Reddit API fiasco

[Cmaier]

Reddit decided to pull a twitter and charge for API access. The amount they are charging seems calculated to eliminate third party apps. After trying to negotiate, the author of the popular Apollo client for Reddit gave up when someone from Reddit leaked a false story claiming he tried to extort Reddit. The best part is that he has audio recordings of all of his negotiations with Reddit, and Reddit didn’t know it. He writes the story in much more detail at the link below, including a link to a key portion of the audio recordings that show that Reddit is lying.

 

[dada_dave]

I can’t imagine that Aaron Swartz would be happy.

 

[Cmaier]

Looks like /r/iphone and /r/videos intend to go dark indefinitely now (in addition to the thousand subreddits that were planning on 2 day outages starting on monday), in response to the crazy AMA on Friday. Mods will probably get removed and replaced.

 

[Eric]

Looks like /r/iphone and /r/videos intend to go dark indefinitely now (in addition to the thousand subreddits that were planning on 2 day outages starting on monday), in response to the crazy AMA on Friday. Mods will probably get removed and replaced.

That whole structure of mods over there is sort of a free for all, at least for such a huge environment. They have no real oversight so in this case it sounds like the actual company will be stepping in which is something you don't see much there.

 

[jbailey]

Looks like /r/iphone and /r/videos intend to go dark indefinitely now (in addition to the thousand subreddits that were planning on 2 day outages starting on monday), in response to the crazy AMA on Friday. Mods will probably get removed and replaced.

People hate being lied to. Especially when it easily deduced that someone is lying. It seems that the presence of the phone recordings isn't something that Huffman was expecting but apparently he is still incapable of changing his tune even after the existence of the recordings became public.

 

[mr_roboto]

I forget where I saw it, but I read some speculation that AI might be the reason for this move, and it actually seems plausible to me. See, a lot of the AI media darlings like ChatGPT trained their systems on nearly-free data scraped from public sources, including the Reddit API. So Huffman may be trying to squeeze money from AI companies flush with VC cash.

The trouble is, he's shutting the barn door after the animals already got away. Also, I suspect that the only reason AI startups trained on Reddit was that it was a cheap way to get a lot of text written by humans, and he's going to find out that even outfits riding the latest investment bubble aren't eager to pay extortionate prices for Reddit posts.

 

[Cmaier]

I forget where I saw it, but I read some speculation that AI might be the reason for this move, and it actually seems plausible to me. See, a lot of the AI media darlings like ChatGPT trained their systems on nearly-free data scraped from public sources, including the Reddit API. So Huffman may be trying to squeeze money from AI companies flush with VC cash.

The trouble is, he's shutting the barn door after the animals already got away. Also, I suspect that the only reason AI startups trained on Reddit was that it was a cheap way to get a lot of text written by humans, and he's going to find out that even outfits riding the latest investment bubble aren't eager to pay extortionate prices for Reddit posts.

If all he cared about was AI he could easily change the API licensing terms to prevent AI training without payment. He clearly wants an end to successful 3rd party clients that don’t generate ad income for him.

 

[Eric]

I may be an outlier but as one who uses Reddit all the time I don't see how this impacts me personally as I only ever use the native app or in-browser on my computers. Is there anything else I'm missing here or is it strictly based on third party apps?

 

[mollyc]

I'm still a relative new reddit user also, and really just lurk with a random occasional comment on a post, but I also just use the browser or native app.

 

[Cmaier]

I may be an outlier but as one who uses Reddit all the time I don't see how this impacts me personally as I only ever use the native app or in-browser on my computers. Is there anything else I'm missing here or is it strictly based on third party apps?

Something like 40 percent of people use third party apps, including most mods, if I remember correctly. Apparently, too, the first party apps don’t support accessibility, so some people have to use Apollo or other apps.

In your case, the only effect would be if your subreddits go dark.

And, of course, this is likely only the first of a series of user-hostile acts, if we take Twitter as an example.

 

[Eric]

I'm still a relative new reddit user also, and really just lurk with a random occasional comment on a post, but I also just use the browser or native app.

I've been there for 9 years now and have built up a decent reputation as far as Karma and points go, I just keep my nose clean, stay away from divisive topics and never really have any issues. I've seen their moderation though and it's very wild wild west depending on the sub.

 

[Eric]

One of my favorites has already gone black, tomorrow's going to be a slow day but I fully support those making the move.

 

[Cmaier]

Now 5311 dark subreddits, and seems to be growing by a few a minute.

Update: 5365/7047 subreddits are currently dark.

Update 2: 5419/7047 subreddits are currently dark.

Update 3: 5470/7047 subreddits are currently dark.

It just keeps on growing. The number of subreddits planning to participate (the denominator) jumped up, too.

 

[mollyc]

What is actually happening by going black? Are people just not posting? I thought at first it was just no photos in threads, but I'm guessing it's more than that.

 

[Eric]

What is actually happening by going black? Are people just not posting? I thought at first it was just no photos in threads, but I'm guessing it's more than that.

From what I can see it means those subs participating have removed themselves from view, most of my main subs are gone right now. My guess is it will be short lived but I'll back them, you know, solidarity and all.

 

[mollyc]

Oh, I see. I still see quite a bit in my feed, even though I did see posts about subs going black. I guess it's still early yet too.

 

[Cmaier]

List of dark subreddits here: https://reddark-digitalocean-7lhfr.ondigitalocean.app/

Picking up steam.

 

[Eric]

List of dark subreddits here: https://reddark-digitalocean-7lhfr.ondigitalocean.app/

Picking up steam.

Had a post that got over a thousand upvotes yesterday, now poof it's gone lol. I'm assuming it'll all come back at some point.

 

[mollyc]

Oh, it seems like all of Reddit is down now. I was getting a lot of extra "suggested" posts from stuff completely irrelevant to anything I normally read (I assume because nothing new was posted in my normal subs), but now it's just "Server Error/Something Went Wrong" for the entire site and app.

 

[Eric]

Oh, it seems like all of Reddit is down now. I was getting a lot of extra "suggested" posts from stuff completely irrelevant to anything I normally read (I assume because nothing new was posted in my normal subs), but now it's just "Server Error/Something Went Wrong" for the entire site and app.

According to Reddit it looks like I'm solely responsible, sorry about that.