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APIs for content sites must be free

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Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#161

Post by vinnymac »

clnq wrote: post #126
PaulHoule wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? The average discussion on Reddit/StackOverflow/etc is full of wrong answers and it is hit or miss if the "accepted" answer is correct, never mind any of the other ones. These sites are a great model for convincing bullshit but if you wanted something worth training an A.I. you'd need to filter out 90% of the content.

Sadly very true. Most threads are very comparable to ChatGPT 3.5. I think one could recreate Reddit mostly with a LLM.

Yea, the future of public discussions online is interesting to consider. LLM bots are already a thing, comments posted here could be from a bot. We don't have a way to really confirm it, and I am not sure it actually matters (yet).

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#162

Post by rcoveson »

zoogeny wrote: post #135
rcoveson wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting something valuable for free sounds weird in the physical world but it's not weird at all in the information world, where costs can diffuse so thinly that many users never even see them. I see no reason why a non-profit reddit couldn't be free if they didn't try to host video or images (links and comments only). Server costs could absolutely be covered by donations (like "reddit gold") and intra-site advertisi…

> I see no reason why a non-profit reddit couldn't be free "could be free" and "must be free" are such a moving of the goal posts that it is impossible to argue against. I mean, you didn't even go through "should be free" on your way.

I wasn't really trying to move somebody else's goalpost, but here's an attempt to bridge the gap anyway, at least as far as "should be free" ("must be free" follows if you're sufficiently authoritarian/utilitarian, otherwise it doesn't /shrug):

Network effects tend to pick extreme winners and losers. From most user's perspectives, there isn't much of a choice. I have an iPhone for a totally stupid reason: My family's chat is an iMessage group and they coordinate photo albums with Apple's shared albums thing. I use reddit for literally no reason at all except that other people use it.

I assert that it would be better for me and most to use an equivalent networking facility maintained by a non-profit entity, and that if there were some kind of cross-site replication such that you really could choose which option to use, a very large number of people would pick the option that didn't present inline or otherwise invasive advertisements, and (indirectly) the option that had free API access, via something like Apollo (software that's simply built better than its competitor on its OS).

So not only do I believe non-profit-reddit (hey, that's "NPR", complete with donation drives) could exist, I believe it would be better for its users and so it should exist. But I also believe it can't really exist as long as somebody is throwing a bunch of (indebted) money into winning the network effects war. So I believe that for-maximum-profit-reddit should not exist.

But I admit the belief feels empty since I'm not authoritarian enough to take it all the way to "reddit must not exist". So I'm just sad instead.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#164

Post by Pet_Ant »

simonw wrote: post #53

I've found myself resisting posting comments on Reddit recently - things like answers to simple questions people have about SQLite - partly because I don't want to cross the picket line but also because I realize that I was relying on a very light social contract that was in place there: I would share my knowledge for free, in exchange for which I knew that I was contributing to a larger dataset that myself and other…

> Why should I work to benefit their service if they're hoarding the resulting data and not making it available to me or people like me in the future?

This I believe is generally called "digital sharecropping" https://www.roughtype.com/?p=634

> What’s being concentrated, in other words, is not content but the economic value of content. MySpace, Facebook, and many other businesses have realized that they can give away the tools of production but maintain ownership over the resulting products. One of the fundamental economic characteristics of Web 2.0 is the distribution of production into the hands of the many and the concentration of the economic rewards into the hands of the few. It’s a sharecropping system, but the sharecroppers are generally happy because their interest lies in self-expression or socializing, not in making money, and, besides, the economic value of each of their individual contributions is trivial. It’s only by aggregating those contributions on a massive scale – on a web scale – that the business becomes lucrative.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#165

Post by vinnymac »

PaulHoule wrote: post #145
randomdata wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was that short period of time where most of the big players (Google, Facebook, etc.) had settled on XMPP and it was all interoperable, to some degree at least. I even remember when Facebook first announced their support thinking "Oh sweet, now I can message all my Facebook friends from my current chat app." And when it launched, I could! But then I realized I didn't really want to. And it wasn't long before sup…

Funny but XMPP has hit it really big for law enforcement and military users. For instance the commander of a squad fills out a form about what engagements they had with the enemy every day and often they fill out a form that gets submitted to XMPP and is sent asynchronously up the chain of command.

I was surprised to see this mentioned.

I was working for a company over a decade ago that saw the military purchase a piece of software from us specifically for its messaging and XMPP based capabilities. We were requested to rewrite chunks of our application just to meet their needs. Makes me wonder if it is still in use somewhere.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#166

Post by simonw »

dylan604 wrote: post #156
simonw wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that most sites won't do that - so I don't invest much of my time and effort in most sites. Reddit had 17 years of track record of providing access, which had eventually bought my trust. They're setting that trust on fire right now.

I stipulate that a 30 day notice for a major change from something that has been available for 17 years is pretty egregious. However, I'm still of the mind that when you build a company/product that 100% depends on a 3rd party existing or allowing one to play in their playground, these are the exact situations that can arise. You have to know that at some point, if the dependency is no longer available, neither is yo…

Sure, and that's why I haven't built a commercial product on top of Reddit.

(I actually did run a startup on top of Twitter's API between 2010-2013 - I'm VERY glad not to have to worry about that any more!)

I'm not talking about this in terms of being an app developer: I'm talking about it in terms of being a regular user posting content on the site.

If you rug-pull my expectations on access to that data in the future, don't be surprised if I find somewhere else to spend my time.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#167

Post by TheCoelacanth »

dvt wrote: post #114
derefr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh... I really don't think you do know what a social contract is. A social contract is a temporary state of affairs, where both sides are benefitting from being able to implicitly hold the other side to it; where either side can freely breach it, but where this dissolves the social contract that held until that moment; and where dissolving the social contract will (obviously) cause the other side to rescind all bene…

> A ceasefire during a battle is an example of a social contract. This is absolutely false. A ceasefire is not a social contract. It's just bizarre to even claim this, as ceasefires are most often enacted in the context of ceasefire.. uh, treaties . > Not eating your coworkers' food in the office fridge is another example of a social contract. This is a better example (though still a very poor one, as we have laws ag…

International law in general is more like a social contract than a legal contract since there is very limited recourse to enforce it against violators other than rounding up a bunch of other countries and getting them to agree to enact a punishment.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#168

Post by zokier »

randomdata wrote: post #138
PaulHoule wrote: post #119

I would frame it as "messaging applications should interoperate". People understand that a T-Mobile customer can send a text to an AT&T customer. They understand that a Samsung owner can call an iPhone owner. Why do they accept that a Slack user can't send a message to a Discord user? Why do they accept that Google has made 11+ different messaging applications that aren't compatible with each other? Why do they accep…

There was that short period of time where most of the big players (Google, Facebook, etc.) had settled on XMPP and it was all interoperable, to some degree at least. I even remember when Facebook first announced their support thinking "Oh sweet, now I can message all my Facebook friends from my current chat app." And when it launched, I could! But then I realized I didn't really want to. And it wasn't long before sup…

While G and FB both used XMPP, I don't think they ever federated

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#170

Post by Andrex »

PaulHoule wrote: post #119

I would frame it as "messaging applications should interoperate". People understand that a T-Mobile customer can send a text to an AT&T customer. They understand that a Samsung owner can call an iPhone owner. Why do they accept that a Slack user can't send a message to a Discord user? Why do they accept that Google has made 11+ different messaging applications that aren't compatible with each other? Why do they accep…

> People understand that a T-Mobile customer can send a text to an AT&T customer. They understand that a Samsung owner can call an iPhone owner.

Meanwhile, every European techie under the sun is still breathlessly shouting "WHATSAPP! WHATSAPP!" in my ear. "Why would any unevolved caveman still use SMS?" etc.

Well, maybe because Meta sucks and I think protocols are better. I think SMS/RCS/etc. based texting will outlast WhatsApp, and anyone in 10-20 years is free to look up my email here and let me know if I'm right.

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