API Updates & Questions

The Reddit Data API is free to use within the published rate limits and subject to our Developer Terms and Data API Terms.

I'm the developer of Pager - I don't charge for it, it is non-commercial, I have plenty of mods who use it but also non-mods.

Are you still changing the current rate limit of 60 requests per minute per user to 100 requests per minute per client id?

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encrypted on 2023-08-16

see profile for how to decrypt

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I'm dissapointed in this FAQ. The questions responded to are largely straw-men of the legitimate concerns people have, and still leave the largest questions unaddressed.

It is still ambiguous whether moderators will be able to leverage 3rd party Reddit clients as moderation tools for example.

And if they break, we will work with you to fix them.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this appears to directly contradict another admin from r/redditdev who refused to provide support to a developer and likened their refusal to how "Google & Amazon don’t tell us how to be more efficient. It’s up to us as users of these services to optimize our usage to meet our budget."

Reddit is also covering hosting for apps via the Developer Platform, which uses the Data API.

My understanding is that the Developer Platform has major usability issues for anything but the most trivial bots, and also largely has no migration path for existing services that weren't written in typescript.

Per one of the early beta testers:

When looking at the API, the way we get all of the information we need, we have access to a fairly large amount of information. The Developer Platform, while it has its uses, is not designed with large and busy bots in mind. It's much better suited for entry-level 'learning to code' style bots that we see frequently pop up on the site. Issues from data usage limits, data storage limits (500kb! Our database in Blossom is over 1.4GB), connecting to services outside reddit (which we have gotten special permissions for, I'll give them that), and more plague the development experience at the time of this writing.

- https://redd.it/13yhnxa

So this quote:

We will ensure existing utilities, especially moderation tools, have free access to our API. We will support legal and non-commercial tools like Toolbox, Context Mod, Remind Me, and anti-spam detection bots. And if they break, we will work with you to fix them.

(Emphasis by me)

Does not inspire confidence following a separate admins response when the Apollo app dev, u/iamthatis asked for clarification about improving their app and was met with this reply:

Having developers ask this question of themselves is the main point of having a cost associated with access in the first place. How might your app be more efficient?

Which pretty clearly reads as, "Figure it out yourself."

I get that Reddit has an obligation to its shareholders, but because I understand that obligation, I lack the willingness to believe any of these promises will be preserved. The additional shiny bobbles of the Reddit app "coming soon" meant to distract mods here instead only acts to highlight all the reasons mods should not trust a reddit app made by Reddit in a vacuum without competition. Many of these features are basic, and should have been baked into the app ages ago.

Q: How will rate limits impact my bot that is used for moderation, fighting spam, or is non-commercial? ContextMod, Toolbox, anti-spam bots, remindmebot, etc.

A: If usage is legal, non-commercial, and of reasonable scale – especially if it helps our mods, and keeps our users safe – you should not be impacted. We will work to ensure your tools face as little disruption as possible.

Can you clarify what "reasonable scale" means?

A lot of us rely on 3rd party bots for moderation tools. /u/SafestBot is one of the more important parts of our setup on /r/me_irlgbt due to the huge amount of brigades we get. We are not able to make our own bot, so we rely on the work /u/blank-cheque has put into maintaining this. Given AEO's lack of response to community interference, I doubt this feature is going to be turned into a native reddit feature any time soon. Safestbot has to look at every user in almost 500 subreddits. Is that reasonable? If not, what do you propose communities do when they rely on tools like this?

This is ludicrous. The Mod Community has been crying out for months and months for proper mod tools across all platforms - I cannot see the (proper) Mod Queue, the Reported Queue, the Removed Queue or the UnModerated Queue in the Android native app, and this is the reason I use Boost.

(I would actually use Boost for everything, but of course DMs and chats were never released on the API, so I have to use two apps, but that's irrelevant now)

To turn off third-party access before the native app has all Mod tools in it is just plain dumb - a large proportion of your (unpaid volunteer) Moderators are losing tools from their armoury with nothing to replace them.

You mention that there is a mod queue upgrade due out this week - any more details on this, or are all the queues properly serviced only in the September update ?

Have you fixed the borked chat Vs legacy chat issue yet ? Will I be forced to choose between functioning queues or a functioning chat if I allow the coming update ?

1. This does not address the imminent bankruptcy of third-party Reddit apps, which is driving the majority of this backlash.

2. Even if third-party tools like bots are not directly affected, their maintainers and users disproportionately rely on third-party Reddit apps to moderate and browse the site, and many are now threatening to quit the site and take their critical tools offline in protest if their favorite apps are forced to shut down by the exorbitant API costs.

These changes affect a tiny percentage of Reddit's userbase. But this tiny percentage are the most engaged power users that help make the site go at every level, far more than multiple millions of lurkers and occasional commenters. Read up on the 1% Rule of social media. Y'all are screwing with the load-bearing walls holding up the inverted pyramid of your entire business model.

I think you all have kind of lost the whole point.

The app is trash. The third party apps aren't. That's the main point here. The app is trash when it comes to moderation and general use.

Between accessibility issues, a distinct lack of features, and a poor ease of use compared to these 3rd party apps, there is no reason for me to use the official app. Getting rid of 3rd party apps will just make me not use the site, that includes moderating my subreddits. Over 150 other subreddit mods feel the same way.

Would it be possible to comment on why the timeline for this has been so aggressive?

There are less than 3 months separating the initial announcement on April 18th 2023 and start of enforcement on July 1st.

It is exceedingly abnormal in healthy service<->developer relationships to ship a breaking change, especially one of this magnitude, on such a tight timeline.

For example, the Chrome Web Browser is currently trying to migrate their entire extension ecosystem from Manifest v2 to Manifest v3. This is a disruption similar in impact to Reddit's API changes, since many browser extensions will no longer be viable after this change is finalized. The Chrome Team publicized this effort back in 2020 and the migration is still ongoing. That's over 3 years vs this timeline at less than 3 months.

Since you won’t fix accessibility issues on your website or apps, how do you expect blind and visually impaired users and mods to remain on your platform, without access to the third party UIs?

The issue with moderation on apps is that third party apps offer far better tooling than reddit's first party app, and from the sounds of things, will continue to do so.

Additionally, in order to appropriately moderate, an app must load all the data a user can load plus more.

This leads to an issue where, in order for reddit to serve their moderators the content they need to moderate, they must either provide only the mod tool interactions for free (which still kills the third party app), or make third party app requests free for moderators. The latter option then leads to every user making and moderating a tiny niche personal public subreddit with no intention of growing it.

This leads to reddit will either have to concede to 3PP apps (which leads to zero change), or reddit will have to raise the threshold for what they provide, which will fuck smaller subreddits made in good faith.

The solution is obvious, of course; cede absolute control over the app space, and charge third party app developers reasonable rates for their requests.

This announcement addresses none of the actual issues. The fact alone that Reddit is making these drastic changes to an API they’ve been supporting for many years, with only one month notice, is extremely disrupting to anything interacting with it.

Reddit is not being accomodating towards third party app developers to any extent, and is now doubling down on their ridiculous new policy and pricing options.

Oh, and they’re also still limiting API access to third party apps, including removing access to all NSFW sexually explicit subreddits. But I guess that’s a moot point when third party apps are being killed off anyway.

And their official app still sucks.

Btw reddit your official app is down rn, we can't even remove flame baiting and hate full comments on this unstable flimsy app.

And you put up a non answer instead of fixing the mess you all created.

Edit:It's fixed now for me, now fix the reddit API pricing

New Mod Stuff

Here’s our roadmap of the mobile mod tools we are shipping in the near future:

Mobile mod queue improvements - launching this week (announcement coming tomorrow)

Mod-centric User Profile Cards (faster loading time, more user information, mod actions are front and center) - launching the week of June 12

Mobile Mod Log - launching the week of June 26

Mobile Mod Insights - also launching the week of June 26

Mobile Community Rules Management (add/edit/delete rules) - launching the week of July 3

Enhanced Mobile Mod Queues (improved content density, focus on efficiency and scannability) - launching in September

Native Mobile Mod Mail - launching in September

Is this a joke?

Many of those, such as modmail and the mod log, are basic features that should have been present Day 1.

It's been 5 years since the official app was released. Instead of adding basic features during this time, you added... NFTs...

Get your priorities straight.

This is exactly why I use Apollo.

Your app sucks and is not a viable product for moderating. How are you not embarrassed to type “Modmail: coming in September”? The app has been out for 5+ years and doesn’t have native modmail?

Apollo is developed by one guy and has perfectly functional moderating features, including native modmail. I won’t pretend to understand how reddit’s professional dev team can’t make an app with the same features as Apollo, but as they can’t, removing third-party apps is getting in the way of moderators.

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Moderators will be able to see sexually-explicit content even on subreddits they don't directly moderate

Will this be true if I moderate on RiF?

Hey! While those changes are good us moderators need the 3rd party apps and will continue until we get them.

It also doesn't help that the official reddit app doesn't work with screen readers for vision impaired users.

Hey, is there a miscommunication around how billing works for 3rd party apps possibly? It makes no sense for rate limiting to be per-app instead of per-app-authorization for apps that take actions as users. For instance, RIF is authorized to act as me, but if I make a ton of requests with that authorization it shouldn't bill RIF nor should it hit rate limits for the entire system. It almost seems like it was just written wrong in the announcement. Is this the case?

Or is it that these 3rd party apps are designed poorly and they can avoid the massive billing by changing their auth model?

The official app is absurdly enshittified and banning third party apps for the average user does not change this.

Q: Is access to sexually explicit content/subreddits being removed from the API? How about other types of NSFW?

A: No. Access to all subreddits will continue to be available to free-tier developers via the API, granted their apps are not third-party UIs.

This statement heavily implies that pricing out third party mobile apps is the intended goal of this. But I'll ask anyway;

Are there any plans to work with third party apps to allow the average user to continue to use them for the regular browsing of reddit?

The official app is so heavily enshittified many people much prefer having customization over how what they see is presented.

I do all my moderation from Relay for Reddit. I think the official app is absolute garbage and only switch to it when I need to do a specific task Relay does not support. Am I shit out of luck? Will my subreddits have to go without me and the other mods like me during the time we don't have access to desktop?

So you are still trying to kill third party apps via pricing and removing access to NSFW content..

And this "update" is only "hey you can see NSFW content on stuff you don't moderate if you are a moderator"..... Great update..

Also your shit is broken and vomitting errors everywhere currently.. Keep up the solid development work

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Q: Is NSFW in jeopardy? Is old Reddit next?

A: No. These changes have no implications for old Reddit or the future of NSFW on Reddit.

You will still kill old reddit one day, and it'll be the day I leave the site.

Edit: Also, this update basically says that you will be going ahead with killing third party apps. Way to go, guys!

So you're all still gonna fuck over /r/blind?

It's non-commercial but not a 'mod tool' so doesn't seem to qualify under any of your exceptions listed above.

I care about the third party apps but I think this is the most outrageous element of these changes by far.

rinse ad hoc retire sheet slim sparkle bag shaggy correct frighten

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

So your plan is still to kill off 3rd party apps with delusional pricing, and to also make sure that those apps, should they survive, cannot access sexually explicit content, thereby effectively killing off the half of Reddit that fucking built the place. So nothing has changed, awesome.

Thanks for the non-announcement, I guess?

Y'all have truly lost the plot.

This damage control post curiously lacks any mention of third party mobile apps. Peculiar. Almost as if they're still doomed and this is naught but a smokescreen.

Hey lift tickets! Thanks for the update. We know this isn't your fault.

The rioting will continue until third party apps are left alone.

THe only question I have is when will this entire thing be rolled back

How to miss the point 101

I'm glad it seems certain bots won't be affected now, but I'm not quite sure how this helps me as a moderator unless I use those bots.

The official reddit app just isn't as good an experience for moderating as third party apps, so if I need to mod while on the go, I need a third party app to do so effectively and as far as I can tell this adjustment doesn't affect that. My preferred apps are all gonna die anyway.

Am I misunderstanding?

A few days ago, u/FlyingLaserTurtle said:

How might your app be more efficient? Google & Amazon don’t tell us how to be more efficient. It’s up to us as users of these services to optimize our usage to meet our budget.

Can you clarify this?

Your API prices are significantly higher than what Amazon and Google charge, and unlike what u/FlyingLaserTurtle said, Amazon and Google absolutely help you optimize your API usage.

So, does this mean that you will be charging an absurd amount for customer service that ranges from crappy to nonexistent?

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You forgot to say about the best mobile app options going away.

Let the api limits be PER USER not per app developer. And let users pay for api use by buying Reddit gold. Don’t charge app developers. Charge users.

to me, this post just calls for extra days being added to the scheduled blackout...

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We don't care, give us back our third party apps

So what I'm reading is that you're still killing third-party apps?

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If you think this is going to change anything I'm afraid you're kidding yourself. What we want is API access for third party apps. They are vitally important to the ecosystem of this site, to the moderators that ensure each subs effective operation and to the users who create the content that is displayed.

Will app developers still be able tl offer premium app versions in order to support themselves? Otherwise, this still kills third party apps

Is old Reddit next?

A: No. These changes have no implications for old Reddit

Please never kill old reddit. New Reddit is slow and laggy and uses far too much data. Ditto for the app. Old reddit is no muss, no fuss, and loads like a dream.

While this addresses usage of some mod tools, it seems like 3rd-party apps (like Apollo and RIF) are still restricted to the aforementioned "enterprise pricing". It's my understanding that the pricing is so high that it's untenable for most 3rd-party developers to even consider.

While the API change will not affect certain moderator tools, there is a large percentage of moderators who rely on 3rd-party apps to moderate on mobile. And regardless of the moderation implications, I think a vast majority of community members are more upset that reddit is effectively "killing" 3rd-party applications.

Will there be any consideration to adjusting the enterprise pricing model? It's become abundantly clear from the developers, themselves, that it will be unsustainable, and lead to the extinction of those apps. After receiving such direct feedback from developers, is reddit reconsidering their pricing model so that 3rd-party apps have a more fair and sustainable way to exist?

I'm still going to private my subs, disable all bots and send all mods on holiday.

Developers can continue non-commercial usage of the API, free of charge within stated rates

so nothing changed and the third party apps we love are still fucked, got it!

This damage control is laughable at best.

The second you go public people will scour your financial reporting like hawks, and it'll be out in the open that the price you're asking is absolutely ludicrous.

The promised app improvements are a mere drop in the ocean of reasons that make the official app shit. People don't use third party apps out of spite, it's out of sheer necessity. And this doesn't solve it.

Q: Is NSFW in jeopardy? Is old Reddit next?

A: No. These changes have no implications for old Reddit or the future of NSFW on Reddit.

Yeah right, you said the same about API. You also said CSS is coming for new/worse reddit and here we are 5 years later, lol.