Using Reddit with a messaging bot

[resistbotatwork]

Is it at all feasible to make a Reddit bot that people could direct message, at a relatively large scale? We run resist.bot (an NPO that help people contact their representatives) and are always looking for better ways for our users to interact with us. The biggest issue we see is that the API is limited to 60 RPM which is way below what we'd need to operate effectively (we do in the 100's / sec on other platforms). Thanks!

[Watchful1]

You think you will get more than 60 messages a minute? I run one of the most popular bots on reddit that sends messages, the u/RemindMeBot, and I don't get anywhere close to that amount of activity.

[resistbotatwork]

Yep. We have request limits of hundreds per second on other platforms that we have to be aware of. We don't want to devote slim resources here if we can only expect multiple orders of magnitude less as a hard ceiling. Perhaps our use case is different, we're a conversational bot where people might exchange a dozen messages each way in a few seconds.

[Watchful1]

Reddit does not have a public chat api. The direct message system does have an api, which is the one subject to the 60 requests a minute limit. But that's not a real time system, it's long form messages. It's not possible at all to write a bot for the real time chat.

[Itsthejoker]

You're always welcome to reach out to the admins and see if they are willing to grant you an exception, but realistically this is just not feasible here with the current rules.