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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

#141

Post by fluidcruft »

dom96 wrote: post #122

I've been following this since it erupted and am currently developing something that I hope will either enable the Reddit community to transition to a new home or force Reddit to abandon its paid API plans. The first step in my plan is to implement a read-only API proxy which does not use Reddit.com's API but instead scrapes the necessary data. This should cover 80% of the API traffic, if it works then third-party ap…

Doesn't reddit's website use an API? It's new.reddit.com seems like some single page app bullshit, right?

The real problem you will run into though is that Reddit will restrict what you can access without login. They already tried to flip the switch once on requiring login to access NSFW content, and had to backtrack at least temporarily. I'm not exactly sure why they had to, but supposedly they have now added some missing feature to their web version that allows upload of NSFW content on desktop, so maybe they're ready to unpause. And the official API will block NSFW so I think that's returning. And once you login, scraping will earn a ban. Reddit is also very over zealous with IP bans.

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

#142

Post by stevenwliao »

rekoil wrote: post #126
sangnoir wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think the people this change will hurt are in large part fine with paying a reasonable sum for API access. I have no idea what reddit would consider a reasonable number (if they actually tried), but for me it's probably in the $1-5/month range. That's full API access of course, not the limited API they've had which doesn't allow e.g. vote interaction, nor an API without NSFW content like they are proposing now with…

Reddit charges $7/mo for Reddit Premium. I assume it's worth at least that much to Reddit.

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

#143

Post by dom96 »

fluidcruft wrote: post #141
dom96 wrote: post #122

I've been following this since it erupted and am currently developing something that I hope will either enable the Reddit community to transition to a new home or force Reddit to abandon its paid API plans. The first step in my plan is to implement a read-only API proxy which does not use Reddit.com's API but instead scrapes the necessary data. This should cover 80% of the API traffic, if it works then third-party ap…

Doesn't reddit's website use an API? It's new.reddit.com seems like some single page app bullshit, right? The real problem you will run into though is that Reddit will restrict what you can access without login. They already tried to flip the switch once on requiring login to access NSFW content, and had to backtrack at least temporarily. I'm not exactly sure why they had to, but supposedly they have now added some m…

It's actually interesting how they do it. The new and old Reddit seems surprisingly similar in how they handle at least the initial page loads.

> And once you login, scraping will earn a ban. Reddit is also very over zealous with IP bans.

Argh, that would suck. Not as bad as losing my Twitter but still. That said, they explicitly say in their API docs "We're happy to have API clients, crawlers, scrapers, and browser extensions". So at one point in time they were happy to allow scrapers.

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

#144

Post by sterlind »

tiedieconderoga wrote: post #14
UpToTheSky wrote: post #2

What is the hard thing about building an open, user-friendly Reddit alternative? Hosting the posts shouldn't be that hard. Storage is so cheap these days. Is it the legal aspects of handling user generated content? Ranking the posts is another issue. Is that where the value of Reddit lies? Maybe one could build some hybrid thing which capitalizes on existing structures? I could imagine a frontend which only shows pos…

Three big issues off the top of my head: * Hosting costs. Reddit was very lucky to have imgur pick up a lot of its bandwidth in its early days, but free image/video hosting sites are cyclical: absent a benevolent billionaire, the costs will rise with popularity, and the site will eventually need a source of revenue, which will introduce friction and start its inevitable decline in popularity. * Moderation. Always a h…

> Most Reddit spin-offs of the past several years have been focused on minimizing moderation, which ends up attracting people who tend to get banned from other places before the site gets a chance to form its own identity and pick up steam.

Mastodon is a good example and counterexample of this trend. Gab was the biggest Mastodon instance, largely populated by the kinds of people pre-Musk Twitter banned or limited (and their followers.)

But the second (post-Musk) wave wasn't people who got banned, it was people leaving because they didn't like Musk and/or his changes to Twitter. And Reddit's own userbase came from Digg in much the same way.

Imagine if Mastodon had been easy to migrate to, Twitter would have collapsed like a popped balloon.

Reddit has a natural administrative/scalability partition boundary though, which makes federation much easier. I think a federated reddit would work better than Mastodon has.

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

#145

Post by somsak2 »

NikkiA wrote: post #133
optimalsolver wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit can replace the mods at any time, if necessary with their own staff until they get volunteers.

That only works for the top few dozen subreddits, the ones that were once 'default' subreddits, they can't afford to pay people to sit and moderate the other hundred thousand subreddits all day long.

They probably don't care about that long tail. While valuable to individual users, I'm sure their business is an 80-20 like any other. For monetization, they just need to make sure the default subreddits stay moderated. Which they can with hired guns if required. This is how every other social network works after all.

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

#146

Post by thefourthchime »

blendergeek wrote: post #5
UpToTheSky wrote: post #2

What is the hard thing about building an open, user-friendly Reddit alternative? Hosting the posts shouldn't be that hard. Storage is so cheap these days. Is it the legal aspects of handling user generated content? Ranking the posts is another issue. Is that where the value of Reddit lies? Maybe one could build some hybrid thing which capitalizes on existing structures? I could imagine a frontend which only shows pos…

The hardest part is going to be the community itself. Reddit (the board and shareholders) are betting that the community is too large to migrate to a better alternative.

The internet is still young, but full of once successful than failed social media sites. Myspace, digg, Friendster, Orkut, Google+, Vine, LiveJournal, etc..

I promise you, Reddit won't be around in 50 years. And it may not be much in 5 the way they're disrespecting their core audience.

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

#147

Post by GenericDev »

I wish they would just let Reddit die.

I hate it so much. I'm tired of ecosystems.

We need to get away from content farms. Get away from shitty monetization driven efforts. Get away from shitty people moderating communities without giving members any locus of control.

Bring back the 90s web. Bring back personal websites. Bring back people sharing their own content on their own terms.

God I hope Reddit sticks to this API nonsense and kills themselves in the process.

Part of me wants this to happen to Hacker News too. This community sucks, but for different reasons.

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

#148

Post by shrimp_emoji »

GenericDev wrote: post #147

I wish they would just let Reddit die. I hate it so much. I'm tired of ecosystems. We need to get away from content farms. Get away from shitty monetization driven efforts. Get away from shitty people moderating communities without giving members any locus of control. Bring back the 90s web. Bring back personal websites. Bring back people sharing their own content on their own terms. God I hope Reddit sticks to this…

Decentralized platforms with no shitty middlemen fiduciarially responsible to shareholders to exploit you even harder next quarter? Where's the $$$$$ in that?!

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

#149

Post by tester457 »

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)

> this holds in general

Way too complex to navigate that minefield, lawyer fees will be a big hit on the budget of any reddit challenger.

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

#150

Post by urda »

GenericDev wrote: post #147

I wish they would just let Reddit die. I hate it so much. I'm tired of ecosystems. We need to get away from content farms. Get away from shitty monetization driven efforts. Get away from shitty people moderating communities without giving members any locus of control. Bring back the 90s web. Bring back personal websites. Bring back people sharing their own content on their own terms. God I hope Reddit sticks to this…

Today's reddit mods are the same as Digg's power user's back in the day. It's an open secret that a few dozen or so individuals control the top 100 or so subreddits, and calling that fact out is often met with site wide bans.

Reddit died a long time ago, and it's time we let it go.

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