Lets see how things work after the 30th...
They can stick their api up their ass, i want them to burn.
this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2023
50 points (100.0% liked)
Reddit Migration
458 readers
1 users here now
### About Community Tracking and helping #redditmigration to Kbin and the Fediverse. Say hello to the decentralized and open future. To see latest reeddit blackout info, see here: https://reddark.untone.uk/
founded 1 year ago
They can stick their api up their ass, i want them to burn.
That's my position too now. Until a week ago or so, I was holding out hope that reddit would change course and work something out with the app developers, now I hope reddit burns and turns into a complete shit heap.
Thanks to /u/Spez for opening his mouth, and to the admins for how they "handled" the protests.
This is exactly my thought process. They chose every wrong way to handle this possible. I was there almost a decade, but now I'm trying to find my new "home." There's no going back anymore.
I want to raze it to the ground - preferable during the IPO. The shares of spez shall be no more worth then toilet paper.
That will be the true test.
Basically the protests are still working. Even the John Oliver ones - reddit has to pay expenses to handle the traffic but are getting fewer revenue in response.
Keep up the good work people!
However: Getting through with their API changes will earn them more money/reduce costs in the long run, so it will return profitable for them anyway.
Nobody is paying for their api... And reducing cost? How? People will either leave or use scrapers/RSS to get their stuff idk how thats going to work out... Also reddit app has 3.stars on Google play most people will not download a tree stars app to begin with.
There are apps going to pay, also providing an API has been cost intensive for Reddit. It’s not as simple as you make it seem I‘m afraid.
What apps? I haven't seen a single one.
And no, providing an api reduces load on the server because otherwise people use scrapers... Wich happened before. You just believe what reddit is shiting out.
I don‘t like your tone so I‘ll refrain from further participation in this discussion. Bye
How fragile are you? I said you believe reddits shit talk and you see it as personal offense? Are you paid by them or something?
There's nothing wrong with their tone. Seems like you just don't like being questioned about your empirical claims that you've provided no supporting evidence for.
None afaik. Only one I heard about that was going to give it a go was Relay but in the end it doesn’t matter.
The dev tried so hard but couldn’t make it work.
From what i gathered one, yes, one single dev wanted to sign up for it... But reddit just straight up ghosted them. (it was part of the ama)
load more comments
(3 replies)
I don’t think any apps are going to be able to afford to pay. They purposefully priced it too high to be viable. At the start there was a few who seemed to tentatively say they’d look in to it, but every app I’ve seen now has done the math a realized there’s just no way.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Can you actually backup that "There are apps going to pay"? Because I've seen users say they'd pay, but no apps say the same.
And lol, if you think the API is cost intensive, you don't understand the costs inherent to alternatives to an API. It's much more cost efficient to provide an API that you can effectively limit and use minimal resources to respond to a query vs web scraping which is objectively more resource intensive (with the webpage overhead the API doesn't have) and doesn't have nearly as good rate limiting or the protections an API has.
I think Infinity is going to pay if someone subscribes. The description in the Play Store is:
Starting from July 1st, Reddit API will be pay-per-use for 3rd-party clients.
In order to survive this change, Infinity will become a subscription-only app after July 1st. Learn more: https://www.reddit.com/r/Infinity_For_Reddit/comments/147bhsg/the_future_of_infinity
It's required for you to update Infinity after July 1st. None of the previous versions (including this one) will work after July 1st. Due to a tight timeline, the update may not be available immediately on July 1st.
load more comments
(9 replies)
Which app developers have indicated they will pay the demanded rates?
load more comments
(1 replies)
There's no cost effective way for someone to make a useful app and pay the API costs. It's only possibly feasible to enterprises for LLM training. It's like Twitter's API cost. There's simply no cost effective business model for a publicly released app.
One of the reasons they are doing this is because of the large language models being implemented. These companies are using Reddit to train the models. The reason is because of the voting on replies. Where else can you get millions of questions being answered with actual humans saying how good a response is?
The big boys in the current AI space will definitely pay for the API. They'll likely pay a lot for it as well.
Why pay the bloated and gouging costs for API access when you can just write a web parser and scrape the site the old fashioned way?
Scrapers can easily be disabled. Reddit won't look the same obviously. But this isn't a real obstacle.
then the scrapers start using residential proxy botnets
Then you just force them to change the syntax repeatedly and scraping will break with regular occurrence. Scraping is extremely fragile and not easily adaptable without human effort which costs money.
There is no reason other apps need to be swept up in the same cost structure as LLM enterprises.
Exactly, the LLM excuse is just that, an excuse to purge 3rd party apps and push ads/get user data that is otherwise unavailable to them.
They may not need to. Already trained, already got the data that they need. Going forward they can just continue training with the input from
The users (all the folks talking to ChatGPT directly for example).
So is the traffic useful traffic, or is it people lurking on 3rd party apps while those work, commenting about alternatives and popping over to crosspost Reddit's stuff?
This notes a chunk of the increase is the protest posts. What does interaction look like when you take away those and all the bots? Did they make a few more to make up the loss of several hundred thousands of their most invested users? Because bots can't click ads.
I know nobody new is going to join reddit after seeing the headlines and, having joined, the progressively shitty atmosphere makes them less likely to stay
increase is the protest posts
Posts are posts, clicks are clicks, all grist for the mill. From the article:
"traffic is up in subreddits expressing their discontent with photos of Oliver. Traffic to r/pics, for example, is up 564% compared with last month, while traffic to r/Aww is up 152%"
The question now becomes, what does traffic look like once everyone is burned out on Johnny O?
once everyone is burned out on Johnny O?
Dunno, but doubt users currently posting & clicking maymays of the now will get bored & come up with a new forms of 'protest' (which, you guessed it, will also involve posting, scrooling & clicking on reddit).
There's probably some number of those users that 'll stop posting in a week when their apps stop working. I can only speak for me, but I probably won't be bored of Mr. Oliver yet will definitely stop contributing to traffic.
load more comments
(3 replies)
It seems like the exact breakdown isn’t known but certainly without the protest traffic the traffic would be down by a significant chunk still.
Ad-buying traffic is roughly half of what it was pre-blackout? That's huge, and IMO should have been in the article's headline.
Let’s understand that Reddit has spent over a decade enjoying its status as a world-leading platform while kicking the ‘we’ll figure out how to monetize later’ can down the road. Along the way, some important social questions have arrived and Reddit is still failing to show leadership in this matter. Let me explain:
Those that say Reddit ‘will continue on’ aren’t looking at the situation through the lens of history. At its core, ‘Reddit is a rare social product that has seemed to become more relevant over time, as a growing user base comes to appreciate its distinctive, human-centered approach to digital conversations.’ A digital third place, built on mutually-shared beliefs and principals of digital altruism – Reddit existed to Give People Voices – aiming to create a safe space for all viewpoints.
So that’s what Reddit is supposed to do as a ‘platform.’ What about Reddit as a ‘company?’ Sadly, boardroom shenanigans have pursued Reddit throughout its entire lifecycle. Reddit lost the public-spirited people like Aaron Swartz, and gained trolls, hate groups, and the soap opera that was the Ellen Pao debacle. As Will Durant said: ‘A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within.’
Actions this year by Reddit have pushed it much farther down the path of ‘less user-oriented.’ Worse, public statements and private actions by the company leave nothing to doubt when it comes to their intentions. “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive,” Steve Huffman the CEO of Reddit, wrote in a recent AMA.
Spez' decisions have ripped the guts out of Reddit's understood social identity and community intent. Those public statements and private actions by the company I mentioned earlier? They aren’t there to make Reddit a more human-centered place. Monetizing API use won’t increase Reddit’s stature as a ‘a safe space for all viewpoints.’ Like when managers decided to launch the Challenger space shuttle, “the concerns about the O-rings that ultimately led to the explosion were buried in a vast sea of thousands of other decisions … leading up to the ill-fated launch.”
Risks don’t rely on your perspective for existence. “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away,” as Philip K. Dick famously said. This recent Reddit move to monetize APIs creates major cracks in its foundations of digital altruism and human-centered behavior. As I said last year with Twitter: “Twitter has every chance to prove to us that it can be a safe, responsible place for us to interact with our readers if they want to. In the meantime, it’s getting too weird around here. I’m mustering at the life boat station now, in case we must abandon ship.”
I never click on ads anyway. Is it okay for me to start using Reddit, at least a little, or should I continue not to give traffic to them?
You do you. Whatever works best for your life imo. I will no longer browse Reddit, I will never download their app. If a question I google seems to ONLY have a solution on Reddit, I will only view it on browser (old.Reddit, ad blocker, logged out).
You don't have to click on ads to give them money, impressions still count. You can use uBlock Origin, but they'll probably still make money from the traffic as they show off their number of visits to advertisers
Interesting.. not surprising the majority don't care. (Admittedly, i only put up with reddit until now because i wasn't aware of the alternatives which the latest foofaraw revealed).
i've fully migrated to kbin (replaced my reddit feeds with kbin rss feeds into miniflux for a completely transparent migration.. like nothing ever happened, except the noise went down along with toxicity and no intrusive ads).
Glad to be here with people who care about their discussion platform.
load more comments
(2 replies)
view more: next ›