Comment by CobrastanJorji | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CobrastanJorji | Hacker News Reader

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The use of the word "must" (in both the title and the body) is uninformative. What on Earth does it mean? Does it mean there's a law? A moral imperative? A strategic necessity? A technical requirement? Is the author claiming some form of jurisdiction?

"It must provide APIs" isn't an argument. It can't be taken literally because it's clearly false. And it can't be taken in any other form because the author doesn't tell us what those forms might be.

It continues, equally poorly stated: "Millions of users create the content expecting it will be widely available. Locking down an API breaks that social contract." Now that IS an argument, but it's not a good one for a surprisingly large number of reasons, the simplest of which is that websites like Reddit are widely available regardless of a free API.

Finally, we get to the only actual statement of merit: "The short sighted thing about these API fees is they will harm the company in the long term." Yes, that's quite likely true. Is that the whole argument? That this is a short sighted plan? Companies are free to make stupid plans. They do it all the time, and you are free to stop doing business with them. "Must" doesn't enter into it.

I agree. The way the article is written is basically just a guy throwing a tantrum because he wants something. That doesn't make it a law of the universe that he must be given what he wants.

I fail to follow your chain of reasoning. How can the claim both be "clearly false" and unclear in its statement?

The use of "should" as the very first line of the body text actually makes the argument extremely clear, which is that there is a non-legal, non-technical imperative for API access [leaving only a moral/social imperative, as you determine]. I think you are probably smarter than the very low reading comprehension bar in order to understand what is being said, so I'm not sure what value you are deriving from pretending not to.

> there is a non-legal, non-technical imperative for API access [leaving only a moral/social imperative, as you determine].

There is no more an argument here than if I said there was a moral/social imperative for them to clean my house. An argument derives conclusions from premises.

"X must do Y," taken literally, would imply that X did Y. But here, X did not do Y. That's the "clearly false" part. and that's fine, because that's how language works. People speak hyperbolically or metaphorically all the time.

But the author must be trying to say something when they say "X must do Y," and it's not clear to me what. Are they just using "must" to mean "should?" Or do they mean something stronger? And what does "should" even mean? Do they mean should like "it would be a tactical mistake not to?" Evidently not because they start talking about social contracts and such, which are more about some sort of community unstated rules or traditions or something.

Put another way, if I say "X must do Y" to you, and you want to disagree, how would you do that? Would "X is not required to do Y" be a rebuttal? Or "Y would not be very nice?" I can't tell if either assertion would contradict the author's assertions. What are they trying to say?

Maybe it's just me being annoyingly pedantic (it's happened before!), but it's the title of the post and even after reading the whole thing I'm no closer to being able to summarize their argument. Is it just "I don't think Reddit should do this because it's a useful tool and it'd be mean," but with the word "must" thrown in randomly for oomph?

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