this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Yeah, I think that's a possible way that this goes down. I also think that if they did that it'd be a mistake. I think Apollo, RIF, and the other 3rd party apps are gone. Even if reddit announced yesterday that they were going to keep the API free, let alone negotiate a middle ground, I think 3rd party apps are gone and not coming back. On the 3rd party level I don't even really think it's the cash grab that's the problem, it's the lack of communication and trust. Even if reddit were to bend over backwards to try to keep them, I don't think there's anything they can do to make up for the lack of trust this has created in reddit's leadership. Same thing goes for the mods. The mods are arguably reddits most important users. They make the site usable for everyone else and if reddit was ever to become profitable I think the people spez would have to thank for that would be the mods who made the spaces that people wanted to come be a part of. They can't trust reddits leadership either. It doesn't matter what shiny new toys reddit may try to roll out to make their job easier, it doesn't matter what exceptions they try to carve into their new API policy. Common thread here is noone wants to sink their time into something that might change as fast as reddit has shown it can. Being a 3rd party dev or a mod takes a lot of time out of your day. Faced with the choice of leaving or laboring for a company that clearly doesn't respect the value you add to their service I think that most would choose to flee the sinking ship.
I think there are other motivations which will bring devs and mods back to reddit. Devs like the large user base and frankly I have no idea what motivates the volunteer mods other than a misguided sense of purpose.
I don't necessarily think it's misguided, simply misdirected. Mods are, I think, people who want to build a community. They landed on Reddit because well that's where the people were. Devs have their own reasons, but I think the best are members of the community who simply wanted to introduce a new way to interact with it.
More cynical devs may view it in a strictly monetary way where they just wanna fill a niche. I think if there are going to be 3rd party devs who come back to Reddit it's going to be those, and the service is going to be all the worse for it. But even for them, Reddit has proven itself to be an unreliable business partner at best. Why bother building anything for it at all if Reddit has shown itself willing shut you out of it's ecosystem pretty much on a whim?
You wrote really good stuff, but please use paragraphs next time. Holy crap wall of text.
Will do. Phones, limited time, and stream of consciousness make for a poor mix.
Oh I get it, I post via my phone using voice-to-text as well.
And I swear I wasn't just trying to just be a spelling nazi or anything like that. Its just you said some really good points, but damn trying to pull them out from that wall of text was rough. I was just feeling bad that you may not have been getting heard as well as you could.
Thanks for considering what I said.
No worries, your point was taken in the spirit it was offered in. Also I've never been great with the grammar thing so advice is actually genuinely appreciated!