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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • That is the claim from Reddit, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny because LLMs are not using the API to get content from sites like Reddit. They are scraping data from the entire Internet, much like Google does.

    Even if it was using the API, however, it’s still a bullshit excuse because Reddit would be fully within their rights to enforce existing rate limits or other TOS violations. Nobody would have been complaining if Reddit revealed that the Apollo app or OpenAI were abusing the rules that were already in place and everyone agreed to. Actually, nobody would even be complaining if the pricing and timeline for the changes was anything close to reasonable!


  • Agreed. I was never on Digg, but was on reddit for several years before the Great Diaspora. I remember the epic web comics telling the story of how the Digg invasion happened. What some people forget to include in the retelling of those days is that there was not just one, isolated incident that led to Digg’s downfall.

    Like all mass migrations in human history, there were multiple waves. The last was the biggest, but only because the previous waves had already gone out and created something new for the masses to move on to.

    I think this will be similar. We’ll see people move back to Reddit in a couple of days, but in July the mobile apps shut down and another wave will likely be generated.


  • I see where you are coming from, but it’s really the only way to protest at the individual level. Reddit’s value is the users and mods and the content we create. Destroying that is the best way to not only devalue Reddit’s upcoming IPO, but to actually have a chance of getting the current admins to realize they are sowing their own downfall.

    I look at this as a lesson for the wider Internet culture. We spent the last decade forgetting that it’s about decentralizing and niche communities, not walled gardens controlled by single individuals or companies. That let to some great things, perhaps, but it also means the system was less resilient to change.

    I’m hoping that in a few years we will look back and realize that the Fediverse, in all of its many forms and motivations, helped restore a bit of what the original promise of the Internet and the web had. At the very least, I hope to one day see the 2015-2023 era as a low point.




  • If they want to keep our data, realistically nothing we can do will stop them.

    I had the same mental debate when I deleted my Facebook account years ago and realized I just don’t have any power in this situation. I am deleting things mostly for my benefit; it’s symbolic, like throwing away the remaining pack of cigarettes. That act by itself does nothing, but it sure doesn’t hurt my chances of actually kicking the habit.

    In this case, even if the data is still buried somewhere in Reddit’s servers, if enough people do the same it will destroy any “value” that Reddit has left as a company. Trying to undo all of that would be a massive, likely impractical undertaking that I’m comfortable betting simply won’t happen.