this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
137 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

37739 readers
576 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I've been a long time Redditor and an Apollo user for about a year. I even paid for it. The main draw for me was the lack of advertising. In the back of my head I kept thinking that it couldn't last. Reddit is losing revenue from the lack of advertising views. It didn't

To me, Reddit's sky high pricing for the use of the API is intended to kill off apps like Apollo and for its users to move to the advertising filled web site or its own app, which I've never used.

If Huffman came out and said this was a revenue move right off would everyone be as upset as they are? Are people upset because Huffman completely mishandled the move or because they got their ad free experience turned off? If Reddit had an app the same quality as Apollo only with ads, would they be OK with it. I've only used Apollo so I can't speak to the other apps.

I can't blame Reddit for wanting to make money. It doesn't make a profit. Investors have to keep pouring in money to keep it going. They're going to want to see a return on their investment at some point. Usually they cash in on an IPO, but IPO's are generally only successful if the corporation looks like it will be profitable or at least the stock price continues to go up. That's how capitalism works.

In my case, I probably would have left regardless. I can't stand adds in my feed. I probably wouldn't have heard of lemmy or kbin if there hadn't been such an uproar. So I'm glad it went the way it did.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] SkepticElliptic@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I suspect they have signed an exclusivity deal with some kind of third party to use the API. It could be for "AI" or it could be for more nefarious purposes.

[–] GonzoVeritas@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Spez knows he can create 'traffic' of user comments and answers with AI. He also knows he can use AI to moderate subreddits. He doesn't care about the quality of the site, just the numbers that get him his payday. He'll burn it to the ground and cash-out, leaving a mess in his wake.

[–] kingthrillgore@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

The widespread adoption of AI isn't to do anything better, its to do something worse than a human does, because people will buy close enough. The WGA is 100% right about AI, and I say this as an avid Midjourney user.

[–] Skray@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sat on the reddit board for years and was briefly CEO for 8 days.

[–] lanbanger@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

OpenAI is another dumpster fire waiting to happen, then.

[–] soundasleep@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Why else would they make access to OpenAI/ChatGPT/etc so cheap? So others can build businesses on the tech that get locked in before they jack up the price.

We've seen this rodeo plenty of times now.

[–] Zacpod@lemmy.villa-straylight.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's why it's important to go back thru our comment history and replace them with linguistic garbage. To ensure Reddit can't profit off our donations. I'm not in the business of subsidizing Reddit, after all.

"Plonked up behind the radio them ready the plastic manuscript who observe Jerry's can." Or whatever.

[–] jnj@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If I were implementing this nefarious Reddit I probably wouldn't have edits wipe out the original Tatars data. It's certainly not necessary to implement edits that way.

[–] webghost0101@lemmy.fmhy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

In fact, the editing log itself can be used as more data.

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

We actually know for a fact they don't do it that way, since Reddit has already been caught undoing peoples "delete" edits after they've gone