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An impersonator issued a fake Reddit take down notice against SaveVideo

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Re: An impersonator issued a fake Reddit take down notice against SaveVideo

#131

Post by SquareWheel »

hn8788 wrote: post #126
SquareWheel wrote: post #117

That's good to see, and I hope reddit starts taking action on more of these bots. There's no good way to filter them out and they make the comments section such a chore to read through. This bot in particular generates thousands of spam comments. Any popular thread with a video will be filled with requests to download that video. It's even worse than the RemindMe bot. People are too lazy to use an external tool, or e…

You can use RES and ignore the bots, then you'll never see them. If you don't want to use RES, you could always just block them through reddit and get the same effect. It's not hard.

There's hundreds of bots, and thousands of users who trigger them. You can't possibly block everyone typing /u/SaveVideo, or responding "Good bot/Bad bot" in the comments.

Reddit's tools are not up to the task.

Re: An impersonator issued a fake Reddit take down notice against SaveVideo

#133

Post by skinnymuch »

piva00 wrote: post #82
nicbou wrote: post #3

When a company grows large enough, the APIs and user-generated tools that propelled its growth get treated like a threat. They tend to vertically integrate and keep anyone from using their data.

Exactly, Twitter went through the same process, locking down its API, introducing usage quotas and getting increasingly more hostile towards Twitter clients that circumvented the ad-serving side of it. I remember it was a shitshow at the time, probably around 2012, I worked for a company that was leveraging Twitter's API for a product and we got quite nervous about the hostility.

Yeah. Facebook locking down their stuff earlier than that and then again when they had the perfect excuse because of HN and the media’s relentless attacking of FB for Cambridge Analytica, were both huge blows to any remaining optimism I had. The latter is even worse because Facebook limited their data and APIs which made the app worse...by doing exactly what people on HN and similar places perportedly wanted. There’s no winning.

The Twitter fiasco was indeed a shit show. I remember being on HN once a week or so during that time but was on daily for a few weeks during that time.

I believe the alternative Twitter app for $50/year came out around that time as well before failing.

Re: An impersonator issued a fake Reddit take down notice against SaveVideo

#134

Post by neutronicus »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #109
kevincox wrote: post #90

Once upon a time Reddit was a link aggregator. You would post a link and the author would get credit. You could save the link without Reddit. But Reddit is moving towards first party content. Not only has the site added native photo and video upload support but many communities disallow external content. Requiring a reupload or a screenshot. This not only removes the link to the actual creator but is also a nightmare…

> I wonder why sharing of links is so unpopular It’s because the most active parts of Reddit’s user base prefer it this way. Reddit has become about rapid-fire content consumption without leaving the site. Following a link and actually reading an article for 5-10 minutes isn’t as exciting as rapidly consuming a few videos, a few screenshots, and a few self posts along with the top comments for the most interesting on…

Yeah, my wife scrolls /r/all, expands posts (some of them text posts), and closes them, possibly clicking into the comments to discuss.

If, at any point, she accidentally follows a link, it really pisses her off

It's nice to have videos, images, and short articles in a familiar layout

I know I'm much more likely to click a recipe link if it's a self-post, because recipes on non-reddit websites always seem to be gated behind multiple auto playing videos and the author's entire life story

Re: An impersonator issued a fake Reddit take down notice against SaveVideo

#135

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

criley2 wrote: post #107
atrus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if I'm looking for a time waster, I'll start on Reddit, just by habit. Then I'll go to TikTok when I see the first one on Reddit. It doesn't take very long anymore these days. I remember people on Reddit making fun of facebook saying everything on there was on Reddit 3 days ago. The tables have turned since then.

I mean, Twitter out-did Reddit on that by 2012. Everything on Facebook and Reddit is just screenshots of Tweets.

yes pretty much.

Re: An impersonator issued a fake Reddit take down notice against SaveVideo

#136

Post by crtasm »

hn8788 wrote: post #126
SquareWheel wrote: post #117

That's good to see, and I hope reddit starts taking action on more of these bots. There's no good way to filter them out and they make the comments section such a chore to read through. This bot in particular generates thousands of spam comments. Any popular thread with a video will be filled with requests to download that video. It's even worse than the RemindMe bot. People are too lazy to use an external tool, or e…

You can use RES and ignore the bots, then you'll never see them. If you don't want to use RES, you could always just block them through reddit and get the same effect. It's not hard.

Can RES change comment counts? E.g. I see "post title, 1 comment", click to see what someone said but it's a bot. Blocking (ignoring?) the bot on reddit doesn't change the "1 comment" part.

Re: An impersonator issued a fake Reddit take down notice against SaveVideo

#137

Post by _archon_ »

willis936 wrote: post #105

Friendly reminder that old.reddit.com is still up. I deleted the app this morning. Maybe old.reddit.com will be a nicotine patch.

While old. is an improvement, mobile accessibility is horrendous by design. It increasingly seems like the site has entered a profit-driven tailspin.

Re: An impersonator issued a fake Reddit take down notice against SaveVideo

#138

Post by rolandog »

willis936 wrote: post #93
kevincox wrote: post #90

Once upon a time Reddit was a link aggregator. You would post a link and the author would get credit. You could save the link without Reddit. But Reddit is moving towards first party content. Not only has the site added native photo and video upload support but many communities disallow external content. Requiring a reupload or a screenshot. This not only removes the link to the actual creator but is also a nightmare…

In the case of person-to-person: links decay but screenshots do not. A screenshot is a record that I know doesn't have any trackers and won't one day disappear. It's the information that I want to send and nothing more.

> It's the information that I want to send and nothing more.

In some cases, it is...

But I think, most times, it's the equivalent of getting something you ordered online, encased in a large blob of jello.

You can look at it, but everyone is going to have a hard time interacting with it.

Re: An impersonator issued a fake Reddit take down notice against SaveVideo

#139

Post by toomuchtodo »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #86

Pretty simple explanation, they let the clearly copyright infringing content in to their walled-garden under safe harbour protections, but allowing download is contributory infringement with distribution and there's no hiding from that as they can clearly easily prevent it (as they have). Super hypocritical? Sure. Understandable? Also a yes.

Apollo, one of the best mobile clients for Reddit (highlighted by Apple in the App Store), allows direct download of media from Reddit.

If Reddit forces this, I assume browser extensions are the next step that they can’t mitigate. If the browser needs to play it, it can be ripped.

Re: An impersonator issued a fake Reddit take down notice against SaveVideo

#140

Post by handoflixue »

SquareWheel wrote: post #117

That's good to see, and I hope reddit starts taking action on more of these bots. There's no good way to filter them out and they make the comments section such a chore to read through. This bot in particular generates thousands of spam comments. Any popular thread with a video will be filled with requests to download that video. It's even worse than the RemindMe bot. People are too lazy to use an external tool, or e…

To me, the whole point of a download is that I can preserve access. There's not a "download" link on video posts - "save" just bookmarks it to your internal Reddit bookmarks. If the post gets deleted, you still lose access.

Given that context, I think it's pretty neat that new functionality can be introduced to the site via bots. Unlike a browser extension, this automatically works on Firefox, Chrome, IE, and Edge with no extra development time; and it's significantly more discoverable since you'll see the comments.

If you don't like the feature, you can block that bot with a button click and never see that particular bot again. I use Reddit regularly and block maybe one bot a month?

I'm not a big fan of the grammar bots and such, but "save video" and "remind me" seem like genuinely useful features.

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