I know why it happened, but who started it and how did they start it?
Ask HN: Who Started the Reddit Blackout?
1–10 of 33 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who Started the Reddit Blackout?
#2i mean I guess Spez started it by trying to monetize the API, unless you meant who started the idea of a blackout as a reaction to that, in which case Im not sure.
Re: Ask HN: Who Started the Reddit Blackout?
#3It grew organically to the best of my knowledge. But the extent and addiction of various mods' dependency on these third party apps was something that came as a surprise to me. Didn't knew they actually depended so much more for moderation tools on these 3rd parties than the official reddit platform itself.
Re: Ask HN: Who Started the Reddit Blackout?
#4[flagged]
Re: Ask HN: Who Started the Reddit Blackout?
#5It grew organically to the best of my knowledge. But the extent and addiction of various mods' dependency on these third party apps was something that came as a surprise to me. Didn't knew they actually depended so much more for moderation tools on these 3rd parties than the official reddit platform itself.
Someone must have been the first to suggest it
Re: Ask HN: Who Started the Reddit Blackout?
#6[flagged]
Now apply the skepticism you feel from this hopelessly devoid of context answer to other questions you ask generative AI.
Re: Ask HN: Who Started the Reddit Blackout?
#7It grew organically to the best of my knowledge. But the extent and addiction of various mods' dependency on these third party apps was something that came as a surprise to me. Didn't knew they actually depended so much more for moderation tools on these 3rd parties than the official reddit platform itself.
Someone must have been the first to suggest it
Sometimes, the time and situation has an energy of its own. It didn't matter whether Leibniz invented calculus or Netwton did, someone had to do it at that time (as a matter of fact, they both did independently in their respective countries).
Re: Ask HN: Who Started the Reddit Blackout?
#8It grew organically to the best of my knowledge. But the extent and addiction of various mods' dependency on these third party apps was something that came as a surprise to me. Didn't knew they actually depended so much more for moderation tools on these 3rd parties than the official reddit platform itself.
I had been under the impression it was relatively common knowledge that the reason Reddit had been keeping both the API and old.reddit alive was that power users - both moderators and the most prolific content submitters - disproportionately used those interfaces and were considered too valuable to alienate. I have been surprised not to see much discussion about what, if anything, changed about that situation leading up to the current kerfluffle. Have enough power users been moving over to new.reddit and the official apps? Or has Reddit's calculus as to the importance of that segment of the user base shifted?
Re: Ask HN: Who Started the Reddit Blackout?
#9[flagged]
Now apply the skepticism you feel from this hopelessly devoid of context answer to other questions you ask generative AI.
This "hopelessly devoid" answer has this interesting nugget at the end which I didn't knew earlier (and I strongly suspect many people here also don't know!):
- Use a third-party Reddit app.
If this is indeed true, it means the "dark" or gone under subs are still accessible using third party apps. I haven't tried that because I don't use any but can someone here confirm it?
Re: Ask HN: Who Started the Reddit Blackout?
#10I think the first one who talked about it was Christian Selig the developer of the popular third-party Reddit app Apollo. He said that it would cost him $20 million per year to keep his Apollo app running if he had to pay Reddit's new API pricing structure.