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APIs for content sites must be free

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Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#81

Post by malfist »

beders wrote: post #47

It's stunning to me how little people like the author of this piece know about the economics of running large scale sites like reddit or twitter. Nothing is free, including providing and maintaining APIs. Someone's gotta pay for the ramen, especially if you can't run ads.

If you read the article and not just the headline, the author is in favor of charging a cost based fee for API access. A fee that would cover hosting and serving the API, but not generate profit for the parent company benefiting from the 3P users' content.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#82

Post by rcoveson »

zoogeny wrote: post #56
TheCoreh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Based on this man's logic, if I were to run a web forum then I must provide an API or data dump to download the posts created by the users? How about a comment section on my blog? How about a community Discord server? Why not Facebook posts? Or Instagram stories? Yes? I don't think it's a very radical, unreasonable or difficult thing to provide: this is available as a first class feature on most blogging/forum soft…

> users are also free to leave, complain, or demand that they don't change Yes, I have no issue with all of those. I'm poking fun at taking that desire for action from a single company in a single instance and extending it to a universal moral principle. My own opinion is that Reddit users were getting something valuable for free and it is being taken away from them. In addition to the totally reasonable protests tha…

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 advertising (sidebar subreddit ads). Just don't hire many people, don't take VC money, and lean on your community for moderation (which is perfectly morally acceptable for a non-profit entity).

It's not freeloading, it's just a bunch of people dedicating so much time and attention to communicating with each other that the server costs are dwarfed by the value of the platform to its users.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#84

Post by jmull »

zoogeny wrote: post #13

I like vehement arguments even when I disagree with them. Based on this man's logic, if I were to run a web forum then I must provide an API or data dump to download the posts created by the users? How about a comment section on my blog? How about a community Discord server? Why not Facebook posts? Or Instagram stories? I often get the feeling that in these circumstances people derive first principles from specific d…

I think a lot of the people who contribute to reddit and other sites -- whose content collectively provides a great deal of value to those sites -- want fair access to their content.

I think that's a good first principle.

I also think "APIs for content sites must be free" is a pretty good attempt to derive a rule from the principle of fairness. So hardly an invented moral axiom, as you put it.

Also, claiming a reinvention of history is unfair, since, until now, everyone has been contributing to reddit in a context where API access was free. That's the history. It's not the history that's changed, it's Reddits API access policy.

Anyway, it's 100% fine and good that people decide under what circumstances they ought to be willing to invest their time and effort in a social media site. Setting some common principles, like this one, is just a good way to communicate that to the purveyors of social media sites.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#85

Post by jmyeet »

The problem here is capitalism. You can fight it with high-minded ideals like free API access but that’s really just polishing the brass on the Titanic.

UGC sites need to be collectively owned by those who create the value or, in the very least, held in a nonprofit like Wikipedia is.

Without such guardrails there will be constant pressure to extract more and more value from the users who create the value.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#87

Post by derefr »

dvt wrote: post #68
derefr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking of a legal contract. A social contract is what two sides do in practice in order to not piss the other off.

I know exactly what a social contract is, and it's always superseded by a legal contract (which the ToS sort-of is, though it would have to go through the courts if challenged). Given that the ToS explicitly says that Reddit et al. can do whatever they want with your data, the idea that there's a social contract there is wishful thinking.

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 benefits they were granting the other, and instead revert to whatever it perceives as the game-theoretic global optimum — usually involving local indefinite defection, to "make an example of" the party that violated the social contract.

A ceasefire during a battle is an example of a social contract. Neither side shoots until the other does. Once someone shoots, the other side responds with everything they have, to make an example of the side that shot first.

Not eating your coworkers' food in the office fridge is another example of a social contract. Once someone violates it, people either stop putting food in the fridge, or start petty games of bringing random leftovers dosed with ex-lax to work and leaving them in the fridge.

A social contract isn't "superseded by a legal contract"; a social contract is relied upon in preference to a legal contract. The legal system only applies when a given social contract is broken and dissolved by one party breaching it, thus leaving no recourse other than the underlying legal reality.

The social contract for Reddit, that did exist until it was breached, was "Reddit lets people consume its data for free; and in exchange, users act to curate and maintain and grow the data, rather than actively polluting/destroying/lessening the data." Now that that social contract is dissolved, users are doing everything they can to make Reddit a shithole.

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#88

Post by paxys »

dcow wrote: post #12

The most accurate/charitable interpretation of the content, despite the abysmal title, would be: If users provide content for free, then a platform must allow users to consume that content freely , as in "as they wish", not "for free". The author supposes that this is a fundamental social contract between users and platforms that needs to exist for platforms to work well. The author does not cite any evidence or exam…

> as in "as they wish", not "for free".

What's the distinction between the two? If the site is monetized via ads then providing the content ad-free (via an API or otherwise) automatically makes it "for free".

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#89

Post by Ekaros »

I just consider anything I post on Internet like this comment to be donation to who ever hosts it... They can do anything they want with it, and take all the responsibility of things like hosting or safe keeping...

Re: APIs for content sites must be free

#90

Post by davorak »

dvt wrote: post #68
derefr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking of a legal contract. A social contract is what two sides do in practice in order to not piss the other off.

I know exactly what a social contract is, and it's always superseded by a legal contract (which the ToS sort-of is, though it would have to go through the courts if challenged). Given that the ToS explicitly says that Reddit et al. can do whatever they want with your data, the idea that there's a social contract there is wishful thinking.

> I know exactly what a social contract is, and it's always superseded by a legal contract

Legally sure, it is also legal to be a jerk but in most circles/societies there is social contract to not be. Social contracts are often built on top of legal contracts where you live by the social contract and fall back on the legal protections of the legal contract where that fails. Most ToSs and contracts with social media companies are one sided though so for the average user there is not much to fall back on.

I think why people use social contracts on top of legal ones is because it is hard to get all of the details right in a legal document while in a social contract is normally more flexible and can change through time with iterative back and forth and therefore can make both sides better off compared to if they just stuck with the legal framework.

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