You could tell they got scared when subs got the idea to go NSFW.
Such a great idea.
The two subs I have still left are now even sensibly NSFW. Many workplaces dislike what is considered IP violation in some jurisdictions. Shareholders frown on that kind of thing.
I still find astonishing that tech crunch buys the argument of ML model training.
No one in their sane mind would use the API (that have always been rate limited) for fetch data for text generation. People would use HTTP or, even better, archives of reddit.
Why? Because there is better or no rate limit, there is no need to write anything (only reading) and it will stay free 🙂 Also super fresh data is not dramatically useful (except in very specific corner cases when something in the news change the way we talk)
Web crawling has always worked through raw HTTP/HTML parsing, why create site specific API calls that require authentication and are throttled.
This excuse is pure bullshit.
Another proof of Reddit’s incompetence.
Considering the Reddit API has a hilariously low limit, I fully understand why the AI bro’s will use a scraping approach instead. I’ve built small discord bots that had a difficult time following the API because you had so little Requests available! I was in the process of building an event-driven system which used multiple API tokens in order to be able to keep up with multiple feeds. Its just terrible.
I think it’ll take a while for us to know the real overall impact spez’s decision has made on Reddit’s user base. Until then, it’s really just speculation unless something concrete comes out (like financial reports etc).
Yes, exactly my thoughts as well. I’ve noted the following: I started exploring options and landed on Lemmy as many of us did around the time the API changes were announced At that time, there were a lot of test posts here and loads of Reddit complaints. It was challenging to find real content, but it was clear the community and interest was growing.
I continued to open various Lemmy apps over Reddit, but still peaked into my Reddit feed periodically and noticed that Reddit was definitely still alive, with the occasional flare up that made browsing annoying. Not much different than when any other viral topic would take over the top posts everywhere, but more regular and less amusing from an entertainment point of view. Those days I had no problem coming to Lemmy almost all day. But that left me with using Lemmy more and more frequently.
The last couple days, I’ve found that Lemmy is still growing and becoming much more interesting to browse and view, though I definitely see the added complexities and early nature of apps as a limiting factor for the general use at the moment. So going to Reddit now seems to be largely filled with lower effort posts as most users that haven’t migrated are those that felt it was too much work to join a Lemmy community and get reestablished (in my opinion). However, there is still definitely a functional and lively community over there. At least for the time being.
Whenever I check in on Reddit, I am still using third party apps. Those apps will go dark July 1, so if that actually happens, I likely will stop checking in. And I have no idea how many else will be doing the same.
Very well said and that all pretty much sums up my experience so far. I too find myself periodically checking reddit (via a third party app of course) really just to check out the vibe and see what folks are discussing about lemmy lol. It really is great to see the activity continuing to grow here.
This. There are short-term indicators, but a lot of Reddit’s cash flow now is probably from deals negotiated weeks or months ago, and a drop in sales this month might not show up on the balance sheet until weeks or months from now.
Honestly probably not that much. Reddit hasn’t scuttled itself nearly as much as twitter, and twitter is still doing all right despite it.
Wait an article I read earlier is claiming that subreddits are business as usual. Now, this article claims the opposite?
That’s the media for you 🙄
Could you share the link to that one? Thanks. Looks like this TechCrunch article is sourcing info from emails with advertisers partnered with Reddit, not just from public statements about visitor traffic published by Reddit themselves.
I wonder what the measured metrics are internally. Funny that those earning metrics would’ve been more readily available had they already IPO’ed on the public market.
Guessing it’s this wired article
(Disclosure: WIRED is a publication of Condé Nast, whose parent company, Advance Publications, has a majority ownership stake in Reddit.)
LMAOOO
Hot damn now we know why
yeah, i want to know the reality not some delutional article
There’s plenty of media that’s corporate friendly.
From this article:
The negative impacts on Reddit’s daily traffic and average time spent have improved, according to more recent statistics, indicating that the initial downturn was temporary.
The decrease in traffic was during the 2 day blackout, but now things are mostly back to normal. Realistically, any sustained downturn will be more gradual as quality decreases and people turn elsewhere. We might also see a bump when 3rd party apps are shut down.
Those numbers hardly describe a “plunge”. Much lower impact than I had hoped honestly
They’re lining up an IPO. Anything suggesting that they can’t maintain 5-10% real growth year after year (like other companies that investors could put their money) is truly damming. A sustained decrease in revenue, even a small one, is going to gut the IPO valuation.
I really doubt this will translate into a decrease in revenue, anyways. These numbers suggest very little sustained loss in traffic, and if that continues when the new API pricing kicks in they’ll probably come out ahead
These numbers suggest very little sustained loss in traffic
You’ll probably see a decent sized dip at the point where the changes go into effect. There are probably a lot of people using apps like Apollo until they can’t: once they can’t, certainly not everyone is just going to go install the inferior reddit app and start using it.
Also, it’s possible the relatively small drop will have more of an effect than might immediately be obvious. Social media sites like reddit, Twitter, etc aren’t really that profitable (when they’re profitable at all) — but people are willing to invest in them because they’re currently still experiencing growth. So in this case, growth has not only stopped, but reddit lost some ground.
I don’t know why people keep expecting this to go differently than twitter. Folks who are expecting Lemmy to kill Reddit are going to be waiting a very long time.
I was saying this when the protests started and was ignored.
Reddit nearly doubled their userbase after the site redesign. They know how many users don’t understand the “old” reddit ways and don’t give a shit. They don’t care that they’re losing the users that “built” the site. All they care about is engagement from Facebook-zombies who want an endlessly scrolling feed of bullshit to be angry about.
They know they have enough users who won’t care about the change to weather the storm. The quality of posts and comments will drop, spam will increase, but they don’t care as long as they have enough ad impressions to pull off the IPO and cash out.
You’ve never stepped off the sidewalk and plunged down to the street?
Except we can be sure that the entire drop is due to humans deciding Reddit is dead. How much of the remaining traffic are bots?
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Love it, I deleted my 150k+ karma account last week and never visited again
I’ll do it on 1st July. But first I have to delete all my comments. Takes some time.
If you do it before 1 July, you can use one of the many API tools that auto overwrites your comments.
Done. Thanks for the info.
You saved me a lot of work!
Were you seriously going to do it manually otherwise? That’s some dedication.
There have been multiple reports on this not being upheld by Reddir admins. Wait on account deletion until after the GPDR and others have fought the right to be forgotten battle.
They are restoring deleted comments 🤬
Ive heard some users saying Reddit is undeleting comments. Better to edit your comments to gibberish.
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This worked well for me to delete my comments: https://redact.dev/
I’m interested to see how many waited until the 3rd party apps died to stop using the site. By the end of July I think we’ll have a better idea how the change has effected them.
Reddit’s front page is just an echo-chamber of reactionary explosiveness without merit, simply for the sake of being reactionary.
I have a theory this stems from the Trump presidential run in 2018 where it saw many pro-trump posts reaching the front page, whether from shitposts or hacking or genuine interest, ever since it’s like every post is “You should be really pissed off about this thing! And if you’re not pissed off about it you are worse than Hitler!”
Remember Reddit before that? I mean it had gotten worse by 2018, but remember back in like 2011-2013 where communities were developing and you could count on the front page having genuinely interesting content? Where if something was reactionary, it was seldom and actually very important?
I really hope Lemmy can stay as close to that for as long as possible. I saw a post today complaining about the chicken industry on Meme, and it has me scared Lemmy is also on its way to devolving into Reddit.
My Frontpage has increasingly less churn since last week or so…
Don’t love the framing of this paragraph from TechCrunch. It’s not that they’re charging for the API. That’s understandable and obvious, and we all wanted the platform to survive. I’ll be happy to volunteer to contribute to lemmy development/server costs/app development one day. It’s that they’re grossly overcharging for the API to such an extreme degree that paid subscriptions to third party apps actually lose money.
In April, Reddit announced its plans to start charging developers to access data through its API. The move was obvious — to restrict third parties from accessing Reddit data that can help build text-generating machine learning models such as OpenAI’s GPT 4. Developers building apps and bots to assist people using Reddit and researchers who wish to study the platform for noncommercial purchases were among the few exceptions. However, as a result, third-party apps, including popular Reddit client Apollo, found it difficult to pay for those charges and decided to go offline. Various popular subreddit moderators came in support of those apps and developers and started protesting against the API pricing move.
Yeah you can tell whose side the media takes by how they frame it. Everyone, to include ALL THE DEE E VS, were okay with paying for the API. They just can’t pay the amount Reddit asked for.
Not surprised. Made me look for alternatives. I get many won’t make the move, but I feel like the really engaged users have and will continue to.
*Reddit ceos plunge user engagement
Just lovely
Yes, such as most of it.
I sith voice: “Good! Good!”
