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Absolutely nothing. I don't understand why they don't just support OAuth and then the api usage would be by user, not by the app itself. Otherwise apps like a

Absolutely nothing. I don't understand why they don't just support OAuth and then the api usage would be by user, not by the app itself. Otherwise apps like apollo technically would be some of the biggest "users" of the api. What's wild to me isn't just the amount, it's the lack of time. In theory APollo might have enough users will to pay enough for them to profit (albiet with a fraction of the users). But because there's no time, and because people bought year long subscriptions, he's stuck with his subscribers paying less then their operating cost.

The_Blade 3y ago
> I don't understand why they don't just support OAuth OAuth breaks peoples brains and I can only imagine the tech / political debt reddit has
ribosometronome 3y ago
Isn't this why people are upset? It's pretty transparently them giving the axe to third party apps when they explicitly said that wasn't what they were going to be doing. People don't like being lied to or treated like they're too stupid to know what you're actually doing.
roskelld 3y ago
I figured because they don't want 3rd party apps because they don't run ads for Reddit. Reddit wants users within their (soon to be) walled garden getting fed all of the monetization pressure systems. My take when Reddit said that Apollo cost them $20M a year, they weren't talking running costs but revenue potential because Apollo doesn't feed ads to its users.
- appletrotter 3y ago
  Hopefully someone has the link, but I heard that the lost revenue from ads is significantly lower than the $20 million bill.
- mattkevan 3y ago
  I don’t understand, if API apps not displaying ads is the problem, why Reddit doesn’t include ads in the feed and make displaying them part of the terms for access. They could even have a revenue sharing agreement with the app developers.
  - junon 3y ago
    This implies that the Reddit administration thinks things through. They have a track record proving they indeed do not.
    - BizarroLand 3y ago
      I wonder how we've ended up in a situation with so many petulant tyrants running amok over previously green fields of humanity? Elon, Zuck, Bezos, Trump, Gates, Putin and now Reddit, all in the last 5-7 years have been doing things that are user or human hostile while holding some segment of our society hostage in the process. Elon throwing a 42 billion dollar Twitter hissyfit, Bezos using Amazon's money and connections to lock sellers into their platform and then undercut them with cheap knockoffs, plus underpaying their front line employees as if they don't have enough money already, Trump with turning seemingly normal Republicans into walking cesspools of hate, Gates with the Windows 10/11 privacy and user right shitstorm, and now Reddit redlining their greed and attacking the users and apps that actually makes their site function while not offering any equivalent alternative, Putin tanking the entire country's human reserves and financial strengths to try to vaingloriously steal back a few hundred square miles of land. All of these things happening in the same bundle of years makes me want to believe in Aliens or Armageddon or the Illuminati or something, because I can't bring myself to believe that the most powerful people in the world would be so selfishly stupid. Selfish, yes, stupid, yes, but selfishly stupid? When they are surrounded by so many people whose life and lineage and future history depends on the glamorous and glowing successes of these people? And they all ignore all of them and do stupid things with no one checking their ego even the slightest? How is that possible without an unseen third hand pulling the strings? I don't know, and I don't think I believe there is something like that, but I suspect there is, and I can't shake that suspicion either.
_dan 3y ago
That’s exactly how it works today, Apollo logs into Reddit as you via OAuth. When you add an account you follow a pretty standard OAuth flow (Apollo sends you to Reddit, you log in, Reddit asks you to authenticate Apollo, then sends you back). But Reddit knows it’s you, and they know you’re using Apollo. In fact heres the post where Apollo switched to OAuth some years ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/44rd9g/apollo_beta_11_oauth_account_switcher/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/44rd9g/apollo_be...

The_Blade 3y ago

> I don't understand why they don't just support OAuth OAuth breaks peoples brains and I can only imagine the tech / political debt reddit has

ribosometronome 3y ago

Isn't this why people are upset? It's pretty transparently them giving the axe to third party apps when they explicitly said that wasn't what they were going to be doing. People don't like being lied to or treated like they're too stupid to know what you're actually doing.

roskelld 3y ago

I figured because they don't want 3rd party apps because they don't run ads for Reddit. Reddit wants users within their (soon to be) walled garden getting fed all of the monetization pressure systems. My take when Reddit said that Apollo cost them $20M a year, they weren't talking running costs but revenue potential because Apollo doesn't feed ads to its users.

appletrotter 3y ago
Hopefully someone has the link, but I heard that the lost revenue from ads is significantly lower than the $20 million bill.
mattkevan 3y ago
I don’t understand, if API apps not displaying ads is the problem, why Reddit doesn’t include ads in the feed and make displaying them part of the terms for access. They could even have a revenue sharing agreement with the app developers.
- junon 3y ago
  This implies that the Reddit administration thinks things through. They have a track record proving they indeed do not.
  - BizarroLand 3y ago
    I wonder how we've ended up in a situation with so many petulant tyrants running amok over previously green fields of humanity? Elon, Zuck, Bezos, Trump, Gates, Putin and now Reddit, all in the last 5-7 years have been doing things that are user or human hostile while holding some segment of our society hostage in the process. Elon throwing a 42 billion dollar Twitter hissyfit, Bezos using Amazon's money and connections to lock sellers into their platform and then undercut them with cheap knockoffs, plus underpaying their front line employees as if they don't have enough money already, Trump with turning seemingly normal Republicans into walking cesspools of hate, Gates with the Windows 10/11 privacy and user right shitstorm, and now Reddit redlining their greed and attacking the users and apps that actually makes their site function while not offering any equivalent alternative, Putin tanking the entire country's human reserves and financial strengths to try to vaingloriously steal back a few hundred square miles of land. All of these things happening in the same bundle of years makes me want to believe in Aliens or Armageddon or the Illuminati or something, because I can't bring myself to believe that the most powerful people in the world would be so selfishly stupid. Selfish, yes, stupid, yes, but selfishly stupid? When they are surrounded by so many people whose life and lineage and future history depends on the glamorous and glowing successes of these people? And they all ignore all of them and do stupid things with no one checking their ego even the slightest? How is that possible without an unseen third hand pulling the strings? I don't know, and I don't think I believe there is something like that, but I suspect there is, and I can't shake that suspicion either.

_dan 3y ago

That’s exactly how it works today, Apollo logs into Reddit as you via OAuth. When you add an account you follow a pretty standard OAuth flow (Apollo sends you to Reddit, you log in, Reddit asks you to authenticate Apollo, then sends you back). But Reddit knows it’s you, and they know you’re using Apollo. In fact heres the post where Apollo switched to OAuth some years ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/44rd9g/apollo_beta_11_oauth_account_switcher/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/44rd9g/apollo_be...