The reddit developer platform is a really cool concept, it is just a shame it was introduced when reddit had burned most bridges and zapped all my energy. I would have been really excited about it...
The reddit developer platform is a really cool concept, it is just a shame it was introduced when reddit had burned most bridges and zapped all my energy. I would have been really excited about it if it had only come two years earlier.
As not everyone will know my backstory with reddit. The tl;dr is that I am one of the founders of the moderator toolbox extension for reddit. With almost 20k users at some point most mods on reddit would have used it. Needless to say I spend a lot of time and energy developing tooling for reddit.
Having sat in a meeting with Steve (Spez) around the API debacle I can also say that even if I still had some energy left. Any goodwill towards reddit as an organization also is pretty much gone.
As a long time ex-Redditor, thank you so much for helping to make it possible for my favourite places to have existed for such a long time while it lasted. Mods couldn't have kept the place going...
As a long time ex-Redditor, thank you so much for helping to make it possible for my favourite places to have existed for such a long time while it lasted. Mods couldn't have kept the place going without those tools
It has been my pleasure :). Well, except for the last year or so, I should have quit sooner. Something about hindsight. I should also mention that it was never a solo effort.
It has been my pleasure :). Well, except for the last year or so, I should have quit sooner. Something about hindsight.
I should also mention that it was never a solo effort.
This is more than fair. Just following along when spez tried to libel the developer Apollo that had to be disproven with the audio recordings of their phone call told me everything I need to know...
Having sat in a meeting with Steve (Spez) around the API debacle I can also say that even if I still had some energy left. Any goodwill towards reddit as an organization also is pretty much gone.
This is more than fair. Just following along when spez tried to libel the developer Apollo that had to be disproven with the audio recordings of their phone call told me everything I need to know about the guy. Not someone I would do business with, especially as a 3rd party dev at his whim.
I guess it all worked out for him, but I still feel sad that we lost something special by driving out all the talented people who built community instead of a business.
I know, but reddit never catered to game developers directly and indie developers probably do not have the same reservations as other devs because they work in a really competitive and unforgiving...
I know, but reddit never catered to game developers directly and indie developers probably do not have the same reservations as other devs because they work in a really competitive and unforgiving field. Even with those past actions, this game jam is gonna help a few devs. I’m optimistic about this one.
I wish the best of luck to those who participate. But chasing off all the 3rd party devs last year, only to sell out to AI, and now trying to come back to incenivize people to work on some other...
I wish the best of luck to those who participate. But chasing off all the 3rd party devs last year, only to sell out to AI, and now trying to come back to incenivize people to work on some other reddit platform is peak irony.
They want to centralize everything one year and forcefully remove developers 3rd party developers. Even going so far as to say they werre getting free rides and leeching off reddit. And now this...
They want to centralize everything one year and forcefully remove developers 3rd party developers. Even going so far as to say they werre getting free rides and leeching off reddit.
And now this year they want to encourage third party development. That seems pretty ironic
This platform was already in development around the time of the API debacle. It also fits within the context of reddit wanting to centralize everything, as these applications run on reddit....
This platform was already in development around the time of the API debacle. It also fits within the context of reddit wanting to centralize everything, as these applications run on reddit. Meaning that reddit has control over them in a way they don't have with browser extensions and external bots.
Basically it comes down to control. Reddit does see the benefits of third party developers, but what they didn't like was that they couldn't control them as tightly and dictate how they interacted with reddit. The developer platform from reddit's perspective solves this issue. It allows for third party functionality, but only in those places of the UI and those parts of the API where reddit has control over those modifications.
As I said in my other post, if this had come a few years earlier, I might even have liked the concept. Offering functionality toolbox offered natively would have been really beneficial for a lot of mods on reddit, including those on mobile. But they didn't, what they did instead is first abandon a lot of reddit redesign core development in favor of shiny new features. Ignoring all pleas for performance, cohesion, finishing mod tooling, etc.
I would agree that the timing of it all is a bit ironic. As at the same time Spez was busy pissing everyone off over the API changes the PM of the developer platform was trying to entice us to start developing toolbox features. Although, at that point I wouldn't even call that ironic anymore, as that is pretty much how I had come to expect reddit to operate.
Yeah, as someone who vyes to be a FOSS component, that's probably the best way to make sure I never touch your APIs again. Claiming to be open source in the beginning and then closing down...
It also fits within the context of reddit wanting to centralize everything, as these applications run on reddit. Meaning that reddit has control over them in a way they don't have with browser extensions and external bots.
Yeah, as someone who vyes to be a FOSS component, that's probably the best way to make sure I never touch your APIs again. Claiming to be open source in the beginning and then closing down everything over a decade is pretty much why FOSS proponents tend to be so defensive about their software. We're only convinient until it's time to cash out. That's not why we contribute to this kind of software.
if this had come a few years earlier, I might even have liked the concept.
I'll admit I was already souring on Reddit more than a few years back, so I wouldn't have changed much in my disposition. The last year just took me from "maybe they can redeem themselves" to "I will never actively help them again".
I was never a mod directly but I'd help with various automod tooling on some tiny groups and I've made a few scripts here and there for personal use. So I definitely empathized with a lot of the lack of support the non-power mods would get even in the mid 2010's. The 2020's just revealed what I and likely you already knew deep down about their approach to "community".
Reddit did the changes fundamentally for data sovereignty. 3rd parties like pushshift were starting to sell Reddit data they scraped to data companies for things like LLM training. Reddit wanted...
Reddit did the changes fundamentally for data sovereignty. 3rd parties like pushshift were starting to sell Reddit data they scraped to data companies for things like LLM training. Reddit wanted that revenue stream for itself.
The apps were more collateral damage, although it was long time coming that Reddit api access would need to cost money. That was part of being more responsible with their costs as they neared IPO.
Since then, the former has both been implemented and very successful. Their new deal with Google is driving a lot of revenue. So now they have the latitude to go back and carve out more spots where programmatic access isn’t conflicting with Reddit’s core revenue streams or costs.
Nothing seems ironic to me, rather it’s very logical. If you need to clean your table, you take everything off and put some things back on. It’s not ironic that you first took everything off, then put them back on. You did something in between, and not everything is coming back.
Generally I agree with your take here, except for this one: Specifically as a blanket statement. Even more so considering how many benefits many of the third party developers have given to reddit...
Generally I agree with your take here, except for this one:
although it was long time coming that Reddit api access would need to cost money
Specifically as a blanket statement. Even more so considering how many benefits many of the third party developers have given to reddit over the years. Additionally, I also think it can only really be true in a context where the only rational is short term monetary thinking without consideration of longer term impact. Which, I think, was indeed the context in which a lot of the calls on this have been made. But, that doesn't make it an overall truth of this having been the only path forward.
If LLM training truly was the core of the issues, then they could have been more lenient in general towards app developers. I should also note that LLM data was not one of the main motivators here according to Steve (Spez) himself. This was missed revenue because third party apps do not show ads and such. How big the impact here truly was is hard to tell. But if we assume it is true, then from a monetary standpoint you want to move people away from using these apps if they user base of them is big enough. If you do take community goodwill in account and recognize the valid role these apps did play in the past there would also have been many more much more reasonable options. For example, making ads available through the API and requiring app developers to show these. Or, even simpler, make it that users can only use the apps if they have a gold subscription.
Instead, reddit opted to go for tactics clearly not intended to charge for reasonable access but to effectively force people to stop using the API.
As far as your analogy goes. I'd say there are roughly two ways you can do this:
Already setting aside things you want to put back on the table. Storing away things you want to store away but might want to use later and throwing other things in the trash
Throwing everything directly in the trash, go out to buy everything new, realize you do want some of the stuff you threw away and dive into the trash bin to try and salvage that.
What reddit did in many ways is more like the second option. Where they threw away all they had, went out and bought a new platform, realized they had thrown away a lot of goodwill and furiously started trying to fix a lot of core issues. There is no denying that it eventually got them there. But I can't help but feel that there would have been other ways to get there, without the massive media fallout and general decline of so many subreddits.
The API changes were fine, in the end, just magnified by a personal dispute between Spez and one of the 3rd party developers. As the dust settles, there are still 3rd party reddit apps....
The API changes were fine, in the end, just magnified by a personal dispute between Spez and one of the 3rd party developers. As the dust settles, there are still 3rd party reddit apps. Personally, I use narwhal 2 when I still go on Reddit, which the developer has been able to pay for costs with a simple $5/month subscription.
The fact of the present is that the API pricing changes in no way it made it impossible to have a reddit app - you just need to pay what seems like a very reasonable fee if developers can still have profit with no more than $5/month.
Simply charging for API access is the most logical way to do things; then, the developer can find ways to bring that revenue however they're comfortable with it, whether that be their own ads, or a subscription. No reason to force a particular model.
The Apollo spat definitely seemed inappropriate on both sides, it's a lesson to not be personally involved in matters as an executive, and for the apollo developer to not burn bridges so easily. But overall, the API moves were perfectly justifiable and continue to make sense todya.
This glosses over a lot in my opinion. Specifically that it was not quite as easy for third party developers as you make it out to be. It isn't as if they could simply apply, all be quoted the...
This glosses over a lot in my opinion. Specifically that it was not quite as easy for third party developers as you make it out to be. It isn't as if they could simply apply, all be quoted the same price, etc.
Talklittle of RIF is active here on Tildes, I am not going to ping them because I don't want to drag them into this discussion. But, it is quite easy to find their account of events on how this was handled.
Sure. But either way, I'd hardly classify the situation as "ironic", even if you view the API changes negatively. Overshoot and correct is a classic approach for big issues, and the LLM training...
Sure. But either way, I'd hardly classify the situation as "ironic", even if you view the API changes negatively. Overshoot and correct is a classic approach for big issues, and the LLM training data issue was one that would have serious impacts on Reddit's continued existence as a business (and not as a money-losing exercise).
They had a goal, they accomplished it, now they have time to do subgoals. I don't think Reddit is really sweating about whether or not devs go back to using their platform, and if they had to choose between the fat deal from Google and having more 3rd party apps they'd choose the former without thinking, but it'd be nice, so throw some pocket change at it, why not?
Additionally, the kind of thing they're looking for here is fundamentally different than what the API changes were about; they're looking for apps that embed inside Reddit, effectively.
In my case, I feel developers were the scraps and they claim to want the scraps back now that they clearned it off. I'd rather not risk being wiped off again when I'm inconvinient to Reddit's...
If you need to clean your table, you take everything off and put some things back on.
In my case, I feel developers were the scraps and they claim to want the scraps back now that they clearned it off. I'd rather not risk being wiped off again when I'm inconvinient to Reddit's profit motivations.
. 3rd parties like pushshift were starting to sell Reddit data they scraped to data companies for things like LLM training. Reddit wanted that revenue stream for itself.
Sure, and you don't see "well we got ours, you can come back and get the scraps" as ironic? Well, everyone's sense of irony is different.
Everything's being scrapped for LLM training and it's not like Pushift was selling out. As you said, the devs were collateral to the bigger powers than be, and I don't feel like being a pawn again.
Not really, how is that ironic? It seems logical. Overshoot and correct is a classic strategy. If Reddit was trying to open up again for free LLM training, that would be ironic, but they're...
Not really, how is that ironic? It seems logical. Overshoot and correct is a classic strategy. If Reddit was trying to open up again for free LLM training, that would be ironic, but they're definitely not doing that. It's not like they're doing all that much, just throwing a bit of money at a hackathon.
I would also note that what they're courting here is very different from what was cleared; this isn't about apps that build ways to view reddit's data, like 3rd party clients or things like pushshift. This is about essentially apps inside Reddit. It's just an entirely different audience; I doubt any of these would even work in old.reddit.com.
I explained it 3 times, I don't know how else to rephrase it at this point Maybe for businesses, not for what Reddit was 15 years ago. Lessons learned, but if you're only seeing it from a business...
how is that ironic?
I explained it 3 times, I don't know how else to rephrase it at this point
Overshoot and correct is a classic strategy.
Maybe for businesses, not for what Reddit was 15 years ago. Lessons learned, but if you're only seeing it from a business perspective, I'm not suprised we seem to be talking past each other.
this isn't about apps that build ways to view reddit's data, like 3rd party clients or things like pushshift. This is about essentially apps inside Reddit.
From my perspective, they once again want to rely on others' goodwill and free labor to make toys for their playground, when they have multiple times have thrown out the sandbox whenever number needed to go up. I don't see the difference here. That's always been the model for reddit, yes, but they had an advantage previously from being one of the more convinient options for this sort of method.
Well, they more than lost traction. Why would I use this sandbox over Roblox, or the recent UEFN (Fortnite Roblox)? They are giving devs less power and pretending they have the same renown they had in 2010 in terms being this techy commmunity utopia? I won't predict that this will fail horribly, but the boy has cried wolf at least 4 times at this point. I'm not falling for the same promise. That's irony to me:
a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects
Maybe it's just not ironic? I'm not sure what is contrary to what expectation. This, imo, is exactly in line with what Reddit wants to do. Or rather, it's in line with the expectation that Reddit...
Maybe it's just not ironic? I'm not sure what is contrary to what expectation. This, imo, is exactly in line with what Reddit wants to do. Or rather, it's in line with the expectation that Reddit doesn't particularly care about 3rd party developers, but treats it as a nice-to-have. If they had to choose between having better results in this hackathon, or their fat deal with Google, I imagine they'd prefer the $600m deal.
They are giving devs less power and pretending they have the same renown they had in 2010 in terms being this techy commmunity utopia?
What is the pretending part? They're just throwing 100k at a hackathon. Who's pretending about anything?
Do you think it would be better, or more logical for them not to throw some pocket change at a hackathon?
It's fine if you don't want to participate, but that doesn't have anything to do with Reddit's broader goals and aims, and whether or not its current actions are contrary to any of them.
Maybe we can agree to disagree? At this point we're clearly not convincing one another and this is a trivial detail to my main point. I do not in fact miss the odd nitpicking of redditors. We have...
Exemplary
Maybe it's just not ironic?
Maybe we can agree to disagree? At this point we're clearly not convincing one another and this is a trivial detail to my main point. I do not in fact miss the odd nitpicking of redditors.
This, imo, is exactly in line with what Reddit wants to do
We have been on reddit in very different eras. 2011-2014 reddit was very different from 2021-2024 reddit. We're talking past each other when you're clearly looking at Reddit as a business making reasonable financial choices, and I'm looking back on it as a community. So there's not point talking any further if you don't want to empathize.
I was more than happy just leaving it at "good luck to those who participate" without going on my own personal hang-ups with Reddit. What do you want out of me?
So I have a bit of a bias since I am super pro-indie and moderate r/indiedev, but one of the few good changes I saw with Reddit recently was that they are actually trying a more give and take...
So I have a bit of a bias since I am super pro-indie and moderate r/indiedev, but one of the few good changes I saw with Reddit recently was that they are actually trying a more give and take approach with users. I hope we get more stuff like this from Reddit.
well that is the default reddit experience now if you have any account. The one pleasant thing I read in the tos was that you do in fact keep IP ownership of your project, you're only giving...
well that is the default reddit experience now if you have any account.
The one pleasant thing I read in the tos was that you do in fact keep IP ownership of your project, you're only giving Reddit license to judge and show off your project to the public.
Subject to Reddit’s Developer Terms and Reddit’s ownership in Reddit Licensed Materials (as defined in the Developer Terms), all Submissions remain the intellectual property of the individuals or organizations that developed them. By submitting an entry, Entrants agree that the Sponsor is granted a fully paid, non-exclusive license to use such submitted materials in connection with running the Hackathon, including for judging the entry. Some Submission components may be displayed to the public. Other Submission materials may be viewed by the Sponsor, Devpost, and judges for screening and evaluation. By submitting an entry or accepting any prize, you (and, if you are a Representative, on behalf of your Team or Organization) represent and warrant that (a) you own or have all necessary rights to all submitted content, including the Submission(s) and demo video, and to grant the licenses under these Official Rules and the Developer Terms; (b) the submitted content does not violate the intellectual property or proprietary rights of any third party; and (c) the content submitted does not contain any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware or other disabling devices or harmful or malicious code.
But that doesn't prevent Reddit from seeing your specific code and implementation, seeing how well it works, and then making their own copies from scratch for anything that looks appealing.
But that doesn't prevent Reddit from seeing your specific code and implementation, seeing how well it works, and then making their own copies from scratch for anything that looks appealing.
I think since it’s games that are being developed, reddit would really be shooting themselves in the foot by claiming the best work for themselves. I’m pretty sure they’re trying to promote their...
I think since it’s games that are being developed, reddit would really be shooting themselves in the foot by claiming the best work for themselves. I’m pretty sure they’re trying to promote their new developer platform and marketplace and attract talent.
But with reddit you never know, the company has a history of throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. It seems to be an internal motto there when trying out new programs. And sometimes they even scrub the stuff that works.
That's pretty much how all apps work. If they actually took your source code or copied novel parts lind by line that'd be infringement. But people can make copycats without ever seeing any source...
That's pretty much how all apps work. If they actually took your source code or copied novel parts lind by line that'd be infringement. But people can make copycats without ever seeing any source code directly.
Also, I'm not sure how the code is exposed for this new API, but given the web platform that might be something anyone can do anyway.
The reddit developer platform is a really cool concept, it is just a shame it was introduced when reddit had burned most bridges and zapped all my energy. I would have been really excited about it if it had only come two years earlier.
As not everyone will know my backstory with reddit. The tl;dr is that I am one of the founders of the moderator toolbox extension for reddit. With almost 20k users at some point most mods on reddit would have used it. Needless to say I spend a lot of time and energy developing tooling for reddit.
Having sat in a meeting with Steve (Spez) around the API debacle I can also say that even if I still had some energy left. Any goodwill towards reddit as an organization also is pretty much gone.
Though if anyone does want to do modstuff stuff, the one dev still somewhat active for toolbox did make some bindings to interact with toolbox stored stuff.
As a long time ex-Redditor, thank you so much for helping to make it possible for my favourite places to have existed for such a long time while it lasted. Mods couldn't have kept the place going without those tools
It has been my pleasure :). Well, except for the last year or so, I should have quit sooner. Something about hindsight.
I should also mention that it was never a solo effort.
https://xkcd.com/1768/
This is more than fair. Just following along when spez tried to libel the developer Apollo that had to be disproven with the audio recordings of their phone call told me everything I need to know about the guy. Not someone I would do business with, especially as a 3rd party dev at his whim.
I guess it all worked out for him, but I still feel sad that we lost something special by driving out all the talented people who built community instead of a business.
Given their past actions, I can’t fathom why any developer would put any effort into working with the Reddit API.
I know, but reddit never catered to game developers directly and indie developers probably do not have the same reservations as other devs because they work in a really competitive and unforgiving field. Even with those past actions, this game jam is gonna help a few devs. I’m optimistic about this one.
I wish the best of luck to those who participate. But chasing off all the 3rd party devs last year, only to sell out to AI, and now trying to come back to incenivize people to work on some other reddit platform is peak irony.
Is it? I don’t see what’s ironic about it.
They want to centralize everything one year and forcefully remove developers 3rd party developers. Even going so far as to say they werre getting free rides and leeching off reddit.
And now this year they want to encourage third party development. That seems pretty ironic
This platform was already in development around the time of the API debacle. It also fits within the context of reddit wanting to centralize everything, as these applications run on reddit. Meaning that reddit has control over them in a way they don't have with browser extensions and external bots.
Basically it comes down to control. Reddit does see the benefits of third party developers, but what they didn't like was that they couldn't control them as tightly and dictate how they interacted with reddit. The developer platform from reddit's perspective solves this issue. It allows for third party functionality, but only in those places of the UI and those parts of the API where reddit has control over those modifications.
As I said in my other post, if this had come a few years earlier, I might even have liked the concept. Offering functionality toolbox offered natively would have been really beneficial for a lot of mods on reddit, including those on mobile. But they didn't, what they did instead is first abandon a lot of reddit redesign core development in favor of shiny new features. Ignoring all pleas for performance, cohesion, finishing mod tooling, etc.
I would agree that the timing of it all is a bit ironic. As at the same time Spez was busy pissing everyone off over the API changes the PM of the developer platform was trying to entice us to start developing toolbox features. Although, at that point I wouldn't even call that ironic anymore, as that is pretty much how I had come to expect reddit to operate.
Yeah, as someone who vyes to be a FOSS component, that's probably the best way to make sure I never touch your APIs again. Claiming to be open source in the beginning and then closing down everything over a decade is pretty much why FOSS proponents tend to be so defensive about their software. We're only convinient until it's time to cash out. That's not why we contribute to this kind of software.
I'll admit I was already souring on Reddit more than a few years back, so I wouldn't have changed much in my disposition. The last year just took me from "maybe they can redeem themselves" to "I will never actively help them again".
I was never a mod directly but I'd help with various automod tooling on some tiny groups and I've made a few scripts here and there for personal use. So I definitely empathized with a lot of the lack of support the non-power mods would get even in the mid 2010's. The 2020's just revealed what I and likely you already knew deep down about their approach to "community".
Reddit did the changes fundamentally for data sovereignty. 3rd parties like pushshift were starting to sell Reddit data they scraped to data companies for things like LLM training. Reddit wanted that revenue stream for itself.
The apps were more collateral damage, although it was long time coming that Reddit api access would need to cost money. That was part of being more responsible with their costs as they neared IPO.
Since then, the former has both been implemented and very successful. Their new deal with Google is driving a lot of revenue. So now they have the latitude to go back and carve out more spots where programmatic access isn’t conflicting with Reddit’s core revenue streams or costs.
Nothing seems ironic to me, rather it’s very logical. If you need to clean your table, you take everything off and put some things back on. It’s not ironic that you first took everything off, then put them back on. You did something in between, and not everything is coming back.
Generally I agree with your take here, except for this one:
Specifically as a blanket statement. Even more so considering how many benefits many of the third party developers have given to reddit over the years. Additionally, I also think it can only really be true in a context where the only rational is short term monetary thinking without consideration of longer term impact. Which, I think, was indeed the context in which a lot of the calls on this have been made. But, that doesn't make it an overall truth of this having been the only path forward.
If LLM training truly was the core of the issues, then they could have been more lenient in general towards app developers. I should also note that LLM data was not one of the main motivators here according to Steve (Spez) himself. This was missed revenue because third party apps do not show ads and such. How big the impact here truly was is hard to tell. But if we assume it is true, then from a monetary standpoint you want to move people away from using these apps if they user base of them is big enough. If you do take community goodwill in account and recognize the valid role these apps did play in the past there would also have been many more much more reasonable options. For example, making ads available through the API and requiring app developers to show these. Or, even simpler, make it that users can only use the apps if they have a gold subscription.
Instead, reddit opted to go for tactics clearly not intended to charge for reasonable access but to effectively force people to stop using the API.
As far as your analogy goes. I'd say there are roughly two ways you can do this:
What reddit did in many ways is more like the second option. Where they threw away all they had, went out and bought a new platform, realized they had thrown away a lot of goodwill and furiously started trying to fix a lot of core issues. There is no denying that it eventually got them there. But I can't help but feel that there would have been other ways to get there, without the massive media fallout and general decline of so many subreddits.
The API changes were fine, in the end, just magnified by a personal dispute between Spez and one of the 3rd party developers. As the dust settles, there are still 3rd party reddit apps. Personally, I use narwhal 2 when I still go on Reddit, which the developer has been able to pay for costs with a simple $5/month subscription.
The fact of the present is that the API pricing changes in no way it made it impossible to have a reddit app - you just need to pay what seems like a very reasonable fee if developers can still have profit with no more than $5/month.
Simply charging for API access is the most logical way to do things; then, the developer can find ways to bring that revenue however they're comfortable with it, whether that be their own ads, or a subscription. No reason to force a particular model.
The Apollo spat definitely seemed inappropriate on both sides, it's a lesson to not be personally involved in matters as an executive, and for the apollo developer to not burn bridges so easily. But overall, the API moves were perfectly justifiable and continue to make sense todya.
This glosses over a lot in my opinion. Specifically that it was not quite as easy for third party developers as you make it out to be. It isn't as if they could simply apply, all be quoted the same price, etc.
Talklittle of RIF is active here on Tildes, I am not going to ping them because I don't want to drag them into this discussion. But, it is quite easy to find their account of events on how this was handled.
Anyway, this does feel a lot like a rehash of discussions I had over a year ago. So I'll leave it at this, it's clear we both have a different view on all of this.
Sure. But either way, I'd hardly classify the situation as "ironic", even if you view the API changes negatively. Overshoot and correct is a classic approach for big issues, and the LLM training data issue was one that would have serious impacts on Reddit's continued existence as a business (and not as a money-losing exercise).
They had a goal, they accomplished it, now they have time to do subgoals. I don't think Reddit is really sweating about whether or not devs go back to using their platform, and if they had to choose between the fat deal from Google and having more 3rd party apps they'd choose the former without thinking, but it'd be nice, so throw some pocket change at it, why not?
Additionally, the kind of thing they're looking for here is fundamentally different than what the API changes were about; they're looking for apps that embed inside Reddit, effectively.
In my case, I feel developers were the scraps and they claim to want the scraps back now that they clearned it off. I'd rather not risk being wiped off again when I'm inconvinient to Reddit's profit motivations.
Sure, and you don't see "well we got ours, you can come back and get the scraps" as ironic? Well, everyone's sense of irony is different.
Everything's being scrapped for LLM training and it's not like Pushift was selling out. As you said, the devs were collateral to the bigger powers than be, and I don't feel like being a pawn again.
Not really, how is that ironic? It seems logical. Overshoot and correct is a classic strategy. If Reddit was trying to open up again for free LLM training, that would be ironic, but they're definitely not doing that. It's not like they're doing all that much, just throwing a bit of money at a hackathon.
I would also note that what they're courting here is very different from what was cleared; this isn't about apps that build ways to view reddit's data, like 3rd party clients or things like pushshift. This is about essentially apps inside Reddit. It's just an entirely different audience; I doubt any of these would even work in old.reddit.com.
I explained it 3 times, I don't know how else to rephrase it at this point
Maybe for businesses, not for what Reddit was 15 years ago. Lessons learned, but if you're only seeing it from a business perspective, I'm not suprised we seem to be talking past each other.
From my perspective, they once again want to rely on others' goodwill and free labor to make toys for their playground, when they have multiple times have thrown out the sandbox whenever number needed to go up. I don't see the difference here. That's always been the model for reddit, yes, but they had an advantage previously from being one of the more convinient options for this sort of method.
Well, they more than lost traction. Why would I use this sandbox over Roblox, or the recent UEFN (Fortnite Roblox)? They are giving devs less power and pretending they have the same renown they had in 2010 in terms being this techy commmunity utopia? I won't predict that this will fail horribly, but the boy has cried wolf at least 4 times at this point. I'm not falling for the same promise. That's irony to me:
Maybe it's just not ironic? I'm not sure what is contrary to what expectation. This, imo, is exactly in line with what Reddit wants to do. Or rather, it's in line with the expectation that Reddit doesn't particularly care about 3rd party developers, but treats it as a nice-to-have. If they had to choose between having better results in this hackathon, or their fat deal with Google, I imagine they'd prefer the $600m deal.
What is the pretending part? They're just throwing 100k at a hackathon. Who's pretending about anything?
Do you think it would be better, or more logical for them not to throw some pocket change at a hackathon?
It's fine if you don't want to participate, but that doesn't have anything to do with Reddit's broader goals and aims, and whether or not its current actions are contrary to any of them.
Maybe we can agree to disagree? At this point we're clearly not convincing one another and this is a trivial detail to my main point. I do not in fact miss the odd nitpicking of redditors.
We have been on reddit in very different eras. 2011-2014 reddit was very different from 2021-2024 reddit. We're talking past each other when you're clearly looking at Reddit as a business making reasonable financial choices, and I'm looking back on it as a community. So there's not point talking any further if you don't want to empathize.
I was more than happy just leaving it at "good luck to those who participate" without going on my own personal hang-ups with Reddit. What do you want out of me?
So I have a bit of a bias since I am super pro-indie and moderate r/indiedev, but one of the few good changes I saw with Reddit recently was that they are actually trying a more give and take approach with users. I hope we get more stuff like this from Reddit.
You GIVE them your data and they TAKE lots of money by selling it?
well that is the default reddit experience now if you have any account.
The one pleasant thing I read in the tos was that you do in fact keep IP ownership of your project, you're only giving Reddit license to judge and show off your project to the public.
But that doesn't prevent Reddit from seeing your specific code and implementation, seeing how well it works, and then making their own copies from scratch for anything that looks appealing.
I think since it’s games that are being developed, reddit would really be shooting themselves in the foot by claiming the best work for themselves. I’m pretty sure they’re trying to promote their new developer platform and marketplace and attract talent.
But with reddit you never know, the company has a history of throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. It seems to be an internal motto there when trying out new programs. And sometimes they even scrub the stuff that works.
That's pretty much how all apps work. If they actually took your source code or copied novel parts lind by line that'd be infringement. But people can make copycats without ever seeing any source code directly.
Also, I'm not sure how the code is exposed for this new API, but given the web platform that might be something anyone can do anyway.