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So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

cole-k.com

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Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#551

Post by iamnothere »

wraptile wrote: post #403
iamnothere wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Lemmy is that every instance seems to treat itself as an insular fiefdom that bans dissenters. It’s the same problem scaled up. Instances can cross-post in theory, but often people seem to treat the domain as a tribal affiliation, and mods may block subs or even entire domains based on petty disagreements. I think Nostr solves this problem; individual relays may block certain accounts, but there’s no…

The "tribalism" is a feature not a bug. As attack is always cheaper than defense a system must be designed with that in mind. Defending against lemmy.ml is much easier than identifying and proving each attacker. The community itself then has incentive to self regulate as if we all get put on shit list our each individual capability suffers. This combined with full transparency of Fediverse makes identifying and pursu…

I’d much rather have an “expensive” system where the cost is that new entrants have a harder time getting established due to the “noise” of unknown accounts. This removes so many failure modes of human groups. It’s amazing to me that people want to replicate those failure modes when technology allows you to subvert them!

Besides, “defending against” lemmy.ml is literally defending against the instance run by the Lemmy dev, because some centrists are too scared of socialism and anti-imperialism to have real conversations about it. It’s a ridiculous situation. It’s not like it’s Hexbear or Lemmygrad where users are actively and intentionally hostile.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#552

Post by dzonga »

tdeck wrote: post #536

I always wondered how Reddit justified the old.reddit effect. If your new design is so awful that a large percentage of users refuse to use it, and prefer the (more performant!) version from more than a decade ago, shouldn't that be a strong signal that you've made some mistakes? Why not try making the new version more appealing by investigating and fixing the issues that cause people to use the old one. I guess cred…

Reddit had to make a business decision.

old reddit - wasn't bad before the age of mass scrappers of LLM labs.

now - yeah - they need to put everything behind a wall. LLM scrappers don't contribute, steal traffic.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#553

Post by ndriscoll »

graemep wrote: post #547
ndriscoll wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local bike clubs and hobby groups presumably know their members, so age verification and moderation aren't issues. Despite computers theoretically being able to connect to anyone in the world, you don't have to use them that way.

Its fine for some groups, but its extra work (you cannot just let people sign up, the admins will have to add each user individually) and for many things you want people to join. A very local hobby group might be OK, but anything broader is a problem. A hobby group for a city? A community forum for a village?

You don't need a centralized approver; you could give any member invite privileges or have a shared password or QR code that members can give out, or that can be shared at in-person meetups, etc. That should work fine still for a city-scale group (which in practice is still going to be maybe a few dozen members). Community forum like for a PTO is also the exact type of thing I had in mind. Print a QR code with embedded password on flyers.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#554

Post by MSFT_Edging »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #302
20k wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're just trying to manufacture a reason to kill off old reddit. Someone internally clearly hates the fact that its still quite popular, despite all the efforts to make it unusable so far

New Reddit for my phone has decided to put a bottom popup forcing me to the app. The second old goes away I’ll never go that site again except for search results. I ADORE that a publicly traded tech giant is so fucking stupid.

For years, reddit admins would lie to the faces of users saying those app redirects weren't supposed to prevent browsing the site in a mobile browser. They'd say "weird! looking into it, that shouldn't happen!".

The owners of the site are hostile to the userbase. The new reddit where it doesn't let you read more than 3 comments before redirecting you to other posts is a cancer. Not to mention the ads that are somehow even more finely woven into posts than the old reddit.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#555

Post by unethical_ban »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #514
unethical_ban wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been saddening seeing people who think they're clever and have it all figured out getting wrapped around the axle about Odyssey for the absolutely most foolish reasons. You act like the casting decision is the downfall of society.

[flagged]

Look how much you need to attack it. All of you. Can't let go because your coping mechanism for reality or your conservative TV host made you feel superior for thinking it. Otherwise I can't imagine what makes a person care so much on their own. Maybe the same kind of context-less logical purity that makes some people libertarian.

I don't really care if someone feels "icky" about non-cis or non-hetero people. That's your personal problem to work out.

My problem is I've never met someone who both ranted about trans people and gives a damn about the corruption of the current administration. I've never seen someone rant about traditional family values and excluding certain groups from society who also supports the rule of law or talks about reforms to improve democracy.

I pity the person who is so enraged about a minor casting decision.

It is so unimportant in comparison to the degradation of government, food and healthcare issues, social media addiction, AI instability. The "gotcha" bitterness about trans people here makes me wonder what values a person actually claims to hold.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#556

Post by tdeck »

asddubs wrote: post #544
tdeck wrote: post #536

I always wondered how Reddit justified the old.reddit effect. If your new design is so awful that a large percentage of users refuse to use it, and prefer the (more performant!) version from more than a decade ago, shouldn't that be a strong signal that you've made some mistakes? Why not try making the new version more appealing by investigating and fixing the issues that cause people to use the old one. I guess cred…

While I do use old.reddit and genuinely think it's better UI-wise, in the general case users tend to be resistant to any UI change because it breaks their habits and muscle memory. This is valid but applies even if the new design is easier to use/better in one way or another.

I'm not really a regular user of Reddit, but I'm reminded to use old.reddit every time I open a Google result and can't quickly skim or search the comments. That was an issue for years before LLMs so I'm not sure what the justification is for such a poor experience.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#557

Post by chongli »

tdeck wrote: post #536

I always wondered how Reddit justified the old.reddit effect. If your new design is so awful that a large percentage of users refuse to use it, and prefer the (more performant!) version from more than a decade ago, shouldn't that be a strong signal that you've made some mistakes? Why not try making the new version more appealing by investigating and fixing the issues that cause people to use the old one. I guess cred…

Enshittification is the answer. Old Reddit doesn’t make any money. Users block what few ads there are and it’s free so there’s no subscription revenue otherwise.

New Reddit is full of ads plus social media engagement-bait garbage. New Reddit makes money. Reddit the company wants people to use New Reddit.

So why does Old Reddit still exist? Because that’s where the content creators live! Old Reddit is a cost centre but a necessary one to keep the old guard of high-effort posters around. Alienate them and the New Reddit users won’t have any new content to engage with.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#558

Post by tlonny »

wongarsu wrote: post #497
benjiro29 wrote: post #84

As somebody who did plenty of scraping for his own little projects, lets just say that reddit their security concerns are just PR for "we do not want to keep supporting old.reddit". While yes, you can not simply scrap new reddit as easily as a pure html scraper is cheaper to run. And while the new reddit its js "slow down" scraping as it need to run over a headless browser. Do you slow scraping down a lot? No. Becaus…

New reddit is more annoying (to me as human, but also to scrapers) in two very important ways: - old reddit shows more or less the raw comment tree, sorted, like HN. New reddit does aggressive folding. You get a couple comments for each branch and have to click "show more" to see more - new reddit forces you to log in to view anything tagged NSFW, including entire subreddits. Old reddit does not enforce this, along w…

As I understand it, anything publicly viewable is free to be scraped without issue.

If you scrape stuff behind a sign-up, you potentially open yourself up to being sued for breach of ToS.

Now I'm sure the Chinese labs don't give a rats arse about that threat, but I imagine it stops the likes of Google, OAI, Anthropic from scraping and instead forces them to purchase the data.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#559

Post by Gormo »

asddubs wrote: post #544
tdeck wrote: post #536

I always wondered how Reddit justified the old.reddit effect. If your new design is so awful that a large percentage of users refuse to use it, and prefer the (more performant!) version from more than a decade ago, shouldn't that be a strong signal that you've made some mistakes? Why not try making the new version more appealing by investigating and fixing the issues that cause people to use the old one. I guess cred…

While I do use old.reddit and genuinely think it's better UI-wise, in the general case users tend to be resistant to any UI change because it breaks their habits and muscle memory. This is valid but applies even if the new design is easier to use/better in one way or another.

> While I do use old.reddit and genuinely think it's better UI-wise, in the general case users tend to be resistant to any UI change because it breaks their habits and muscle memory.

It's funny how often people say "it's just habit / muscle memory / etc." in response to these kinds of discussions, as though it were somehow a counter-argument, and not something that corroborates the argument against making sudden, drastic UI changes.

It's really weird how common it is for people to say "well, Y is only true because of X" in response to "Z doesn't work because of Y", and thinking they're somehow defeating the argument against Z. If you acknowledge that X exists and causes Y, and accept that Y isn't compatible with Z, then you are conceding that Z does not hold!

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#560

Post by tdeck »

dzonga wrote: post #552
tdeck wrote: post #536

I always wondered how Reddit justified the old.reddit effect. If your new design is so awful that a large percentage of users refuse to use it, and prefer the (more performant!) version from more than a decade ago, shouldn't that be a strong signal that you've made some mistakes? Why not try making the new version more appealing by investigating and fixing the issues that cause people to use the old one. I guess cred…

Reddit had to make a business decision. old reddit - wasn't bad before the age of mass scrappers of LLM labs. now - yeah - they need to put everything behind a wall. LLM scrappers don't contribute, steal traffic.

I agree, but I'm not sure how this is a response to my comment?

If we time travel back to, say, 2020, it was still weird that they felt the need to keep two parallel versions of their site running because the new one was so unappealing to people who knew what the old one was like.

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