Reddit is following in Twitter’s footsteps and charging third-party apps for entry to their APIs. The outcome: Apollo, one of the vital widespread Reddit apps for iPhone, is shutting down entirely after figuring out that the brand new pricing would price it $2 million a month. RIF, one other widespread app, is calling it quits for a similar cause. After the API information, a number of main Reddit communities are blacked out this week in protest.
Reddit has each proper to cost for its API, legally talking, and it stands to acquire if extra individuals use the (horrible) official app. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman argued in an AMA that the adjustments are being overblown. Comments in that thread are, let’s say, lower than pleasant to the corporate line.
If all of this leaves you questioning what may occur to the posts and feedback you’ve made on Reddit through the years, you’re not alone. David Brownman, a programmer primarily based in San Mateo, California, was questioning precisely that.
“I have put so much into Reddit over the years, and I didn’t like the idea of it being inaccessible to me,” he tells me. “It’s my content, and I’ll need to be a steward of it if Reddit won’t. I also reference old posts of mine a lot, so having full text search was important to me.”
With these issues in thoughts, Brownman needed an offline archive of his posts. Here’s how one can get one too, both by asking Reddit or through the use of a device Brownman constructed to obtain it your self.
Ask Reddit for Your Data
Reddit has a type the place you possibly can request a copy of your data. The course of can take up to 30 days, after which you’re going to get a personal message in your Reddit a depend with a obtain hyperlink. The knowledge comes within the type of CSV recordsdata which you could open utilizing Microsoft Excel or any textual content editor. There are separate recordsdata on your feedback, your posts, your voting historical past, and your chats, amongst different issues.
This technique has a couple of downsides. First, CSV recordsdata could be a little unwieldy, particularly in order for you to search. Second, there’s a delay, which is annoying should you simply need to obtain the information and transfer on along with your life. Still, it’s simple, and for most individuals, that is most likely one of the simplest ways to again up their Reddit content material.
Download Your Reddit Data Yourself
If you’d reasonably not look ahead to Reddit to ship your knowledge, or would like to hold your knowledge in a searchable archive, you should utilize Brownman’s device, reddit-user-to-sqlite. This command line utility can obtain the entire public archive of any Reddit consumer and compile it in an SQLite database file. Just needless to say this technique will cease engaged on July 1, 2023, when the API change happens.
Brownman gives a blog post outlining the tool with a couple of directions—should you’re comfy with the command line, I like to recommend following the directions there. For everybody else, don’t fear: It’s not as onerous because it sounds.
First you have to to install Python. For Windows customers, that is greatest executed by downloading and operating the installer on your pc. After putting in Python, you have to to install pipx. On Windows, that is greatest executed with the next instructions, which you’ll be able to run within the Command Prompt or PowerShell:
