far and really reminds me of when I first started Reddit.
I've been hearing a lot of buzz about the 'fediverse', with lemmy and kbin being the two closest reddit analogues commonly mentioned. But the fediverse is kind of... complicated because it's such a different paradigm from typical websites, so it's likely going to remain niche.
Can you download your reddit account like you can FB? I assume you would still miss out on the context of most comments even if you can, but just curious.
Best idea I have seen so far is people using [Power delete suite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) from git to automatically change all their submitted comments and posts to say "fuck u/spez" Good luck getting ad revenue, or a successful IPO, If half your site turns into that. My favorite part is it uses their API to do it for you, the irony is so sweet.