11 ms·

Call me cynical but building a client for a user hostile service is a sign of a Stockholm syndrome.

• frankfrankfrank 3y ago
  It’s reddit, Stockholm Syndrome and mental illness is the core of that whole site and community.
• acumenical 3y ago
  My thoughts exactly. As long as reddit knows we can't quit on them, they've got us cornered. It's like a toxic relationship.
• acatton 3y ago
  I totally agree. Also, this is a thankless task. The app will break every other week when they change webpage (if it's using web scraping) or when they change their internal API because the client was updated. (if it's using the reversed-engineered official app's API)
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • floomk 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • dang 3y ago
      We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments (e.g. this one, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693511, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693493). Would you mind using HN in the intended spirit? It's not in your interest to keep degrading the conversations here—it just contributes to making this place nasty and boring. I'm sure you wouldn't dump trash in a city park or trample public flowerbeds or spill used motor oil in a nature preserve. Why do the equivalent here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • onlymonkeys 3y ago
    Old Reddit hasn't changed in years, probably quite the stable target.
• hoseja 3y ago
  What is your opinion on NewPipe?
  • altfredd 3y ago
    The difference between YouTube and Reddit is so drastic they are basically incomparable. YouTube is a humongous monster with their own network backbone and video storage boxes co-hosted by countless ISPs. Multiple major governments would like to unseat YouTube, but they simply can't. YouTube's competitors are Netflix and (to lesser extent) classic TV networks. Reddit is a web forum hosting platform, that can be wholly bankrolled by a single upper-class US citizen (assuming that your drop their awful video-hosting). Reddit's competitors are WordPress and phpBB. One of them is somewhat of necessary evil. Another hardly deserves to have it's own custom clients to begin with.
    • aloisdg 3y ago
      PeerTube while still lacking a ton of content and features is gaining traction. I have hope.
    • maccard 3y ago
      You've completely missed what provides the value of both YT and Reddit - the content and network effect. Their tech is "easily" replicated.
      • hattmall 3y ago
        YT isn't easily replicated though, it's insanely expensive. Reddit tech is easily replicated and that's the difference.
  • high_5 3y ago
    :-D Ok, you got me <raises hands in surrender>. NewPipe is actually my primary YT client on the phone :-)
• that_guy_iain 3y ago
  I wouldn't say Reddit is user hostile. Recent actions have been to make profitable companies pay for API access. That isn't hostile to users. It's hostile to parasite companies who make a profit from your product while taking away from your revenue. There are a select group of users who decided to vandalise the site in response. They were allowed to do so for a small period of time. In fact, some hardcore groups are still vandlaising the site. People are constantly asking why it's happening. The fact they were allowed to vandalise the site seems the opposite of hostile to users.
  • nullandvoid 3y ago
    Of course Reddit is user hostile. - Can't use web version without getting the mobile version banner forced down your throat every other interaction. - Actively making the non-app version worse than the mobile, for no reason other than engagement metrics. - Not able to view "NSFW" posts (of which everything is just false labeled as that) without logging in; even though it shows you the image on the timeline (the entire "NSFW" part) - a dark pattern / cheap tactic to drive sign up. And this is just to name a few, dark patterns are a plenty across their site. I won't go into the API side of things as others have said it better, and it seems you've already made your mind up there.
    • that_guy_iain 3y ago
      That's not hostile. That's wanting you to use one version over the other. The fact you think if they don't support your desired version of using it over any other then it's hostile to you. The things you've mentioned aren't even dark patterns. One of them could be considered just a figament of your imagination. And one "Oh they make me log in to see porn" like really? Really?
      • Daneel_ 3y ago
        I strongly disagree - this sort of activity by Reddit is almost textbook user hostility.
      • aydyn 3y ago
• joshstrange 3y ago
  Totally agree. I was ready to pay for Reddit access in some shape or form but after my favorite client (Apollo) shutdown, understandably, and after I saw how Reddit treated the developer and the community I decided it was time to leave. It was/is incredibly hard to do so, it was a near-daily habit for well over a decade but there has to be a line somewhere and Reddit barreled right past it and never looked back.
  • Daneel_ 3y ago
    I paid for Apollo ultra as well as Reddit premium for over 5 years specifically to avoid this situation. I couldn’t agree more about leaving now that Reddit has played its hand, and it was ugly. I’ve left Reddit.
    • mywacaday 3y ago
      I'm the same but using Reddit is fun on Android, taking it as an opportunity to reduce my screen time although I would have been happy to pay for an API key to use the client I wanted.
  • ElCapitanMarkla 3y ago
    I thought leaving was going to be a hard habit to break. Turns out it wasn’t. I started going down the road of checking out Lemmy but… I don’t actually miss pissing around on reddit.
    • joshstrange 3y ago
      There a couple of communities I miss (mostly small ones) like my city/state subs and a few games but yeah, I'm surprised at how quickly I flipped off that switch. I've played with Lemmy some but there just isn't much content there (that I care about). I followed the "memes" "subreddit" (literally no idea what they are called) to see more content and then very quickly remembered why I had purged my Reddit subs of stuff like that a long time ago.
      • 3y ago
• ThatPlayer 3y ago
  I do something similar with a different user hostile website with lots of user generated content: scraped all the content, and built a viewer. I would love to not have to, but the contributors I follow are still on the site instead of the less user hostile alternatives. Running a web scraper is easier than convincing all the users to change to a different site, and the (user-generated) content is good enough that I'm willing to spend the time to do it.
  • flyinghamster 3y ago
    Browser extensions (either bespoke or existing content blockers) could be another way to deal with user-hostile sites. Unfortunately, with either approach, it becomes a cat-and-mouse game the second the extension or scraper becomes popular.
    • ThatPlayer 3y ago
      The site I'm scraping will also just deny users access to the content regularly. It's not even a per-user rate limit, but seems to be site-wide. Unless you pay. They've recently also started banning too many requests, so a simple refresh script I used to use no longer works. So what I need isn't just a simple content blocker, but also an auxiliary database, and maybe a browser extension to pull data from that source instead.
• ohgodplsno 3y ago
  It's actually an amazing way of being hostile towards said service. - Using up their resources, for free, while looking like one of their clients - Not displaying any of their ads, costing them even more - If they want to stop this, they have to dedicate resources to do so, which costs them money. - Stopping this most likely means making their own app worse, leading to a worse experience, leading to fewer users and therefore, costing them money.
• poulpy123 3y ago
  It's not great but there is no alternative to Reddit
  • thejohnconway 3y ago
    I mean there never will be if people don’t move. ActivityPub-based alternatives Lemmy https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/ and Kbin https://kbin.social/ https://kbin.social/ are growing fairly rapidly at the moment.
  • johnnyanmac 3y ago
    No alternative now. Not gonna be an alternative if someone (which may or may not be "we/us") doesn't start fostering one. Reddit year one wasn't a Digg alternative either. I'm using Tildes to replace most stuff, HN for more technical news, and then a few gaming news site and animation youtubers for entertainment news. And then tryig to keep an eye on and support some very alpha sites I've found over the weeks. Still myabe 70% replaced, but it's a lot more than the last time I said I'd quit reddit in like, 2017.
• maccard 3y ago
  Or it shows that the service provides immense value to the users and they're willing to go to great lengths to continue using it.
• nickpsecurity 3y ago
  Reddit still has millions of people (tens? 100+?) who choose to use and submit content to the site. That's millions of people you can share Jesus Christ with, show love to (esp encouragement / counseling), learn from, collaborate with, and market to. There's so much good happening over there! To see Reddit as having no value, a person's ideology would have to outweigh all those benefits. If it's a bad business, then all of that value it provides for all of those people wouldn't be worth whatever Reddit asked in return. Most still accept Reddit's terms for what the site offers them in return. Much of the turmoil was about API fees. I'm happy to pay their fee to do more good for people. It might not have acceptable cost-benefit for everyone's use, though. I can definitely imagine better ways to do it for sure. That might include free blocks of or discounted calls to the API for OSS developers, academics, and Reddit Gold members (even if only 100-1000 for personal use). As an I.P.O.-focused startup, I accept that they're going to do what's good for their bottom line. Let's say you want the situation to improve. For such companies, you can try to propose to decision-makers suggestions like above that increase value to everyone (including them!) with low or no extra cost. That's speaking their language. For avoiding harmful lock-in, people can (a) avoiding putting critical data in for-profit services or (b) keep backups of their data off-site in form OSS software can easily host. You can get a free copy of your Reddit data, too, at the link below: https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043048352-How-do-I-request-a-copy-of-my-Reddit-data-and-information- https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/36004304835...
  • johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >To see Reddit as having no value, a person's ideology would have to outweigh all those benefits. Not quite, the downsides simply have to outweight the benefits. Value is relative, but even before this drama I've simply started valuing reddit less and less. It's harder for me to find actual conversation and I need to filter out more and more noise, toxicity, and outright spam to do it. It's become too much work, and that says a lot given that I browse Youtube and 4chan comments as well. >If it's a bad business, then all of that value it provides for all of those people wouldn't be worth whatever Reddit asked in return. Given recent valuations from places like Fidelity, that may in fact be the case. And that's who Reddit is trying to appeal to, not the actual users beneitting from the value of community. >Much of the turmoil was about API fees. I'm happy to pay their fee to do more good for people. And I'm sure others do too. However Reddit made it clear next month that they don't want 3rd party devs to divert costs to the users. Which sends a message that they do not want to work with 3rd party devs on their terms. I don't want to swing this back to that drama, but that example is very endemic of how Reddit has operated for at least 7 years. There are compromises users would like to make but reddit doesn't allow nor make time to make becasuse the focus isn't on user satisfaction. Maybe others will continue asking. But I'm simply done. The time I spent trying to improve reddit could have honestly been spent finding and fostering a new community who will listen.
• rkangel 3y ago
  Surely it's just a sign of the network effect? Reddit is several things, but one of them is a set of communities that provide value to people. I'm an NFL fan, but I'm in the UK so my community of people to discuss NFL with is on Reddit. This network effect is what Reddit management is banking on with these changes (or at least, I assume so!). It definitely exists, but management seems to underestimate the long term effects of user hostile behaviour.
  • JeremyNT 3y ago
    Indeed, you can't simply pretend that there's no value in these platforms for end users. As awful as reddit may be, it has many users and a lot of valuable information. I don't think that things like this client (or e.g. nitter) are desirable end states, but they can be incredibly important for users who still need/want to work with the "old" platforms while more open/friendly replacements emerge.