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...
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
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.
expired
"It's required for you to update Infinity after July 1st... Thank you for understanding!"
goes on Lemmy and never returns to Reddit lol
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.
expired
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 believe the admins said it would only block access to NSFW communities, not a post flagged NSFW on an otherwise SFW community
But still bullshit
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. 🙃
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 digg the name
I think they're trying to get rid of rfd party apps. It's more 'die or die' for them.
I would consider paying, but giving money to support Reddit? With its current attitude? It is a moral choice rather than a financial one.
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.
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".
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
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.
As others have pointed out, doesn't seem like this will work out well for the dev from business (or integrity) POV - Only thing I can think is maybe devs need to act in good faith now to "attempt" to adapt to API changes to then demonstrate the absolute and tangible harms that Reddit caused their business with this quick and reckless change, so that they can then sue after the fact?
Otherwise, what are you doing?
This was the Sync for Reddit's main argument against going in that direction.
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.
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.
expired
They could permit individual users to get API keys and then charge for that. This way would be fair and profitable while protecting them from API misuse. But forcing it on to app developers charging insane prices was their way to kill the apps.
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
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.
You know what... That does seem like something Spez would do.
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.
Reddit should be paying users, not the other way around.
Also didn't reddit already make enough money to cover its server costs several times over selling gold and premium? The only reason it isn't turning a profit is because of excessive management costs.
I payed Infinity+ just to support this amazing app. I remember Infinity being one of my first true approached to the FOSS community, "It's free, built by pretty much one person, Reddit is a multimillion dollar company, how can this app be better!?.. But pretty much every penny Infinity makes from now on will go to the greedy Reddit admins' hands so I guess this is goodbye.
Such a damn shame.
the app is better because u/spez has no control over it
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.
You should never pay for for-profit social media, it's fundamentally backwards. Their service is not the product, your contributions and presence are. They are nothing without you, and require you.
The exception is things like instances on the Fedi where it's not for profit and you're putting up a server to include yourself.
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.
Shutting down altogether might be a deeper hole, if people have already paid and would have to receive refunds.
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.
expired
If the app developer doesn't have an API key in the app though then what power does Reddit have to stop them? Reddit would have to ban each individual API key that people generated and put in the app, no?
App developers have already agreed to some Reddit ToS in order to get an API key, so one of Reddit's powers is to sue them. Developers don't want to risk that, so they just follow the agreement and whatever Reddit tells them.
Individual users would still need to request becoming a developer, a process which Reddit has recently changed, and agree to the same ToS to get an API key, but the risk of getting sued instead of just banned, would be much lower. The ban could include both the API key, and any users using it, so still risky other than for throwaway accounts.
Reusing the official app's API key though, could be interesting. Still risk getting banned, but interesting.
I love infinity but paying for Reddit to enable them to continue doing this is something I hope nobody does.
Yeah I've used Infinity for over two years, but won't after this update. I couldn't imagine paying money to Infinity only to have it go directly to Reddit. Tbh, I don't think paying money to any non-open, profit-driven social network is a good idea.
I feel like using them for free is an even worse idea. At least if you're paying there's a chance they'll treat you like a customer.
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
expired
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.
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%.
I mean what's the point. This is all just going to pay Reddit for the privilege of a hobbled 3rd-party app experience (and no NSFW). And we now know how much Reddit cares about you using their API.
Even with subscription how many requests you're allowed per month?
I wonder if there will be apps similar to NewPipe for YouTube or Frost for Facebook that don't rely on official third party APIs.
While I'm happy on Lemmy, it seems that reddit has so far won the battle and protest died down.
scraping goes brrrrrr
That's not gonna last long
You honestly can't blame them for trying to adapt and keep their project going. It's either they start doing a subscription model or Infinity dies. They aren't allowed to make a tutorial for you to just replace their API key with your own, so what choice do they have? (you can do that btw, there are tutorials on the Infinity subreddit, although you're limited to 100 calls a day)
expired
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
Paying for user generated content while the company behind aggregation profits from ads. Madness IMO.
I mean aren't they just trying to cover the cost of operation? I guess they figure we can make it a subscription based app or we can shut it down. IFR has no choice in the matter. Reddit made this decision.
True, they're just trying to cover the cost of operation. However, at that point, I think the best move is to just cut your losses and quit.
Reddit made that decision without regard for any effects it might cause to the 3rd party app developers. Reddit does not care. What's stopping them from pushing a change that would cripple any remaining third party apps without warning?
None. Reddit does what it wants.
Continuing to work with such an unreliable company is just asking for trouble.
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)
expired
I see, thanks, all this time I was under impression that Christian is the infinity dev
"her" is the infinity dev I think
I guess my hope, although knowing it is naive and improbable, is that come 1st of July, the few people that were staying to see If reddit backtracked their terrible mistake, following the shutting down of the 3rd party apps will either stop using reddit all together or slowly begin using it less and less, that much I think will happen.
Then, my hope is, seeing the slow down on content creation, traffic and user interactions reddit will slowly and discreetly, trying to save fuck-spez's face, roll back on some choices or make some concessions to allow 3rd party apps to come back ... But not holding my breath on it.
I know at this point in time, seeing spez dissimisive attitude and knowing it's not on their best interest to look weak or relinquish control of the site to the user base, once the decision was made, they won't go back unless the ramifications are near catastrophic, like losing all together 100% of the people that like me used 3rd party to browse reddit.
End of rambling.
I agree with you. I love Infinity, but Reddit is dead to me.
dang, wonder how much they're going to charge