Megathread for Reddit News & App Shutdowns

alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgmod to Technology@beehaw.org – 82 points –

if you want to post links or discuss Reddit over the next while, please localize it to this thread in order to keep things tidy, thanks! (a more formal body may be forthcoming, but that'll come in the morning if so)

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Just got my push notification from Sync. "It's been a hell of a ride."

It actually hurt my soul a little to hit that uninstall button. Maybe I'll try the Lemmy version when LJ makes it public. Don't know. Kind of liking the alternatives purely because it feels like a fresh start without the reddit baggage.

Got the notification as well :(. Haven't been on it since lemmy but it was still a sad feeling. I'll definitely be trying out sync for lemmy when its released.

Bought the full version like 10 years ago because, funnily enough I didn't want ads when browsing Reddit.

I'm loving the organized chaos over here better.

I was up-to-date on everything and knew 3rd party apps were shutting down, but it still felt like it wasn't going to happen. One of those 'oh surely they won't let it get that far' moments, but nope. Poof. All gone.

I'm not uninstalling rif. It's going to sit there until I get a new phone.

I'm struggling to do it too man ;_; I don't want to let go... I want reddit to come to its senses. After all the shit we've been through in the past 4 years, this is like a swift kick right in the ribs while we were already curled up on the ground in agony.

I don't know how to accept this "reality"...

First post! I just want to drop a hint to anyone else coming from Apollo — I just installed wefwef.app and, despite the weird name, it is insanely close to an exact replica. I’m honestly surprised a PWA can work this well.

Also,
FUCK SPEZ
RISE LEMMY

Where does one find wefwef? A quick search didn't give me anything obvious, and it's not on the app store

Ah, right — try wefwef.app, and be sure to install to your Home Screen to get the full benefits of the PWA capabilities (check the settings tab, or if on iOS, tap the “share” icon in safari and select that option).

Updated my original comment with the link as well.

Its not a native app, basically an alternative web view, that you can add to your homescreen

I'm using wefwef now, coming off of using Reddit Sync, and it's delightfully intuitive. I'm super bummed about reddit imploding, but hey, at least we have a new place.

It's like how every time there's a group chat, it spontaneously spawns a new, smaller group chat "without the annoying people".

Yes, using this right now and it’s helping me feel like I’m still on Reddit. :)

I can't get it to load any comments :(

That is much more likely to be a problem with your server, not the PWA, simply because it is just a client-side web app. Are you on one of the large servers? I’m hearing they’re struggling to service the influx of users.

Although, I suppose it could be exacerbated by the app potentially requesting more from your server than the basic lemmy frontend does.

RIF no longer showing content for me :( It's over. 6 years of being my most used app on my phone

Same. It just says 429 for me. I can't believe it's really gone!

Same here. I tried a few times past midnight but there it went. End of an era - gonna be one hell of a difficult habit to go cold turkey on. Hopefully Lemmy can fill the void...

No threads here. Tap to refresh.

Same here, went dark as I was scrolling. Guess that's it for me on Reddit in any kind of meaningful way.

And now RiF is just memories. I hope Beehaw and the Fediverse grow and become something great

Unsure if this is off-topic for this thread so feel free to delete if that's the case.

/r/firefox now looks like this.

I can't help but love when subreddits do this in response to the threat of removing mods if they stay private. I remember there were some that were posting "sexy" pics of John Oliver. iPhone was limited to posting "sexy" pics of Tim Cook. Working with what they have in order to continue their protests. I like it😁

It has malicious compliance written all over it 🙃

It forces Reddit’s hand even more IMO; if you start forcing a sub to stay on a certain topic by admin order (and not by mod’s / community “owner” choice), it really sets a weird tone for the community

If admins want to force certain subs to stay on certain topics, they can moderate them by their own f#ckin' selves.

oh, the teddit thing looks neat, like a perfect backhand slap. good enough to just see and not interacting. I didn't know how much history on reddit until I run the power delete suite script, it just keeps going. 9 years sure has a lot of stuff on it. XD

Yep, Teddit works well for me because I don't have a Reddit account. It's quick and privacy respecting. I think I may have found it through the Privacy Redirect extension for Firefox.

Welp, Sync Pro just went dark for me. Guess I'm done with Reddit.

Relay appears to be attempting to reduce API calls and stay open.

Edit: I just found this patch to use our own API key if Relay gets taken down.

Why bother honestly

There are three possibilities.

  1. The developer thinks maybe they can make this work. Maybe there's a combination of a lower limit of API calls and an upper limit of what people are willing to pay for their app that will let them keep going.
  2. The developer's lawyer recommended that to sue reddit for destroying their livelihood they would need to demonstrate that they had tries with the new system and it wasn't feasible in order to make their case stronger
  3. The developer wants to take advantage of the third party landscape being just them now

Personally I think the first one is the most likely. It seems naive and bound for failure. But its also the least conspiracy theory and doesn't assume malice

The developer’s lawyer recommended that to sue reddit for destroying their livelihood they would need to demonstrate that they had tries with the new system and it wasn’t feasible in order to make their case stronger

Not sure how you get a cause of action for someone else's business decisions messing with your business, as a general rule. How would that work? I'm legitimately curious.

I agree, I’m OK to let that website die. We really are ready for decentralization and we just need to deal with the growing pains. But it will happen eventually.

Doesn't matter, paid will due shortly after people realize there's no NSFW content. Not just porn, everything flagged NSFW won't show up at all. Everything from AMA to TV show discussions will be impacted.

I'm pretty sure reddit said explicitly that everything marked NSFW will not be filtered out.

They also said they won't force subs to reopen

Yeah, that's fair. And they also said earlier this year that they won't change anything about the API in at least a few years.

Spez has already said that doing this {when talking about Apollo} is “not allowed”, so likely this method will get blocked or your account will get banned. You’re here now so IMO it doesn’t matter

Why wouldn’t it be allowed? They don’t want to deal with billing a bunch of people?

Because the goal was to ban third party apps and they don't want people trying to dodge it. u/spez seems to be personally offended by their existence and wants them gone.

There's also a patch for Sync for reddit, apparently you can use your own API key and app name. I'll give it a look once sync stops working tomorrow.

Now we just need someone to find the api key used by the official app …

Well the official app uses a new internal (graphql iirc) API, so that would be nice but it wouldn't really work as easily as that.

I’ve already been removed as a mod. Oh no! Anyway…

More time to scroll through Lemmy now.

If they really do shut off API access I'll go into partial link aggregator withdrawal. My Lemmy instance still isn't upgraded to the latest versions which are compatible with apps, so I don't browse on my phone.

Try using the Progressive Web App (PWA) instead. I'm on iOS and haven't found a good app for Lemmy yet but the PWA has helped me get used to Lemmy on my phone in place of Reddit. You just open the site in your phone's native browser (Safari on iOS, probably Chrome on Android?) and choose "Save to Home Screen". Now it looks like any other app and behaves like it too, even though it's secretly just the web page.

Give wefwef a try. It’s a third party PWA app already looking very similar to Apollo.

hi, do you think you could walk me through how to download something like this or point me in the direction of a guide or something that could? i’ve been using lemmy just on browser but would be interested in something like this, i’ve just never installed anything like it before and don’t quite know what to do :) thanks!

Open https://wefwef.app in your mobile browser, open the share slid out menu or however that menu is called and click on "add to home screen". That's it.

One thing to be aware of is that it should probably be done with the original system browser, so Safari on iOS and Chrome / Samsung Internet on Android. At least I didn't seem to get the option to add to home screen from Firefox on Android, and I'm also not sure every iOS browser will have add to home screen in the share sheet.

There's an "Install" button in Firefox in the menu.

OK, thanks. Guess I must have overlooked it when I searched for it (because I started in Firefox). I still think it's worth to be aware of in case people use some really specialized browsers with certain limitations.

Go to wefwef.app in your browser. Now open the options menu of your browser (the three dots, if on Android, the square with the arrow pointing up, if on iOS) and find the option to put a bookmark on your home screen (in iOS it's called "add to home screen")

This will create a sandboxed version of wefwef.app, tap it and it should load like a normal app. (this is what Apple envisioned as apps way back when, before they realized that they could make money selling apps)

When the page has loaded, in the bottom middle, tap on "lemmy.world", and log in to your Lemmy instance.

Enjoy.

One thing to be aware of. If you have selected more than one language in your Lemmy profile, wefwef fails to post comments because you need to select which language you typed in, and you can't select that (yet?) in wefwef.

Just tossing this out there, I’m commenting from memmy (iOS) and it’s great. Still beta and incomplete but really nice UI and themes. New features being added literally daily. Feels much more native and usable than the web interface.

RIP Sync for reddit 😢 I hope Sync for Lemmy will be even better!!

I didn't really follow the recent "drama" (for lack of a better term), but I'm glad it came about because it created a lot of buzz on hackernews about reddit alternatives which got me to check out the Fediverse (kbin/lemmy), and a few other alternatives. I really like the look and feel of Discuit, but it's inevitable for it to become essentially another digg v4/reddit 2.0 clone because apart from a nice UI and the creator/owner not being a dick, it's still a centralised forum that will limit or censor discussion at the whims of the owner in the end. I don't want that.

My friend mentioned Reddit is Fun is shut down now. Sad day 😔

RIP Apollo. Was truly a ride.

Currently using wefwef and Memmy to browse lemmy via mobile. Wefwef feels closest to Apollo but Memmy has a better interface.

Also subbed to Winston on Reddit, the dev is actively responding to suggestions and aiming to release an app as close as possible like Apollo for browsing reddit. Then of course there’s also Narwhal.

It was so very fun to use third-party apps for Reddit until the last day. Today will be the new dawn for kbin and Lemmy apps. Reddit before, now Threadiverse.

I get having megathreads, but currently kbin doesn't care whether a post on Lemmy is pinned, so megathreads make it harder here to follow news and discussions on the topic.

This is exactly why kbin just isn't a practical option yet. Should just stick to Lemmy at least for now.

I’m not even confident that kbin.social is federating properly.

It might not be their fault, but things don’t seem to match up.

There seem to be a lot of problems surfacing with federation in general. Some actions seem to be taking a very long time to federate - if they ever do.

There are problems that goes both ways, the number of subscribers, for example.

this is unfortunate but we kind of have to prioritize our users first and a lot of people are annoyed about all the reddit posts that clearly don't need to be their own thread

Yes, I understand :) Just thought it'd be nice to increase awareness of the problem.

Open-source app Slide also stopped working today. Goodbye reddit, hello Lemmy. I'm still getting used to the UI of Connect, but I'm glad there's something to fill the void. May Beehaw grow into something great!

I've been using bacon reader for 9 years. I keep wanting to feel sad that it's my last day on Reddit* but I really don't. *I'll probably check in sometimes at home as long as I can use old Reddit. But honestly my only time to read it has been during the day during downtime at work. I get home and have much better things to do then sit on Reddit.

Also old Baconreader user. Really hope it comes to Lemmy. But didn't seem like it.

Same here, loved BaconReader, (not sire why it's not mentioned that often)
got the message popup yesterday ;-(
But you are right, might be a good moment to detox a bit

Reddit missed their own deadline for enabling rate limits and now they are weeks away. 🤦‍♀️

Hi Devs,

Over the last few months, we’ve shared updates on our Data API Terms and Developer Terms. Shortly, we will begin enforcing the previously announced, updated API rate limits. Rate limits will go into effect for all apps with usage above the free limit in the coming weeks, and some changes will be noticeable over the next 24 hours.

As we have shared, this will not impact non-commercial bots operating within free rate limits or moderator tools.

Free API access rates are as follows:

100 queries per minute per OAuth client id if you are using OAuth authentication

10 queries per minute if you are not using OAuth authentication

The vast majority of third-party apps and bots fall into the free usage category and should not see any disruptions. Our free rates account for bursts in usage.

For apps that exceed these limits, we have exempted select clients (for example, accessibility-focused apps like RedReader, Luna, and Dystopia), mod bots, and mod tools. If your bot or tool is affected unexpectedly, please reach out here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/14nbw6g/updated_rate_limits_going_into_effect_over_the/

I just wanted to say thank you for this, hopefully it helps to clean up the clutter from this community.

I like my fediverse like my house... cluttered with the same content spread everywhere

Other people have said the same, but Apollo was my most used App on my phone.

I find that during the day, I mainly browse Reddit on my phone, as I can't stand not having RES on my work laptop. I'll have to see what sort of adjustments I'll have to make, as I was looking at using both Reddit (via browser on my laptop) and Lemmy (via wefwef on my phone) whilst the lemmy community gains a bit more traction.

I feel the same way now that I did when I quit World of Warcraft, and started playing Final Fantasy XIV. My favourite app is gone, destroyed by greed.

I'm hoping Lemmy can do for me what Final Fantasy did.

Is there a countdown on when RIF will stop working? Is it based on midnight GMT? EST? PST? CST?

I haven't seen a specific time, but today will be the last day :(

Such a great app, I will miss it.

Lol set up a countdown website like its New Year's Eve

This gonna be some interesting days.

It looks like our independence day will be on the 1st of july.

The irony for me is that my cake day is July 4.

Apollo really held on for dear life. Worked until sometime this afternoon.

I tried Reddit on the browser but it just doesn’t work like I want it to on my phone. There are many people who don’t know a different version of Reddit than their terrible app and site. It will continue but not with me.

My preferred app (RedReader) was allowed to stay,apparently for free, but I still deleted my account. A shame, it was a great app!

That’s crazy, I wonder how they managed to stay - and for free!

It was granted an exception due to its accessibility features.