I’ve seen that some subreddits went dark and said they’d come back in 2 days (June 14th), and others said they’d go dark indefinitely, until the API changes are rolled back. I’d like to make an appeal for the admins who’re willing to go back: please don’t.
I think Reddit wouldn’t withstand 2 weeks to a month without their largest subreddits, and maybe they’d change their minds about API changes. Some may say they’d just make the subreddits public again and promote someone to mod (which I totally agree, they’ll probably do that if the blackout endures for too much time), but I think most people don’t realise the PITA it is to be a good mod, and just want to be one because of the status (I’m not an ex-mod btw, I just heard it is very complicated to moderate and I believe it really is).
Secondly, there’s no guarantee that Reddit won’t pull the rug again. Even if they roll back the changes and everyone goes back, they’ll probably come up with this strategy again some time in the future. So instead of going back, stay in the Fediverse: all applications are open source AFAIK; you can run your own instance if you wish; you can defederate other instances if you wish; you can contribute with new features you miss or create a fork aplication of your own if you want to; heck, you could create your own Fediverse application if you want. And there won’t be a scumbag to come and try stop you.
Agreed, I think it’s a good time to be here: Mastodon has been gaining a lot of ground these days, thanks to Elon; other apps like Peertube, Pixelfed, Lemmy and Kbin are growing as well. Now I actually enjoy the experience of the Fediverse, and I hope it keeps growing and maybe dethrone current mainstream media.
TL;DR: Spez is a scumbag and don’t care if people use Reddit content to train AI models, he wants to kill 3rd party apps.
I don’t think they’re actually worried about people using their data to train AI models, since Sam Altman (OpenAI’s CEO) is a Reddit investor and was a former chairman until 2022. I mean, either spez knew Sam was using it (my theory is that they’re “friends” and spez knew it all along) OR spez didn’t see Reddit content as valuable until now. Either way, Reddit started to limit access from mobile browsers, forcing users to use their official app. I don’t know, but it seems to me spez is trying to kill 3rd party apps instead of just creating a better protection against scraping.
I was more meaning large scale pressure AI could be an issue fom small community and self hosted servers like the fediverse.
Reddit’s change of mood on API is not a surprise, glad they kept it up for so long. What did seem shitty was the notice period and scale of the price hike.
It was so short notice and so high a price for a reason. Forced 3rd party apps to close. Mission accomplished for Reddit.