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So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

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Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#591

Post by vovavili »

inigyou wrote: post #454
p2detar wrote: post #429

Reddit is such an amazing business model that exploits the gullible. People go on reddit, voluntarily post comments, generate interest vectors that can be harvested and get "paid" with upvotes. The so called reddit mods do voluntarily, unpaid work to manage subreddits that can be closed at any time by reddit admins. All of this work done by people for free for a commercial platform, so that it can then build a walled…

This is called chokepoint capitalism and most web2 sites do it. HN also does it.

Hacker News is way more innocent in that it's main purpose is to expose a narrow slice of highly technical and entrepreneurial people to YCombinator and companies that it funds. Of all the social media websites it employs the least amount of dark patterns and is the only website that I know of that natively helps people for whom the use of the website becomes problematic.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#592

Post by dredmorbius »

inigyou wrote: post #578
dredmorbius wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost always by user flags rather than moderation removal , no?

Automated removal by user flags is itself a moderation decision .

What HN's net moderation system does (user flags, automated moderation, direct admin-moderator actions, shadowbans, penalties) is limit all extreme views, to the extent that they conflict with HN's Prime Directive, "to optimize for intellectual curiosity": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27901918>.

As I've pointed out repeatedly, the net bias created is less left/right than pro status quo: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>.

Challenges to conventional thinking are more than fair, but they've got to avoid falling foul of one of HN's guidelines, particularly increasing substantiality with time, thoughtful criticism, generic negativism, not fulminating, no personal attacks, not sneering (including at the rest of the community), good faith, responding to the strongest plausible interpretation of your interlocutor, avoiding flamebait / generic tangents / Internet tropes. And most importantly in this vein, not using HN for political or ideological battle (including nationalistic flamewars).

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

As to flags: mods do frequently reverse them for both posts and comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353896> https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>.

I don't always agree with mods, but I often do, and even where I disagree, I understand the underlying principles being employed. I've been an active critic / commentator on moderation for much of my time on-site (dating to 2011).

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#593

Post by Eisenstein »

jonathanlb wrote: post #339
victor9000 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBlock Origin can clear those on FF mobile with one of the Annoyances lists

If you're on iOS, you're out of luck. FF extensions aren't supported.

Brave is on iOS and will block 'use the app' notifications'.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#594

Post by tsss »

iamnothere wrote: post #183
wraptile wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For users, Reddit has been in a downwards spiral since the IPO. I'd argue since redesign that introduced old.reddit > to give some examples of mod abuse You're barely scratching the surface. Many subreddits are directly astroturfed and sold out. The most clear indicator is when a subreddit links to alternative communication platform like Discord - it's there to signal that mods are selling out. This is particularly…

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…

You hit the nail on the head. As bad as reddit is nowadays, I will never use Lemmy because it attracts the activists and "power users" that have ruined reddit in the first place.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#595

Post by VCFundedGenYer »

Klonoar wrote: post #178
VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit HAD almost 20 years of comments, until about three years ago when they started to lock down APIs, remove moderators, and make poor choices. Users reacted accordingly and now you will just see a whole lot of [deleted] or comment content replaced with garbage data. It's no longer an archive or wealth of information it once was.

That redacted amount is absolutely miniscule and blown out of proportion.

Please provide data on your claim.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#596

Post by dlenski »

inigyou wrote: post #442
dlenski wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think at this point I'm ready to give up on Reddit, most of my questions are already answered by LLM. That's a bizarre and self-sabotaging path to take. Almost all LLMs get a substantial portion of their knowledge from Reddit. In order to evaluate the quality of those LLM responses, you'll have to click through to the Reddit threads and critically evaluate the quality of the underlying discussions. If you just bl…

No new valuable training data has been created on Reddit since 2023.

What's your source for this claim?

I've read new, valuable-to-me human-written information on Reddit since 2023, so I very much doubt this is true.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#597

Post by dlenski »

bugufu8f83 wrote: post #412
dlenski wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think at this point I'm ready to give up on Reddit, most of my questions are already answered by LLM. That's a bizarre and self-sabotaging path to take. Almost all LLMs get a substantial portion of their knowledge from Reddit. In order to evaluate the quality of those LLM responses, you'll have to click through to the Reddit threads and critically evaluate the quality of the underlying discussions. If you just bl…

>I spend quite a lot of time reading and writing on Reddit, and while I encounter plenty of low-quality posts and comments, I'd say that essentially none of them are written by bots. Err... I spend quite a lot of time on Reddit as well (including moderating a medium size subreddit) and I can assure you that there are tons of bot posts and comments all over the site right now. If you think this, you're probably not ve…

It sounds like maybe your moderation is working!

I spend most of my time on subreddits related to the city where I live, and tax+financial planning forums.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#598

Post by foco_tubi »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #494
Twistyfiasco wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can hide distracting items in safari to remove the popup.

True. But for me, I hide the “fuck you asshole, use our app!” bottom overlay, and it does go away, but then scroll stops working!

For a while the overlay blocked touch events AND spanned the entire viewport so you couldn’t swipe to go back, trigger the address bar and toolbar to display, etc. I would have to swipe to minimize the app and then go back to trigger the toolbar to hit the back button.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#599

Post by ruszki »

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.

Except in this case, it’s seeing complete threads without clicking vs clicking many times to achieve the same thing.

Also, clutter…

These are measurable things, not moody things.

Re: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

#600

Post by benjiro29 »

tlonny wrote: post #558
wongarsu wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not how it works ... Anything public viewable is still subject to a TOS. And the whole copyright or whatever still applies.

If your argument was valid, we can scrape news websites and show their content freely. No ... You get sued and lose the case.

See Google News that got their behinds in court and lost. Short summaries are allowed / transformative, but you can not just take content (even without a login). Not without getting into civil court if somebody wants to press the matter.

Now, if you scrap and never make that data public or transform it (LLMs). Then it becomes a harder matter to deal with.

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