Reddit

At Fast Company, Katie Notopoulos takes a deep dive into the Palantir meme-stock community:

Toolbox is running into Reddit’s new API rate limits, but even CEO Steve Huffman said it should have free access. A Reddit admin (employee) says the company is looking into it.

That’s based on screenshots shared in the moderator coordination subreddit, including a message from the Reddit admin (employee) account u/ModCodeofConduct.

The iOS app shut down last week. As of this writing, Apple is currently showcasing it as an Editors’ Choice app even though you can’t actually browse Reddit with it anymore. Apple is also featuring the official Reddit app right below Apollo.

The mods of the subreddit may be removed as a result, but they’ve accepted that.

BotDefense, a tool that helps fight bots in more than 3,600 subreddits and has nearly 150,000 accounts on its bans list, will be going away. As for why:

They posted their response publicly for the community — and, presumably, Reddit — to read. According to the mods, the admin sent the moderators a message that they violated the moderator code of conduct by going NSFW.

Users have been voting on the subreddit’s rules, and the newest one means you’ll be seeing a lot fewer actual videos in the community.

In a tongue-in-cheek announcement post, the moderators said they had “no choice” because people had been posting profanity, which technically counts as NSFW (Not Safe For Work) under Reddit’s content policy. Despite the change, gore and pornography are still not allowed on the subreddit.

“When users are logged out, the app is still working because it does not use the OAuth client credentials while logged out,” developer Andrew Shu tells The Verge in an email. However, he expects that the app will stop working in this way soon.

“Since the latest “accessibility” update to the Reddit app, the amount and magnitude of new accessibility related bugs has made it virtually impossible for blind mods to operate on mobile,” the mods wrote. And since many third-party apps have shut down and one that had been granted an exemption for being accessibility-focused is apparently “impossible to log into,” they’re largely out of other options on mobile.

I’m getting kind of melancholy reading posts about Reddit apps actually going kaput. It has been clear for awhile that Reddit wouldn’t budge, but part of me still hoped something would change before today.

Christian Selig wrote a eulogy on the Apollo subreddit paying tribute to his app, which will be shutting down sometime Friday. (As I write this, the eulogy is at the top of r/all.)

“Rate limits will go into effect for all apps with usage above the free limit in the coming weeks, and some changes will be noticeable over the next 24 hours,” Reddit said in a post on Friday.

That’s the latest stat from Reddit in an updated version of its “Key Facts to Understanding Reddit’s Recent API Updates” website. While more than 2,000 communities remain dark, according to the Reddark tracker, many that had shut down have opened up.

Reddit said last Friday the features would arrive by July 1st, and today, the company said they’re now available in its iOS app and coming “shortly” to its Android app.

Screenshot below.

The more than 2 million subscribers to the subreddit can now access it again. But the moderators of the community aren’t done protesting:

And that’s before the protests went down. As reported by TechCrunch:

The Reddit app-pocalypse is here, and the developer of Boost for Reddit, a Reddit client for Android, announced Thursday that the app will stop working after July 1st. Like others, the developer says that the price of the API is too high and is unhappy with other decisions by Reddit:

After receiving a message from a Reddit admin on Thursday saying that its moderators were going to be replaced, Reddit’s Firefox community opened up from being private — but with a temporary new focus on an animal species instead of a web browser.

He shared some details about how he plans to keep his Reddit app alive, and I’ve updated my story with the context. Other popular apps, including Apollo and rif is fun for Reddit, will be shutting down tomorrow.

Moderators have been on edge after CEO Steve Huffman indicated the company might consider rules that would let users vote out moderators, but based on a message seen by The Verge, a Reddit admin (employee) says that no such tool exists and that is not on the company’s roadmap.

That’s a recent quote from Reddit’s VP of community, Laura Nestler. Here’s more of it:

If you subscribed to the app, you’ll now be able to decline a refund on your remaining subscription. If you choose to do so, it could help developer Christian Selig in a big way: he’s currently looking at refund costs of about $250,000. The update also includes a wallpaper pack you can buy to help offset the costs of refunds.