Ask HN: Anyone else disinterested in Reddit API drama? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Anyone else disinterested in Reddit API drama?

33 pointsthrowarayes30 comments

Like I get it, Reddit has historically been more open. But I just find the drama boring. Most people don't use 3rd party apps. Most people browse Reddit through an official UI. Instagram, Snap, a bazillion other private social networks don't have 3rd party apps. And with OpenAI, etc, you can't just give away the community's content to train LLMs. I didn't sign up for that when I posted on Reddit.

I'm going to continue to use Reddit.

I can imagine the most impacted folks are Mods, thus Mods are in a position to make a big splash with their complaints. But do 99% of users really care? Or even know what Apollo is?

The histrionics have gotten a bit out of control...

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The issue goes far beyond just alternate frontends, mods of a popular subreddit for discussion of esports related to a game I play said that the API changes would greatly impact how the subreddit runs to the point where it may well be impossible(they make heavy use of bots and moderation tools to facilitate discussion etc.). Also consider accessibility and the problems that have surfaced related to it.

>you can't just give away the community's content to train LLMs

The API has always existed, it's just a lot more expensive so if OpenAI really wanted to, they still could train their LLMs on Reddit comments just fine.

And as other users said, this is yet another platform catering solely to shareholders and giving no second thought about the users of the platform before making decisions that only maximise profits, which is a discomfort to lots of users to say the least.

>But do 99% of users really care?

I use the website and official mobile app, but if a subreddit that I really enjoy stopped being enjoyable because of these changes, I do indeed care(and so do thousands of users across so many different subreddits).

>Most people browse Reddit through an official UI. Instagram, Snap, a bazillion other private social networks don't have 3rd party apps

Well atleast their UI is better than Reddit's, and as far as I can tell, a lot more accessible than Reddit's official UI . Also those platforms went down the "maximise profit margins by not caring about users" route a long time ago, this move from Reddit feels like the last straw for a significant enough amount of the userbase to participate in these blackouts.

You may not have a horse in this race but I think it's worth understanding exactly how this impacts you as a user before bringing out the "but I don't care" take(which is fair enough, but I would be slightly surprised if that was still your take after fully understanding the implications of these changes).

> The API has always existed, it's just a lot more expensive so if OpenAI really wanted to, they still could train their LLMs on Reddit comments just fine.

This here is the point that seems to be missing from most discussions.

OpenAPI has the cash to pay if they find it valuable.

Indie devs and moderators don't.

This change doesn't price out LLM training. It ensures only they will have access.

Yeah they're just taking away access from the exact set of people who'll benefit the userbase most(mods, indie devs etc.) and still reserving it for corporations with the money to pay. It's not wrong to expect enterprise prices for enterprise use but surely it shouldn't be unfeasible for individuals either. Spotify does it well, by restricting use of 3rd party clients to those with a paid subscription, I think people would be less worried if they did something similar.

Lots of ways to do what Reddit is doing and it almost feels like they've picked the worst one.

edit: feels eerily similar to Twitter, which has changed for the worse at this point.

Reddit is more than 10 years old at this point. if anyone wanted to use it for LLM, couldn't they just download all of the content through the API while they can? Is 10 years of content not enough off of a site like Reddit?

It's about cutting losses, at this point. Closing the dam gates doesn't mean you get the water back but it does mean new water doesn't get out.

That is, if it was about LLMs in the first place.

Realistically, these changes won't affect me directly. I pop onto Reddit a handful of times per month to view a local group. For that the website suffices (even though it is horrible on mobile).

I will probably be indirectly affected by any migration of people who do care, people like the mods who keep that local group sane. Why should they continue donating their time to a corporation who is actively making their life harder? Why would I want to visit a forum where that is full of crud because noone care to moderate it? Why would I want to visit a forum that lacks insightful gems because the people who care to post those gems have moved on because they don't want to deal with the crud either.

Realistically speaking, the API thing is unlikely to alter my use of Reddit. Reddit probably wouldn't care if it did anyway since I'm unlikely to be in their target audience. That said, potential changes in the atmosphere of Reddit are very likely to alter my use of Reddit. I've also been on the Internet long enough to see platforms rise then fall from grace, so I view it as a real possibility. (Albeit, I also realize that the fall takes much longer than many would have us believe.)

You're thinking about in terms of reddit vs 3rd party apps.

Instead think of it as a labor movement where reddit are the owners and mods/posters are the laborers, and the 3rd party app creators are the union leaders.

This isn't about reddit trying to kill 3rd party apps. This is about the enshitification of one of the few "free speech" platforms left on the internet: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

It's actually pretty astounding that reddit has not brought the hammer down, but when that happens, that's when we'll know it's over and the investors have won the short game (maybe at the cost of everything).

Reddit used their power unilaterally and said "what are you gonna do about it?" I really can't remember the last time (with the exception of ukraine) where a powerful entity said "what are you gonna do about it" and then they "found out."

This makes me even more disinterested.

I’m more of a “robots will replace us all” than a “labor will finally organize to wield power over management.”

So while I feel empathy for Taco Bell employees striking for higher pay, as I would like them to live better lives, I consider it moot because soon there will just be burrito machines.

>Instead think of it as a labor movement where reddit are the owners and mods/posters are the laborers

More like Reddit is the inner party, mods are the outer party, and the posters are the proles.

I hear you, but I don't care about what drama you care about or don't.

This is part of a larger fight against monopolism and walled gardenism, theft and privatization of free information & data provided by users.

People can care about whatever they want, but I find the umpteen stories a bit much – how often do you need to discus it? Never mind old news like "Reddit’s CEO edited comments that criticized him (2016)" that was on the frontpage earlier today.

Good thing you can hide stories.

Ok, you don't care about these particular events. So? What is the purpose of your post? What do you hope to achieve?

Evidently, lots of users care: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36251707

Because almost every internet post is performative histrionics.

Nobody posts the "meh" position. Which I suspect is the silent majority.

The purpose of my post is to collect / measure the "mehs" in upvotes

Nobody posts the "meh" position because those opinions don't lend themselves to intellectually interesting conversations or insights.

And thus discourse is dominated by the 0.001% that throw a fit, which isn't nesc. the most rational position.

And why would your position be the most rational position?

A meh position isn't by default the most rational. A huge change in how the API perform will break the experience for a big parcel of power users, power users are usually what whole platforms are built on top of. Twitter's usage is powered by the minority of a few power users who actually post something interesting in the platform, the same is true for Reddit.

You being a consumer satisfied with a subpar experience is not the rational position, it's exactly the "meh" position you mention so it doesn't really lend to much discussion. You won't be that affected, so you probably wouldn't be that affected if Reddit completely disappeared.

Calling people being affected by some massive change to their experience "histrionic" is both being condescending as well as completely not understanding how much it can affect others...

Yes, it's a minority portion of users, but an important minority who engage with Reddit in a very different way than you do :)

I have no idea which is more rational. I only mean to say one side gets a lot more oxygen.

I don't believe we can expect the side of "meh" to get much oxygen in any discussion. How could that be? "I don't care about this thing", "me either", "me either".

There's nothing to be said, hence no oxygen for it at all.

The vast majority in any issue don't care about it at all, even important humanity changing stuff like climate change. There's no intellectual value in the "meh" position, it's just apathy... If you can make apathy interesting that might be a million dollar idea.

I am interested even though I only use the official web interface to read occasional results of a specific web search or targeted research on Reddit.

I do appreciate the fact, however, that I can connect to Fastmail and read my mail using my client of choice and not Fastmail’s web interface or iOS client. Fastmail does not care because they get my money anyway. I like that model.

So I am siding with Reddit on this one. I’d prefer Reddit to be self-sustainable at least. If there are clients that deliver the value to the users bypassing their ad revenue stream, it is reasonable to ask users to pay for it. Now, whether API pricing is reasonable or not - it is hard for me to say, but I will let market forces figure out this one.

There's a larger issue at play with all the API drama, and its not with the end-users, but users of these APIs: indie devs and start-ups.

Free (or cheap) APIs have been a way for whoever makes them to discover new segments/markets with low risk/investment. If its good enough, its an opportunity for an indie dev or start-up to get acquired and make an exit, if it isn't, then all the risk was on the indie dev or start-up to begin with.

If you go back years into these API ecosystems, you'll see stories like this Apollo/Reddit one aren't new, since the API owners aren't required to buy anyone out, they could either cancel your access or simply clone the way you're using their API and be done.

What is new, is how these API dramas are accelerating, either APIs are no longer free, they are putting more locks on how the data can be used or they are getting so expensive you can't make a business case waiting to get acquired or noticed. Simply search for stories about APIs related to Youtube, Reddit, Bing in the past months.

My suspicion about this dynamic, is the bigger elephant in the room is ML/AI. For many sites, their lifeblood is their data and they're not going to part with it as easily, since a couple of API calls can mean they're going to get passed over entirely in this ML/AI era. Its do or die for many sites, even if it means pissing off the symbiotic relationship many had indie devs & start-ups.

You are so disinterested you made a post about it!

Probably 95% time 'disinterested' is used the author/speaker meant 'uninterested'.

I understand how someone can be disinterested in a topic, but interested in the meta topic of how so many people can be interested.

For example, I don’t care about bottled water at all (tap water ftw/bottle water = climate change genocide/etc etc) But I’m interested in how other people are interested.

I see it as part of a larger issue of "platform rot" or "enshittification". I deleted my Reddit account a long long time ago, but I've been around long enough to see AOL instant messenger be a thing, and then MSN instant messenger a thing, and then there were 11+ different messaging apps from Google, then there was Skype, then there was Skype for business, then there was Facebook messenger, then there was Whatsapp, then there was Discord.

This is not a story of progress but rather a treadmill. The story is "try platform Y, it's like platform X was a few years ago before platform X got broken", and then you move to platform Y, and then platform Y rots.

People don't seem all that amazed that a Verizon customer can call a T-Mobile customer or that a iPhone user can call an Android user but the idea that communication apps or social media apps could interoperate is like science fiction or nuclear fusion or communism or something.

Since what happened to Twitter I think a lot of people are in an inflamed state and I think other "platforms" have gotten the wrong message and decided to follow Musk's playbook of accelerating enshittification. For years Reddit has insulted our intelligence by putting a banner at the top of their mobile website saying "download our crapp for a better (worse) experience" and if you tried it you got exactly what you'd expect to get. Reddit has some good subreddits but it takes a huge amount of cognitive effort to see content between the ads. The third-party cutoff will force people to wade through that crapp.

It would be interesting if we went deeper to why this is happening and what will change with other platforms too. Clearly we are at the nearing end of cycle of cheap or VC money propping up companies. And now they have to act like well actual traditional companies. Just being tech and getting more users isn't enough anymore.

And maybe can actually anything be done. Is there some models that would effectively serve both users and company aiming for IPO. And then later the retail investors.

Every time I have to use Reddit I'm genuinely amazed that anyone would choose to. I'm hoping this drama kills it so I'm quite enjoying it.

I don't think the point is whether people use 3rd party apps, instead users are annoyed at how the platform is changing, the direction they are now pursuing and how they are treating developers. The same frustrations have been aired over Facebook and Twitter tightening or removing their APIs, and you could argue that they were watershed moments in their histories too.

Reddit have been dead for me for almost 10 years now, I'm surprised that so many people on HN still use it. It's like lj or digg at this point, dead man walking.

Many many people seem to be itching for any opportunity to be an activist these days, so the subreddits going dark thing is a no-brainer to latch onto.

reddit will be fine w/o the power users, they've been purging them for years ... I have several boomer age family/friends on reddit and they don't even understand the concept that other subreddits exist, they only know the default ones for the memes and political zeitgeist. also, i estimate like 30-50% of the accounts on there are bots in the first place.

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