Reddit @lemmy.world ShakeThatYam @lemmy.world 1 yr. ago

Relay for Reddit API Subscription Fees

www.reddit.com Reddit - Dive into anything

One of the remaining 3rd party Reddit apps (Relay) has begun discussing what it would be charging for subscription fees. Imo, they actually seem somewhat reasonable. The weird thing is that every upvote or downvote is an API call so you can rack up a huge number of API calls from voting.

Also, while the costs might be reasonable now, there's nothing preventing Reddit from jacking up prices again.

Edit: Also, there wouldn't be any NSFW content with the app.

27 comments

What is happening with reddit is so sad. The users made that platform what it is and were never compensated by reddit. Meanwhile, reddit is pissed off that tech like chatGPT used it to train models and not compensate reddit. If that ain't the pot calling the kettle black. The indifference/ignorance is staggering.
I really don't see the point in them restricting the NSFW stuff. Some stuff will slip through, it'll lead to posts being made in ways to try and reach the most people and get around it.

Then there will be arguments and someone will say think of the children or something.
- The point of the restriction was to silently remove the apps with excuses that it's just a side effect of other actions.
  
  This is what I believe too. With interest rates rising, companies have been under a great deal of pressure to show profitability, and especially with Reddit aiming for an IPO, it seemed (superficially at least) a great idea to badger their userbase into adopting their mobile app, where they could be monetized to a much larger extent.
  
  So of course they made the conditions of using their new API incredibly onerous.
  
  The whole point was to discourage developers from using it. And then by cherrypicking a handful of select 3rd-party developers to offer more amenable terms to on the downlow, they can show that they were just being reasonable good guys, and doing their best to work with everyone, and that it must be the developers at fault if they decided to walk away and abandon their users.
  
  So yeah, they've managed to get their app center stage, and the only minor tradeoffs have been:
  
  Launching/boosting a fleet of competitors (lemmy/kbin/squabbles/discuit/tildes/etc)
  
  Driving their very talented 3rd-party app devs into making apps for said competitors
  
  Creating a massive breach of trust between Reddit Inc and its unpaid volunteer mods
  
  Squandering any remaining goodwill Reddit once had in the tech community
  
  Driving away folks who enjoy using 3rd-party apps
  
  Ruining the image of the CEO
  
  Negatively affecting the overall community to the point where it's both a more hostile and unpleasant site, and simultaneously less moderated.
- I'd say the same reason as usual - the card processing companies are led by hypocrites and they don't want to allow payments for NSFW stuff.
- Also, you can bypass the restriction by making yourself a mod of a subreddit 🤦🏾‍♂️
  
  I heard that. I was going to try it but then I thought nah. They are killing off Joey the app I liked using why would I want to stay?
  
  Haven't b and n back since Joey stopped working.
  
  Is that just to post NSFW on your own sub? Or do see NSFW from all subs on a 3rd party app?
There are significantly more people in the comments willing to pay than I thought.... But the prices are also lower than expected.
- Yeah, it's cheaper than Reddit premium so it's kind of strange that you'd get an ad-free option for cheaper than what Reddit officially offers.
  
  Of course it's cheaper. You aren't allowed access to ANY NSFW tagged content, which is probably about 60% of Reddit as a whole, so it's an actively degraded experience.
That does seem reasonable.

Makes me curious, did Reddit finally budge on the pricing or did this dev figure out a way to optimize calls? Latter seems unlikely given each vote is a call.
- I do remember people saying that Apollo was badly optimized for API calls.
  
  I always felt like there has been some backroom negotiations between Relay and Reddit because Relay has (allegedly) been eating the costs of the API calls. Doesn't seem like it would be cheap for the dev to just eat that cost.
  
  I do remember people saying that Apollo was badly optimized for API calls.
  
  "Those people" were Spez and admins, who have a vested interest in actively attacking Apollo, and then ran an entire smear campaign trying to accuse Christian of blackmailing reddit when just calling his app bad wasn't enough. Nobody else ever corroborated those baseless claims made using unlabeled bar graphs. That info has exactly zero credibility, please do not repeat it.
  
  The reality is, users that care enough about their experience to use a 3rd party app simply use reddit more. And make more api calls for content.
  
  Christian seemed pretty confident Apollo was no less efficient than other apps in terms of API calls.
  
  Relay is probably just hoping to capitalize on a market everyone else abandoned. When it fails, can't they just declare the company as bankrupt and move on?

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