Related:
Reddit will require you to log in to use old.reddit.com
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48740217
(Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1ujtebf/logging_in...)
So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe
91–100 of 681 posts
Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe
#92I am hard put to defend reddit and a lot of the things they do ... but I can attest, from personal experience, that scrapers are a huge problem for anybody trying to keep a complex site working. Withholding the display of the comments will significantly reduce the database traffic needed to satisfy a request; I can see why they would want to do that for anonymous readers.
Agreed; we have a Linode VPS for some small WordPress websites and it was grinding to a halt after an AI crawler started iterating through every possible date in "The Events Calendar"’s URL structure, sequentially scraping calendar pages all the way back to like 1970. I'm sure that's partially my fault for not putting it behind Cloudflare or anything though.
The response to that should be to restrict the events calendar and similar dynamic functionality, not to restrict the 99% of users who are accessing what should be 100% staticly cached HTML.
Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe
#93I feel like this is a deliberately obtuse response to a real and irritating change.
Old reddit is going to be MUCH, MUCH easier to scrape. Scraping has the potential to bring down the site. Gating old reddit to logged in users will massively mitigate that.
I don't like it either. But it's not hard to see a good reason why doing so helps "keep reddit safe"
Even if it also coincidentally makes it easier for them to make more money. Grr.
Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe
#94> This is because appending site: reddit.com to a search query is basically a surefire way to find results written by genuine humans. This is, sadly, not even remotely the case anymore.
Still works as long as you don't care about recent results and are okay with filtering for pre-2023 answers.
(So like, 20% as useful, but still...)
Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't matter what they spent excatly but it's in their direct interest to raise legal moats for competitors. Kind of like what Allegedly Open AI tried with the "AI will kill us all" threats.
> It doesn't matter what they spent excatly If the number didn’t matter then the comment above wouldn’t have led with it to make their point. The flaw in the original study was that someone started with a premise that Meta was at the heart of this and all spending could be traced back to Meta. They made Claude generate a report but they didn’t read any details, so they didn’t notice that Claude couldn’t access the ac…
> he entire premise that Meta is driving this with $2B of lobbying is an AI hallucination.
I guess the $2B is hallucination. But it makes sense for them to do the "think of the children" lobby.
Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe
#96IF you're an actual user of the site, like, logging in and what not, you can still just set your preferences to use the old design. Never need to go to old.reddit
Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe
#97Meta has spent $2B on verification lobbying. Very successfully it seems. In 1-2 years, you won't be able to browse the internet without scanning a body part and providing a ID for your ass. https://www.gadgetreview.com/reddit-user-uncovers-who-is-beh...
My mother tried to buy something on Amazon yesterday. It wouldn't let her check-out until she'd entered a code sent via WhatsApp. Which she doesn't have and doesn't want. She'll be buying her tat on eBay in future. I dream that Amazon will lose lots of sales and backtrack, but I don't suppose they will.
What is a tat?
Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reddit has almost 20 years of comments. You could certainly argue that it's less true now that there's legitimate people commenting, but there are years old threads on there with very helpful and valuable information that you can only really find via some incantations of Google search.
Have you ever looked at an old reddit comment thread. + Hey how do you do thing? | -+ [deleted] | -+ Thanks, that's just what I needed.
Some of that was a reaction to Reddit closing the APIs and blocking apps.
Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe
#99Meta has spent $2B on verification lobbying. Very successfully it seems. In 1-2 years, you won't be able to browse the internet without scanning a body part and providing a ID for your ass. https://www.gadgetreview.com/reddit-user-uncovers-who-is-beh...
My mother tried to buy something on Amazon yesterday. It wouldn't let her check-out until she'd entered a code sent via WhatsApp. Which she doesn't have and doesn't want. She'll be buying her tat on eBay in future. I dream that Amazon will lose lots of sales and backtrack, but I don't suppose they will.
Are you sure it was actually via whatsapp, and not just a six digit code sent via regular SMS to the phone number on record for her account? It's possible whatsapp on her phone has simply hijacked the SMS client functionality and set itself as the default.
Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reddit has almost 20 years of comments. You could certainly argue that it's less true now that there's legitimate people commenting, but there are years old threads on there with very helpful and valuable information that you can only really find via some incantations of Google search.
Have you ever looked at an old reddit comment thread. + Hey how do you do thing? | -+ [deleted] | -+ Thanks, that's just what I needed.
Reddit will delete anything remotely controversial if it contains referenced facts. They banned and deleted my account for simply stating the 5th amendment prohibits requiring incriminating yourself to exercise a right. An Ivy League educated lawyer dug up the comment one year after I posted it, told reddit I was distributing illegal legal advice, and had my whole account nuked.