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Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from unpopular API pricing changes

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Re: Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from unpopular API pricing changes

#111

Post by mrguyorama »

CameronNemo wrote: post #100
IggleSniggle wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m trying out federated via lemmy (lemmy.ml, lemmy.one, self-host, whatever) which interoperates with mastodon etc. If somebody were to start a larger lemmy server and do Reddit scraping for even just the next couple days, it would probably gain traction pretty quickly. But also that sounds expensive for an enthusiast

https://raddle.me/f/lobby/155371/warning-lemmy-doesn-t-care-...

I guess it makes sense that the only people dedicated and motivated enough to actually build their own stuff in the modern world are neo-nazis and tankies.

Re: Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from unpopular API pricing changes

#112

Post by mrguyorama »

reportgunner wrote: post #85
some_random wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>alright, we'll let you fix our broken shitty site but only if you take a vow of poverty. What a fantastic way to put it, thinking about it so much of the 3rd party tools for reddit are about fixing the site. Bots, because moderation tools aren't powerful enough for the job, RIF in the browser because even old.reddit is kinda crappy, and 3rd party mobile apps because the 1st party one is notoriously bad.

I wonder why people keep going to such a trash website, just leave it to die already.

Any community that isn't massive and doesn't get shown on the front page is most likely doing what the community members want. Things only go awry when it gets big enough that corporate starts to pay attention, or "normies" from the /all feed suddenly decide they are subject matter experts and have extremely important opinions.

Re: Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from unpopular API pricing changes

#113

Post by ipaddr »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #86
sebzim4500 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think their data set is valuable, it's just freely available for anyone to scrape (or as you say, has already been scraped).

You can’t scrape it anymore. It’s really annoying because I was just scraping individual posts to save them and now I can’t.

Pretend you are a bing bot

Re: Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from unpopular API pricing changes

#114

Post by mrguyorama »

nhubbard wrote: post #105
dotnet00 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think they're just not saying indefinite because apparently that'd give reddit an excuse to just replace the mods using the excuse of inactivity.

A clever way of getting around this would be the mods posting every 30 days (I believe that was the cut-off for inactivity) so that Reddit has no valid excuse to replace them.

A private company is free to interpret their internal rules however they see fit. "Malicious compliance" isn't magic, reddit can replace whoever they want whenever they want and not be guilty of any crime.

Mostly they just don't care, because they probably expect most popular subreddits to just come back at some point. People will get bored.

Millions of people use reddit through the official app and DGAF that the UX is "bad" because we have spent the past 20 years gaslighting people into feeling like this is just how computers and things ARE

Re: Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from unpopular API pricing changes

#115

Post by danShumway »

TX81Z wrote: post #94
danShumway wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> alright, we'll let you fix our broken s** site but only if you take a vow of poverty. I'm so glad someone brought this up. Every conversation I've seen about Reddit's API pricing on HN has had at least one person asking, "well, how are they supposed to fund the site then?" And that's not Reddit-specific, it's a really common talking point whenever a property/platform starts cracking down on fan/volunteer work. But…

Or like, don’t have a website that is a steaming pile of the jankiest JavaScript on the web. The damn site barely works and has crashed my browser more than every other site I visit combined. God help anybody with a screen reader. The other story here is these apps all exist because Reddit the site is a joke from a technical standpoint. It’s just a disaster. The community is why people are there and the apps allow th…

This is also a good point. It's somewhat orthogonal to what I'm getting at, my point is more that even if Reddit wasn't in that position it would still be really weird and unreasonable for them to be pushing a non-commercial requirement.

But agreed that in addition to the "Open Source developers like to eat" thing, it's also very worthwhile to ask why Reddit isn't accessible to blind users already. Accessibility can be hard, but it's not that hard. It's not so hard that a company with 2000 employees (I guess less now) couldn't do it.

Blind accessibility shouldn't be the community's responsibility to fix; and there's an extra layer of absurdity in people fixing Reddit's horrible accessibility for them, for free, and Reddit responding with, "we've decided in our infinite generosity not to charge you money for the privilege of fixing our site. But God help us if we find out that anybody else is giving you money to do it..."

Re: Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from unpopular API pricing changes

#116

Post by bastawhiz »

chromoblob wrote: post #84
bastawhiz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The feature that mods are using is setting the subreddits to "private" (with no approved members). Disabling the ability to do this will break that function for people who use it, or look really petty.

Reddit could just disable this function on a specific moment , so that the feature cannot be used for coordinated strikes

To what end? The only thing it accomplishes is making them look petty.

Re: Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from unpopular API pricing changes

#117

Post by treprinum »

dTal wrote: post #91
treprinum wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(2022 snapshot of) Reddit might be the last fully human-prepared dataset there will ever be. That might be their main value.

A beautiful thought, except that Attention Is All You Need came out in 2017. ChatGPT was when the hype cycle kicked off, but I guarantee there were LLM-generated comments on it before then, possibly from nation-state-funded propaganda mills - not to mention other, less sophisticated bots.

Yes, but the real human-like comments were possible only with ChatGPT and I doubt the startups that got GPT-4 early access in 2022 used it to generate Reddit comments. These days a self-hosted Vicuna-LLaMa-13B is good enough to write MBA essays so anything published in 2023 is a suspect.

Re: Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from unpopular API pricing changes

#118

Post by The_Colonel »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #63
The_Colonel wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of assumes there's an endless stream of quality moderators willing to work for free, just waiting for their turn.

No, it correctly assumes there's an endless stream of people wanting to be moderators so they can wield the power that comes with that. Whether that be by being a quality mod or by abusing it to silence people they disagree with is irrelevant.

It's not irrelevant. "Moderator" who uses their privileges only for abuse is not actually fulfilling the role of a moderator. Quality goes down the drain as a result.

Re: Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from unpopular API pricing changes

#119

Post by TX81Z »

danShumway wrote: post #115
TX81Z wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or like, don’t have a website that is a steaming pile of the jankiest JavaScript on the web. The damn site barely works and has crashed my browser more than every other site I visit combined. God help anybody with a screen reader. The other story here is these apps all exist because Reddit the site is a joke from a technical standpoint. It’s just a disaster. The community is why people are there and the apps allow th…

This is also a good point. It's somewhat orthogonal to what I'm getting at, my point is more that even if Reddit wasn't in that position it would still be really weird and unreasonable for them to be pushing a non-commercial requirement. But agreed that in addition to the "Open Source developers like to eat" thing, it's also very worthwhile to ask why Reddit isn't accessible to blind users already. Accessibility can…

Totally, the root of all this is their site is garbage but has a great user base. If I were them I’d be terrified a moderately competent teenager could break that moat with a fast and performant site.

Re: Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from unpopular API pricing changes

#120

Post by hourago »

Since Twitter fired so much developers, started to price its APIs and monetize its blue marks there are two different reactions:

- The Venture Capitalists see these moves as the best thing that ever happened. A way top put employees (mostly the software developers) and users (that get things for free) in their place.

- The consumers and employees see that the value that Twitter provided is disappearing fast as much as employer as a platform.

Many VC backed companies, and other that do not, seem to be following Twitter trends. Let's see if they are right and they can lower salaries to employees and increase prices for consumers, or if they overestimated their capability to do so.

Reddit is just another example of this trend.

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