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APIs for content sites must be free

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Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#101

Post by mkoubaa »

simonw wrote: post #53

I've found myself resisting posting comments on Reddit recently - things like answers to simple questions people have about SQLite - partly because I don't want to cross the picket line but also because I realize that I was relying on a very light social contract that was in place there: I would share my knowledge for free, in exchange for which I knew that I was contributing to a larger dataset that myself and other…

A little inconvenient but you could Ask/answer it on stack overflow and then link it in the reddit reply?

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#102

Post by andrewaylett »

alecbz wrote: post #35

I think the entirety of their argument is: > social media sites don’t produce content. They merely host it. Millions of users create the content expecting it will be widely available. ? But this feels pretty simplistic. Not convinced that people do (or should) upload content expecting they or anyone else can access it however they want. If you create the content then it's obviously yours forever. If you also decide p…

This cuts both ways -- if I'm not going to allow access to that content for free, why would you give me your content?

The ToS might allow for it, but people are routinely dismayed when companies stick to the letter of what their ToS allows them to do, especially when they start doing things they never did before.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#103

Post by ZoomerCretin »

simonw wrote: post #53

I've found myself resisting posting comments on Reddit recently - things like answers to simple questions people have about SQLite - partly because I don't want to cross the picket line but also because I realize that I was relying on a very light social contract that was in place there: I would share my knowledge for free, in exchange for which I knew that I was contributing to a larger dataset that myself and other…

Can someone explain to me why Reddit can't have different price tiers for their API service? Why can't they charge people who want to scrape en masse (LLM trainers) 10-100x more than mobile app API users?

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#105

Post by jodrellblank »

awestroke wrote: post #34
11235813213455 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but you can access every single shitpost from the website, so why not from API? it's lighter

Because you can't include ads in an API response

Why can’t you?

“Sent from my iPhone.”

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#106

Post by johnday »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #22

The use of the word "must" (in both the title and the body) is uninformative. What on Earth does it mean? Does it mean there's a law? A moral imperative? A strategic necessity? A technical requirement? Is the author claiming some form of jurisdiction? "It must provide APIs" isn't an argument. It can't be taken literally because it's clearly false. And it can't be taken in any other form because the author doesn't tel…

I fail to follow your chain of reasoning. How can the claim both be "clearly false" and unclear in its statement?

The use of "should" as the very first line of the body text actually makes the argument extremely clear, which is that there is a non-legal, non-technical imperative for API access [leaving only a moral/social imperative, as you determine]. I think you are probably smarter than the very low reading comprehension bar in order to understand what is being said, so I'm not sure what value you are deriving from pretending not to.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#107

Post by incone123 »

rcoveson wrote: post #82
zoogeny wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> users are also free to leave, complain, or demand that they don't change Yes, I have no issue with all of those. I'm poking fun at taking that desire for action from a single company in a single instance and extending it to a universal moral principle. My own opinion is that Reddit users were getting something valuable for free and it is being taken away from them. In addition to the totally reasonable protests tha…

Getting something valuable for free sounds weird in the physical world but it's not weird at all in the information world, where costs can diffuse so thinly that many users never even see them. I see no reason why a non-profit reddit couldn't be free if they didn't try to host video or images (links and comments only). Server costs could absolutely be covered by donations (like "reddit gold") and intra-site advertisi…

I know of one long-running message board site which is free of advertising and free for users. A number of users make regular donations and occasionally when funds are low they make an announcement and some other users make a one-off donation.

I am very doubtful their model would scale to Reddit's size, and certain they don't have any wish to.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#108

Post by ambicapter »

zoogeny wrote: post #13

I like vehement arguments even when I disagree with them. Based on this man's logic, if I were to run a web forum then I must provide an API or data dump to download the posts created by the users? How about a comment section on my blog? How about a community Discord server? Why not Facebook posts? Or Instagram stories? I often get the feeling that in these circumstances people derive first principles from specific d…

> I often get the feeling that in these circumstances people derive first principles from specific desired outcomes.

Once you learn about motivated reasoning, you start to see it everywhere.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#109

Post by andersa »

malfist wrote: post #81
beders wrote: post #47

It's stunning to me how little people like the author of this piece know about the economics of running large scale sites like reddit or twitter. Nothing is free, including providing and maintaining APIs. Someone's gotta pay for the ramen, especially if you can't run ads.

If you read the article and not just the headline, the author is in favor of charging a cost based fee for API access. A fee that would cover hosting and serving the API, but not generate profit for the parent company benefiting from the 3P users' content.

There would be no benefit to providing it, then.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#110

Post by thewataccount »

ZoomerCretin wrote: post #103
simonw wrote: post #53

I've found myself resisting posting comments on Reddit recently - things like answers to simple questions people have about SQLite - partly because I don't want to cross the picket line but also because I realize that I was relying on a very light social contract that was in place there: I would share my knowledge for free, in exchange for which I knew that I was contributing to a larger dataset that myself and other…

Can someone explain to me why Reddit can't have different price tiers for their API service? Why can't they charge people who want to scrape en masse (LLM trainers) 10-100x more than mobile app API users?

Absolutely nothing.

I don't understand why they don't just support OAuth and then the api usage would be by user, not by the app itself.

Otherwise apps like apollo technically would be some of the biggest "users" of the api.

What's wild to me isn't just the amount, it's the lack of time. In theory APollo might have enough users will to pay enough for them to profit (albiet with a fraction of the users). But because there's no time, and because people bought year long subscriptions, he's stuck with his subscribers paying less then their operating cost.

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