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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

#71

Post by aeturnum »

germinalphrase wrote: post #38
londons_explore wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The days of ... Digg losing to Reddit are over. I disagree. Especially somewhere like reddit where the power lies in a relatively small pool of moderators (ie. a couple of hundred people), who aren't well controlled by Reddit the company. These moderators could, if they organised together, kill the site in a matter of days. And I'm sure reddit-clones have been approaching the moderators with lucrative offers to do…

Surely, Reddit would just remove and replace these moderators at the first taste of real pain. Yes?

A lot of the depends on if you think the moderator role is truly impactful in a meritocratic way where better work is rewarded with higher quality communities and content V.S. a largely rote role which involves correctly implementing the community rule set.

If the former is true, the moderators aren't really "replaceable" in that way. You can fire them, but the output of your product will suffer as a result. In that interpretation the moderators are actually some of the most important customers of Reddit - they produce quality content in return for free hosting and occasional assistance.

If the latter is true then you can just fire them and it doesn't matter...but it kind of seems like no one believes that? If Reddit really thought they could fire them they probably would have just done it? I don't know what the truth is but I think the former interpretation dominates thinking.

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

#72

Post by spondylosaurus »

dt3ft wrote: post #64
spondylosaurus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is merely a tool, guided by the same principle Aaron Swartz implanted into reddit. Freedom of choice, freedom of expression, as long as the laws in the country hosting the servers are upheld. Communities can form and moderate the content as they please, but alternative communities can also form with perhaps less moderation. It is up to the users to make it what they want, not funded by advertizing, but rather with…

Sure, I understand. Just providing feedback as a potential user of such a tool—personally, I'm not super interested in the current community it's attracting, and a hands-off approach to moderation seems like it's unlikely to attract the kind of community that I (or others with tastes similar to mine) would be interested in.

There's a couple neat glimmers on there, like the link about beekeepers, but if I wanted to hear conspiracy theories about Joe Biden or mean remarks about trans people I would just go on Facebook and see what my uncle's been posting lately :P

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

#73

Post by maxbond »

Levitz wrote: post #28
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 valu…

I said this in a sibling comment but it felt responsive to yours, so you summarize, I think what we're finding out is a.) When the marginal cost of joining another network is 0, people will join "lower value" networks and b.) When you have enough people on the platform, the marginal value to the user of adding an additional user becomes negative - when you get to a certain scale, the new people joining are less likely to bring you additional conversation then additional trolling and harassment.

Anecdotally, HN is at a sweet spot for me. It's large enough that I'm just a person in the crowd (which I value), but it's small enough and the interaction is limited enough that I don't feel I'm likely to receive persistent, ongoing harassment. (I catch plenty of trolling, but it never feels personal really, I don't think they'll recognize me in the next thread we bump into each other.)

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

#74

Post by 58x14 »

awesome_dude wrote: post #42

The API arguments are interesting from another point of view - who really owns the content generated on a site like Reddit, Twitter, or Hacker News. Once I send this post out, do I own it? Can I claim some sort of compensation for my comment being used in an AI training set? Does HN (or whichever site I post the comment on) own the comment, and therefore should be compensated for the comment's use in said training se…

Depending on the Terms of Service flavor your platform of choice serves you, it’s generally that you own the content you post, but grant an infinite, irrevocable license to use that content for just about any reason, including as an entry in a dataset sold to a separate entity for use training a large language model.

I think this is a really important question worth answering by future UGC-based platform incumbents.

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

#75

Post by hfkwer »

bezier-curve wrote: post #49
tomatotomato37 wrote: post #45

I'm curious how the logistics of this strike are going to happen. With the old reddit themes you could just put a black everything over with squares in CSS but the new themes are so uncustomizable (especially in the app) that your average mass consumer may not even notice. In addition, anti-spam/anti-bandwagoning measures may be leveraged by reddit to censor protestors in the subreddits, along with banning of "malici…

Mods can set the subreddit to private.

And reddit staff can reverse that immediately. I'd be amazed if they didn't prevent huge subreddits from going private altogether without someone from the staff giving the go ahead.

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

#76

Post by MrStonedOne »

ninth_ant wrote: post #52

Can someone explain why this is such a big deal to some people? I legitimately don’t understand why this matters. Third party clients seem to be fairly niche with limited usage, I’m not sure why inexpensive access to an API is a required right for forum software. I don’t expect this to affect my usage of Reddit at all, and wondering who and what it does affect aside from a small number of third party client users. To…

[dead]

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

#77

Post by xtracto »

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…

We need to go back to build open protocols. Protocols instead of programs. And then let Open Source and companies build the programs.

That was a fight we had "won" on the days of MP3 (very painful), SMTP, MKV, among others during the 80s and 90s. The fact that people are now more willing to go back to install "real software" (in the form of phone applications) instead of web apps is an opportunity.

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

#78

Post by viraptor »

tantalor wrote: post #36
marcod wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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)

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

#79

Post by zamalek »

londons_explore wrote: post #34
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…

> The days of ... Digg losing to Reddit are over. I disagree. Especially somewhere like reddit where the power lies in a relatively small pool of moderators (ie. a couple of hundred people), who aren't well controlled by Reddit the company. These moderators could, if they organised together, kill the site in a matter of days. And I'm sure reddit-clones have been approaching the moderators with lucrative offers to do…

Facebook, Instagram, etc. have shown that users are willing to put up with an absurd amount of bullshit and bad apps. While Reddit may lose the crowd who are aware of this whole issue, those users are likely the tip of an iceberg of "I just want to see ~~titties~~ kitties."

Reddit isn't a cozy corner of internet subculture anymore. It was instrumental in getting the orange buffoon elected, for crying out loud.

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

#80

Post by derekp7 »

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…

Here's an idea -- there is already a sizeable number of users that get to Reddit via third party apps. Would it be feasible for a would-be Reddit alternative to form by having all the third-party apps switch over to the new platform overnight (as soon as their API access to Reddit is cut off)? That would get you a large enough user base to bootstrap.
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