Exactly this. Relay was a great app and I will miss it and Reddit. I would love for Dbrady to start fresh with Relay for Lemmy but I imagine that is quite a bit of work and maybe he just doesn’t feel up to it. I wish him the best no matter what happens!

I uninstalled Relay and moved on. Kinda wished DBrady would have done the same. I don’t want Reddit get paid for their shitty behaviour.

Reddit gets to hold these up as examples of reasonable developers who were willing to work with Reddit, unlike those crying babies that are closing their apps.

This deserves to be repeated. Like… I get why one would want to not let their project die, but we all know this is exactly what’s going to happen. These few who remain will funnel a ton of money into Reddit’s pocket for a worse experience all so that they can be used to further slander the devs of the 3PAs who were forced out from the API changes. In a couple months when the last few 3PAs inevitably go under, I don’t know if a single tear will be shed because the writing on the wall is so obvious.

Thanks for this well-written roundup of what’s going on. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. I just hope the dev doesn’t rack up debt in the time the app is free…

I just feel bad for the devs of TPA. They created so much value for reddit when reddit didn’t even HAVE an app. Then reddit shafts them so hard for all the work they put in. Fuck reddit.

Nearly agree with everything you said.

But maybe Reddit is okay with a few 3rd party apps surviving if it means they can charge such a ridiculous premium on API requests. Perhaps they didn’t think any dev would be crazy enough to take them up on their offer. But at that point, they’re raking in so much money that they might not care those users are on a 3rd party app.

I also use Relay, and I’m not sure how I feel about this move. I’m using reddit less and less since the blackout, and mostly just to check on the protest at this point. I love the Relay app, and DBrady is an incredible dev, but I refuse to give money to reddit after this whole debacle, especially for an app that will be stripped of it’s full capability,

It make sense in the short term. Even if this only works for 6 or 12 months, they might make more to live on in that time, than they would converting the app to Lemmy right now, simply due to the massive difference in user-count.

It might be the “right” call to stick with Reddit, getting the scraps that are still there, while Lemmy is still only just taking off. They can always jump ship later, though others will have a head start by then.

Ethically? Different matter.

API fee is not free, only delayed. I have no idea how the devs will handle the combined bill when it comes. It’ll be a huge bill while income from subscriptions have not really picked up yet. I would not take this risk even if someone give me Appollo source code for free.

You’re right that this is a PR move rather than a genuine attempt to work with devs, but I think it would have been more clever if Reddit had done this three weeks ago, when they could have undermined the “this will kill third party apps” narrative. Instead, they waited until Huffman had spouted off about how he admires Elon, who killed Twitter’s third party apps, and how the API was “never meant” for third party apps. Basically, he has expressed a personal desire to see third party apps killed, and usually the CEO’s opinion overrules official company statements with this kind of thing. So now, it’s going to be hard for the company to turn around and claim that killing third party apps isn’t their end goal.

The new API requires you to remove ads regardless, they could get banned by reddit for serving their own ads.

And narwhal. I can’t see this working in the long run. They are only granting access to a subset of content, in exchange for a price that people don’t have to pay if they use the “real” app. This is doomed to slowly bleed users and die.

Piggybacking on the point: People keep repeating Reddit’s line that non-porn NSFW will be allowed, but every time anybody (including Selig) asked how Reddit will manage to differentiate types of NSFW, it’s been radio silence on Reddit’s end.

Despite Reddit’s promises I do think it will end up being a blanket NSFW ban.

I think it will cause all sorts of problems if Reddit tries to actually slice the line. What’s the difference between art and porn? Would a hypothetical subreddit like “artistic photos of naked women” be porn? If not, what about photos of topless protests? Could a subreddit made entirely of photos of topless protestors be considered NSFW but not porn? What about something like a subreddit of clothed women sticking their bare feet at the camera- would that be able to simply not mark itself NSFW since it isn’t actually showing anything explicitly sexual?

When there’s no official line it’s so much easier to mark things NSFW out of an abundance of caution. When marking things NSFW or determining porn from non-porn NSFW actually affects user experience it’s going to become a headache for all involved.