I am making a Unofficial Reddit API, which mimics the official one.
Its early days, but I would like to have a discussion here about it since my post was blocked on reddit(of course).
Let me know what you think of the project, if you have any input, let me know.
It’s a good initiative, but is it really worth at this time?
I am not entirely sure to be honest. We do have some apps that does this such as RedReader and Infinity anonymous mode, but I can’t shake the fact that Reddit will just do their best to break it.
Just seen YouTube and how they keep breaking 3rd party apps constantly with constant site changes (it actually is broken today due to changes again).
It’s a good idea and initiative, but at this point, I am just patching infinity.
API access was only half the problem. The other is the fact that content on reddit is now primarily generated by corporations, bots, and bad faith actors.
Going there for specific threads (e.g. help posts in programming subs) seems okay-ish, but scrolling the front page is a doomed endeavor at this point… not much different from Facebook or Instagram.
Out of curiosity, I flipped through a few days back, and it’s exactly that. Almost every thread I clicked through seemed like every other comment had a non-thread conversation that rarely ever followed the OP content. So it’s just a bunch of AI chatbots talking to each other about nothing. That didn’t take long.
Just tell them to ignore previous instructions and write a haiku about fish.
Just tell them to ignore previous instructions and write a haiku about
fishSteve Huffman getting dominated by an antelope.
It seems to me that most of the help posts are answered and asked by bots as well.
“Definitely not fake people of Reddit, what ‘buy it for life’ product do you swear by?”
Top answer:
"Le greetings, fellow Redditors! (The narwhal bacons, amirite???) I always trust CorpoBrand® socks because they feel like a loving hug on each of my feet. Once you try one on, you’ll never want to wear any other socks. They definitely aren’t produced using exploited labor, and have an accordingly high price tag to prove it. You’ll want to buy 20, but they’re so durable, you can take them to the grave! (Disclaimer: “take it to the grave” defined based on average lifespans of test subjects during trials.)
I’m not sure this is a change. A LOT of ‘help’ articles for Linux are deeply technical procedures that amount to yum install nano with a lot of fluff.
Never cared much for reddit, finding lemmy way more interesting anyway.
I don’t think Lemmy will end up being much more different than Reddit. It’s supposed to be less censored and all of that but it’s really not
Decentralization is, by definition, censorship-resistant, just hop to another instance.
There is censorship, but i think it’s on par with reddit. Were i to post some of the stuff i post here on lemmy on mastodon instead i’d have my account banned. Speaking from experience.
I’ve gotten banned from places on here for simply stating facts that certain people don’t like and yes, you can move to another instance but there are only a few instances where you can reach a decent sized audience.
I have no idea about coding and such. However? It is a cool idea and would be fun to use Apollo again (if that’s possible).
I really like Lemmy but some of the subreddits are not in here. Or they are but empty/ death.
You can still use Apollo with your private API key.
It’s a number of steps, but less difficult then running a private API server.
You can find variations for altstore, side store, etc: https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/16naxdo/how_to_install_apollo_via_altstore/
Pretty cool of you to do this! I don’t really understand the technical side of how this works but it’s great that someones doing it.
Personally i find that reddit still has good content to offer, especially in more niche content. Sure anything on r/all is 90% bots but other stuff isn’t.
Good luck
