# Fuck you, Reddit! Back in 2017, I was excited to learn about the command-line Reddit client rtv. It was one of many tools that allowed me to GET AWAY from the blinding, bloated GUI experience that is most modern operating systems (by default). Of course it wasn't without issues, and the first one to appear was an inability to log in after I had to reinstall Void Linux as a means of cleaning up the garbage that accumulated in my experiments. Normally rtv would use w3m as the browser to log in with, but something changed on the website and this was broken. It would always deny access despite my login credentials being correct. So I was forced to start an X session and run a memory-hogging browser just to log the fuck in. Oh but wait! There's been another change since the first time I installed rtv. The program is obsolete now, having been replaced with tuir. It's _literally_ the same program on the outside, but on the inside it still had the login issues with w3m. So again I had to use a gigantic and totally unnecessary "web browser" just to log the fuck in again. After this I would make a copy of the login credentials file that was conveniently stored on the system, allowing me to avoid such nonsense in the future. This would be useful when I put Void on other machines WITHOUT installing Xorg and friends... Until now. After much time had passed and these tools went unused, I tried installing tuir on OpenBSD for the first time. While it seems to work just fine, I can't log in. The website loaded in w3m says that two-factor authentication is enabled, "because you're awesome"... Right, I didn't ask for that, but thanks anyway. Of course it won't work because I don't have a 6-digit code to enter, so I just leave that one blank and end up with an infinite redirect loop. Hmm... Maybe I'll just install vimb and use THAT to log in, but NO! Piles of junk were installed on my otherwise clean system, only to be met with what appears to be the SAME FUCKING REDIRECT LOOP! Why is this a thing? How fucking hard must it be to log in to a goddamn website? I've got your shitty Java-Script and your shitty GTK nonsense, what more do you want? To make matters _even worse_, I can't even log in to the website using Firefox on Android. I tried the old AND the new versions of the site, yet BOTH OF THEM FAIL! I can only lo g in through the official Android app. Well it turns out that Reddit has gone full capitalist. I should have known this when the official Android app was slowly becomming infested with ads. It was only a few at first, but now as of November 2023 it seems like every third or fourth "actual post" is followed by a fucking ad. Oh, and because of the way they're presented, it's not always readily apparent that what I'm reading is NOT a post, but an advertisement. FUCK! It gets worse. Earlier this year, Reddit enabled some ridiculous API changes that essentially amounts to use having to PAY THEM just to keep our third-party tools working with the service. How much, you ask? One article quoted the Apollo app for iOS has having to pay upwards of 20 million dollars if it continues to operate at its current scale. That's not a typo. Twenty MILLION, as in 20,000,000 with a fucking gigantic DOLLAR $IGN at the front. And that's an annual fee. It's not just them either. ALL third-party apps have to pay to use the API. This includes Teddit and Libreddit. In fact, I learned of this when I tried searching the OpenBSD repositories for anything concerning Reddit. When I found libreddit, the first thing I did was look it up to see what that was about, leading me to the horrible truth. Seriously, how _greedy_ are you, Reddit? In what universe does that make any rational sense? Are you trying to keep us all locked into your ad-infested spyware? Seems so. Fuck you Reddit, and fuck your greedy ass API changes. Your app shall be DELETED from my phone FOREVER! => ../index.gmi Home => ../core.gmi Core Dump Index