- cross-posted to:
- android@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- android@lemmy.world
I had a feeling they’ll put something like this, so I went in every now and then to see how infinity will react. I really loved the app, devs did an amazing job
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I find it extremely ironic that all the closed source apps, some with subscription options, are closing or moving to support open platforms, while the prime FOSS app is staying with Reddit and going subscription only.
Yeah it’s baffling. I haven’t touched Reddit since the blackout but I still had my Infinity app installed, just out of nostalgia I guess. While the dev has every right to do businesses with whomever he wants, I expected differently from a FOSS project. Now to delete Infinity…
I’m going to delete infinity on July 1st
Is is because the sole developer was actually a CS student, now looking for a first job (sick what he achieved at his age right ?) so he has no time to change the app to support Lemmy. However he said that should someone pick up the development, it should not be to hard to integrate the new feeds to it.
See 2nd link in the post.
Even more reason not to deal with a dickish corporation and be on the knife edge of possibly being tens of thousands in the red, if you’re fresh out of school.
I think it is great for resume for applying jobs
Owning money to reddit?
nah having an app that is being used by thousands of people and got name recognition
I see. That’s a good things.
Previous post mentioned owning $$$ unless I misunderstood.
IKR… This doesn’t feels right lol.
oof. the only reason I even used infinity was to browse reddit without an account. now there’s less of a reason to use it past July.
Real odd. Those who use Foss maybe moving towards trying to cut themselves off from reddit, subscription models are ones that are going to mainly appeal to power users of reddit who don’t intend to stop.
And I would guess those users would be more drawn to the official app than the third party app, since third party or api might be things they don’t care about.
It is baffling but maybe he sees that there will be very few decent third party apps and an opportunity to monetize his work. I have seen discussion of scripts that compile infinity from source with a personal API key. So, the FOSS option still being maintained is a win I guess. 🤷🏻♂️
True, I just worry that the dev will get screwed by Reddit. If I were a dev or doing some business, I wouldn’t touch Reddit with a very long stick. It’s like poking a huge dung, you can only get a swarm of flies.
They certainly will be screwed somehow, at some point. If they give this little warning. I doubt Reddit will disclose changes quick enough for there not to be an eventual case of a huge bill randomly, and many “oh shit” moments for the developer
I suppose no one else will be able to monetise it because all revenue will go straight to Reddit
Infinity is open source. https://github.com/Docile-Alligator/Infinity-For-Reddit
That’s what I meant? Infinity is FOSS and signing subscription with the devil.
This! I couldn’t believe what I was reading when I saw this post…
I don’t think it’s ironic at all - Infinity is and always has been a Reddit client. Subscription fees seems to be the only possible way for it to continue to be a Reddit client and if only a small number of people are willing to pay, then that’s fine. It’s an open source project and doesn’t need to make enough money to pay a salary. It just needs to pay the API costs.
Infinity also doesn’t need any of it’s existing contributors to continue using it, they could all move on (perhaps start work on a Lemmy clinet?) and other people might keep developing Infinity. Open source projects change hands all the time.
If someone wants to make the app into a client for another platform, they can simply fork Infinity. It doesn’t make any sense for Infinity itself to change into a totally different app. And it would be totally different, Lemmy has different features.
It just needs to pay the API costs.
As I wrote elsewhere, I just worry that the dev will get screwed somehow. While before they only needed to make an app and let it loose, now they’ll need to constantly be on a lookout if their users API usage doesn’t exceed what they’re paying in subscription. Or if a thousand bots buy their app with stolen credit cards and Google holds their money. Or if someone hacks their app/server, figure out their API key and racks up a billion calls in spam.
They’re turning a hobby dev project into a business, to be exchanging thousands of money between Google, themselves and Reddit, potentially being in the red for any number of reasons, and dealing with taxes and accounting on top of that.
I mean this is exactly what the Apollo dev said he doen’t want to deal with (he just anticipated a much larger volume than Infinity, but the principle is the same).
Apparently the dev is just starting their first job and don’t have time to port the app to Lemmy, how will they have time if there’s some disaster caused by Reddit?
Maybe it will work out for them, but I’d be super careful doing any business with Reddit at this point.
I was an Infinity user but I can’t help but feel this is the wrong move. After all Reddit has done to them they just set up a way to siphon miney straight to them for the devs’ hard work?
Why?
Infinity is open source. You can change the key and user agent (and one more field, but it escapes me at the moment), compile your own APK, and continue using it for free.
Will it work without the reddit API though? Maybe if there’s a way to scrape the site but idk how everything else could be handled.
you need to get it for yourself, but you won’t be able to see nsfw at july 1 :(
The new version will not be.
Where did you see that? He said he’s charging for it and would not tell anyone how to change things to get past reddit, but that there’s a guide already out there that will walk people through the changes that need to be made.
I’d be interested in seeing where he said he’s no longer providing source code updates.
And isn’t it a little unethical not to even mention nsfw?
A number of devs talked about the pricing and the consensus seems to be that the fee applied to keep the apps afloat would need to be pretty high and they don’t see how it can be sustainable.
I wonder how much Infinity is planning on asking and I doubt its user base will be so keen on paying that much.
Yeah like $5 a month for more casual users. And people paying for apps tend to use them more. I think Apollo’s calculations were like $10-12/mo for higher end users? Anything over $5/mo is probably a no-go so I wonder if it’ll be viable.
And if Infinity’s userbase makes $5/mo viable, I wonder if they’ll get flocks of users from other apps and if that’ll make it non-viable with high-traffic users.
Or maybe they’ll go with a post-paid plan where you pay by usage? That seems iffy.
Keep in mind too, that even with the paid API usage to the best of my knowledge the 3PA still will not have NSFW/porn content in the feed. How many people are going to be willing to spend $5-10/mo while also having reduced content?
I certainly won’t that’s for sure. I’m a current infinity user.
Which is nuts. I was Apollo Ultra, and that was $10/year.
I honestly never looked into Reddit premium until all the API drama and was shocked it is $50/year, while only offering a fraction of what Apollo offered. Crazy pricing.
The other weird part is, I’m sure a lot of Lemmy users would be more than happy to donate much more to a good cause than an average Google Store app user who can ask for refund at any time and then leave 1 star.
It would be cool if it gave the option to pay more per month as a donation. That would allow wealthy users to help lower the cost for less wealthy users
Social media as a business model rapidly becomes unethical
cough more unethical
I was really hoping to see an “Infinity for Lemmy” app. Oh well; Jerboa it is I guess.
Edit: spelling
I heard that Sync for Lemmy is going to be a thing.
I’m trying out Connect For Lemmy which came out a few days ago, seems nicer than Jerboa to me so far.
Liftoff is pretty good
I need to second this one! Tried some of the apps that came out in the past couple of weeks/days and Liftoff is the one I stuck with. The button at the top where you can switch to different instances with a single tap actually made me better understand the whole way Fediverse works. Now I switch between Beehaw, Lemmy world and some of the more obscure ones super simple (I am sure one could do this with other apps also but with Liftoff it just clicked for me).
My homescreen is still littered with a lot of the same stuff because a lot of instances have similar stuff on them but this is the first time I have something resembling control over the content I am reading in the Fediverse.
(still mourning the loss of RIF and it’s simple and incredible easy to use interface. I truly hope RIF’s dev makes an app for Lemmy!)
Image Transcription: Text and Image
[Screenshot of the Infinity app for Reddit. A pop-up notification is on the bottom of the screen.]
Important Notice Regarding Reddit API Changes
Starting from July 1st, 2023, Reddit API will be pay-per-use for 3rd-party clients, which include Infinity for Reddit. The announcement from Reddit can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api
In order to survive this change, Infinity will become a subscription-only app after July 1st. You can learn more about the changes in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Infinity_For_Reddit/comments/147bhsg/the_future_of_infinity
It’s required for you to update Infinity after July 1st so that you will get the new version with subscription options. None of the previous versions (including this one) will work after July 1st. But due to a tight timeline Reddit gave, the update may not be available immediately on July 1st since it requires proper testing. Thank you for your understanding!
I’m a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too!
Good human
There’s a Lemmy ToR? ToL? I’m in. 30 transcriptions on reddit, time to carry on the legacy.
I created !TranscribersOfLemmy@discuss.tchncs.de but we got a lot of work to do.
I’m sure Reddit has figured out how much to charge to ensure they get the money they would get for premium one way or another. They aren’t getting anything out of me.
Even if they setup a subscription model, the api is not going to give them access to any nsfw content. Who will pay for a subscription to not be able to see any nsfw stuff, while they can get it for free on the Reddit app?
Especially when you will still be able to use RedReader for free since it has been spared, at least for the time being. So, probably only people who really like Infinity and don’t want to switch to another app. Even with RedReader though you still won’t have access to NSFW.
Why so many of you in the comments are complaining that he “is trying to make business with Reddit”? It is his own app, he is finishing his studies and he have achieved so many things, he has the right to do whaterver he wants with his application. Also, you can just download the Infinity’s source code and build your own version of Infinity with your own API key. It will work without any problem after 1 July. So where is the problem there?
The apps for lemmy have good potential once the bugs are resolved, but in terms of UI design, nothing beats Infinty imo
That one downvote? Is that you Apollo lover (I am too but it wasn’t I)
Idk have you used boost? It’s incredible
I agree infinity’s ui was the best
There goes the client I used. I deleted my reddit accounts already anyway.
Sync I paid for cus it was just so slick, Infinity not so much. I certainly won’t pay.
Wow, not even Sync dared to charge a subscription adjusted to the new API price. I wonder how much Infinity’s going to charge.
A subscription to what would now be a lesser product since you can’t access NAFW content. The whole thing is sad. I deleted Sync the other day after using it for like 10 years.
what’s the point of paying for the API then?
Yeah, I feel bad for the developers that are trying to make it work, but I don’t think it’s gonna fly. Sync developer already moved to work on a Lemmy app.
Yeah, I bought the $30 support Sync bundle a while ago, and I will buy another one to support him, especially if it supports Kbin.
I’ve heard though a few others that sync supposedly will support Kbin but not on release. Hopefully someone can verify.
Dude you just made my day
What are they going to charge?
Any number higher than FREE.99 is too high just to access Reddit.
Definitely. I’m just curious what amount makes it worthwhile to keep the app alive
A least $15 a month.
Non power users probably wont pay, and any lower and they’ll definitely lose money.
I don’t see how paying more than Netflix will do anything other than kill that app.
Yeah, this is for people really addicted to reddit who don’t plan to stop, but for some reason have an issue with using the official app despite plans to continue contributing to the platform. It’s kind of conflicting stuff. So now they are willing to pay monthly subscriptions just to use a third party app because they love reddit that much but hate the idea of using the reddit app?
It’s going to be a slow glorious death
I guess if the app’s dead either way, they don’t see any harm in giving it a try.
It’s just giving money away to Reddit.
That’s the real issue. I would have gladly paid Apollo $5-$10 a month considering how much I used the app and loved it but the fact that so much of it doesn’t go to the developer because Reddit wants to charge 27x more for 3rd party users is ridiculous.
I only read from the Apollo guy, that the amount of requests the users of his app make, would get him to pay reddit 20 million a year. So, the more popular your 3rd party app is, the more they would have to pay Reddit.
The one i use, Sync for Reddit, is also dying before the 1st of July arrives. From there on, the new prices apply.
Reddits motivation for this, is to get paid for API access by companies like ChatGPT. They suck reddits content, our posts, in order to feed the AI with content. I assume they do it big style and Reddit wants to cash in for this.
That would be the client I used - it’s a shame they’re being pushed to this.
Once that app goes subscription, I’ll run a purge on my account and drop in a GDPR request invoking my right to be deleted.
If by purge you mean power delete suite, it (and others like it) won’t work after the 1st.
Also I don’t know how true it is, but apparently it costs them a handful of money to comply to GDPR requests for data recovery. So maybe do that and then delete.
If I understand it correctly, Power Delete Suite should work just fine, since it’s using the logged in user’s API access. It will just get hit by the “free tier” rate limiting, but that only should mean it will take longer to do it’s thing.
