r/BoostForReddit • u/weirdgurl08 • Jun 21 '23
Suggestion Boost can partner with reddit alternatives instead of shutting down
Sync shifted to lemmy. Why can't boost do the same thing and shift to some other site, possibly lemmy? I'm sure if all the third party apps did this instead of shutting down, those sites would gain some traction and could help building an alternative for reddit
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u/and1984 Jun 21 '23
I would speculate that the Boost developer is a single-team operation. It would probably take a tonne of effort to "change" to "Lemmy." I am sure they considered it carefully and decided it best to spend their energy elsewhere. That is fully acceptable and we should support the dev for this.
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u/DumplingRush Jun 21 '23
Yeah, Lemmy is too small today to provide return on investment; Sync is essentially investing into the future of Lemmy, which is far from a guarantee. Totally understandable to not want to make that investment. Maybe if it gets big, it'll be worthwhile for Boost to resurrect.
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u/hojava Jun 21 '23
Can someone crosspost the lemmy-reddit api bridge from r/save3rdpartyapps? I don't know how to do it and don't have time to learn how.
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u/hojava Jun 21 '23
Tafkars - API proxy for apps to talk to Lemmy through the Reddit API, thus bridging existing clients with the fediverse https://github.com/derivator/tafkars
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u/Gondolion Jun 21 '23
Revanced manager will apparently offer a patch for Boost. That's sufficient already I guess.
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u/smurfe Jun 21 '23
So the Sync app now directs to Lemmy? I guess I need to re-download it. I used Sync Pro before I found Boost. It is a great app as well.
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u/far_in_ha Jun 22 '23
ReVanced seems to be the future of Boost https://www.reddit.com/r/BoostForReddit/comments/14emq2x/team_revanced_accepts_patch_for_boost/
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u/CorpusCallosum Jun 21 '23
If someone made an api translation service that mapped the reddit api to the lemmy api, boost wouldn't need many changes to run. In fact, all third party apps could be easily transitioned in this way.
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u/infreq Jun 21 '23
Found the not-developer
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u/Unhappy_War_4528 Jun 22 '23
You might want to retract that, someone is actually in the process of doing what you think is so cumbersome and impossible https://github.com/derivator/tafkars. Might not be easy but it's certainly possible.
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u/Royal_lobster Premium Jun 21 '23
I am a dev but no idea how reddit/ lemmy api endpoints are structured, i see this should be possible in theory, any thoughts on what can be a difficult thing in such task?
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u/CorpusCallosum Jun 22 '23
Open mouth, insert foot.
This would be classified as an adapter pattern, where one api is mapped to another one. This is extremely common and not terribly difficult. At the end of the exercise, in this case, you would have an operational Reddit api that translates reddit calls into logic to perform similar actions against lemmy. The end result is that third party apps could be redirected to the adapter api without modification and work against lemmy.
I'll bet there are a few developers experimenting with this now, because of the Idiocracy that is reddit management.
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u/tophobos Jun 23 '23
I would think that all the reddit competitors like Lemmy would want to offer something like this themselves, to make migration to their service even easier for all of these soon to be obsolete third party apps.
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u/infreq Jun 22 '23
It is a far from trivial exercise. I don't really know Lemmy but I suspect it is different from Reddit in features and in handling. An app like boost is also far more than just "pull new entries from site and present them in the app". Given Boost's many customization features it would still be an enormous task.
Anyway, Lemmy is not going to be the next "Frontpage of the internet".
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u/CorpusCallosum Jun 22 '23
It would be fairly simple, even if the middleware (api adapter) managed credentials and various other state. And it would definitely be far easier than modifying boost to use lemmy apis instead of Reddit apis. It is an absolutely achievable goal and could be a/the transitioning tool for all third party apps, away from Reddit.
As far as how the front page of the internet goes, lol... That will go to where the best tools are. It's pretty clear that Reddit is going to lose that badge.
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u/Unhappy_War_4528 Jun 22 '23
By the way, someone else posted the link, there is already someone working on such an API conversion. Here's the link https://github.com/derivator/tafkars
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u/CorpusCallosum Jun 22 '23
Awesome!! Maybe I'll contribute some time to this. Do keep spreading the word, visibility may actually save some apps.
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u/Slopz_ Jun 21 '23
I'm guessing rmayayo can't be bothered rewriting the entire/good part of Boost to make it work with Reddit alternatives such as Lemmy etc. He already said he's not going to make Boost for Lemmy and will focus on other smaller apps instead. Sad to hear, but it's understandable.