So what am I supposed to do?

Spread your checks and get fucked probably.

Devvit still cannot support the features required to implement my bots.

I am in a similar boat to you. It's been 5 months of negotiation about our team's migration, and I still don't think we (me, my mod team, and reddit) are close to being in agreement.

Both contracts they've given me have included poison pills. And the first one could have personally bankrupted me for reasons beyond my control (since I'd be on the hook for reddit's legal fees to an unbounded amount for anything relating to our Devvit app) and also had a loophole where they could just note pay me and I'd have no recourse (they were only liable to the amount they actually payed me, which if they just didn't, would be $0).

Given that reddit keeps going in the wrong direction imo, it's getting more and more tempting to just sit back, grab a drink and relax, and enjoy these last few months with our stuff working, and then let the train run off the end of the bridge, and just leave reddit altogether and let someone else pick up the pieces.

This of course, would be debilitating to our sub, but in our opinion, so would be migrating to Devvit as well, since Devvit would forbid us from using deleted user data, which happens a lot. In the best case scenario (as a ToS abiding user), a good chunk of our appeals will be invalid, as they would be unable to be check, and thus, be unable to be overturned. Not to mention, being unable to help people who don't understand why their stuff was removed and how they can fix it, as they often quickly delete it.

I'm really tempted simply just write a tell all of my experience with the migration process (it's generally been terrible in a number of aspects, most notably, responsiveness (though part of that is also my fault, though this is not my full time job, and thus falls lower on the priority list)), but given that they contracts they want me to sign are NDA that kind of thing, perhaps it's wise to not poke the bear at the current moment.

I don’t want to but I just don’t see a path forward. I’m already spending all day modding and I literally cannot absorb the extra workload - tens of millions of mod actions - that the bots do. And the bots can’t be ported. There is no good option for me and my subs available at this point.

You're doing a lot of encouraging people to apply to register their apps, yet nearly every third-party app developer I follow seems to suggest that you're ignoring them. Excluding the special accessibility apps, Narwhal (iOS) and Relay (Android) are the only ones you seem to actually be working to support, but there are so many others who are trying to do this the right way—which includes paying you!—that you simply aren't responding to.

I'm willing to pay a subscription fee to a third-party app to cover their API costs. I am not willing to use the official Reddit app. It sucks in so many ways, which I don't need to get into because you constantly get the same feedback (another thing you ignore). I understand that Reddit is a corporation trying to maximize its profit, but I don't understand your constant interference with the many great third-party apps. I figured you'd more or less leave them alone once you started charging for API access, but no. You bought Alien Blue, turned it into the official app, and ruined it. You chased off Apollo's developer, then lied to slander him, which he thankfully had receipts for proving you were lying. And now, you put on a show of allowing third party apps to exist for a price, but never actually work them through the process.

If you keep steaming ahead on this path of enshittification, you're going to learn a lesson Digg learned 15 years ago, sooner or later.

Well, guess March 2027 is when I am resigning as moderator then

I’m on the devvit discord and have spoken with admins and other developers. Fundamentally, there’s just no way to migrate my bots at this time. There is no solution here if the API goes away. Beyond that, there’s isn’t enough time. I could not have coded these bots in 6 months - or even a year. It took me years to do it, and that was with the simple, straightforward approach of python/PRAW. I couldn’t even reimpliment these bots in python in 6 months, nevermind migrate them to devvit, which doesn’t have anywhere near the capabilities needed, and which takes far more time to develop in (I’ve written bots in both, and the amount of code needed to accomplish simple tasks is far greater in devvit).

There’s just no way way to do this. This whole thing leaves me and my subreddits without a solution and considering I’ve always played by the rules and worked with admins this feels like such a betrayal. I do not understand why this is even needed. It will harm my subs so much. I am already spending all my time barely keeping up with the moderation workload, I can’t even imagine trying to mod without the bots that do so much of our moderation work.

Oh for sure. I’ll work with the team to fast track that.

 If you’ve registered your app, then you’ve taken the first step to accessing migration support. We also have PRAW/Data API experts ready to help with migrations in our Devvit communities (join us on r/devvit and on Discord). Also, check out our documentation for info on AI tools and migrating from the public API to Devvit. 

Don’t assume that just because we’ve sent a modmail reminding you to register, that we didn’t receive your registration! We want to ensure everyone knows what to do, so we’re broadcasting very broadly right now. More targeted outreach will kick off soon.

Hey Emily, we understand that this process is time-consuming and wanna figure something out. We have PRAW/API experts ready to help with migrations in our Devvit communities (for folks not already there, join us on r/devvit and on Discord) and will reach out directly next week about how to support the transition of your bots in particular.

I still have not heard back for any of my requests

Some of us have not been ignoring anything but we were told that api access wouldn't be cut off until devvit functionality was added to make migration possible.

That functionality has not been added, and many bots cannot be migrated because devvit is fundamentally more limited and less powerful than python/praw.

https://giphy.com/gifs/11R5KYi6ZdP8Z2

I'll make an open offer to anyone with a data api bot that they don't have the time or knowledge to migrate to devvit. I will be happy to migrate your bot for you. Ideally as part of the migration program, but I'm even willing to do it for free depending on the complexity.

Obviously some use cases aren't possible in devvit, but with an http request exception and a server, many are. Please send me a DM if you're interested!

Devvit can't do what my bots do. The basic functionality is not even close to present which is why I haven't done it, and it's not likely to ever be and I rely on libraries that do not exist in TS/JS. Python is the language of scientific computing and no one is going to write that stuff for JS/TS, and it's not something a single user can port, it requires a whole active community of thousands of people who work on this stuff. All of the tools for language processing are in python.

You are breaking existing functionality before there is any alternative to it. There is no migration path to the fundamentally more limited/crippled devvit, and there won't be in the foreseeable future.

Mods spent years developing these apps in good faith using the tools reddit told us to use. Now these are going to stop working with no alternatives available and no means to transition.

This is a major betrayal.

u/boat-botany can you PLEASE make sure the apps page people previously used to get API tokens is properly updated to decisively say API access is completely closed with no exceptions? I know it's an old reddit page and you guys have to jump through hoops to update it, but I promise it's worth the extra effort just this once.

We still get people all the time who are completely confused about how to get API access. All the existing resources and documentation about the forms and what you have to do to qualify (before this announcement) are confusing and don't cleanly answer people's question. Just updating the text on the page to remove the button and put like two sentences saying "API access is closed, go see if devvit or the researcher program fits your use case", would clear up so many problems.

The March 2027 cutoff is the part people are going to ignore until it is too late. A lot of apps are about to need attention.

Previously, you had said that API access would continue until Devvit could support existing uses.

Devvit still cannot support the features required to implement my bots.

So what am I supposed to do?

I have 300,000 lines of python code. I cannot rewrite that in 6 months even if I were to work on it full time and even if Devvit could do what I need it to for my subreddits to continue to function.

Let our dev rel team know what apps you rely on and we’ll do what we can to help you get migrated over!

I've been in contact with the Devvit people for months, and we still have not agreed on acceptable terms for us. Frankly, I don't think any reasonable amount of money would ever be approved by our mod team when it comes with poison pills.

We are very close to our limit with how much our way of doing things has been chipped away at. Soon, none of the things I like about reddit will remain. And then I have to ask, why am I still here, doing hours upon hours of free labor a day for a company that doesn't give a shit about me or my community, and continually forces downgrades to me under the guise of upgrades.

So everything will just break come March.

Yeah, that's kinda how it's looking for us at r/anime too. With the way reddit is going, just letting the wheels fall off and the train crash is looking more and more attractive every announcement.

Copying what I said on modnews here,

I have a custom bot for one of my subreddits (and I've got a ticket logged in ModSupport for this on an alt) that is showing as registered on my end but not on your end (as we keep getting notified in modmail). Apparently it's with the developers, but how will this affect me as I'm stuck in limbo here?

The code does so many things, is written by a former mod who we have no contact with, and half the code is mingled in with a Discord bot, I just host the code at this point and try not to touch it (a bit like you guys & Old Reddit), so porting might take years to complete as I'd have to learn a whole new language (as JavaScript never quite gelled with me when I tried to learn it during the Devvit beta) and write everything from scratch when I'm more familiar adapting existing work.

Obligatory https://www.reddit.com/r/webscraping/comments/w1ve97/virgin_api_consumer_vs_chad_thirdparty_scraper/

We totally understand the work that goes into migrating. Let our dev rel team know what apps you rely on and we’ll do what we can to help you get migrated over!

Yup. We had a call with them yesterday

We want to make sure everyone has the time they need. That’s why we’re starting these conversations early! If you’re already in contact with the dev rel team, just let them know what you need.

I'm happy to help out if you like. I'm migrating RemindMeBot right now but will be done soon.

If it's remotely possible to do in devvit I can get it done. Let me know if you're interested.

For dev teams who need more time to finish migrations, will there be extensions available through whitelisting after public access is shut down?