Infinity, a lesser known open-source third-party Reddit app for Android, has announced that it will be switching to a subscription-only model. This would mean that the F-Droid version of the app will be delisted and the API key currently in the source code of the app will be removed. As of this post, the developer is currently not interested in converting Infinity into a Lemmy client, but encourages others to look into doing it themselves because of the app’s open source nature.
But couldn’t someone hack the binary to extract the key and enter it into the free version? Sounds kinda risky.
You can do that on every single app, so no difference there.
They will not give you the real API key. Everything you request will go through their own server, that way they can also cache stuff globally.
That sounds quite unbelievable.
This is a common approach if API access is paid. Not doing this is equivalent to lighting your money on fire because someone WILL extract your API key and start scraping.
It’s also quite common to have the key directly in the app like that’s the case with twitch (I mean the desktop app) and Crunchyroll
Yeah, but those are first party apps. Entirely different scenario.
Not really. You can extract the key and use it in your application