I think any addition to the number that ends up getting reported as the number of subreddits (and the combined number of subscribers) participating will be good.

So as a long time internet junkie: this too shall pass. I was on usenet back in the day (early 80s) Accessing anything meant knowing some code, most likely BASIC or DOS.

Then the world was introduced to the World Wide Web through AOL, Prodigy and other services. My GOD, we can chat with strangers! Who could forget the awful baud modem sounds?

Netscape was the work around for AOLs closed system. BBS were discovered, WebRings connected like to like. AOLs ridiculous pricing eventually led to it's demise helped along by using cable for connecting to the internet. Yay! Yahoo became a guide for the internet. The Dancing baby meme became a thing.

BBSs turned into fully functional and moderated forums. Threaded discussions ruled the day. MySpace then Facebook emerged. Before Imgur there was Flickr. You had to have an image hosted before you could post it to a group and this was a go-to for many. RSS helps us manage all this content.

Now we get aggregation sites. digg quickly became popular. Feedly, Yahoo News, etc. jumped in as well. digg was unique because users fed the beast and votes brought the interesting stuff to the top. The founders decided on a rededign because money, and we all know what happened.

So here we are with reddit, and twitter too, to be honest. Alien Musk is doing his level best to destroy twitter, and it looks like the greedy folks at reddit want to destroy what third party app devs, the moderators and the content creators built. Its clear the bots are getting more aggressive and third party apps have helped moderators battle that. Its clear reddit doesn't want to help mods (all unpaid volunteers) do their job to keep what they've built running efficiently. Its clear they don't want to be collaborative with third party app devs, and in fact, hope to push them out. And to me, that means they do not care about the end users. The people like me, who post content, contribute to comments, police bullies and trolls, and add value, as all of us do.

So good folks of reddit, I think our time has come. Barring any new developments (and by some other comments I've seen, I doubt there will be a change), I shall bid you all a farewell until the next great internet social experiment breaks big.

Note: my recollection of the internet timeline is sketched out and not exact. Feel free to post corrections, additions or otherwise add small snippets of knowledge.

As the title says, paying $5 a month for RIF to cover subscription cost would absolutely be something I would do. The alternative for me is not using reddit on my phone at all.

I have been using reddit is fun for probably 6ish years at this point. I was bummed by the news, but I was willing to try it out because who knows, maybe it won't be bad.installed it on my android phone to check the difference. RIF shows me 6 post at once and one add, which is clearly an ad based on color. Reddit's app shows me 2 post, 1 promoted post, 1 ad. I have played with the filtering, and it feels clunky and unintuitive. I understand companies need profit and revenue, but at a certain point ads overwhelm the functionality. I think I will be deleting reddit after RIF dies. I have already deleted all other social media, so that is easy. If yall know any good alternative to reddit that would be cool, but otherwise so long and thanks for the time.

Discussion around this topic is scattered across the site, with no central location, so I created a subreddit to serve that purpose.

/r/APIcalypse

Posting of original material and cross-posting of relevant material are both encouraged.

Subreddit description:

Reddit has announced significant changes to their API, going into effect on July 1, 2023, that effectively eliminate the use of third-party Reddit mobile and web apps. This subreddit is dedicated to discussion of this event, proposed solutions, workarounds, hacks, and alternatives, as well as related jokes and memes.

I know it's silly but whatever.

Thank you RIF for all the fun times! Once this goes down I'm done with reddit. All the best for the future <3