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Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

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Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#111

Post by suddenclarity »

Macha wrote: post #63
awesome_dude wrote: post #42

The API arguments are interesting from another point of view - who really owns the content generated on a site like Reddit, Twitter, or Hacker News. Once I send this post out, do I own it? Can I claim some sort of compensation for my comment being used in an AI training set? Does HN (or whichever site I post the comment on) own the comment, and therefore should be compensated for the comment's use in said training se…

Legally it's governed by the terms of use which for most sites say something along the effect of you retain copyright ownership but transfer a non-revocable unlimited license to the platform. Sometimes other legislation, like EU right to to be forgotten, GDPR, etc. overrides that and they have to take it down, but otherwise they could pretty much do whatever.

GDPR doesn't force a forum to take down content unless it contains private information. It's enough to just change the username to a random string and then it's no longer tied to you. Authorities in my country published guidelines about it because plenty of people saw it as an opportunity to get rid of shit they wrote when they were younger.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#112

Post by SecretDracula »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #26
UpToTheSky wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really need a big part of the community to have a good "forums for everything" site? To me it seems, that 99% of Reddit is just "content fast food" and low quality comments. If we would get just 1000 HN users to use an alternative, that could already be something.

Do you visit niche or speculate topics? They have far better communities than any of the default communities. My observation is comment quality scales with complexity of the topic. It’s extremely hard to rebuild most of these high quality communities elsewhere. Often, it seems only the troublemakers/outliers are willing to move to another platform. They simply become a stain on the alternative platform.

Yeah. A new platform needs to offer something fun or interesting in its own right to attract users. Otherwise it's going to be an island prison for the worse members of the old community.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#113

Post by narrator »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #18

The days of MySpace losing to Facebook or Digg losing to Reddit are over. We reached a phase where the biggest networks are too big to die quickly. It no longer seems possible to replace these sites wholesale. Their decline will look like Craigslist's. They'll still be around a decade from now, but having slowly and steadily lost traffic and cultural relevance. I fully welcome Twitter and Reddit suddenly sacrificing…

As far as alternatives for Reddit go, there's http://communities.win. That's where all the subreddits that got cancelled went. My favorite community on there is http://communities.win/c/nonewnormal which was an anti-lockdown and later anti-vax community that got cancelled on Reddit.

Reddit refugees, used to a finally manicured echo chamber, will of course find it toxic. However, it doesn't suffer from the problem of Gab and Truth social in that there's enough fun stuff mixed in to make most of the content funny and reasonably entertaining and not just overly serious excessively doomer politics.

Rumble seems to be doing pretty well too. However, nothing can replace Reddit for the unbelievable variety and ontology of adult content.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#114

Post by appleaday1 »

The mobile reddit site is so bad, it is basically unusable and they tell you to get the app. I personally don't even prefer Reddit mobile, I use Apollo if I have to moderate on the go, and it's really good for moderation I haven't used the Reddits mobile app for moderation but I remember when I did that it was terrible.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#115

Post by Akronymus »

dt3ft wrote: post #25

I started to build an alternative: https://flingup.com It’s not much, but it’s honest work. If all this does is create a tiny fragment with a hundred people, I’ll call it success. For now, me and a handful of people use it to share articles we find interesting.

Your website offers me to install a "Create React App Sample" app. Which makes me wonder what tech stack you are using.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#116

Post by sangnoir »

screye wrote: post #108
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #18

The days of MySpace losing to Facebook or Digg losing to Reddit are over. We reached a phase where the biggest networks are too big to die quickly. It no longer seems possible to replace these sites wholesale. Their decline will look like Craigslist's. They'll still be around a decade from now, but having slowly and steadily lost traffic and cultural relevance. I fully welcome Twitter and Reddit suddenly sacrificing…

> Digg losing to Reddit are over I strongly disagree and I can give you a clear reason why. Internet forum / niche communities serve a few purposes, and the advent AI (I know, bear with me) destroys their existing moat. A reddit serves the following purposes: 1. Persistent store of timeless information - ChatGPT style models have made this redundant. I 2. Updated store of current information - The problem with curren…

> Persistent store of timeless information - ChatGPT style models have made this redundant.

This was only possible because ChatGPT-style models were trained on data scraped from Reddit using the (then) free API. While it may seem like bolting the barn door after the horse has run out, Reddit can ignore this and become obsoleted by models that keep ingesting the latest user comments, or at least earn some money out of it.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#117

Post by sangnoir »

patrickmay wrote: post #62
ninth_ant wrote: post #52

Can someone explain why this is such a big deal to some people? I legitimately don’t understand why this matters. Third party clients seem to be fairly niche with limited usage, I’m not sure why inexpensive access to an API is a required right for forum software. I don’t expect this to affect my usage of Reddit at all, and wondering who and what it does affect aside from a small number of third party client users. To…

I'm an Apollo user and I'll be dramatically reducing my use of Reddit if and when the third party apps are killed. The official Reddit app is nearly unusable, with a remarkably poor UI and too many ads. It also doesn't offer the tools for subreddit moderators that third party apps do. The hope is that, despite being a small percentage of total users, third party app users represent a large volume moderators and high…

> I'm an Apollo user and I'll be dramatically reducing my use of Reddit if and when the third party apps are killed.

Devil's advocate: are your current usage patterns making money for Reddit? If not, then your reduced usage will be considered a win by Reddit, all things being equal.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#118

Post by YetAnotherNick »

viraptor wrote: post #78
tantalor wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or if you have EU users

That doesn't apply by default. While the US is enabling people to be more litigious, EU will mostly slap you with fines for doing bad things. You have the option to... not do bad things. (Yes, I'm sure there's some odd counterexample somewhere, but this holds in general)

The problem is law doesn't fine for doing bad things, it fines for breaking the law which is not exactly the same.

In my previous company for a project we had to hire lawyer for more than a week just to determine if we were breaking law, even though the site didn't do any bad things by normal people standard.

In the end the suggestion was to just slap a consent form with consent rejection redirecting to some other site, which didn't made sense to me, but yeah that's what the law says.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#119

Post by tremarley »

bastawhiz wrote: post #93
ninth_ant wrote: post #52

Can someone explain why this is such a big deal to some people? I legitimately don’t understand why this matters. Third party clients seem to be fairly niche with limited usage, I’m not sure why inexpensive access to an API is a required right for forum software. I don’t expect this to affect my usage of Reddit at all, and wondering who and what it does affect aside from a small number of third party client users. To…

Imagine if Google started charging for POP3 and IMAP access. Either use the official Gmail clients or pay ridiculous client costs. Sure, there's no inherent right to free third party client access. And you can obviously switch to any service you want, or start your own. The point is that Reddit is taking away features and workflows from users which have been available for longer than most users have been on the servi…

This is the best analogy I've seen so far.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#120

Post by zouhair »

ninth_ant wrote: post #52

Can someone explain why this is such a big deal to some people? I legitimately don’t understand why this matters. Third party clients seem to be fairly niche with limited usage, I’m not sure why inexpensive access to an API is a required right for forum software. I don’t expect this to affect my usage of Reddit at all, and wondering who and what it does affect aside from a small number of third party client users. To…

You already got good responses. I will add something many don't bring up in here: The death of bots.

Bots are a huge part of what makes Reddit decent. This API change will kill them all.

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