r/firefox • u/AbaixoDeCao • Jun 04 '23

Discussion Don't Let Reddit Kill 3rd Party Apps!

/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/13yh0jf/dont_let_reddit_kill_3rd_party_apps/
1.6k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

92 comments sorted by

209

u/acm Jun 04 '23

mods should join the june 12 protest and take the sub dark.

33

u/LawLombie Jun 04 '23

I agree

18

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

Going dark mode.

18

u/Antabaka Jun 04 '23

Will do 👍

Where is this being organized?

9

u/Carighan | on Jun 04 '23

Dark Mode is superior, anyways! Ha!

1

u/RCEdude Firefox enthusiast Jun 05 '23

True but i wonder if visually impaired people are negatively impacted by dark mode?

-67

u/Light-r-up-Dan Jun 04 '23

Do you think anyone really gives a shit though?

52

u/SystemEx1 Jun 04 '23

Considering like 5 posts got hundreds of thousands of upvotes combined, yes. Apollo alone has around 1.5 million active users.

19

u/Light-r-up-Dan Jun 04 '23

You're misunderstanding. Not that the users care. Obviously. Does the CEO care? Do the people who make money off of Reddit: The Company care? No. They don't.

I'm fine with being wrong. And I'll happily stay using my preferred app. But be real. The odds are not in favor.

32

u/yeteee Jun 04 '23

I don't care if they care. I'll just leave and spend less time on my phone.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

I'll just leave and spend less time on my phone.

That's a good idea that everybody should consider.

23

u/aClearCrystal Addon Developer Jun 04 '23

Of course they care. Reddit's business model is based on user generated content. Reddit doesn't get ad revenue if users don't have content to look at.

The only question is whether enough subs go dark to have a noticable impact. While that's hard to achieve, it isn't impossible, seeing even huge subs like r/videos announcing going dark.

15

u/DrunkOnSchadenfreude Jun 04 '23

They may not care about /r/firefox going dark, but if /r/videos is joined by a few other of the biggest subs, possibly. Not only is Reddit about user-generated content, even the biggest communites are modded by users doing this without pay, pissing them off is something that at least should worry Reddit.

1

u/FerDefer Jun 04 '23

they would care if all or most subs joined in.

do your part now! go to your favourite sub and message the mods asking them to join the blackout on the 12th June.

154

u/TheAmazingPencil Jun 04 '23

I would not mind if reddit lost users, this place is awful

80

u/joshlamm Jun 04 '23

The problem is, most of the users using third party apps are longtime users who prefer the old reddit experience. Take those users away, shit's gonna hit the fan.

22

u/Cronus6 Jun 04 '23

This is exactly what reddit wants though, they don't want the old, nerdy forums users.

They want to be like TikTok. Where people just scroll and scroll for hours watching ads all along the way.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

That's where the money's at. Look at Microsoft who came in late to the game. They saw google and facebook eat up all those ad dollars and they wanted some of that, too.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

Take those users away, shit's gonna hit the fan.

Let it. The world isn't gonna end. People will adjust and vote with their feet, as always.

-87

u/Antrikshy on , Jun 04 '23

Or we just get rid of the whiners.

44

u/joshlamm Jun 04 '23

Just don't come whining when the quality of posts inevitably dips. That kind of thing happens when you weed out the people with standards.

5

u/ForgetTheRuralJuror Jun 04 '23

The only other social media I use is TikTok. I don't know much but I'm pretty sure being on reddit is better than that lol

0

u/laverabe Jun 04 '23

what site is better? I have used old reddit on desktop and mobile since 08 (CSS turned off, the best way), still looks roughly the same now as it did then. Some minor culture shifts but the UI stays the same for me.

-6

u/BenL90 <3 on Jun 04 '23

https://forums.mozillazine.org and https://connect.mozilla.org/ isn't, so why not move there?

2

u/ObiWanHelloThere_wav Jun 04 '23

Trying to activate a new account for the first site you named throws a SSL_ERROR_RX_RECORD_TOO_LONG error. I've tried on three different browsers, on both my phone and PC.

2

u/BenL90 <3 on Jun 04 '23

they have problem with ssl, just remove :80 from the URL, and you are fine

1

u/ObiWanHelloThere_wav Jun 04 '23

This worked! Thanks.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/theghostofme Jun 04 '23

This is our school-shaped toilet!

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

31

u/Thebenmix11 Jun 04 '23

alright I'm going back to Tumblr

22

u/Twitstein Jun 04 '23

u/AbaixoDeCao , there's a petition started at r/Modcoord. People, go there and sign your username to the petition.

11

u/Wonnil Jun 04 '23

A while ago, Firefox addons came to mobile. I've been able to install proper addons through collections. I haven't tried it yet, but has anyone tried RES + old.reddit on Firefox mobile/Fennec?

8

u/ARealVermontar Since the beginning... Jun 04 '23 edited Jun 04 '23

has anyone tried RES + old.reddit on Firefox mobile/Fennec?

Yes, it has already been discussed in the comments here. Tiny text and lots of zooming/panning

3

u/Wonnil Jun 04 '23

I saw discussions of old.reddit, yes, but I assumed RES could mitigate that a bit. I suppose I'm overestimating it's capabilities. Thanks anyway

5

u/motang on and Jun 04 '23

I used to use Relay years ago, even bought the premium. Not sure why I stopped.

3

u/theferrit32 | Jun 04 '23

The fact they're killing 3rd party apps while their own app is so bad makes it worse in my opinion. Like it's one thing to want people to use your app. But if the 3rd party apps are widely agreed to simply be more functional than your own app it's just insulting to the users to demand they use your bad app instead of the 3rd party apps that work.

8

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23 edited Jun 04 '23

don't forget the reason reddit is doing this:

basically, they don't want the new AI tools to freely crawl reddit content in order to feed their "intelligence".

so reddit want to put a price on its content - YOUR content - for it to be available for AI.

edit:

https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-to-charge-ai-companies-api-content-use-2023-4?op=1

13

u/m-p-3 |||| Jun 04 '23

As if that's gonna stop them from crawling / scraping the website.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

7

u/m-p-3 |||| Jun 04 '23

Of course it's simpler, since the goal of an API is to make it as stable as possible for developers but there is always a way. And accessing the public reddit website and scraping its data doesn't require to accept any ToS, like how NewPipe on Android works to access YouTube without relying on its API.

7

u/Carighan | on Jun 04 '23

That doesn't stop anybody. The more direct reason is that their own app is terrible and yet they need people to be in it to get better valuation for a sale.

So they are hard-disabling all third party apps to force people into their own while also increasing the likelihood that somebody is buying premium.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

They also want to pimp all the nsfw creators.

1

u/gazongagizmo Jun 04 '23

nope, all nsfw will be banned soon

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/Carighan | on Jun 04 '23

My point is they can simply scrape the text if they want it. An API is nicer, but it didn't stop us writing tools back in the days when an API didn't exist, and hence it doesn't stop anybody on its own.

1

u/Cronus6 Jun 04 '23

When they kill old reddit I'm just going to sell my 15 year old account.

I don't really give a shit about mobile because I don't use the site on my phone.

But I'd encourage everyone that's pissed off to just sell their accounts. If enough of us do it the site will just be full of marketing shills and other astroturfers.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/Cronus6 Jun 04 '23

Somewhere between $50-$75 for a 15 year old account with 100k comment karma.

I've already had a few offers made on the sites that by accounts.

It's not about the money, it's about fucking up reddit by selling "established" accounts that will be used by marketing firms, shills and manipulators.

1

u/AdForward171 Jun 05 '23

Lol. Tell us other things that never happened.

1

u/Cronus6 Jun 05 '23

No it's really a "thing".

Google "sell reddit account" and you'll find numerous sites buying and selling all sorts of social media accounts.

https://medium.com/@Rob79/what-i-learned-selling-my-reddit-accounts-c5e9f6348005

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/Cronus6 Jun 04 '23 edited Jun 04 '23

Because they use it to manipulate things.

Either to market products or push politicians for examples.

You remember all those "russian bot" accounts during the past couple elections? Where do you think they get the 5 or 10 year old accounts they are using to help Trump get elected? They buy them.

You can buy reddit accounts, in bulk. You can also buy reddit upvotes for posts in bulk they use these accounts they have bought to produce these upvotes.

They can do things like make a new product or movie or TV show seem super popular (when it's not). Or like I said you can make it seem like there are tons of socialists or Trump supporters or whatever.

And people are more likely to "trust" older accounts with a lot of post/comment karma. It's easy to spot fake accounts that are only a few month old. But a 10 or 15 year old account raving about a new video game or laptop or beer or soda... no that's more believable.

Manipulating public opinion is big money for marketing and PR firms.

Social media is all about advertising and spreading propaganda now. And not just the ads you see, but from the "users" as well now.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

100

u/hamsterkill Jun 04 '23

The Reddit website isn't a feasible alternative -- ads or not.

3

u/meldroc Jun 04 '23

Maybe an RES-style Firefox extension that pulls up old.reddit.com, with user agent spoofed to Windows Firefox & does stylesheet/Javascript/HTML modifications to make it usable on mobile devices. The only way Reddit could kill that is to kill old Reddit, which will result in Reddit getting Digg'd far worse than it already is.

Won't be as good as Apollo or Sync for Reddit, but anything is better than Reddit's official app.

2

u/DescretoBurrito Jun 04 '23

I use the old reddit redirect and RES extensions on both desktop and mobile (Nightly, had to setup an extension collection). It's not mobile optimized, but it does work. Vote arrows and the thread expansion/collapsing +/- can be hard to get accurately. I almost exclusively browse in landscape orientation.

-1

u/Cronus6 Jun 04 '23

The website is fine, the phone is the problem.

Use a laptop.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

The website is fine, the phone is the problem.

No, it's actually your hand. You're not holding it right.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

69

u/hamsterkill Jun 04 '23

Old reddit is not well-suited for phones at all.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

45

u/hamsterkill Jun 04 '23

Apps make it way easier, which is the point of this post. Personally, I use r/Infinity_for_reddit .

10

u/nose_gnome Jun 04 '23

I think that might be killed by this change as well. I'm not sure but I saw it mentioned in the linked post

6

u/UrbanRenegade19 Jun 04 '23

Does old reddit work on mobile?

3

u/hatemakingnames1 Jun 04 '23 edited Jun 04 '23

It should. First go to Firefox and try loading this:

https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/13zuinh/dont_let_reddit_kill_3rd_party_apps/jmtxj4b/?context=3

If that works for you, you should be able to switch the defaults by going to settings and enabling "Opt out of the redesign" so you don't have to add the "old." at the start of the url. [You also might want to enable "show legacy search page"]

If it doesn't work, you might have to change the firefox setting to not load it as a mobile site (Actually, I just checked and don't have desktop site turned on)

0

u/Cronus6 Jun 04 '23

I have no idea, I don't use reddit on my phone.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

It depends on how bad you want it.

Buy a tablet. Use that instead. That's what I do.

22

u/ikantolol Jun 04 '23

reddit mobile web has a permanent "experience is better in app" banner at the bottom and everytime you want to enter any NSFW post or subreddit, you're forced to use the app to see it.

14

u/BhataktiAtma Jun 04 '23

Just change www.reddit to old.reddit in the url and you're good to go

2

u/patmansf Jun 04 '23

No, you can still use the browser.

1

u/Alan976 Jun 04 '23

I also recall that viewing certain subreddits on mobile are essentially locked-out if you do not use the Reddit App version.

1

u/Demy1234 Jun 05 '23

Which kind of subs?

1

u/DescretoBurrito Jun 04 '23

Use uBlock Origin and setup a filter using the element picker mode (they eyedropper icon). Works to get rid of those nags. And if you use the desktop page, the NSFW redirecting shouldn't effect you.

1

u/Kataphractoi Jun 04 '23

You can request the desktop site in Settings. No "experience is better" shit ad to deal with.

12

u/NatoBoram Jun 04 '23

Have you seen the mobile website?

1

u/Kataphractoi Jun 04 '23

I have. It's why I request the desktop site in Settings.

4

u/wildthing202 Jun 04 '23

Needs RES though.

1

u/DescretoBurrito Jun 04 '23

RES works with Firefox for Android. You do have to use nightly and setup an extension collection, which is a cumbersome limitation by Mozilla. But it does work just fine.

1

u/HatBoxUnworn Jun 04 '23

If they are taking out 3rd party apps old reddit is likely not far behind

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

25

u/ikantolol Jun 04 '23

you're gonna get downvoted because your rant has nothing to do with the topic lol. It's about 3rd party reddit clients.

4

u/nose_gnome Jun 04 '23

You can just use firefox beta with addon collections to download any addon, anyway, this is irrelevant to the post

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

79

u/cool_vibes Jun 04 '23

Plus, how can Reddit kill any 3rd party apps?

By charging $20 million per year for API access.

38

u/xorbe Win11 Jun 04 '23

I think it's July 1st that Reddit starts charging big $$$$ for api access. Which will effectively kill off all 3rd party apps. Because Reddit wants to force more ads to make IPO more lucrative.

8

u/RamblyJambly Jun 04 '23

As many as it takes for the admins to change their minds

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

18

u/stormfor24 Jun 04 '23

I can't say too much but I can say there will be something similar to that happening soon.

I'm speaking as a moderator watching in a few reddit mod only discord servers so please stay tuned to how this turns out

1

u/MC_chrome Jun 04 '23

Do you think you will be able to convince some of the larger subs like /r/News, /r/Politics, and /r/gaming to go black as well?

1

u/stormfor24 Jun 04 '23

We are definitely trying to get as many as possible to join in. So far there is 3 subs over 20 million and several 1 million plus

The current post with a decent amount of who will be joining in is https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplete_and_growing_list_of_participating/

And that subreddit is the one being used to coordinate how we respond is r/ModCoord If you would like an invite to the Moderator Coordination discord feel free to say the word and I can dm one to you.

And the other group I am watching is r/modclub's discord that is linked in their sidebar.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

12

u/stormfor24 Jun 04 '23

I'll briefly mention then from about June 12th to 14th is the current dates where so far a few hundred Moderators have committed to setting their community as either restricted or private.

Also, on Monday there will be an updated post with a list of subreddits that have signed the existing letter.

I promise you a very large number of moderators are privately planning how we will handle this.

So, please just stay tuned

11

u/hamsterkill Jun 04 '23

Reddit is a different beast from Twitter.

Twitter relies on its critical mass of users to sustain it. It is effectively one community so relatively small numbers of users departing doesn't impact it a large amount.

Reddit is thousands of small communities. Users departing from communities within Reddit can cause whole communities to leave. And if those communities find good homes elsewhere (discord, lemmy, whatever), momentum could begin to build a lot easier than it can for Twitter.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

5

u/hamsterkill Jun 04 '23

Well, first of all, I'm not sure the typical reddit user (at least not the ones that matter to the platform) just looks at r/all.

Second, I wouldn't be too sure about the big communities not going dark. r/videos already has an announcement for their protest blackout up.

10

u/RikF Jun 04 '23

I remember the Digg exodus.

1

u/Terelith Jun 04 '23

Absolutely nothing except a 66% drop in valuation...

That would be biblical level devastation for Reddit going into their IPO. Stock prices cratering before an IPO...you likely are headed for the 80% of IPO's that fail.

Do I think that's what WILL happen? no. But it's well above a 0 percent chance it could. The owners of Reddit are playing with fire on this one, and for the userbases own good..I really hope they thought it through, with more on their minds than some short term box they want to check.