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…
That, or Christian made a pretty expensive mistake…
I wouldn’t put a lot pass /u/spez, including offering special deals on API pricing. Especially if he thinks it would make Christian Selig look bad.
It’s precisely the kind of thing a lying, gaslighting and vindictive /u/spez would do.
You know what… That does seem like something Spez would do.
I think the best thing to do if you want to continue using Infinity would be to just compile your own APK with your own API key.
I’ve never used android studio before but didnt take me very long to work out how, and it all seems to be working.
You only need to change a couple of settings and about 3 lines of code.
You don’t even need android studio. You can edit the files with anything and just compile the apk with any valid android compiler. But yeah it ain’t that hard. The question remains: do you want to be using reddit? ;)
Someone made a Google collab notebook that takes your API keys as an input, takes care of the compilation and offers you a download link to get your apk. Zero knowledge needed!
I did try that method but for some reason it wouldn’t install. Seemed like it was conflicting with an already installed app (had already uninstalled it) so by using Android studio I could change the package name at the same time.
Also did see some people mention it might be a bad idea to give your API key out to randos on the internet which is fair enough.
Giving out such an API key is essentially what the infinity dev does, up until the 1st of July at least.
Reviewing the colab’s code, I did not find anything susceptible to leak your API key (or other info) to the author.
However, I have also seen users offering to build apks for others (which implies giving out API keys on top of installing software from a random guy). That seems indeed very dangerous.
Yea thats true, and tbf I did give them mine and i’ve not had my identity stolen as of yet lol.
The main reason I did mine manually was that I was getting a conflict error when installing so i wanted to change the package name too.
I ended up basicly using the Collab thing as a guide on what to change so it did come in handy.
How do we get an API key, does it cost money, and where can we find the notebook?
This is what I and many others used who have zero knowledge. It’s very simple. Check it out here In the Collab link it gives you the link to get the key.
Infinity for Reddit is OpenSource: https://github.com/Docile-Alligator/Infinity-For-Reddit
Apparently Reddit doesn’t allow the original developer to publish the app with a field for a user API key… but there are tutorials on what to modify to get it to work, and there might be forks out there with the required fields baked in.
Yes, of course. I even reported a bug on that exact repository about a month ago. But I don’t see the point, getting “back” to reddit now that they’ve shown their intent…
If the app developer doesn’t have an API key in the app though then what power does Reddit have to stop them? Reddit would have to ban each individual API key that people generated and put in the app, no?
App developers have already agreed to some Reddit ToS in order to get an API key, so one of Reddit’s powers is to sue them. Developers don’t want to risk that, so they just follow the agreement and whatever Reddit tells them.
Individual users would still need to request becoming a developer, a process which Reddit has recently changed, and agree to the same ToS to get an API key, but the risk of getting sued instead of just banned, would be much lower. The ban could include both the API key, and any users using it, so still risky other than for throwaway accounts.
Reusing the official app’s API key though, could be interesting. Still risk getting banned, but interesting.
There’s no way to be profitable with this pricing. Simply no way. Each time an user opens the app it will cost 2 cents in API requests. Continue scrolling, open threads and the costs rises. In average, accounting all the lurkers, inactive and free users, it might look like that it could be supported by a $2 subscription. But then, who is willing to subscribe to an app to read a free website? Only the most addicted users. The ones that will doom scroll for hours. The ones that will do 10000 api requests per day
Also, the server backend must be rewritten from scratch. Right now the app is open source and it’s talking directly to the reddit servers using the API key. After the change, it could continue to do so, but because extracting the API key from the APK is trivial, some asshole could extract/crack it and give her a massive bill
Every single request must be proxied by her own server, making a check for a valid subscription to each user and also some quota management. Possibly some caching to save money on the most popular posts. Otherwise it will be trivial for some asshole to make a revanced patch to bypass the subscription. But implement this takes months, she can’t have done this and tested carefully in just two weeks
Please someone let her realize this before she gets a massive bill at the end of the month, i don’t have a reddit account for that
I wanted to answer this earlier, but I got sidetracked.
This actually is absolutely true, and I don’t know why I have not considered this before. Probably because I am so used to APIs providing a fully comprehensive client/user integration that I didn’t even consider that essential API features you would be paying for (through the nose) as a 3rd party developer, would have to be provided by yourself. I didn’t know reddit didn’t manage this. This is preposterous. Having to proxy ALL reddit traffic via your own infrastructure, simply to ensure your paying customers, when consuming your reddit API allocated quota are, indeed, paying, is next level stupid.
The only way to provide Reddit integration while making sure your credentials don’t get hijacked (like I did with the testing Python script I posted publicly in the bug report I made on the “Infinity for Reddit” repo) is to make your own API, on top of reddit’s.
Essentially, as you said, providing quite advanced features. Authentication, Caching, Quota management, etc, etc. I wouldn’t even do this if the reddit API was free… 🤦♂️
It’s OAuth. Each user that allows access to the app will have an individual token only valid for that app and only for that user’s account. Either the developer or the user can revoke that token at any time.
All the dev has to do is to not create/send a token to the user until they subscribe, then revoke that user’s token if the subscription expires.
“It’s required for you to update Infinity after July 1st… Thank you for understanding!”
goes on Lemmy and never returns to Reddit lol
I love infinity but paying for Reddit to enable them to continue doing this is something I hope nobody does.
Subscription with less features (no nsfw). That’s a no from me. I will not be using reddit on mobile.
s/ on mobile//
FTFY
echo 'I will not be using reddit on mobile.'| sed 's/ on mobile//g'Useless use of the global flag.
You don’t need
echoif you use the here string:sed 's/ on mobile//g' <<< "I will not be using reddit on mobile."Useless use of the global flag, needlessly non-POSIX.
Edit: Heredocs are good, use them.
I don’t think that’s posix compliant
EDIT: It doesn’t work in dash which is posix complianr
True, I was assuming zsh/bash - https://www.shellcheck.net/wiki/SC3011 has the posix-compliant equivalent.
Upvoted for linking
shellcheck. 👍Edit: Please never assume bash. This is the single most common shell problem and has been for at least a decade. #portabilityactuallymatters
Dash isn’t the POSIX reference, this is.
And what you’re going to find too is that as the sub price goes up, the users who use it the least (generating less API costs) get priced out first. In other words, the average cost per user increases because the users who are willing to pay more are the ones who are generating more costs. If 75% of users stop using it because of the subscription cost, the API costs won’t fall by anywhere close to 75%.
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.
Wait, did I miss that? Are reddit going to make NSFW API calls available only to their app!?
Yes and they’re already blocking mobile web access to most porn subreddit. Only from their app, for “safety” 😉
The funny thing is, there is barely any porn on reddit. It’s mostly on redgifs. Reddit is just an aggregator with categories and tags support…
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”.
Yup.
🤦♂️
Spez™. For when “fucking up hard only once” is not enough.
Free speech absolutist except for boobies.
Fuck that
Figuratively only, unfortunately… Not gonna touch that absolute turd of an app reddit is pushing on users, even for sex. 😬
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
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…
would love to have an Infinity for Lemmy
You’re welcome. (Assuming it gets done 🤞)
You should never pay for for-profit social media, it’s fundamentally backwards. Their service is not the product, your contributions and presence are. They are nothing without you, and require you.
The exception is things like instances on the Fedi where it’s not for profit and you’re putting up a server to include yourself.
This is reddit killing third party apps, because even if you did subscribe you’re still not getting NSFW because reddit is taking that out of the API anyways
So who would pay literally more for less? Reddit can say all they want about supporting 3rd party but even the blind could see through them
The devs were hoping that they can keep their apps up and their livelihoods without too much additional work, that’s fair from them I suppose. But they should definitely be taking a hard look at porting their existing apps for the Fediverse, if they aren’t yet.
This was the Sync for Reddit’s main argument against going in that direction.
I bet Infinity is doing this instead of hanging up their keyboards like the other apps specifically because they know it won’t work and want to be living proof of it.
Some of the other apps are making Lemmy versions instead.
As others have pointed out, doesn’t seem like this will work out well for the dev from business (or integrity) POV - Only thing I can think is maybe devs need to act in good faith now to “attempt” to adapt to API changes to then demonstrate the absolute and tangible harms that Reddit caused their business with this quick and reckless change, so that they can then sue after the fact?
Otherwise, what are you doing?
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.
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.
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”. 😉
Yeeaah I just uninstalled Infinity. It was my go to app for years after Slide fizzled out. Not sure how many users that are into open source will be willing to pay Reddit…
Same, it’s a bit sad, but I’ve not used it for weeks and I’m certainly not going to start paying
