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APIs for content sites must be free

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Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#241

Post by Meph504 »

TheCoreh wrote: post #52
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…

> 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? Yes? I don't think it's a very radical, unreasonable or difficult thing to provide: this is available as a first class feature on most blogging/forum soft…

You have the option to syndicate information from your site at your leisure.

You are not obligated to provide it to whoever wants it,and to cover the cost of providing or insuring it is available.

This is a radical notion.

As for the for everyone wrote it,everyone has access to it. That is daft, the access to the data is at the discretion of the service hosting it, they never made any claims they would make this data available to everyone anyway they wanted it?

If people don't like the terms of a site don't use it, don't think just because you used a service for a period of time you have some right to determine how that service is operated.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#243

Post by willcipriano »

h4ckerle wrote: post #172
willcipriano wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> laws only apply to large players, e.g. >1M users. What if I don't want to share my user list with the government?

You don't have to. You can self report and if you incorrectly report it is a crime. As simple as that. This is also exactly how the definition of very large online platforms (which is a site from 45+million montly active Users) in the EUs new Digital Services Act works [1]. Some companies (primarily porn) are believed to have misreported, and are being investigated for that[2]. If they are found guilty they will have…

Couldn't the government claim you are lying about how many users you have, and then demand you show them how many you have? How will they prove how many users they have without handing over the list of users?

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#246

Post by throwaway32908 »

kpw94 wrote: post #235
awestroke wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can't include ads in an API response

You could, but with EU and other legislations you'd have to make it clear it's an ad, so in API-speak, there'd be a "is_sponsored=true". That makes it too easy for API consumers to ignore. (Compared to human eyeballs browsing a webpage) But you could make it part of the ToS: if you're using the API to present posts to users, you MUST show all the posts in the list, including the is_sponsored=true ones.

Even though reddit probably don't tag the ads on their website deliberately, it's still really easy to block them in a browser

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#247

Post by fuzzylightbulb »

dylan604 wrote: post #156
simonw wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I stipulate that a 30 day notice for a major change from something that has been available for 17 years is pretty egregious. However, I'm still of the mind that when you build a company/product that 100% depends on a 3rd party existing or allowing one to play in their playground, these are the exact situations that can arise. You have to know that at some point, if the dependency is no longer available, neither is yo…

Ignore the app developers for a second.

What reddit is doing is horrible for the users. Reddit benefitted massively from 3rd party apps making it easier for users to contribute, comment, moderate, etc. Without those users' efforts the platform is worthless. That is the issue here.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#248

Post by appletrotter »

roskelld wrote: post #232
thewataccount wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I figured because they don't want 3rd party apps because they don't run ads for Reddit. Reddit wants users within their (soon to be) walled garden getting fed all of the monetization pressure systems. My take when Reddit said that Apollo cost them $20M a year, they weren't talking running costs but revenue potential because Apollo doesn't feed ads to its users.

Hopefully someone has the link, but I heard that the lost revenue from ads is significantly lower than the $20 million bill.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#249

Post by andersa »

margalabargala wrote: post #140
andersa wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would be no benefit to providing it, then.

No first-order benefit, perhaps. It shouldn't be difficult to look to second- and third-order benefits, though, such as increasing your user base and the amount of generated content.

That makes sense.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#250

Post by _dan »

thewataccount wrote: post #110
ZoomerCretin wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

That’s exactly how it works today, Apollo logs into Reddit as you via OAuth. When you add an account you follow a pretty standard OAuth flow (Apollo sends you to Reddit, you log in, Reddit asks you to authenticate Apollo, then sends you back). But Reddit knows it’s you, and they know you’re using Apollo.

In fact heres the post where Apollo switched to OAuth some years ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/44rd9g/apollo_be...

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