Reddit is trying desperately to kill third party applications and in the process its own community. You can read more about it here. This proposal makes only two assumptions.
- Reddit has taken for granted that which got it where it is.
- Reddit is replaceable.
Reddit is massive in terms of scale, but not in terms of complexity. So, it can be replaced, but maybe not practically. I made this post on /r/technology a week ago, and it got some traction. Since then, I have received several emails and offers of labor and funding.
I must start by clarifying that my intuition is not that this can't be done, but that it won't be. Very rarely does an opportunity of this magnitude arise and coincide with the will to do something about it.
- Create a non-profit organization to begin gathering funding and develop charter guaranteeing suitable governance.
- Implement some distributed data store. Something fancy like SurrealDB or well-worn like Postgres.
- Create a thin session manager handling authN/authZ and an API translator implementing Reddit's API contract.
- Point all participating 3rd party applications to the new endpoint with new API tokens.
- Notify a user upon opening a 3rd party app, they are welcome to continue but must create a new user.
Sounds easy when there are only five steps. ... But it isn't. It is basically impossible, as it relies on the following conditions being met.
- All major 3rd party app providers would need to agree to this.
- All would need to switch at one time, to lower the duration of the initial content desert.
- Its on-demand infrastructure would have to be prepared for this massive initial scale-out.
- Major API endpoints would need to be ready by 2023-07-01.
- The cost would have to be lower than Reddit's new pricing. (shouldn't be too hard)
This simply does not work without agreement from the majority of:
- Apollo
- rif
- Baconreader
- Boost
- Slide
- Sync
- Joey
- etc.
And even with that support; it probably still doesn't work. BUT IT VERY COULD. In my estimation, the primary challenges are:
- Fractured user base; but still huge.
- Infrastructure monetization.
Lastly, I'm not asking anybody to do anything. This probably isn't achievable, but I am convinced it is possible, and I know Redditors with motivation can accomplish big things.
I am willing to make a Github organization and start building a project board, but I really don't want to steer this ship, if it leaves port. I've made this a Gist, in case Reddit tries to block it. Perhaps somebody would like to create a Discord or Element server for further communication. I'm operating all my notes under the name "Lest" for the replacement, but I don't feel strongly, I just think it is a nice short memorable word that also has a similar meaning.
If you think this is a worthy proposal, please share it where you believe it would help.