I realise that this is unpopular. But personally while I disagree with the decision to charge (exorbitantly) for the api and appalled at the slander hurled at the dev, I think that is an business choice and one more item that I have to disagree and live with.
But I am very excited about the rise of the fediverse. I know that a company will eventually make a decision that I feel very passionately about, but I will be stuck making a difficult choice. With the fediverse, it provides the users with the opportunity to have control. This power of course often comes with various other costs (lack of a dedicated sre or moderation teams, etc). But I expect that over time this will evolve into options where paid offerings will come up that allows for higher QoS where required.
The api changes really were about protecting their gold mine of data from ai data models scraping for data. Reddit wants to use that data to create its own models and then replace moderators with those models. The ultimate goal here is to turn the existing dataset into an automoderator on steroids that they could sell anywhere. Trouble is someone else is going to beat them to it.
There was a reason these changes lined up so nicely with Google doing the same thing. Everyone’s realizing they’ve been spouting their gold from firehoses for any machine to pick up, and they’re being reactionary and turning them off asap instead of just like, accepting it as a facet of having a public social network.
I’m also very optimistic right now. The challenges I see are more around funding, as continued work on the code bases and hosting seem to be the largest hurdles and ultimately easier with money than without. The Fediverse feels like an incredibly natural next step for a lot of users that are coming from a Reddit or Reddit-like background. Everything else (robust collection of communities, moderation, 3rd party tooling, etc) comes with the crowd and from the community, not from the “owner”, and will only take time if we can solve for the funding/scaling challenges.
I think that is an business choice and one more item that I have to disagree and live with.
You are right, but it’s a pretty piss poor (read: short sighted) business decsicion. It’s straight out of the enshitification playbook. But these businesses seem to forgot (or just don’t care?) about the last step: the platform dies.
The critical error is that clawing back services for users (“you are the product, not the client”) is wholly unsustainable, because users will just leave, at least in a perfectly free market.
To Reddit Inc., you are nothing more than cattle to be packaged to the highest bidder. You have no say in how you get to experience the platform, other than the bare minimum to keep you engaged. But when times are tough, as they are in the tech world now, you are the most expendable asset.
I agree that reddit has every right to charge for access to its api but I don’t agree with it’s handling of this. If reddit was charging a reasonable rate, I wouldn’t leave. But charging exorbitant prices, refusing to communicate w/ users and 3p developers, and lying about Christian’s (Apollo’s) communications with reddit shows that reddit has no respect for its users or developers. Why should we stick around when reddit only seems to be saying that it doesn’t care about us?
I realise that this is unpopular. But personally while I disagree with the decision to charge (exorbitantly) for the api and appalled at the slander hurled at the dev, I think that is an business choice and one more item that I have to disagree and live with.
But I am very excited about the rise of the fediverse. I know that a company will eventually make a decision that I feel very passionately about, but I will be stuck making a difficult choice. With the fediverse, it provides the users with the opportunity to have control. This power of course often comes with various other costs (lack of a dedicated sre or moderation teams, etc). But I expect that over time this will evolve into options where paid offerings will come up that allows for higher QoS where required.
Honestly, if spez hadn’t already sold the site to white supremacists, I’d be a lot quicker to defend this.
The api changes really were about protecting their gold mine of data from ai data models scraping for data. Reddit wants to use that data to create its own models and then replace moderators with those models. The ultimate goal here is to turn the existing dataset into an automoderator on steroids that they could sell anywhere. Trouble is someone else is going to beat them to it.
There was a reason these changes lined up so nicely with Google doing the same thing. Everyone’s realizing they’ve been spouting their gold from firehoses for any machine to pick up, and they’re being reactionary and turning them off asap instead of just like, accepting it as a facet of having a public social network.
Does this really protect their data? Can’t they just scrape for this same information instead?
He did what now?
Who are the white supremacists he sold to?
It was the Chinese that he sold out to. Not the white supremacists.
I must’ve missed that part of the story…
I’m also very optimistic right now. The challenges I see are more around funding, as continued work on the code bases and hosting seem to be the largest hurdles and ultimately easier with money than without. The Fediverse feels like an incredibly natural next step for a lot of users that are coming from a Reddit or Reddit-like background. Everything else (robust collection of communities, moderation, 3rd party tooling, etc) comes with the crowd and from the community, not from the “owner”, and will only take time if we can solve for the funding/scaling challenges.
It is just the catalyst we need to transcend the status quo and normalize technology that respects its users.
You are right, but it’s a pretty piss poor (read: short sighted) business decsicion. It’s straight out of the enshitification playbook. But these businesses seem to forgot (or just don’t care?) about the last step: the platform dies.
The critical error is that clawing back services for users (“you are the product, not the client”) is wholly unsustainable, because users will just leave, at least in a perfectly free market.
To Reddit Inc., you are nothing more than cattle to be packaged to the highest bidder. You have no say in how you get to experience the platform, other than the bare minimum to keep you engaged. But when times are tough, as they are in the tech world now, you are the most expendable asset.
I agree that reddit has every right to charge for access to its api but I don’t agree with it’s handling of this. If reddit was charging a reasonable rate, I wouldn’t leave. But charging exorbitant prices, refusing to communicate w/ users and 3p developers, and lying about Christian’s (Apollo’s) communications with reddit shows that reddit has no respect for its users or developers. Why should we stick around when reddit only seems to be saying that it doesn’t care about us?