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GLFinder.com is getting terminated

Date: 1/1/2024

GLFinder.com had a simple but helpful concept: Sentiment analysis for reddit posts paired with item infos provided by JadeShip. It was described as a

functional frontend for --- subreddits

In practice this meant that you could browse a subreddit, see what items are being sold in what post and how they were rated by the community.

GLFinder was a project that I took over from a community member. Over the years I completely rebuilt the site twice.

After JadeShip and Taobot, GLFinder was our third most popular site. It reached quite a big community and peaked in March of 2022, right before it's inevitable downfall.

glfinder open graph

The Downfall of GLFinder

Here's why we are taking down GLFinder.com

Reddit API Restriction

In April of 2022, Reddit announced that they would restrict API access. At the time there was widespread outrage, with many subs closing as part of a "blackout". But this is the internet, these things quickly quiet down and now everything is back to normal and everyone is still using reddit.

Reddit completely disabled the popular Pushshift API-wrapper, that we've been using. This prompted me to rebuild the whole site to use the official reddit API.

Sadly, that was a shortlived solution, as the official reddit API was also heavily restricted.

Supposedly, there's anonymous free access (heavily restricted) and free access for registered apps (restricted) and of course premium access.

The price for premium access is quite high, and GLFinder analyzes every single comment of every single post, so consequently we run through tokens really quickly. Considering that GLFinder was free and publicly accessible without an account, bad actors could drive up the cost and ruin me financially, so premium was never a realistic option.

I applied for registed free API access, but never heard back from reddit.

The Current Situation

The reality we're facing is that GLFinder is not usable at all. I'm not sure whether that's because the free tier quota isn't even enough for a single request or if there's no free tier at all anymore. But either way, that's just the reality so we have to close down GLFinder.

This is long overdue, as being greeted by an API error screen is worse than straight up telling everyone that the site is no longer operational.

Is there a comeback scenario?

Who knows?

  • Maybe reddit lifts the API restrictions.
  • Maybe JadeShip gets so popular that it can cross-finance the premium tier
  • Maybe we see huge demand, so that we make GLFinder a premium tool in order to afford the premium access.

Alternatives

The reason you would use GLFinder was to find inspiring items and to quickly graps how well they were received.

To find inspiring items, you can use JadeShip TOP or even better JadeShip LIVE.

We don't really have an alternative that incorporates community reviews, but the Spreadsheet Search sorts items based on their prominence in spreadsheets, which one could interpret as a stamp of community approval.

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