For over 15 years, Reddit has provided a powerful API that has been the foundation for countless tools and platforms developed by and for the community, from your favorite bots to critical spam detection and moderation tools to popular third-party browsers that provide a superior user experience on a wide variety of devices. Fans of Stable Diffusion should understand better than most the importance and the potential of open systems like these.
Just recently, however, Reddit has announced a number of deeply unpopular changes to this API that will have some extremely damaging effects on this open ecosystem:
They’ve cut off access to Pushshift, which has long provided a powerful sitewide search and data for academics and security experts
They’re greatly increasing the price of API access, far beyond comparable services like Imgur, such that third-party browsers like Apollo, Narwhal, and Bacon Reader will be driven into bankruptcy
Additionally, they’re denying third-party browsers both ad revenue and all access to NSFW content
Note that the official Reddit app is woefully behind in terms of accessibility compared to third-party apps, meaning blind users will be effectively excluded from participation on mobile
New rate limits and restrictions will make it significantly harder to police spammers, repost bots, and abusive and dangerous accounts (like porn bots spamming SFW subs or pervs browsing /r/teenagers)
Worse, if these changes go through, they will be laying the groundwork for further closure of Reddit’s open platform — think the end of Old Reddit, shutdown of RSS feeds, or permanent breakage of critical tools like Mod Toolbox or Reddit Enhancement Suite. A world where you interact with Reddit through their bloated, ad-ridden, data-tracking official app, or not at all. And all to increase the value of Reddit’s upcoming IPO.
We’re standing with the developers and users affected by this greedy and shortsighted decision, hardworking people who have contributed more to Reddit’s growth than just about anybody else. To this end, we will be shutting the subreddit down on June 12th until the following goals are addressed:
Lower the price of API calls to a level that’s affordable to third-party developers.
Communicate on a more open and timely basis about changes to Reddit which will affect large numbers of moderators and users.
To allow mods to continue keeping Reddit safe for all users, NSFW data must remain available through the API.
More information:
For mods: /r/ModCoord
submitted by /u/Jordan117
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