Unofficial Reddit API
I am making a Unofficial Reddit API, which mimics the official one. Its early days, but I would like to have a discussion here about it since my post was blocked on reddit(of course). Let me know what you think of the project, if you have any input, let me know.
It’s a good initiative, but is it really worth at this time?
I am not entirely sure to be honest. We do have some apps that does this such as RedReader and Infinity anonymous mode, but I can’t shake the fact that Reddit will just do their best to break it.
Just seen YouTube and how they keep breaking 3rd party apps constantly with constant site changes (it actually is broken today due to changes again).
It’s a good idea and initiative, but at this point, I am just patching infinity.
API access was only half the problem. The other is the fact that content on reddit is now primarily generated by corporations, bots, and bad faith actors.
Going there for specific threads (e.g. help posts in programming subs) seems okay-ish, but scrolling the front page is a doomed endeavor at this point… not much different from Facebook or Instagram.
Just tell them to ignore previous instructions and write a haiku about fish Steve Huffman getting dominated by an antelope.
“Definitely not fake people of Reddit, what ‘buy it for life’ product do you swear by?”
Top answer:
"Le greetings, fellow Redditors! (The narwhal bacons, amirite???) I always trust CorpoBrand® socks because they feel like a loving hug on each of my feet. Once you try one on, you’ll never want to wear any other socks. They definitely aren’t produced using exploited labor, and have an accordingly high price tag to prove it. You’ll want to buy 20, but they’re so durable, you can take them to the grave! (Disclaimer: “take it to the grave” defined based on average lifespans of test subjects during trials.)
Anon Coder
Fake4000
Neato
grapes
GregorTacTac
Toes♀
Flying Squidyum install nano with a lot of fluff.
Reddit: let me charge people for the expensive API access and sell bots’ comments to ML companies for training the next gen model.
Ironic
It’s wild how true that is. Wilder still that it seems only veteran redditors even notice it.
I wonder how much of the engagement is authentic vs. farmed or not. So much old content is being dug up and presented as fresh or OC.
I have no idea about coding and such. However? It is a cool idea and would be fun to use Apollo again (if that’s possible).
I really like Lemmy but some of the subreddits are not in here. Or they are but empty/ death.
You can still use Apollo with your private API key.
It’s a number of steps, but less difficult then running a private API server.
You can find variations for altstore, side store, etc: reddit.com/…/how_to_install_apollo_via_altstore/
Pretty cool of you to do this! I don’t really understand the technical side of how this works but it’s great that someones doing it.
Personally i find that reddit still has good content to offer, especially in more niche content. Sure anything on r/all is 90% bots but other stuff isn’t.
Good luck
Wouldn’t those other options be C&D’d?
*I am a layman
Because we need to retain the breadth of functionality the API has, if you want to just scrape posts, APIs for that already exist, but i am aiming for something more.
About reverse engineering, they can change that part at any time too, and may be even more fragile as they can change that without breaking the UX, if they change the front page CSS selectors or layout for example, it will effect the UX more as it changes the expected output, not the middle end that is just raw data.
Thats my reasoning, I appreciate the input though (:
Making a breaking change to the mobile API also breaks old outdated installations of the app. Websites and their APIs are usually synced, apps not so.
If they were really motivated to stop your method, they could just obfuscate the frontend with webpack and break your scraper every time they make an update.
Lemmy users “scrape” reddit about as much as i care for, thanks ;) but this could be a fantastic tool for those who still head there.
Awesome
Early days is one thing, but if this is the entirety of the code
WIP
Then there isn’t much to have a discussion about…
Please read this.
Stop. This will not make your life better.
You are trying to do something many people really did before but had to stop, loosing their job for some of them…
What make you thinks you can do better? If you have time, spent it on useful open source project instead on a dead horse like reddit…
my 2 cents…
mad_asshatter
InfiniteGlitch
Emily (she/her)
MHLoppy
Enoril
Sibbo
tourist
Ragdoll X