Infinity, a lesser known open-source third-party Reddit app for Android, has announced that it will be switching to a subscription-only model. This would mean that the F-Droid version of the app will be delisted and the API key currently in the source code of the app will be removed. As of this post, the developer is currently not interested in converting Infinity into a Lemmy client, but encourages others to look into doing it themselves because of the app’s open source nature.
Infinity was great, but reddit goes to shit and its not worth it at all.
@grizz Relay’s doing the same. I think some of the less popular apps like these can feasibly give the new API pricing a go.
I think the proposition has changed significantly for me though. I liked and supported these apps for a long time, but I’m not using them as vehicle through which to effectively subscribe to reddit.
Same. It’s not about the app anymore. It’s about reddit itself.
Same here. At that point, I’d be supporting spez and his IPO, not the app developer.
Yeah, absolutely. I’m fine with a subscription, but not at that price and not with that CEO. Spez will not see a cent of my money, no matter how much I loved Relay.
Still, most if not all of that subscription fee is just going back to Reddit in API calls. Not interested in supporting them at all, whether through a first or third party app.
no more fdroid?
ewwInfinity was a good replacement when Sync did its redesign, which I didn’t care for. Ah well. I don’t blame them of course, but reddit isn’t something I’m going to pay a subscription to access on a 3rd party app on my phone.
Same here. No offense to the developer of Infinity, but I don’t see too much value in accessing Reddit on mobile enough to pay for a subscription. Now that I have Lemmy, I’ll probably only use Reddit while trying to search for a solution for something.
Probably the solution you will find will be deleted or edited to „fuck u/spez“ hopefully.
I see maybe 3 people on the whole planet subscribing to a 3PA for reddit
I feel like this is largely a culture thing on Android. Apollo has made the subscription model work with tons of success on iOS, where paid apps are normalized. For me, I’d happily fund an open source app, but not Reddit itself.
Ouch, I’ve been using it a lot lately, I would have preferred their app converted to Lemmy’s network
It’s open source so someone might do it
Props to the dev for trying to keep the app going, but Reddit isn’t worth the price they ask nowadays, and when 3PA get killed for good, without the moderation those allowed, Reddit would be even more of cesspool of spambots etc. so absolutely not going to pay for a spam service lol
Infinity was an excellent app. Was customizable enough for my needs and didn’t intrude on my experience with ads or other stuff. Sad to see it go. I will probably just stop using it and just use Lemmy from now on.
I never really cared for Infinity. Every FOSS app has one strange idiosyncrasy that the developer is extremely stubborn about and won’t compromise on: for example, weather app Wx is perfect but for the fact that the developer refuses to incorporate location services. With Infinity, it was the fact that the app didn’t store the read/unread state of posts persistently, and because the app had an option to hide read posts, the dev just wontfixed it and called it a day. Some people had no issue with that but for me it was unusable.
I’ve been using infinity for a while now and it’s fantastic. I would happily pay for it, if it weren’t for the fact that most of the money would go straight to Reddit.
Personally I use the infinity for Reddit app and this is disappointing as it’s my favorite app but I wouldn’t pay a subscription for it. Although I do understand why he/she is doing it I am still disappointed.
Farewell, Infinity. :(
Being an Infinity user, I loved the app. I wish I could use it again for Lemmy. But since I don’t plan on going back to Reddit, I guess it’s time to say goodbye…
Just give in to Reddit’s ridiculous demands indeed.
This is just a start for them to charge even more down the line “cuz profits”.
It will not be sustainable as an 3rd party app one way or the other.
They can also just revoke the access without blinking just because they would feel like it.They’re not doing this to make money on their API, they’re just trying to make 3rd party apps unfeasible so users have to use their app. More control basically, more ad power.
How is a FOSS project gonna enforce this? By providing only binaries on GPlay with the dev’s API key, and then a free version for entering your own API?
It needs an API key to function so they’ll disable the old key and generate a new one which they’ll keep private.
But couldn’t someone hack the binary to extract the key and enter it into the free version? Sounds kinda risky.
You can do that on every single app, so no difference there.
They will not give you the real API key. Everything you request will go through their own server, that way they can also cache stuff globally.
That sounds quite unbelievable.
This is a common approach if API access is paid. Not doing this is equivalent to lighting your money on fire because someone WILL extract your API key and start scraping.
Reddit won’t allow the dev to create an app where users can enter their own keys. So it will still be FOSS but you’d have to build it yourself with your own keys, if you can somehow obtain them. Thus there’s no point in putting the app on F-Droid.
Thanks for the heads up. Just forked the project and hopefully it should be relatively simple to change the API key and rebuild the app. That being said, keeping up to date with the upstream changes might prove more difficult
