Apollo / Reddit app, API shenanigans.

MrRockliffe said:
Looks like most, if not all, subreddits are back.


This is a bad time, because it’s shown that a big company can do what they want and people will still use their services anyway, because they’re mentally dependent on it.
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With a userbase of 450million people, a relatively small handful of mods are easy to replace unfortunately. The outcome was inevitable when the mods started weaponizing the subreddits and allowing porn to be posted to the most popular subreddits. /r/interestingas**** still seems to be read-only though.

Honestly, I've no idea what the mods specifically were protesting against either. The API changes didn't hurt the moderator tools as there was an exception made for apps / tools they used.

Reddit isn't profitable. That's a problem. Times change and platforms change, if you refuse to change with them then you'll get discarded and left behind.

Other commentators in this thread were proud that they were "going to stick it to the man" and actively harm Reddit. For what benefit?
 
Im just shocked a company like Google hasn't offered to buy reddit, all that user data is worth crazy money and google could easily afford the running costs while allowing 3rd party apps, I mean millions of people get their google mail from what ever email client they want.
 
Richard - London said:
Im just shocked a company like Google hasn't offered to buy reddit, all that user data is worth crazy money and google could easily afford the running costs while allowing 3rd party apps, I mean millions of people get their google mail from what ever email client they want.
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Everyone already has access to all the reddit data. There are huge archives available up to 2022 for free.

Will they make it unlawful for an AI agent to have a reddit or twitter account?

Could Google etc also have a bunch of AI agents participating on every meaningful reddit making it forever free? It's publicly available so it would be dumb not to do that.

Google's Bard produces three responses every prompt. Why? Evidently they aren't lacking the resources to do whatever they want with AI. :D
 
MrRockliffe said:
Looks like most, if not all, subreddits are back.


This is a bad time, because it’s shown that a big company can do what they want and people will still use their services anyway, because they’re mentally dependent on it.
Click to expand...
A popular UK motorbike sub I use is still awol unfortunately.
 
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str said:
Will they make it unlawful for an AI agent to have a reddit or twitter account?
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if google owned reddit, then like reddit , they would want to protect the data from being AI harvested by other actors (unless they paid)

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Richard - London said:
I mean millions of people get their google mail from what ever email client they want.
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Google says they don't trawl/monetize your gmail though - so they are just making money from your browsing/searches.


www.wsj.com

Tech’s ‘Dirty Secret’: The App Developers Sifting Through Your Gmail

Software developers scan hundreds of millions of emails of users who sign up for email-based services. Disclosures are often buried in user agreements.
www.wsj.com www.wsj.com

Google said a year ago it would stop its computers from scanning the inboxes of Gmail users for information to personalize advertisements, saying it wanted users to “remain confident that Google will keep privacy and security paramount.”
But the internet giant continues to let hundreds of outside software developers scan the inboxes of millions of Gmail users who signed up for email-based services offering shopping price comparisons, automated travel-itinerary planners or other tools. Google does little to police those developers, who train their computers—and, in some cases, employees—to read their users’ emails, a Wall Street Journal examination has found.
 
Richard - London said:
Im just shocked a company like Google hasn't offered to buy reddit, all that user data is worth crazy money and google could easily afford the running costs while allowing 3rd party apps, I mean millions of people get their google mail from what ever email client they want.
Click to expand...
Why buy it when you can use the free API to farm the data?

They might need to buy it now though.
 
ci_newman said:
With a userbase of 450million people, a relatively small handful of mods are easy to replace unfortunately. The outcome was inevitable when the mods started weaponizing the subreddits and allowing porn to be posted to the most popular subreddits. /r/interestingas**** still seems to be read-only though.

Honestly, I've no idea what the mods specifically were protesting against either. The API changes didn't hurt the moderator tools as there was an exception made for apps / tools they used.

Reddit isn't profitable. That's a problem. Times change and platforms change, if you refuse to change with them then you'll get discarded and left behind.

Other commentators in this thread were proud that they were "going to stick it to the man" and actively harm Reddit. For what benefit?
Click to expand...
The mods were complaining because a lot of the standard mod tools that are available on the desktop website are not available in the official app, but they were available in third party apps, which meant they were highly used. So now they’ve lost the ability the mod on-the-go which could be important if a bot (or an idiot) starts spamming NSFW or inflammatory remarks etc and they’re the only mod available at the time.

They say they’ve made an exception for mod tools but there are no apps which are “mod tool” only, so the mods are still without access.
 
See if ReVanced has an API patch available for your favourite Android app:

ReVanced - Patches for ReVanced

Browse our rich collection of patches for ReVanced you can use to patch your favourite apps.
revanced.app revanced.app

I patched RIF and it works fine.
 
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As much as I enjoyed Apollo (I subscribed, have refused my refund, bought the wallpaper pack etc), the “native” app is… fine.

It’s riddled with ads, doesn’t have a sleek UX, has far too much clutter etc, but I can read subreddits, upvote posts etc. I can continue without it being this life affecting thing that a lot of now-former Apollo users are making it out to be.
 
So after being on Sync Pro for all this time and now having to uninstall it, I have been instead using the reddit mobile site from Firefox on mobile for my on-the-go reddit browsing. It seems to work fine for the most part, you lose some stuff like push notifications etc.

But tonight I tried the official reddit app, I knew from reading about it that virtually everyone hates it whilst some tolerate it. it has a 2.3 score on the Android app store, and the reviews don't rate it highly either.

Colour me surprised when I log into the app and find it rather usable... There are obvious issues like when zooming on large res images the animation is slightly stuttery, for ref I am on an S23 Ultra so there's no reason why anything should stutter unless it's poorly optimised. Also, you can't pinch zoom on uploaded videos using the internal player - So some slight adjustment to get used but but on the whole the main reddit experience seems to be fine, can search subs, can view fav subs easily, can see messages vs chats from the nav bar, comment structure and usage appears to be fine too. I then made a post on a sub and uploaded 2x images, the post was easy enough and the images uploaded nicely too.

no idea if they have recently updated the app to be better than it was though, but if they have, then it's along the right tracks Id say.

The only annoyance I have really is that no matter what you are browsing, in each sub when scrolling you will see a "reddit business" banner about how you can advertise on reddit, yeah you can just scroll past it, but it's still an annoyance :p
 
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I think that's the main thing, it's useable and does the job - the problem a lot of people have, me included is we saw what we could have with some of the third party apps, and now we're left with what we have to have. All so easily avoidable too if it wasn't fore pure greed and bad business sense.
 
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