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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

#21

Post by rvz »

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…

> What is the hard thing about building an open, user-friendly Reddit alternative?

This 'alternative' needs to be able to attract and move both new and existing Reddit users, replicating its network effect and retaining them so that they do not go back to Reddit.

> Hosting the content could maybe be done via one of the new decentralized systems like Mastodon, Nostr or Bluesky? Those inherently have open APIs, so it would be easy to build a frontend which aggregates the content into one simple UI.

Before these generative AI systems this was not a problem and free APIs on social networks was fine. Now having free open access APIs on social networks doesn't make that much sense anymore thanks to generative AI.

It just enables these AI systems to easily train on their platforms at little to no cost to accelerate the grifters, scammers, and bots flooding and overloading the social network which also increases the costs of spam, moderation, servers and low quality content. It doesn't scale for humans alone to reduce it once API access is totally free, whether if it is on the largest instances or even with another Reddit alternative.

But anyway...

...AI really is going just great. /s

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

#22

Post by dumpsterlid »

UpToTheSky wrote: post #11
pgwhalen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many reddit clones. The value is completely in the communities and not in the technology. r/all subs like r/pics are completely replaceable, but something like r/personalfinance is an institution that is not easy to replicate elsewhere.

What are some of those Reddit clones? Any of them decentralized, so there is no "one ruler" who can close down the thing in the future?

There are reddit-likes on the fediverse (which means they are using the ActivityPub protocol). The fact that a software like kbin works on ActivityPub means that users on other fediverse software like Mastodon (twitter-like) can interact with posts on kbin. Discussion, interaction and discoverability are thus not limited to just the small community on kbin. https://kbin.social/

Here is a discussion by @feditips@mstdn.social on reddit alternatives on the fediverse. https://mstdn.social/@feditips/110476830253102884

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

#24

Post by marcod »

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…

If the hosting entity is in the US don't forget lawyer fees ....

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

#25

Post by dt3ft »

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.

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

#26

Post by SkyPuncher »

UpToTheSky wrote: post #9
blendergeek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#27

Post by spondylosaurus »

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.

I love this idea, but the content I'm seeing on the front page right now is turning me off from using it. A lot of fringe political content (pandemic trutherism, Bud Lite culture war shit, etc.), which is not my idea of interesting since I can find plenty of that anywhere else.

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

#28

Post by Levitz »

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…

>And instead of replacing them with new single winners like Mastodon, I'm hopeful the new trend will be to spread our activity to multiple sites, and to be a bit less online in general.

I, too, want to be hopeful, but how do you think this can possibly happen?

Metcalfe's law is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law?useskin=vecto...

TLDR: The more people share a method of communication, the more value that method of communication has. Social networks organically evolve towards monopolies.

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

#29

Post by grepfru_it »

rvz wrote: post #21
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…

> What is the hard thing about building an open, user-friendly Reddit alternative? This 'alternative' needs to be able to attract and move both new and existing Reddit users, replicating its network effect and retaining them so that they do not go back to Reddit. > Hosting the content could maybe be done via one of the new decentralized systems like Mastodon, Nostr or Bluesky? Those inherently have open APIs, so it w…

The irony that the technology we once used to combat spam is being used to create spam has not been lost on me

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

#30

Post by Levitz »

Subreddits are literally controlled by volunteers who get paid nothing. What is stopping them from just going out for a month? It ought to be a month of vacation time, right?

You could argue they might lose users, but who cares, Reddit suffers more from loss of users than them anyway.

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