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June 2023 Data Dump is missing

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Re: June 2023 Data Dump is missing

#121

Post by Zetice »

jcpham2 wrote: post #120
Zetice wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how you use it, but I'd argue that 90% of Reddit's users don't operate the same way, considering they don't even have accounts to begin with. In fact, I would even argue that Reddit is actively trying to push users who use Reddit this way off of the platform, as they're not as easily monetized. Reddit is notorious for having low conversion rates on its ads and extremely high ad blocking rates.

I'm definitely a push-away user. I'll never pay them money to use their site and I rarely comment in the ten years or so I've had an account. Same goes for HN; I would never pay money to use this site - I would just find a new site to frequent. I understand this is unfortunate for the website operator but I consider operating a web server at this point a labor of love, not a business model.

> but I consider operating a web server at this point a labor of love, not a business model.

Hey, at least you're open about your entitlement!

Re: June 2023 Data Dump is missing

#122

Post by RadiozRadioz »

benrutter wrote: post #67
the_pwner224 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decentralized system will never work because 99% of users do not care at all; the centralized systems are easier to sign up for and use. It's been demonstrated over and over and over again. Even if the underlying tech is decentralized, the community will settle around one or a few big instances (for example, Gmail and GitHub) which often end up having significant control over the trajectory of the entire ecosystem.…

I don't know that I agree. I think most people don't care about decentralization but they do care about the effects it brings. Email is a great example where most people wouldn't be interested in a version of email that only let's you email other @gmail.com users. Having a email address that can contact anyone, a phone number that can ring any other phone number etc instead of being locked into a single corporation n…

I agree, but to nitpick one thing: RCS isn't properly decentralized. It's controlled by carriers in the GSMA and, with the current way the infrastructure has been deployed, Google. Interoperable on the app level, yes, but not a poster child for decentralization.

Re: June 2023 Data Dump is missing

#123

Post by blantonl »

lumb63 wrote: post #16

This, along with recent Reddit goings-on has made me realize a major risk with the current structure of online communication. Take either Reddit or Stack Exchange as examples. They build a platform, and users contribute their time, thought, energy, and knowledge to build a community on that platform. Those companies can then gatekeep and restrict access to all that the community built, when all they did is provide th…

>when all they did is provide the platform, and store the data.

Is there not significant innovation and benefit that was designed and implemented in the first place that caused users to contribute their time, thought and energy?

I think the real problem here is when organizations that rely on a crowd-sourced business models decide they just have to be billionaires or solve all the worlds problems with their platforms, instead of just staying true to their model. I don't see what's wrong with just running a highly successful business that makes money for it's founders and doesn't have to go out and strive every day to be the next Facebook or Google.

Make no mistake. Platforms like Reddit and Stackoverflow are real, serious businesses. But why can't they exist and be a general successful business like your local mom and pop restaurant or toy store or whatever?

I run RadioReference.com and Broadcastify, both which are significant businesses but also rely almost solely on crowd sourced data and content. We're wildly successful - but I've never seen the need to hire 3,000 people, or IPO, or do series raises to expand into solving world peace. Our premium subscription pricing has been the same for 15 years. I completely eliminated advertising on one of the platforms last year. We make a lot of money. We provide a lot of value to our communities, and we carefully innovate and expand to provide value. It's a nice happy life for everyone involved, and I don't have to deal with a VC who will be determined to either make a trillion dollars or torpedo my business.

Re: June 2023 Data Dump is missing

#125

Post by tedivm »

jethro_tell wrote: post #100
tedivm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you run your own email server and you get put onto Google's spam list - you're fucked. It's even worse than that- I ran my own email server, and for some reason gmail delayed any emails from their system to outside of their system. That meant that people would send me an email but I wouldn't get it for 20 minutes. These delays don't exist when using big email providers (it stopped being a problem when I switched…

Sounds like you need to allowlist google from your grey list. They have a long retry on their side. Once you tell a server to 'go away, come back later' it is really up to the server to decide when or if to retry. Additionally, If they use multiple sending IPs, you can end up grey listing again and again before they try back with a good ip. You'd either need to allowlist the big providers sending blocks or just drop…

I completely disabled greylisting to try and resolve that, but it is another good point on why gmail kind of sucks for people not on gmail.

Re: June 2023 Data Dump is missing

#126

Post by nightfly »

senko wrote: post #8

I only hope this and the Reddit slowmo-trainwreck-in-progress sensitivise more people about the value of the data they contribute and how it is appropriated by the platforms.

Each contribution, and most individual contributer, is worthless though. They only have value in aggregate.

Re: June 2023 Data Dump is missing

#127

Post by [deleted] »

lumb63 wrote: post #16

This, along with recent Reddit goings-on has made me realize a major risk with the current structure of online communication. Take either Reddit or Stack Exchange as examples. They build a platform, and users contribute their time, thought, energy, and knowledge to build a community on that platform. Those companies can then gatekeep and restrict access to all that the community built, when all they did is provide th…

[deleted]

Re: June 2023 Data Dump is missing

#128

Post by jodrellblank »

lumb63 wrote: post #16

This, along with recent Reddit goings-on has made me realize a major risk with the current structure of online communication. Take either Reddit or Stack Exchange as examples. They build a platform, and users contribute their time, thought, energy, and knowledge to build a community on that platform. Those companies can then gatekeep and restrict access to all that the community built, when all they did is provide th…

The problem is information hoarding. If you imagine going to a pub meeting people regularly, and the pub records everything you ever said, and then one day the pub owner says they're going to charge you for the recordings, you'd laugh. Nobody would pay. If they tried to charge you to enter, you'd go to another pub, you wouldn't lament the "loss of your culture".

In fact, people don't record what they talk about in pubs because the point is the chat experience not the records of previous chats. Data isn't oil and it isn't quite sewage, it's more like quicksand or thickets of weeds growing and tangling around your feet. Like minimalists say 'stuff is bad' but stuff is useful, it's having stuff hidden in cupboards and drawers and a garage full of stuff and wanting a bigger house to hold more stuff and most of the stuff going unused because you can't bring yourself to let go of it, and companies advertising that more and newer stuff will make your life better and solve your problems, which is the biggest problem with stuff. Sufficientism might be a more appropriate name - enough stuff to make your life better and no more.

Enough chat to make your life better isn't "all of it kept forever".

Re: June 2023 Data Dump is missing

#129

Post by ethanbond »

danShumway wrote: post #105
ethanbond wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? The takeaway isn’t rather that rent-seeking AI models need to figure out a way to reimburse companies and communities who’ve stored up all this capital? Seems to me SO built and delivered huge, huge amounts of value and it’s now all at risk because multibillion dollar companies are free riding.

Users on SO created value and freely shared it with a community in expectation that the value they created would be freely and collectively shared with everyone. In SO's case this expectation was explicit; the data backup and API was billed as a deliberate choice designed to give users the freedom to migrate and scrape data in case the company went "evil." It was designed specifically to reduce SO's ownership claim o…

Thank you for the really thoughtful response!

Good point that rent-seeking is maybe not the correct term now, but it looks increasingly like services will have to lock down content or shut down due to AI models frontrunning them with their own content. In that world, the AI models are in a great rent-seeking position (i.e. only they have the [old] content which was broadly available and now is not, due to their own incentive distortion).

In any case I buy your argument with regard to SO stewardship of this data and certainly my intuitions were that the major contributors are not super thrilled about their content being digested by models and spit out with no attribution, but that is absolutely an assumption on my part.

Would be interested to see a poll of those users on this question!

Re: June 2023 Data Dump is missing

#130

Post by theragra »

b3morales wrote: post #78
lumb63 wrote: post #16

This, along with recent Reddit goings-on has made me realize a major risk with the current structure of online communication. Take either Reddit or Stack Exchange as examples. They build a platform, and users contribute their time, thought, energy, and knowledge to build a community on that platform. Those companies can then gatekeep and restrict access to all that the community built, when all they did is provide th…

This was one of the promises originally of Stack Overflow: all the content is Creative Commons licensed so that if they "turned evil" (I believe it was Joel that put it this way) the community could, in a way, create a fork. https://web.archive.org/web/20230203170609/https://stackover... Unfortunately the dumps themselves are not a legal requirement, just a gentleman's agreement, so realistically exercising this abil…

I always wonder why original founders just sell the company and do something else. Why don't they try to control it more and make sure it stays aligned with needs of society more? Either they can't because of shareholder/equity owners pressure, or they won't, because they really don't care and just said it for PR
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