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Ask HN: How has Reddit changed since the removal of APIs and 3rd party apps?

5 points by bko ↗ HN
I remember the uproar of Reddit removing free APIs and essentially killing all third party apps, responsibile for a significant amount of traffic. I also remember the subreddit blackouts in protest.

Management stood firm and went through with the move. And everyone just moved on.

Nearly 6 months later, how has reddit changed? Are people still talking about it? Did people leave? Does anyone care anymore?

8 comments

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solardev
Anecdotally (not being an active reddit user, just someone who occasionally searches for "blah blah reddit"): I haven't seen good new results in quite a while. It used to be the case that anything you searched for would have a recent thread discussing just that, with a lot of active opinions. Now it seems like a graveyard, all messages from 10+ months ago.

I think it's probably fine if you're there for the popular cats videos and news and memes and such, but when they drove away all the most enthusiastic (and eclectic) moderators and subs, it became a lot less useful :(

throwitaway222
Reddit is not one thing.

It's 3 million forums each with its own community and with people that have reasons to stay beyond 0.05% of its population complaining about APIs (read: actually used APIs and no longer can)

Davidbrcz
You still can

I compile my own version of Infinity for reddit with my keys and it works just fine.

CM30
It's quieter than it used to be. Lots of previously booming subreddits are seeing less activity, and it feels like posts get upvoted less than they used to as well. Also feel less... well, interest in using the site too. Just feels a lot more boring than it used to, and much less like a place I want to spend time in online.
wmeredith
More bots, more spam, lower quality overall. The only people who cared about the API stuff were their power users. That's who left/diminished their usage of the site. I suppose Reddit has enough momentum to continue anyway now that they've built their business on the backs of power users for long enough. Twitter used the same playbook.
YaBa
Not an avid user but browse it sometimes. Quality answers are gone, I see mostly wannabes trying to answer technical stuff with copy-paste from ChatGPT.