In 2023, changes were made at two of the biggest social media platforms, with first Twitter, and then Reddit, deciding to reduce free access to their application programming interfaces, known as APIs. In this short post, I’ll write about how these changes affect me and what I have done about it.

API

An API is merely a type of channel for communication, so one could create a mobile application, website, bot or whatever, and have it connect to a server to push data to or grab data from.

In how this related to my use of Twitter on my Android phone, I used the third-party application of Twidere which was significantly more customisable, faster, and removed the bloat of advertisements, useless features and that push towards the almighty algorithm. Twidere let me easily see the tweets of the users I was following, and not much else, just how I wanted it to be.

Similarly, I used Slide for Reddit on my Android device to view my followed subreddits in an easier, cleaner and more customisable way, having started using third-party applications for Reddit because there was no official app when I began using Reddit. I then got used to using Slide, despite it going on a hiatus of active development a couple of years ago and missing many modern features.

Twitter

After Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, many things began to change, and one of them was the shutting down API access of various third-party applications like Twidere. It was a strangely gradual process with Twidere being blocked immediate access, but not the more modern Twidere-X, until that was blocked a few days later. I tentatively then moved to Japanese app Lagopus Lite, reluctant to purchase the full app in case it got blocked too, which it eventually did, and was then removed from the Google Play Store. However, I mostly use Mastodon these days, so losing access to third-party Twitter applications hasn’t been as bad as I initially expected.

Reddit

A couple of months after Twitter announced their changes to their API, Reddit did something similar too. Though the initial wording appeared to only affect for-profit entities or those scraping large amounts of data, such as LLMs, developers of third-party applications were in communication with Reddit and being told their access would now need payment.

Not against the idea of paying for a third-party app and Reddit access if the price was reasonable, I knew I couldn’t stay on the underdeveloped Slide, and instead needed to find a new app. Wanting to stay with something FOSS, I tried out the popular Infinity for Reddit.

Having moved from outdated Slide, it was refreshing to see a modern interface for using Reddit. I am able to customise the appearance to my favourite font of Atkinson Hyperlegible and theme of Rosé Pine, fully adjust how I navigate and read posts, and save select SubReddits for quick access.

Build You Own Infinity

However, after changes began to reduce free access to Reddit’s APIs, the community came together and created a pretty easy way to compile your own version of Infinity with your own API key - and very highly unlikely you will reach any limitations which would incur a cost. Using this Google Colab script and following the instructions on screen, I have been able to continue using Infinity with minimal issues ever since.

It may seem initially a bit scary if you’re not used to stuff like this, but it is well worth spending a bit of time working through the procedure considering how much better Infinity is compared to the default Reddit application, so I highly recommend it if you want to access Reddit via an Android device!