Infinity for Reddit's latest update...
Infinity for Reddit's latest update...
To each their own, but I find this decision really misguided.
It's her money, not mine, so whatever, but l do not expect her to turn a profit in, rather the opposite.
In my view, the cross section of "IfR" users and people willing to subscribe monthly is rather small (especially if the money mostly goes to reddit - assuming I could afford it, I, for instance, would rather fund an open system like Lemmy).
And if Apollo's dev Christian Selig decided that it wasn't worth it with an already established paying user base, who already has a strong culture of subscriptions and exaggerated pricings, and one of the highest volume of users, at what probably was the peak usage of the platform; I don't see how a small app like IfR can survive.
That, or Christian made a pretty expensive mistake...
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Infinity for Reddit is OpenSource: https://github.com/Docile-Alligator/Infinity-For-Reddit
Apparently Reddit doesn't allow the original developer to publish the app with a field for a user API key... but there are tutorials on what to modify to get it to work, and there might be forks out there with the required fields baked in.
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That, or Christian made a pretty expensive mistake...
I wouldn't put a lot pass /u/spez, including offering special deals on API pricing. Especially if he thinks it would make Christian Selig look bad.
It's precisely the kind of thing a lying, gaslighting and vindictive /u/spez would do.
I would consider paying, but giving money to support Reddit? With its current attitude? It is a moral choice rather than a financial one.
And even with that subscription, you still get locked out of any post or subreddit that is marked NSFW, which will now be even more since subreddits are still protesting the changes.
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Ever since the first pricing announcement, they said they’d lock out NSFW. Originally they said it would just be porn, but when asked how the API would differentiate different types of NSFW Reddit never replied.
When mods using 3PA asked how they were supposed to remove NSFW posts on non-NSFW subreddits, the Reddit reply was the posters shouldn’t be doing that. Yeah.
I agree with you. I love Infinity, but Reddit is dead to me.
cross section of "IfR" users and people willing to subscribe monthly is rather small
Absolutely. I used Infinity for years now because it's open source and on F-Droid. I used it to get away from Google and the Reddit App. Donating for Infinity's developer? Sure thing. Paying money only to finance reddits API policy? For sure not.
I don't think most users will understand where their money is actually going...
Which is going to be even better of an experience for IfR's dev: "why is your app so expensive?", "We pay SO MUCH and still have bugs...", "Hey, with what I pay you, I sure would expect the feature I requested to be implemented already". Oh boy, what fun. My only regret is that this probably isn't going to be public, because I can definitely afford popcorn. 🙃
And what you're going to find too is that as the sub price goes up, the users who use it the least (generating less API costs) get priced out first. In other words, the average cost per user increases because the users who are willing to pay more are the ones who are generating more costs. If 75% of users stop using it because of the subscription cost, the API costs won't fall by anywhere close to 75%.
It's 'adapt or die' at the moment for 3rd party Reddit apps. I was kind of hoping that the developer would pivot to Lemmy or add Lemmy functionality to the app. Infinity was my go-to app before the apocalypse.
Same, and that's why I really am disappointed. But hey, someone else is apparently trying to make an "Infinity for Reddit" inspired app for Lemmy. It's apparently going to be called "Beyond". Hopefully, "Beyond for Lemmy". 😉
I'm generally willing to pay for a service (I donate to Open Source Projects I regularly use) because of course there are server costs, development costs, etc. But in this case and after all that Reddit has done to its user base it would be a very bad signal to give them money for it... I like Infinity for reddit and would love to have an Infinity for Lemmy
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The other point for me is that reddit has been getting shittier long before the API change. Forcing you to use their crappy app when you just clicked a link on mobile, all this weird avatar and award stuff. The weird chat that got bolted onto their message system, yet keeping the two seperate?
There's no way I will pay for that.
I think the best thing to do if you want to continue using Infinity would be to just compile your own APK with your own API key.
I've never used android studio before but didnt take me very long to work out how, and it all seems to be working.
You only need to change a couple of settings and about 3 lines of code.
You don't even need android studio. You can edit the files with anything and just compile the apk with any valid android compiler. But yeah it ain't that hard. The question remains: do you want to be using reddit? ;)
Someone made a Google collab notebook that takes your API keys as an input, takes care of the compilation and offers you a download link to get your apk. Zero knowledge needed!
I did try that method but for some reason it wouldn't install. Seemed like it was conflicting with an already installed app (had already uninstalled it) so by using Android studio I could change the package name at the same time.
Also did see some people mention it might be a bad idea to give your API key out to randos on the internet which is fair enough.
It's 100% clear that Reddit is trying to kill off third party apps completely so that they can facefuck you with ads and other garbage. The Apollo dev saw the writing on the wall. I can't blame other app devs for trying to squeeze a bit more livelihood out of this, but hopefully they've realized that they need to move on asap. In the end, it's a great reminder to not build your business on someone else's platform, even if they're "cool".
Christian already had paid subscriptions he'd have to contend with. A much harder problem.
Apollo users tends to browse and interact with Reddit more than other platforms, too, so the per user cost is much higher.
Are there price details yet? Christian was talking about $5 still not breaking even so I’d be interested to see where they’ve landed.
I don't think there's any way you could economically run a 3rd party app with the new API pricing. When the Apollo developer did the math it looked very sensible, and IMHO there's a huge downside to miscalculating the pricing (eg. underestimating the API usage of power users). I wish them luck, but this is probably going to end up pushing this developer into a financial hole, even discounting the extra dev work needed.
There's no way to be profitable with this pricing. Simply no way. Each time an user opens the app it will cost 2 cents in API requests. Continue scrolling, open threads and the costs rises. In average, accounting all the lurkers, inactive and free users, it might look like that it could be supported by a $2 subscription. But then, who is willing to subscribe to an app to read a free website? Only the most addicted users. The ones that will doom scroll for hours. The ones that will do 10000 api requests per day
Also, the server backend must be rewritten from scratch. Right now the app is open source and it's talking directly to the reddit servers using the API key. After the change, it could continue to do so, but because extracting the API key from the APK is trivial, some asshole could extract/crack it and give her a massive bill
Every single request must be proxied by her own server, making a check for a valid subscription to each user and also some quota management. Possibly some caching to save money on the most popular posts. Otherwise it will be trivial for some asshole to make a revanced patch to bypass the subscription. But implement this takes months, she can't have done this and tested carefully in just two weeks
Please someone let her realize this before she gets a massive bill at the end of the month, i don't have a reddit account for that
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It's OAuth. Each user that allows access to the app will have an individual token only valid for that app and only for that user's account. Either the developer or the user can revoke that token at any time.
All the dev has to do is to not create/send a token to the user until they subscribe, then revoke that user's token if the subscription expires.
Unpopular opinion, but I'd consider it if the API provided all the data. I never expected the API to always continue to be free. But making me pay and providing incomplete data? Nah.
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The openai CEO is one of the first investors of reddit, was Reddit CEO for a while, reintroduced spez as the CEO.
There's no way spez is going to let his good friend to pay this insane api prices for ai training
And in fact, i quote spez interview from the verge:
[API pricing for third party apps and AI training pricing] financially, they’re not related. The API usage is about covering costs and data licensing is a new potential business for us
It's interesting the part "potential business", that means they didn't change anything yet for them
I love infinity but paying for Reddit to enable them to continue doing this is something I hope nobody does.
oot but, who is 'her' exactly?
edit: guys I'm serious, idk if op just mixed the pronouns or christian is a trans (unlikely since christian is a man name)
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This is reddit killing third party apps, because even if you did subscribe you're still not getting NSFW because reddit is taking that out of the API anyways
So who would pay literally more for less? Reddit can say all they want about supporting 3rd party but even the blind could see through them
This was the Sync for Reddit's main argument against going in that direction.
The devs were hoping that they can keep their apps up and their livelihoods without too much additional work, that's fair from them I suppose. But they should definitely be taking a hard look at porting their existing apps for the Fediverse, if they aren't yet.
I bet Infinity is doing this instead of hanging up their keyboards like the other apps specifically because they know it won't work and want to be living proof of it.
Some of the other apps are making Lemmy versions instead.
Yeeaah I just uninstalled Infinity. It was my go to app for years after Slide fizzled out. Not sure how many users that are into open source will be willing to pay Reddit..
Same, it's a bit sad, but I've not used it for weeks and I'm certainly not going to start paying
I personally wouldn't try to work with Reddit, if I were a developer, but another factor here is that walking away from a project might be a big risk for someone who doesn't have a backup plan. Christian Selig is a high-profile figure who can afford to walk away from a project. He will be able to rebuild his career quickly and easily, and he knows it. The developer of Infinity likely doesn't have as many opportunities, and may also not feel comfortable taking that risk. I don't know much about her, but if she's not making a whole lot as is, she may legitimately not be able to afford going without an income source for weeks or months. It may be less about making a profit by doing this than about avoiding a catastrophic loss. Selig has admitted he's going to be losing a six-figure amount of money ($250,000, iirc) from shutting down after selling year-long subscriptions. I suspect everyone who has or had a Reddit app looking for alternative income sources, but I don't blame her for trying to make Infinity work for a little while longer.
I guess if the app is done and basically works then you might as well add a payment system and at least try to cut your losses. I'd struggle to enthusiastically improve the app after that though.
That comment about "it might not work" really sums up reddit's attitude
I think "struggle to enthusiastically improve the app" is probably an understatement, lol. I doubt this is meant to be a long-term business strategy. It's not like there were any good options here, just her choice of a few bad ones. I wish her luck.