Narwhal developer believes they can keep the third party iOS Reddit app running with a subscription.
Copy and pasted from Reddit:
Hey all, I want to give you an update on what is happening with Narwhal. I’ve been talking with Reddit a lot about the API changes and what it will mean for Narwhal.
Narwhal is not going anywhere on July 1st. It will continue to operate as it has for many years (except it will not have ads anymore). Over the next few months, I am going to be adding subscriptions into Narwhal 2. The subscriptions will be there to cover the cost of using the Reddit API. I am still figuring out what to do for heavy power users, but there may be a base plan which includes X number of API requests/month and you can top up your balance with another purchase. The subscription will likely be in the $4-$7 range to start. It may change based on total usage of the app (either up or down) to cover the costs of using the reddit API.
Yes, this means Narwhal 2 is finally going to see the light of day. Is it perfect? No. Is it as finished as I wanted it to be before I released it? No. But it makes the most sense to put subscriptions in Narwhal 2 instead of the current app.
TLDR; Narwhal is not going anywhere on July 1st. Subscriptions will be coming over the next few months.
Ask me anything in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer! Also, let me know if this is something that you actually want me to do. Are you willing to subscribe to continue using Narwhal?
Thank you everyone!
The way they’ve handled this whole situation heavily suggests they don’t want a fair share of the revenue from third-party apps, they want those apps to die. Especially considering how aggressively the official app is pushed on the mobile site, which is now borderline useless. I’m guessing it slurps up a lot of sensitive, monetisable data that third-party alternatives don’t send them.
And here I assumed the massive troves of vote data were themselves valuable. Guess not.