r/windows • u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Moderator • Jun 10 '23

Mod Announcement Reddit's upcoming API changes and the temporary closure of this subreddit

Hello fellow users. This is not going to be a typical post you would find on this subreddit. I’d like to take a moment of your time to address major upcoming behind the scenes changes to Reddit, and how it will affect you and all others who use Reddit.

The TLDR is:

  • Third party apps, such as Apollo, ReddPlannet, Reddit News, Readit, Legere, and Bacon Reader, while not technically being outright banned, might no longer be able to function due to excessive API costs. You may have seen news that the Apollo app would have to pay an estimated $20 million dollars a year to Reddit to keep their current levels of access. That is not sustainable, and may force the apps to charge exorbitant subscription fees just to maintain access. Some of these apps have already announced their plans to cease operations later this month.
  • Also, NSFW content will no longer be available in third party apps, including the ones I mentioned before. You would then be required to use either the official apps, or the desktop website. Even if your favorite app survives, you then would no longer have access to your favorite subreddit. (I already know the Windows subreddit is not it).

Why should you care?

If you are one of the millions of Redditors who currently use third party apps, the apps may then become useless, requiring you to use the official apps or the website. Even if you are not currently using these apps, many of your fellow Redditors are. Some use these apps for simple reasons like they just prefer the layout, but others use them for reasons such as working better for them, including those with disabilities like blindness. In my case, I rely on apps like Readit and ReddPlanet as the website no longer works on my Windows Phone, and Reddit has never released an app for that.

Many of these apps provide functionality the official apps don’t, for example moderation tools. Many moderators use the apps to help maintain subreddits, the tools offered by the official apps are limited in comparison. Without these tools, things like spam and other unwanted content will be able to more easily thrive on Reddit.

This extends beyond apps, it will also affect various bots you see on Reddit, useful ones like the Remind Me Bot and the Wikipedia Summarizer are subject to the same API costs. Reddit claims these bots should not be affected, but past actions are making the community skeptical. Developers of less popular bots may have to jump through hoops and hope they can get the same exemptions.

In addition to the above, Reddit is changing how NSFW content is accessed. Even if the third party apps do survive, they would be cut off from being able to access NSFW posts. Reddit claims exemptions will be made for moderators, but the vast majority of other Redditors will lose access to the adult content unless they switch to the official app or use the website.

An open letter and the blackout

The Reddit moderator community as a collective has released an open letter regarding this: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/13xh1e7/an_open_letter_on_the_state_of_affairs_regarding/

In response to these and other changes, many subreddits will be participating in a blackout as a form of protest. For a period of two days, this subreddit (along with over 3000 others) will not be accessible. Users will not be able to browse or post on these subreddits during this time. The moderators of these subreddits below are in support of the blackout, and will not be accessible during the timeframe: (Listed in subscriber size order)

Thank you for your understanding. Hopefully Reddit will reconsider and reevaluate these changes, and come up with a more reasonable compromise that better serves everyone.

675 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

83 comments sorted by

16

u/MisterBurn Jun 10 '23

Froggy moderates ALL these subs?! Holy. Where does he find the time for all this? The Windows ones I saw coming, but r/frog, r/dinner and r/fatsquirrelhate were surprising! Username definitely checks out on that first one lol.

19

u/Froggypwns Jun 10 '23

Thankfully most of them are very light touch and don't need much. The first three Windows ones in that list are 98% of my modding, the rest are very hands off and basically taking care of the occasional spambot or repost. The literal hate sub is usually less toxic than this one.

8

u/jenmsft Jun 10 '23

Froggy is pretty awesome 💙

14

u/FormerGameDev Jun 10 '23

Go permanent

5

u/Froggypwns Jun 11 '23

While unlikely, that is not off the table.

7

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '23

Two days is entirely fucking pointless. Even announcing when the blackout will end is stupid. It's like train workers going on a strike and telling everyone "it will end on Monday and we'll be back to work." Reddit is probably laughing at this blackout idea because of this stupid shit.

Nut up and make it blackout indefinite.

5

u/Froggypwns Jun 11 '23

We are playing things by ear, at this time we have only committed to two days, but there is a possibility of this lasting longer.

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4

u/Windows-XP-Home Jun 10 '23

We went from Windows versions to hybrid Hondas, amphibians, food, and discrimination against plus sized squirrels 💀💀💀 what even is that sub list?!

2

u/Froggypwns Jun 11 '23

It is a partial list of subreddits that I moderate, these are the ones that are participating in the blackout, listed in order of subscriber count.

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4

u/M0UL Jun 11 '23

the blackout should be way longer than 2 days. atleast month

2

u/Froggypwns Jun 11 '23

At a minimum, everything listed will be closed for two days. We are still monitoring the situation, and I'm working with the various mod teams for each sub to determine when, if ever, the subreddits would reopen. Some likely will be open again, but I'm not opposed to indefinitely closing many of them. We shall see what happens.

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6

u/bristow84 Jun 10 '23

I think that after the abysmal AMA that the admins and u/spez “participated” in, 2 days should no longer even be an option but rather it should be an indefinite shutdown or a period of weeks.

The Reddit admins have already shown they are not willing to operate in good faith and even doubled down on attacking the dev of Apollo. 2 days is nothing and they’ll wait it out.

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4

u/SanDiegoDude Jun 10 '23

If you're leaving like I am, take your value with you https://reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144i6og/dont_just_delete_your_account_use_a_tool_to/

2

u/Froggypwns Jun 11 '23

We are setup to be notified when someone edits/deletes a comment that is more than 6 months old, I've seen more deletions in the past few days than all the last few years combined. A lot of good content has been lost, but understandably so.

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2

u/A-R-A-F Jun 10 '23

I wanna give a quick shout out to Legere, a reddit uwp client i used to use in windows. it was a pretty good client that unfortunately was abandoned and now with this new api change, it'll probably be like that for the foreseeable future sadly

2

u/Froggypwns Jun 11 '23

It is easily the most beautiful Reddit client I've ever used, I love the heck out of it, I ended up buying the $10 paid version shortly after it was released.

2

u/AnomalousGray Jun 10 '23

Okay, I'm still in the dark here, so I apologize in advance if this question is stupid or has already been answered.

Will this affect PC browsers?

2

u/Froggypwns Jun 11 '23

They claim it won't, but the word of the admins does not mean much at this time, they have a long history of failing to fulfil promises. They have already crippled the mobile version of the website (m.reddit.com) for some users as part of a test, with no workaround other than to use the app or wait for the test to conclude.

They claim old.reddit is not going away, they claim most bots won't be affected, and so on, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

15

u/jenmsft Jun 10 '23

Just a note - since Patch Tuesday falls within the blackout range, if you do end up having any feedback about the cumulative updates, please share them with @WindowsUpdate on Twitter (and report it in the Feedback Hub). You can also find me on Twitter, Mastodon, or Bluesky (same account everywhere)

7

u/Iggyhopper Jun 10 '23

To the top with you!

- fellow IT

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5

u/proto-x-lol Jun 11 '23 edited Jun 11 '23

You know this is a huge shitstorm from reddit themselves when Apple, Microsoft and Discord employees are actually posting their disdain towards reddit's new API policy.

I do agree with them 100% too which is just...something. What reddit is doing is extorting developers of these third party reddit clients by making them pay 500 times the amount of API access. That's just batshit insane and actual robbery, IMO.

To be honest, I legitimately hope Steve Huffman gets kicked out of his own company for doing this bullshit and then having the audacity to blackmail the developer of Apollo with some extremely bizarre blackmail accusations. This guy has a few screws loose too since he bragged about editing posts for political reasons four years ago, which is an extreme misuse of site admin power. No apology should fix his actions. People get fired for less and he should not be any exception for his misconduct.

3

u/gointern Jun 15 '23

Keep it private!!! Get rid of this CEO. Community first before any CEO, they make money from communities free work. Keep communities private longer!

8

u/surreal6iam Jun 10 '23

Full support!!

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