To each their own, but I find this decision really misguided.
It’s her money, not mine, so whatever, but l do not expect her to turn a profit in, rather the opposite.
In my view, the cross section of “IfR” users and people willing to subscribe monthly is rather small (especially if the money mostly goes to reddit - assuming I could afford it, I, for instance, would rather fund an open system like Lemmy).
And if Apollo’s dev Christian Selig decided that it wasn’t worth it with an already established paying user base, who already has a strong culture of subscriptions and exaggerated pricings, and one of the highest volume of users, at what probably was the peak usage of the platform; I don’t see how a small app like IfR can survive.
That, or Christian made a pretty expensive mistake…
I’m generally willing to pay for a service (I donate to Open Source Projects I regularly use) because of course there are server costs, development costs, etc. But in this case and after all that Reddit has done to its user base it would be a very bad signal to give them money for it… I like Infinity for reddit and would love to have an Infinity for Lemmy
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The other point for me is that reddit has been getting shittier long before the API change. Forcing you to use their crappy app when you just clicked a link on mobile, all this weird avatar and award stuff. The weird chat that got bolted onto their message system, yet keeping the two seperate?
There’s no way I will pay for that.
Did you know, there’s actually 3? PM, Chat and Legacy Chat… whatever the heck differentiates the last two is frankly beyond me, a 12+ yrs old Reddit user…
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Are there price details yet? Christian was talking about $5 still not breaking even so I’d be interested to see where they’ve landed.
I read that it should be between 10-15 dollars. It’s way too expensive, it’s a shame.
Yikes. That’s more than most streaming services. No one is paying that for Reddit access
Indeed. And it can get even more expensive, with heavy use. And no nsfw too…
I don’t think there’s any way you could economically run a 3rd party app with the new API pricing. When the Apollo developer did the math it looked very sensible, and IMHO there’s a huge downside to miscalculating the pricing (eg. underestimating the API usage of power users). I wish them luck, but this is probably going to end up pushing this developer into a financial hole, even discounting the extra dev work needed.
Shutting down altogether might be a deeper hole, if people have already paid and would have to receive refunds.
I would consider paying, but giving money to support Reddit? With its current attitude? It is a moral choice rather than a financial one.
Christian already had paid subscriptions he’d have to contend with. A much harder problem.
Apollo users tends to browse and interact with Reddit more than other platforms, too, so the per user cost is much higher.
It’s 100% clear that Reddit is trying to kill off third party apps completely so that they can facefuck you with ads and other garbage. The Apollo dev saw the writing on the wall. I can’t blame other app devs for trying to squeeze a bit more livelihood out of this, but hopefully they’ve realized that they need to move on asap. In the end, it’s a great reminder to not build your business on someone else’s platform, even if they’re “cool”.
cross section of “IfR” users and people willing to subscribe monthly is rather small
Absolutely. I used Infinity for years now because it’s open source and on F-Droid. I used it to get away from Google and the Reddit App. Donating for Infinity’s developer? Sure thing. Paying money only to finance reddits API policy? For sure not.
I don’t think most users will understand where their money is actually going…
Which is going to be even better of an experience for IfR’s dev: “why is your app so expensive?”, “We pay SO MUCH and still have bugs…”, “Hey, with what I pay you, I sure would expect the feature I requested to be implemented already”. Oh boy, what fun. My only regret is that this probably isn’t going to be public, because I can definitely afford popcorn. 🙃
Someone should tell the developer to not do that. They should just shut down their app.
I wonder if there will be apps similar to NewPipe for YouTube or Frost for Facebook that don’t rely on official third party APIs.
While I’m happy on Lemmy, it seems that reddit has so far won the battle and protest died down.
scraping goes brrrrrr
I mean what’s the point. This is all just going to pay Reddit for the privilege of a hobbled 3rd-party app experience (and no NSFW). And we now know how much Reddit cares about you using their API.
Reddit should be paying users, not the other way around.
Also didn’t reddit already make enough money to cover its server costs several times over selling gold and premium? The only reason it isn’t turning a profit is because of excessive management costs.
It’s ‘adapt or die’ at the moment for 3rd party Reddit apps. I was kind of hoping that the developer would pivot to Lemmy or add Lemmy functionality to the app. Infinity was my go-to app before the apocalypse.
I think they’re trying to get rid of rfd party apps. It’s more ‘die or die’ for them.
Same, and that’s why I really am disappointed. But hey, someone else is apparently trying to make an “Infinity for Reddit” inspired app for Lemmy. It’s apparently going to be called “Beyond”. Hopefully, “Beyond for Lemmy”. 😉
I digg the name
You honestly can’t blame them for trying to adapt and keep their project going. It’s either they start doing a subscription model or Infinity dies. They aren’t allowed to make a tutorial for you to just replace their API key with your own, so what choice do they have? (you can do that btw, there are tutorials on the Infinity subreddit, although you’re limited to 100 calls a day)
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Unpopular opinion, but I’d consider it if the API provided all the data. I never expected the API to always continue to be free. But making me pay and providing incomplete data? Nah.
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The openai CEO is one of the first investors of reddit, was Reddit CEO for a while, reintroduced spez as the CEO.
There’s no way spez is going to let his good friend to pay this insane api prices for ai training
And in fact, i quote spez interview from the verge:
[API pricing for third party apps and AI training pricing] financially, they’re not related. The API usage is about covering costs and data licensing is a new potential business for us
It’s interesting the part “potential business”, that means they didn’t change anything yet for them
They could permit individual users to get API keys and then charge for that. This way would be fair and profitable while protecting them from API misuse. But forcing it on to app developers charging insane prices was their way to kill the apps.
And even with that subscription, you still get locked out of any post or subreddit that is marked NSFW, which will now be even more since subreddits are still protesting the changes.
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Yup.
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Free speech absolutist except for boobies.
Fuck that
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Ever since the first pricing announcement, they said they’d lock out NSFW. Originally they said it would just be porn, but when asked how the API would differentiate different types of NSFW Reddit never replied.
When mods using 3PA asked how they were supposed to remove NSFW posts on non-NSFW subreddits, the Reddit reply was the posters shouldn’t be doing that. Yeah.
Right now nobody even knows which ones will be blocked or not because it’s hardly visible at the moment. It’s going to be an absolute clusterfuck once people start realizing their subreddits are improperly categorized as NSFW and are completely blocked from the API.
If it’s the same as the mobile website, then new/small subreddits are blocked too for being “unreviewed”.
Yes and they’re already blocking mobile web access to most porn subreddit. Only from their app, for “safety” 😉
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I payed Infinity+ just to support this amazing app. I remember Infinity being one of my first true approached to the FOSS community, "It’s free, built by pretty much one person, Reddit is a multimillion dollar company, how can this app be better!?.. But pretty much every penny Infinity makes from now on will go to the greedy Reddit admins’ hands so I guess this is goodbye.
Such a damn shame.
the app is better because u/spez has no control over it
I personally wouldn’t try to work with Reddit, if I were a developer, but another factor here is that walking away from a project might be a big risk for someone who doesn’t have a backup plan. Christian Selig is a high-profile figure who can afford to walk away from a project. He will be able to rebuild his career quickly and easily, and he knows it. The developer of Infinity likely doesn’t have as many opportunities, and may also not feel comfortable taking that risk. I don’t know much about her, but if she’s not making a whole lot as is, she may legitimately not be able to afford going without an income source for weeks or months. It may be less about making a profit by doing this than about avoiding a catastrophic loss. Selig has admitted he’s going to be losing a six-figure amount of money ($250,000, iirc) from shutting down after selling year-long subscriptions. I suspect everyone who has or had a Reddit app looking for alternative income sources, but I don’t blame her for trying to make Infinity work for a little while longer.
I read the post that went into further detail and infinity’s creator was looking for intern/entry level software developer jobs… so definitely not on the same profile level unfortunately
Dang, that’s rough. Infinity should look good on her resume, at least.
Infinity is an awesome app. I’m suprised that she only thinks shes good enough for an intern/entry level software developer job
Agreed. I have never used Infinity myself, but I think anyone who can not only develop a functional app, but maintain that app over an extended period deserves better than an internship. But it’s an awkward position, and companies like to claim they won’t even interview you for a one-finger-typing job unless you have ten years of experience and an engineering degree. And from what I see in the news, tech companies are doing more layoffs than hiring right now.
I guess if the app is done and basically works then you might as well add a payment system and at least try to cut your losses. I’d struggle to enthusiastically improve the app after that though.
That comment about “it might not work” really sums up reddit’s attitude
I think “struggle to enthusiastically improve the app” is probably an understatement, lol. I doubt this is meant to be a long-term business strategy. It’s not like there were any good options here, just her choice of a few bad ones. I wish her luck.
