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APIs for content sites must be free

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Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#141

Post by miah_ »

mkoubaa wrote: post #101
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?

Stack Overflow is under a moderator strike at the moment too! The company has disabled the data dumps of the content after a recent layoff.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/390106/moderation-s...

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#142

Post by CobrastanJorji »

johnday wrote: post #106
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 compre…

"X must do Y," taken literally, would imply that X did Y. But here, X did not do Y. That's the "clearly false" part. and that's fine, because that's how language works. People speak hyperbolically or metaphorically all the time.

But the author must be trying to say something when they say "X must do Y," and it's not clear to me what. Are they just using "must" to mean "should?" Or do they mean something stronger? And what does "should" even mean? Do they mean should like "it would be a tactical mistake not to?" Evidently not because they start talking about social contracts and such, which are more about some sort of community unstated rules or traditions or something.

Put another way, if I say "X must do Y" to you, and you want to disagree, how would you do that? Would "X is not required to do Y" be a rebuttal? Or "Y would not be very nice?" I can't tell if either assertion would contradict the author's assertions. What are they trying to say?

Maybe it's just me being annoyingly pedantic (it's happened before!), but it's the title of the post and even after reading the whole thing I'm no closer to being able to summarize their argument. Is it just "I don't think Reddit should do this because it's a useful tool and it'd be mean," but with the word "must" thrown in randomly for oomph?

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#143

Post by dylan604 »

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…

The funny thing to me is this sort of expectation that a site/app that accepts user contributed content must provide access to it other than the site/app it was submitted.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#144

Post by chc »

TheCoreh wrote: post #55
David_Axelrod wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the time you dont just expose your internal api routes to the world. You need to write curated public facing routes that dont include certain schema or records. Takes time to write and maintain that different set of endpoints

These are already written and fully functional, and Reddit has essentially been a non-moving target in terms of features since ~2016, when they added first-party image hosting.

Reddit actually has added a couple of features since then (e.g. polls), but they just didn't update the API to deal with those, so the API still remained completely stable.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#145

Post by PaulHoule »

randomdata wrote: post #138
PaulHoule wrote: post #119

I would frame it as "messaging applications should interoperate". People understand that a T-Mobile customer can send a text to an AT&T customer. They understand that a Samsung owner can call an iPhone owner. Why do they accept that a Slack user can't send a message to a Discord user? Why do they accept that Google has made 11+ different messaging applications that aren't compatible with each other? Why do they accep…

There was that short period of time where most of the big players (Google, Facebook, etc.) had settled on XMPP and it was all interoperable, to some degree at least. I even remember when Facebook first announced their support thinking "Oh sweet, now I can message all my Facebook friends from my current chat app." And when it launched, I could! But then I realized I didn't really want to. And it wasn't long before sup…

Funny but XMPP has hit it really big for law enforcement and military users. For instance the commander of a squad fills out a form about what engagements they had with the enemy every day and often they fill out a form that gets submitted to XMPP and is sent asynchronously up the chain of command.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#146

Post by PaulHoule »

senko wrote: post #129
PaulHoule wrote: post #119

I would frame it as "messaging applications should interoperate". People understand that a T-Mobile customer can send a text to an AT&T customer. They understand that a Samsung owner can call an iPhone owner. Why do they accept that a Slack user can't send a message to a Discord user? Why do they accept that Google has made 11+ different messaging applications that aren't compatible with each other? Why do they accep…

> People understand that a T-Mobile customer can send a text to an AT&T customer. They understand that a Samsung owner can call an iPhone owner. That was a hard-won victory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsbury_Commitment A hundred years later, we've got the same story, except today's Big Tech had wised up.

The EU can do better than spamming us with cookie popups. They'd like to be relevant, why don't they try passing legislation for this?

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#147

Post by simonw »

dylan604 wrote: post #143
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…

The funny thing to me is this sort of expectation that a site/app that accepts user contributed content must provide access to it other than the site/app it was submitted.

I assume that most sites won't do that - so I don't invest much of my time and effort in most sites.

Reddit had 17 years of track record of providing access, which had eventually bought my trust. They're setting that trust on fire right now.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#148

Post by Blahah »

w0mbat wrote: post #69

The trouble with a free API is that someone can write a $1 client that hides all the ads (the number one requested feature), and now your website has no income. An ad-supported website has to get paid. On the web there is at least some stuff they can do to detect ad blockers, or show ads in sneaky ways that change over time and are hard to block.

That's a good argument against ads, because ads introduce a fundamental misalignment of incentives between the platform and the user. There are many ways reddit could build a collaborative business from their current situation. Advertising is very clearly not going to work, so they just need to look outside that box.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#149

Post by opportune »

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 completely agree.

The only real reason to be upset about the Reddit API changes is that Reddit’s official clients suck. The formatting sucks, they stuff them way too full of ads. Apparently they are less accessible for blind users, and inefficient for moderation.

It’s weird to be upset about people like the Apollo dev (who could just require payment) or scrapers. They don’t really have any right to API access, and should have to pay for it.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#150

Post by stevenhubertron »

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…

Same. I usually spend a few hours a week helping people with 3d printer issues and since all this has blown up I have just ignored it all. Not worth putting that knowledge into Reddit and toying with deleting that which I have contributed already.
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