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The Reddit blackout will continue

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Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#541

Post by makeitdouble »

rightbyte wrote: post #522
makeitdouble wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you still need to manage accounts ? Also under GDPR IP address retention can fall under that in your logs depending on how you manage the info, same way analytics would need attention. It should really be more simple, and I wish we'd have more people just building small sites here and there without having to care much about these details.

If you require logins you don't need to store the IP address for preventing abuse. The user gives you the identifier on login. The IP is a quite bad id anyways since it changes alot.

Yes, that feels simple enough, and would work for a small at home BBS.

It gets messy when you have a number of users and need to know why a specific user is sending you 150 requests per min for 3 hours: you'll insta ban that user, but still need to understand what happened. Did they get their login info leak and the whole internet is having a field day with it ? Is it an issue with your system and their browser is stuck in a weird loop ? Are you session management backend going bust and they're actually all different logged users ?

You'll only know if you have the IP, parts of the headers and some more debugging info, and activating the debug after the fact is often not good enough.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#542

Post by makeitdouble »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #407
chipsa wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a problem user, named Aragorn. You ban him. Two months later, he makes a new account named Estel. How do you associate his new account with his old account, so you know not to approve it? I've done moderating of an phpBB forum and having the IP address and being able to see who else was posting from that IP address was helpful (because you can look at the writing style and decide they're doing ban evasion).

First, for at least this past decade, I have found it impossible that the same user will keep the same IP address for over two months. Storing the IP address _does not help at all_. Second, the new user is subject to approval and all his messages are moderated until a couple of posts. If he starts posting decent material, why would you care he was banned 2 months ago -- are you really that punitative? And if he just…

IP is still a super valuable info, even as it changes every so often.

You'll see strangely repetitive user coming from different AWS's IP blocks. User showing constant sessions from 5 or 6 IP blocks that seem to belong to different countries. Or users having a pretty consitent IP but asks for help right after a new login happened on a different IP.

It can be replaced with other info, but it's still a simple and pretty powerful bit to know about your users.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#543

Post by Seattle3503 »

Xelbair wrote: post #345
4dregress wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree with this enough. The internet today is a cesspit, it needs a git reset hard back to the days when communities were based around forums. I made a lot of real life friends from the forums I frequented. Oh the good old days :(

Honestly looking for information about hobbies is horrible nowadays. It's all first and foremost subreddit, which has mostly memes and no info except maybe a sticky, THEN you find a discord link there, and finally all the knowledge is organized in google docs spreadsheet, that's in some random pinned post in some weirdly named channel. I miss the days of the forum and wikis, it was vastly easier to search and lurk. a…

I wonder if we could use LLMs to update wiki. "Hey bot, update the Wiki page for Mass Effect with the information in this thread."

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#544

Post by Seattle3503 »

yellowapple wrote: post #168
4dregress wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree with this enough. The internet today is a cesspit, it needs a git reset hard back to the days when communities were based around forums. I made a lot of real life friends from the forums I frequented. Oh the good old days :(

That's the thing I'm looking forward to with the evolution of the "Fediverse" and other efforts toward federation/decentralization. The problem with traditional forums was that they were all little silos disconnected from one another; now those forums can talk to each other via ActivityPub or what have you, offering a nicer balance between "isolated but tight-knit community" v. "expansive but highly-impersonal masses…

Why is everyone proposing a fediverse style alternative over a Wikipedia style non-profit with governance? That way most users dont need to care about federation.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#545

Post by Cub3 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #255
jachee wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm. Can you short an IPO? (/s, but only halfway.)

Reddit's going to be fine. This is a tempest in a teapot. The vast majority of users are going to come back (if they ever left), because there's really nowhere else for them to go. The news cycle is going to move to something else in a couple of weeks, and this whole fiasco is going to be just yet another obscure footnote in internet history.

While true, I think this has killed a lot of goodwill from moderators and power users who will just wait for a viable alternative then instantly jump ship

Alternatives that you just know are being worked on right now

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#546

Post by Seattle3503 »

username332211 wrote: post #133
reso wrote: post #71

Is there something counter-intuitive about reddit that makes it hard to monetize? That's the core issue. Reddit still makes barely $1/user/month while instagram makes $35. Cutting off the 3rd party apps is a cost-cutting move, not a revenue-generating move. Why haven't they managed to find more revenue? I'm loath to say it but Huffman has had a decade to solve this and hasn't. Might be time for new leadership with ne…

> Is there something counter-intuitive about reddit that makes it hard to monetize? There is - it makes little sense to buy ads, when you can buy comments. https://xkcd.com/1019/

You can buy upvotes very cheap, and I know people who do it.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#547

Post by Cub3 »

jbverschoor wrote: post #390
jbverschoor wrote: post #164

Why doesn't apollo implement the reddit api and be done with it?

Hello reddit, why did you downvote me?

Because you've missed the point here, if you read the link it will explain that reddit is killing 3rd party apps that are using the API now

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#548

Post by yellowapple »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #544
yellowapple wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing I'm looking forward to with the evolution of the "Fediverse" and other efforts toward federation/decentralization. The problem with traditional forums was that they were all little silos disconnected from one another; now those forums can talk to each other via ActivityPub or what have you, offering a nicer balance between "isolated but tight-knit community" v. "expansive but highly-impersonal masses…

Why is everyone proposing a fediverse style alternative over a Wikipedia style non-profit with governance? That way most users dont need to care about federation.

They ain't mutually exclusive.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#549

Post by jbverschoor »

Cub3 wrote: post #547
jbverschoor wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello reddit, why did you downvote me?

Because you've missed the point here, if you read the link it will explain that reddit is killing 3rd party apps that are using the API now

Exactly.. so just reimplement the essential services first, migrate users and/or data, and take over the complete thing, and let Reddit die.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#550

Post by NovaDudely »

larksimian wrote: post #122
NovaDudely wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brian Lunduke back in 2019 when Reddit took $150 million from Tencent basically said that Reddit would be a company in trouble with in 5 years. His argument was that it shouldn't cost that much to run the place and as such they would have to start pleasing investors and not users. The argument was that you can buy an obscene amount of storage and bandwidth for only a fraction of the money they were raising. It is eve…

If they charged like $2/year/user for 3d party API access they'd be profitable and no one would be that outraged. Their expenses are still absurd given that, from my perspective they've literally done no improvement to the product in the last 5 years or more. Just maintain the API, have some staff to run the servers, pay a few admins to support the mods and feature freeze Reddit the site as much as possible. It's way…

Exactly! If they announced that you will have to pay even $5 a month for 3rd party access - I think most people would be on board. They just choose the dumbest of all paths.
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