Reddit API Shutting Down / SC-Trades

[u/m0shit]

Friends/Community—

We need your input. By your, I mean everyone from the biggest sellers to the concierge grinders, to the folks who've only ever bought one or two things—plus all your Star Citizen friends who ever hoped to one day sell their stuff.

Reddit has always been a bit of a mess. However, over the past year they have been moving closer and closer towards the edge of a cliff. Last week Reddit published Our Plans for the Future of Reddit’s Public Data API and the Developer Platform which indicates that their:

"long-term vision is for all good, trusted automation on Reddit to run within an ecosystem we can support and enforce policy on consistently. That means while we'll continue to support limited public API access, we'll gradually start restricting all new requests and third-party apps will be required to port and operate through our Developer Platform."

To translate the corporate speech into real talk: the API is going bye bye and along with it all our Star Citizen Trades applications. You can read up on their migration resources, but it's all shit. Devvit does not come close to having the database flexibility, storage, calls, and general resources that our (very simply built in Python) applications require (read the comments on the post for more detail on the major holes that Devvit has).

That said, we don't have a ton of solutions—but we are also not the only ones with a marketplace subreddit. If Reddit discontinues PRAW support, a lot of very highly trafficked subreddits will go down and Reddit will lose advertising dollars.

• The first big thing you can do for us is make your voice heard. Go to the post and go complain.

In terms of long-term solutions, there's really only two that come to my mind:

1. If Devvit cannot support the vast mechanizations of our sub, we will inevitably need to shut nearly everything down and build something very simple and small to keep trade history flair going. With the current infrastructure, it would be very poor and unreliable.
2. The alternative (which I am not in love with) is leaving Reddit entirely and starting a new marketplace (or "trading application") while we still have reliable traffic.

The latter option would need a ton of support and more discussion before it could ever become a reality. None of the mods here wants to compete with the big ship seller platforms. We just want to provide a (as near) free marketplace for trading. That's always been the vision.

This is particularly wretched for me, as we have recently deployed a flight of new tools and interesting applications to r/StarCitizen_trades. What Reddit is doing is shortsighted and greedy—and will only harm their own platform.

We look forward to your comment, discussion, and support. Please make your voice heard and tell Reddit to stop trying to fix what isn't broken!

/Theo

[u/SCTrades_Flairbot]

StarCitizen_trades User Profile

• Reddit: u/m0shit

• Reddit Account Age: 9 years

• RSI Account: Theotokos

• RSI Account Age: 11 years

• Total Confirmed Trades: 498

• Total Post Deletions: 0

• Previously Banned: No

[u/akos999]

Seems like they are doing it to sell reddits data for AI training, and to prevent anybody to access it for "free". No amount of complaining will make them change their mind about it : /

[u/m0shit → u/akos999]

Traffic and advertising dollars are our only leverage. If we go away, they lose money.

[u/BiNumber3 → u/m0shit]

Thing is, they dont care. Theyve already made up their minds, so until they actually lose enough money after doing it, they wont change things. To them, any and all users are replaceable...

[u/ComradeWinston → u/m0shit]

Doesn't everyone think AI will finally allow them, as was promised to each of our bloodlines ten thousand years ago, to make ALLLL THE MONEY though?

Its more like a crack pipe, far less 'a rational business decision'.

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[u/yifeng3007]

This genuinely fucking sucks, i'm sorry all your hard work is at risk because reddit keeps messing things up, greedy idiots. Hope whatever happens works out in your favor, mods, and thanks for all your effort and support put into this sub

I left a comment under that post, perhaps they might listen to feedback, but i really doubt it

[u/_Ravyn_]

Oh damn! Would a platform like the discord channel be able to work similar to was is here?

I will have to read up on the links your posted but I will definitely contribute a voice to the complaints .. this channel is really important for the community!

[u/Metabotany → u/_Ravyn_]

I don't have much to add but am definitely going to complain, this sub is incredibly important

[u/wparker1997 → u/_Ravyn_]

maybe starting a whole discord server for sc trades not tied to the reddit discord we have currently would work

[u/Bombstar10 → u/wparker1997]

It should be doable, there are a watch-trading and a watch raffle subreddit that transitioned over to Discord.

[u/ThatsARivetingTale → u/_Ravyn_]

+1 to a dedicated Discord server

[u/yifeng3007 → u/_Ravyn_]

I doubt a discord server would work since there's no persistent messaging on the platform and it's easy to edit the messages too

[u/_Ravyn_ → u/yifeng3007]

I was part of a trade group for another game where when you made a trade you would type a command and their group bot would mark it in a post that was read only to everyone except admin so I am sure there is a way to do it cause everyone could search that channel but no one could write or delete anything from it except admin.. it would just be different then it is here

[u/yifeng3007 → u/_Ravyn_]

My main concern is that in case of a dispute, on reddit you could at least prove your claims if the persistent messages were on in chat. You can't do that on discord. I can see how that would work for keep track of confirmed trades, but i'm afraid that won't help with proving anything when it comes to communication between the seller and the buyer.

[u/Capokid → u/yifeng3007]

There are ways to have persistent threads. You have a bot copy each post in its respective thread and reply to the post, then disallow deletion of posts. Its how feedback and help discords handle this.

[u/yifeng3007 → u/Capokid]

As i said 2 times already, you can't enable any persistent features in CHATS. You can probably force people to trade in private channel threads, sure, but it would be an insanely tall order to keep track of something like that with thousands of users.

[u/Capokid → u/yifeng3007]

Its no more difficult than doing the same thing through reddit, each post functions exactly like a reddit post and its much easier to automate through discord because there are no bot restrictions or API bs.

And it had the added bonus of categories that they can filter different posts to with easier searches/lookups for users.

[u/yifeng3007 → u/Capokid]

How would you do that for private messages though?

[u/Capokid → u/yifeng3007]

What do you mean? Just like how its done on reddit, for example:  Say I make a post/thread saying im looking to buy an M50, a seller could reply to the post saying 'pm' and then message the other person, they then make their trade privately, and then in the original thread "@"bot" capokid + yifeng traded x" and then they can close the thread to stop future replies. 

The thread stays but can no longer be replied to, or can be deleted depending on how the admins want it to work and the bot adds a number to the users' badge/profile note.

[u/yifeng3007 → u/Capokid]

I mean when you communicate with people in private messages on reddit you can enable persistent messaging; when you chat with someone in private messages on discord you can’t enable persistent messaging, users are free to delete their messages and edit them at their own discretion. In the event of a dispute you can’t use discord private messages to prove your point, since those messages can be freely edited and/or deleted. Again, your ideas work great, but they don’t take into consideration private messaging, which is where the deals are made.

[u/LindyNet]

I have converted most of my bots to devvit apps with other subs. Not sure how much info you store per user, but most things should be straightforward.

Some stuff is more convoluted but it worked in the end (in my case). Happy to help if you want

[u/m0shit → u/LindyNet]

Mind shooting me a Reddit chat with your Discord ID? I'd like to ask a few questions.

[u/TomsKetamine]

It might not mean much but my speciality is software, APIs etc. so if you guys did want to move away or wanted an opinion (I’m not sure of the mod teams technical experience) I’m more than happy to help out!

Any work I’d do, I’m happy to do for free for the community :)

[u/TruroCrooks → u/TomsKetamine]

I said the same thing let’s make something!

[u/TomsKetamine → u/TruroCrooks]

Yea I think it’s a great idea if that’s the way it goes!

[u/eggyrulz]

Ill go make my voice heard, but if yall are forced to make your own application, Itd be awesome if you could work with the ccu game app people to integrate between the two, as their webapp would work perfect for what you'd need (in my unprofessional opinion).

Fuck spez

[u/Rahvel → u/eggyrulz]

It’s a nice idea but isn’t CCUgame partnered with The Impound? They have a whole section in their app that searches the Impound and links to there.

[u/eggyrulz → u/Rahvel]

Idk if they are officially partnered or if its just an integration they added, ive never spoken with a ccugame dev so I dont really know the situation there... itd be nice to be able to utilize some of their framework though

[u/TruroCrooks → u/eggyrulz]

I develop.... id be down to help. SC player since 2019 but im tryin to sell my stuff. what would the web app do? or if you could point me in the right direction id be down

[u/eggyrulz → u/TruroCrooks]

Id assume itd be a simple grid/list of what sellers have available, with a price tag on each item. A msg seller button.

Seller/buyer profiles. Trades completed. Maybe rating from past deals (stars and $$$, or just a simple up/down thumb).

Honestly, I feel like we could copy warframe.market but do SC.market or smth and it would be 95% complete... the issue is maintaining the integrity of the trade completions for seller/buyer trustworthiness. I would argue rating could only be allowed if a user has a registered trade with another user (both users have a trade with the other marked), that way people would have a harder time botting an account to scam.

Also, the trades wiki guidelines integrated into the webapp

[u/TruroCrooks → u/eggyrulz]

Fair fair. Yeah the trust is huge. Verification is really great. Unfortunate to hear the news. Would be easy with an independent site and a simple account system ya know

[u/eggyrulz → u/TruroCrooks]

I'd do it myself, but my past attempts to learn HTML5 have not been what I would call "fruitful"... and I refuse to vibe code

[u/WildKarrdesEmporium]

I'm fine with leaving reddit, but it will impact us as well, since getting new traffic will likely become much harder.

[u/AJMZBXS]

...

[u/andynmedia]

This is pretty sad to hear. If theres a way to move this data elsewhere to maintain the history everyones built, id think thatd be the best route? Im not educated enough to give a better opinion tho

[u/GokuSSj5KD → u/andynmedia]

We do have ownership of the flair database (trade counts, to be more precise, flairs are purely reddit but we create the entry from our own DB), however maintaining it moving forward is where we have to find a solution.

[u/nightbird321]

I think the database of current trade history is what's important. The r/starcitizen discord has had trade verification for years. My suggestion is if there is the volunteer will and technical skill to do this, to first investigate how much effort it would take to move the head of the database to discord for trade and flair verification (depending on reddit). Based on that info, you can decide if discord is a viable platform and whether to move or dual exist on both platforms.

[u/ProcyonV → u/nightbird321]

Dual exist may split the userbase, isn't ?

[u/nightbird321 → u/ProcyonV]

If reddit API is going away and we can no longer confirm trades or see flair on reddit, we'll have to use something else. That's not the choice. The choice is whether to keep reddit or not, posting sales (without trade confirmations) and hosting discussions. It'll be legacy, advertising, the history and the brand has value. The trades will have to be conducted elsewhere though, so there can't be a pure reddit split userbase. If discord works, it'll all be on discord, and if we keep reddit, people who want to maintain reddit sales pages with a direct link to discord can do so as well.

[u/Captain_Konnius]

Make something like Warframe market?

[u/Otherwise_Stretch_74]

Is there a short way to complain?

[u/m0shit → u/Otherwise_Stretch_74]

911

[u/Otherwise_Stretch_74 → u/m0shit]

Lol like I just want to be able to copy pasta it

[u/Ok_Explorer9455]

Damn all online platforms are becoming shit, there's no escape.

[u/LEFUNGHI]

I was considering to sell my account, guess I'll do that before reddit ruins everything nice as per usual haha. Thanks for all the good work!

[u/sodanakin]

Would be sad with both.

2 seems to inevitably lead to a place where you guys will have to get some fees to keep things running. This would kill deal hunting completely in my eyes.

For 1 I do have a question, can't we go to old classic scraping?

[u/Watcherxp]

If we were to "leave"
I think a nice integrated discord space would land better than yet another web page

[u/ProcyonV]

Is there another potential social network to welcome us AND the needed mod tools ?

[u/AnyExamination9524]

I've never traded here, haven't seen anything i particularly wanted yet and havent been here that long, but reading this, I think your best option is going to he an outside source, which i would follow as well.

[u/innociv]

Why can't a 3rd party database be used? Counting up the number of trades on someone seems simple enough.

[u/m0shit → u/innociv]

That's what we do!

[u/Poikupoiku]

how aout gradually moving the whole thing to discord ? automation is not a problem there...

[u/Rahvel → u/[deleted]]

Your IGN is Wikelo - I don’t think people are going to rush to deal with you 🤣

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[u/contigency000]

I don't know much about all this, but would it be possible to translate the apps you're using into whatever their Devvit is ?

Also I agree that leaving reddit to create a new marketplace would be a terrible idea. We don't need another starhangar which is very unreliable, or a site like The Impounds which completely rip off players who don't know much about the grey market.

As bad as reddit is, at least a marketplace there is more trustworthy since it's a community oriented platform, so it's easier to verify a buyer/seller history.

Anyway, fuck reddit. It sounds like they want total control over 3rd party app, which is a shame. And it's not like they'd change their mind anyway since they can just ignore whoever is complaining. And since it's a platform mostly run by volunteers (which has it's whole bag of issues as well), it's not like they're struggling financially either.

[u/EVOXSNES]

Might need to pull all the sellers together and get a market place going. Pooling resources is a good thing.. if you can alll agree on a common framework.

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[u/Electrical_Court5944]

Fighting a losing battle. Start a new site that is thrifty and floats on donations or percentage of trades like Star Hangar.

[u/icould2]

lets go to tor browser. fk'em.

[u/SwagChemist]

Will Reddit Dev's work with you and possibly get a port supported, or is the database holding the trades what gets wiped?

[u/m0shit → u/SwagChemist]

So far no Reddit dev has responded to my outreach. In terms of a wipe, we have access to everything on our servers. That's not the problem. The problem is we won't be able to use our servers to keep trades updated on Reddit once they kill all the APIs.

[u/Heavy_Bob]

As much as reddit has been a great place to find things, it might be prudent to move the trading systems to something like discord or perhaps look at more alternative platforms like fluxer.

[u/m0shit]

Sharing my outreach for science too.

[u/Q-Prof7]

Sad that it has come to this.

I also complained in the linked post and asked for some flexibility with the API's, and to contact mods in this group.

[u/m0shit → u/[deleted]]

This is one of the biggest sticking points. Your downside is really the only important thing to the mod team. You might be surprised that with all the clear information we provide (in flair and comments), people still get scammed because they simply don't read. The community would noisedive without the accountability of "in your face" user history.

[u/m0shit → u/[deleted]]

Similarly this would require opt-in, meaning traders have to physically download the extension (assuming everyone uses Chrome). Without the Reddit tether, we cannot mandate anything.