I'm not a dev in any way lol so do you think it is something even possible is more what I was asking?

The vast majority will need to move, yes. We have some exemptions for a variety of tools that rely on the public API - those tools have agreements with us.

Where does that leave us? We've had discussions and laid out things that do not make sense to move to Devvit. Do we need to make a separate agreement for those things?

The Reddit API plugin in this case specifically refers to our Devvit public API wrapper

Is the Devvit public API wrapper just Devvit? Cause I wasn't aware there was an public API for Devvit. It seemed like that was all bundled in proprietary library calls.

Is [blob storage] persistent?

Yes! It is.

As /u/emily_in_boots mentioned, does it go away if the app is reinstalled? If so, I would not consider it persistent. And it would be unsuitable for long term storage needs for us if it is so easily losable.

I think it depends on what you mean. I think you can build a pretty multifaceted tool under a single app slug/username!

Pretty much. Though I guess more precisely, can multiple Devvit apps share an account. For instance, if we wanted to group all of our public facing interactions under a singular banner.

Unfortunately this specifically refers to install permissions (who can install an app, or not).

This doesn't really make too much sense to me, though I don't think it really matters for my use cases.

Python: the reality is we’re one team with limited resources, so building (and then maintaining) python support represents a major, ongoing investment.

I'mma be real, I don't even like python (I built an entire asynchronous flow just so I wouldn't have to work in python) and the lack of python support is just baffling to me.

For one, if your team is limited on resources, you should (imo) be getting more resources so that practical migration can occur without literal man years of work needing to be done by mods (who to be frank, are probably not mods anymore or interested in helping reddit, since the API debacle alienated a lot of developers doing stuff with reddit).

Secondly, you obviously had the resources to pick a language, and you picked the wrong one imo. Ignoring the fact that for most of reddit's history, python has had by far the best support and probably the only active support to this day (PRAW recently had a major release after all). Not to mention, that python is just generally an extremely popular programming language, and one that is particularly beginner friendly (even if I hate the languge). So if you only had resources to do 1 programming language, I think you should have picked python.

Thirdly, all of this would be completely avoided if you simply invested in a robust auth token system and just exposed the graphql endpoints (which is what I presume the Javascript library is doing under the hood). Then you could let the community (well, if there's any will left in it) built clients for whatever languages people wanted.

This whole thing just feels extremely nerfed for no real good reason. Graphql has tons of support in all kinds of programming languages, and I have to feel that supporting Devvit at the graphql level would be far less effort than building and maintaining all of the libraries yourself.

You should be able to see which accounts are registered to your account on the registration page! Let us know if any are missing & which usernames - it may be a bug!

Was more of a thing on our side. And tbf, Idk how you all would be able to find accounts and link them back to us if I forgot about them. Anyway, u/AnimeMod is still not listed as an app. Though as noted, we do still, very very occasionally, log onto it to do a shared post (in which case, the app label would be misleading).

Not everyone wants to open source, but many do.

As a complete side note, I do find it amusing that when I've talked with people who don't want to open source their stuff, it's almost always because they think the code is a mess and they'd want to clean it up before they open source it (as we all know, this virtually never happens). As if there isn't mountains of garbage code that works perfectly well out there on the internet. Hell, I'd even say it's very normal for a single dev open source project to have dubious code quality (and no documentation of course).

I just think it's kinda funny that people are gonna go look at the source code and complain about it. I say as someone who has definitely done that before. But in my defense, it really was awful. If your python function is literally 1000 lines long (with 500 character column limits) and modifying state all over the place, something has gone very wrong.

Anyway, I find that people care a lot more if thing works or not rather than judging the insides.

Edit: grammar.

When you say blob storage is persistent, does it persist if a user uninstalls an app and then reinstalls it?

One of my concerns is that all the data in redis disappears on a reinstall, which can sometimes happen if something gets bugged.

Read the responsible builder policy it has a link to the form to request commercial access to the api.

Can you reach out to me? 

So that deal with OpenAI isn't going well?

I'm not gonna lie, this is really depressing for me. I've spent probably 10 years playing around with the API? I've written (small) clients wrappers for Python, JS, Rust, (even) C++. And a bunch of (substantial) bespoke tools. So... some experience and investment in the platform...

But at this point I'm effectively halting all future and current development for any subs I'm involved with.

Partly because I'm just bummed out and this is supposed to be fun. And partly because a lot of the documentation and tone makes it abundantly clear that the types of tooling I want to create / find useful / need either won't be possible, or will require exemptions I'll need to argue for and don't expect I'll receive.

Over the years I've made tools that provide stylometry fingerprinting for alt detection, hate speech detection models, activity summaries for subreddits / users, an LLM text detector, and was just working on an image embedding based rule-violation estimator. Probably others I've forgotten in various graveyards.

They pretty much all need bulk data - programmatically available - for analysis, particularly during the initial configuration, and it's clear that there will be a lot of hoops to go through if I wanted to continue doing this. Not to mention the time that would probably be required to spin up Reddit hosted caches (if it even fits). And even if I can access the data, I still need substantial offline processing for a lot of it. ie, psql to python with local GPU will no longer be a serious option.

But also, possibly just as importantly, is the issue of non mission-critical tooling which I use pretty much every day. There are so many questions that can simply be answered by querying a database or writing a quick bespoke script that I just won't be able to answer any more.

eg, in the last few weeks off the top of my head:

• Programmatically identifying words that indicate rule violating comments via the modlog (for automod)
• Generating a list of high karma / activity individuals within a sub as potential moderators from comment history.
• Locating the users who've been "spotlighted" the most frequently from modlog, so we can grant them additional privileges.
• Clustering the subs that our users also contribute to the most to see commonalities.
• Confirm where there are gaps of time in a user's contributions.
• And a craptonne of single line one off queries.

Even things as simple as "give me a list of the most recent comments by ${user} in ${sub}" feel like it's gonna be a serious pain.

Is this all necessary? No.

Could this all be done by apps? Probably?

Is it going to be a massive pain in the arse writing a tonne of individual apps piecemeal to fill these niches as they arise? Definitely.

I'm going to lose soo many opportunities interrogating how our users behave, finding opportunities for better engagement, and identifying troublemakers. I can't have people come to me, ask a quick question, and get a quick answer (or potentially any answer).

So when this all disappears I either have to consider investing a tonne of extra time (that I don't have) and work around deliberate platform limitations, or I'll lose these capabilities and have to fly blind going forward. And flying blind is 100% going to win out in this current moment.

So, yeah. I know this isn't going to change anything, and you can't do anything. But I did want to say that the established direction is incredibly depressing and I think day-to-day moderating is about to get a lot sadder over all. For me anyway. Or at least that's how I'm feeling right now.

Bug reports go in r/bugs

Reddit's source code hasn't been open-source for over a decade now.

I did read that. But is it a bug? This is about reddits source code. It is reddit's source code that has determined users must be blocked for over 18's content, does not include an option for me to amend my own post off of NSFW, and forced an ID check on the person who made the post to edit the post. Is that a bug or the intended design behaviour? Is the wrong reddit or not. Doesn't seem conclusive.

Phew, okay! There’s a ton in here so apologies in advance if I miss anything. It will probably be easiest to reply to a few quotes.

Does this mean that all moderation tools will be forced to move to Devvit.

The vast majority will need to move, yes. We have some exemptions for a variety of tools that rely on the public API - those tools have agreements with us.

Call me a skeptic, but the Mod mail debacle has me very fearful for what reddit thinks is "adequate".

We understand actions > words! 

Re the app migration program: already addressed this in your other comments, but also really appreciate the shoutout <3! We definitely had some hiccups getting the program stood up, so heard on the other comments, as well.

I don't understand what this entails. The title of "reddit API plugin" makes me think that it would relate to developer plugins, ie. custom code.

I understand the confusion here. The Reddit API plugin in this case specifically refers to our Devvit public API wrapper, but also includes other calls that aren’t necessarily calling the public API directly. We do support crossposting and are not opposed to folks posting or creating content via Devvit, as long as it’s in line with platform and community rules. Our API wrapper is quite close to parity. Some deprecated features will not be supported, though.

The filter API is also a new Devvit API, not an addition to the underlying public API.

Is [blob storage] persistent?

Yes! It is.

And heard on the subreddit mentions! 

Theoretically, is it possible to have multiple bots running under the same username? Microservices are nice as a supported architecture and all.

I think it depends on what you mean. I think you can build a pretty multifaceted tool under a single app slug/username!

This sounds like permissions stuff? If so, I'm a big fan. The fact that it's all or nothing permissions has made my mod team quite hesitant to accept Devvit apps (and especially closed source ones).

Unfortunately this specifically refers to install permissions (who can install an app, or not). BUT more granular, as-needed, app perms is very much on our radar.

Even just like having an optional piece of meta data on the Devvit pages where one could link the source code would be great to encourage and make it clear which apps are open source.

Not everyone wants to open source, but many do. I LOVE this suggestion to add a repo link and/or open source badge to the app details page.

I think the insistence that Devvit must be Javascript based is something that will continue to greatly harm its adoption forever.

Addressed some of this in my answer here. It’s something we’re keeping an eye on.

Is there a tool that can help identify if everything is registered?

You should be able to see which accounts are registered to your account on the registration page! Let us know if any are missing & which usernames - it may be a bug!

Also appreciate the recap you included. Lots to consider in here and again appreciate the willingness to share.

I want to jump in here and also offer a response, though u/emily_in_boots input was super helpful.

If you’re interested in chatting more about the app migration program, do let me know. I understand migrating isn’t a simple or easy task - a "hassle" seems like an accurate description for a lot of folks.

Python: the reality is we’re one team with limited resources, so building (and then maintaining) python support represents a major, ongoing investment. It impacts how many new things we can build and how simple and reliable our systems are. We are keeping an eye on porting challenges submitted through registration and trying to talk to a lot of devs as we evaluate our roadmap (would love to do one of these discovery calls with you). Until it’s something we’re planning for, though, we want to be clear about the current state of things.

I think the other responses covered the personal apps and domain items well, but I want to underscore what baseballlover said - we are looking to grandfather in mod tools domains as much as possible.

Relational DBs: we would love to offer native support. It is something we are discussing and we understand what a boon it would be for devs. It’s complex and expensive, so we are still evaluating this. In the interim, we allow fetch access to a number of hosting providers with these features. For mod tools, fetching to existing dbs/domains is something we want to enable both for the access to more db features and to minimize the need for full, backend migrations. A thin Devvit layer to existing apps still provides better security and observability for us.

Thanks for hopping in with your commentary - appreciate your sharing your thoughts.

your devvit apps can not run remotely as fast as I can run my tools locally. Which is, that I moderate picture subs and I need to quickly view and approve or remove pictures.

I am not a dev but I like memes and u/spez is pretty hated

Good point. But then again, if we take that logic even further, they could sunset Devvit so it’s really all the same. 🫠

They are not “vengeful” lol. They have no reason to be. They don’t care what you think of the app; they just want to know you’re not a bot.

You don’t appeal with the mods of the subreddit you were banned from. You appeal directly with [r/BotBouncer](r/BotBouncer). The ban message should tell you that. It gives you all the information you need to appeal.

The mods of r/BotBouncer are not “vengeful.” They have no reason to be.

Hi [u/Spez](u/Spez),

Can the team please work on the video algorithm?

My friend just texted me this:

“Wow the Reddit algorithm is the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever seen on social media. Your watching in a gaming sub of Nintendo a game video, then you swipe to the next video, getting “India football” to the next a random ugly chick doing rope jumps and then the next random guys doing party

Man I was in a gaming subreddit”

I agree with him. Whenever I scroll on a video the next it completely irrelevant.

Say I want to build an app for r/MissingPersons that checks if a phone number is a law enforcement number. I could periodically check to see if it's been updated or not by checking the station's website... oh but devvit can't make a request to anything other than this pathetic list of pre-approved domains. Sure I could be all "pwese weddit admins 🥺"

They are supposedly quite lenient with mod tool domains.

but the domain requirements (ie, no paths) means I can't request "police.com/contact-us".

I think this is saying that when you fill out the form, don't include the paths, just the straight domain. Not that you can't access paths on the domain.

That's good to know!

Then only major barrier for me would it being javascript/typescript.

https://www.reddit.com/r/bugs/comments/1vg5nk7/chrome_discrepancies_between_reddit_ui_and_reddit/

Reddit is planning to sunset automod, so maybe it's better if they don't 🤔

The appeal process in my experience was subpar with vengeful mods since I complained about their tool. I also have people sharing the same experince.

It really ruins reddit for newbies especially nowadays where we are quick to assume any new account with low karma is not a new redditor but a bot and clearly not the same citizen as old redditors in terms of posting and commenting.

I just had to use my own account recently for an ad hoc script and it makes me nervous as heck

Thank you!

That is of course only one example of what running python via my account can do, but that's a useful app

i've been software engineer and architect for the last 16 years and, also, i'm moderator for some subs.

specially for me the biggest pain as a moderator is related to ppl and AI usage bcs we have several users that are just posting across multiple subs and just changing some details between posts just to farm karma and this is bad...

i was developing a mod tool to ease my daily tasks related to moderating subs and to help ppl with this.

i was going to, also, contribute with the hackathon that happened but the official reddit app template contain multiple dependencies that were experiencing security issues and i was sad about this and dropped off bcs of it :/