u/Sophira

A while back, QuantumBadger said that the long-term plan was for RedReader to be able to support other sites such as Lemmy(*), but presumably not built in. Is that still the goal?

The main reason I haven't switched away to another site so far is mostly just because there isn't support for it in RedReader. I do have an app already for Hacker News (and I use it), but RedReader is too damn good, and with the recent news that Old Reddit will become only available to people who have used it in the past 6 months, I'm wanting to exit and want to know my options.

(*) Source:

> * My long-term vision for RedReader is to restructure the app to more easily support other sites, including Lemmy, and perhaps others such as Tild.es and Hacker News. Before the API changes were announced, I was already considering adding RSS reader functionality to the app, and I think it would be cool to work with some kind of "open forum protocol" which would allow a variety of websites and apps to interoperate with each other through a uniform API.

From /u/spez's post 11 days ago:

> Old Reddit: I know I said last year that we wouldn’t be sunsetting Old Reddit (I even made a meme about it, which r/agedlikemilk), but the reality is we’re getting to that time where we need to make some changes.

He goes on to argue that Old Reddit (link is likely only viewable after logging in, after a recent change - note that this post itself links to a now-removed post by an admin that talked about how Old Reddit was to be locked behind a login) is only being legitimately used by certain groups of people (including "OG Users" and "OG Mods"), with the rest of the usage being "everyone who spams, scrapes, or does anything bad on Reddit 🖕".

He then states "We have options: We can limit access, migrate important uses, or rebuild it on a modern tech stack, and I think we’ll probably do all of the above."

While this sounds benign, the reality is that Old Reddit is actively being threatened and, if I were to make a guess, will no longer exist in a recognisable form within a year.

Reddit has started being openly hostile to Old Reddit recently (including the removed post that I linked to earlier), and some important features have already been removed from Old Reddit (such as private messages) but talking about sweeping changes to Old Reddit is a first.

Heads-up to anybody using Old Reddit still (which I imagine is a majority of users in this sub): Over the next month, Old Reddit use will start requiring a login.

It's worth also noting that the pinned comment answers the question of "Is Reddit shutting down Old Reddit?" with:

> Not right now! We can’t promise it will be around forever, but u/spez himself has said we’ll keep supporting it while folks are still using it. That said, it doesn’t have the same modern security tech stack reddit.com has so we need to tighten security on old reddit to keep it viable.

That's a big difference to their previous answers about Old Reddit, and strongly signals that it will be shut down in the future, and that until then Old Reddit will be made harder and harder to access.

If you're one of those who use Old Reddit and don't want to use their new version (Shreddit), you may want to start making exit plans.

[edit: Just to be clear here: Old Reddit is not simply "nostalgia", despite the name (which Reddit deliberately chose in order to try to deprecate it.) It's literally how many people still use Reddit, because it's far better than the current Reddit interface for many of us. You can access it if you go to https://old.reddit.com/ in a Web browser... although only if you're logged in, if you access it after this month.]