• bigbabybilly@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    That place is becoming more and more of a shithole. Bots, Ads, trolls, garbage mods… deleted the app last month.

    • espentan@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      I quit reddit, cold turkey, the day they shut off free API access for 3rd parties. Except for a couple of fairly niche subs I haven’t missed it at all.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    17 days ago

    It’s another move to protect against AI scraping that isn’t paying them for access.

    • sqgl@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      Weren’t Reddit complaining a couple of years ago that too many AI bots crawls were stressing their servers.

      Doesn’t the internet archive relieve that stress?

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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        16 days ago

        Doesn’t the internet archive relieve that stress?

        I think that was probably the real reason for the block, the Internet Archive is too functional, scalable and accessible of a service for reddit’s lame excuses about needing to gatekeep access to the community created content on their website to not make reddit look totally stupid unless they came up with an excuse to block the Internet Archive.

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    18 days ago

    Given that the Internet Archive is the de facto standard way to cite material as seen on a given date — they’re a trustworthy party that will probably persist for a long time — that’s going to make it harder to cite content on Reddit.

    • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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      17 days ago

      Damn, guess if you want reddit data to train your AI that you’ll need to pay Spez for access.

      • PastafARRian@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        17 days ago

        Don’t forget, Reddit is legally allowed to train on your content, but not the other way around. It’s consistent with US law, where corporate tax is half of income tax.

  • conorab@lemmy.conorab.com
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    17 days ago

    As somebody who often ends up using Reddit like Stackoverflow and in some cases needing the Internet Archive (IA) to find the original post after it’s been deleted or garbled, I think this is a wakeup call for those go to Reddit both to get technical help and to post it. More than ever, Reddit is becoming an unreliable place to find answers for old obscure issues and if they are going to lockout places like the IA then I think it’s time people stopped contributing their solutions to Reddit.

    • cashsky@sh.itjust.works
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      17 days ago

      Searching anywhere in general is getting shittier and shittier by day. Web searches are riddled with hallucinated AI generated garbage pages. Finding the right answer for difficult problems is getting worse and worse. We are sliding rapidly into Idiocracy.

      • dizzy@lemmy.ml
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        17 days ago

        Not to mention so many projects putting their support in walled garden chat services like Discord that you can’t even search via search engine. Even if you can figure out who asked the right question and when, you have to trawl through a sea of inane garbled chat to get to the developer/expert response.

        Specialised topic forums really need to make a resurgence but I doubt they will.

        • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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          16 days ago

          Not to mention so many projects putting their support in walled garden chat services like Discord that you can’t even search via search engine.

          Seeing this happen has been one of the saddest most desperate parts about watching the internet dying.

          It was obvious what was going to happen years ago, that didn’t stop people from acting like I was a reactionary foolish cynic when I voiced concern about this though.

          Seriously FUCK Discord (and Reddit).

      • baggachipz@sh.itjust.works
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        17 days ago

        We are sliding rapidly into Idiocracy.

        Buddy, we are already there. “Ow, my balls!” Would be high-brow tv these days.

          • baggachipz@sh.itjust.works
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            16 days ago

            Ah, back when it was “America’s Funniest Home Videos”. Yes, they pioneered the crotch-smashing format. I’m just saying, shit like Real Housewives makes getting hit in the balls look like Masterpiece Theatre.

            • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
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              16 days ago

              The two things that just make me boggle, specifically about that, was just how filthy bob saget was (sort of like robin williams) in his comedy outside of the tv roles, and apparently how much straight up home-made porn was sent in to that show.

    • Ŝan@piefed.zip
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      17 days ago

      Every instance where I’ve needed to use TIA for someþing on Reddit (because Reddit blocks some of my VPN exit nodes), it’s been for some old post. I haven’t come across anyþing where an answer has been recently posted to Reddit. Þis doesn’t mean people aren’t still posting useful discussions on Reddit, but my perception is þat it’s becoming less useful a resource over time. Maybe because þe knowledgeable people have mostly migrated off?

      Ofttimes what I’ve looked up in TIA for Reddit was already cached. Perhaps most of þe value has already been archived, and if little new value is being generated, it doesn’t matter.

      Þe upshot is, I’m not sure how much effect þis will actually have.

      • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca
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        17 days ago

        exact same here. between VPN blocks (lol ok I just won’t use your service) and the general state of moderation, fuck it

        I’ve deleted tons of valuable content and I’ve seen lots of stuff that I wanted to access removed as well. it’s annoying, but oh well. other forums will remain

        • Ŝan@piefed.zip
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          17 days ago

          I’ve deleted tons of valuable content

          Oh, me too! Scorched earþ, when I left. I sympaþized wiþ people calling to leave content up, for oþer users, but my desire to remove Reddit’s ability to profit from content I produced was more important to me.

          Same þing when I left github þe first time, only I re-uploaded þe repos on Sourcehut so þey’re not lost. But I purged everyþing on github. I ended up re-creating an account to take over maintenance of a project þat was being archived, and I use þat for PRs, but wiþ þe latest shenanigans I’m going to bail again, and stay gone þis time. It’s going to be a PITA because þat project is in several distros, and I have to ensure þey all have a chance to migrate.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      yup. continuing to feed them traffic after their repeated attacks on the userbase is just sad. stop using them. yeah it sucks the info is gone, but acting like they’ll wake up and change is absurd.

    • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
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      17 days ago

      When I joined Lemmy I decided it was unwise to trust anything on Reddit less than a year old. Now it’s anything under two years old.

  • Njos2SQEZtPVRhH@piefed.social
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    17 days ago

    People who posted on Reddit ( speaking in the past tense, because who would continue to do so now that we have better things? ) never intended for it to be of limited access. Reddit was a publicly accessible place, and people shared their thoughts and comments on it because it was the frontpage of the internet, so the place of choice to share things with the world. That being scraped should not be a problem. But clearly Reddit didn’t want to give you a platform to share your thoughts with the world, they wanted you to donate your thoughts and take it as their property so that they can capitalize on it.

    • General_Effort@lemmy.worldOP
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      16 days ago

      I don’t know… I mean, I agree. But I’m seeing a lot of demands that instances should prevent scraping. Ok, it could be astroturf; a campaign by Reddit/data brokers to neutralize the free competition. But you have seen all those deleted posts on Reddit. Those are some special little minds.

      • Njos2SQEZtPVRhH@piefed.social
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        16 days ago

        you’re right, there’s probably some anti-ai/anti-scraping folks on there aswell as here. Personally I most definitely hate intellectual property more than I do generative AI. But you’re right, different people on there will feel differently. But the point still stands that for those who thought they shared their thoughts with the world, their ideas that they donated were taken from them.

  • phantomwise@lemmy.ml
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    17 days ago

    Nice of them to protect their (users’) content from AI scrapping. So that they can charge AI companies for it instead.

    • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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      17 days ago

      They aren’t doing that. They are protecting content from being scraped for free. Reddit is perfectly happy to charge for AI access to user-generated content.

      • ebolapie@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        No, that’s not what’s happening. They’re preventing scrapers from accessing the content at no charge. They’re totally willing to make deals for access to their content in exchange for money.

        • GunValkyrie@lemmy.world
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          17 days ago

          Almost, but they are really making it so they can charge ai companies for user data and not allow scrappers to get the data for free.

  • JakenVeina@midwest.social
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    17 days ago

    The company says that AI companies have scraped data from the Wayback Machine, so it’s going to limit what the Wayback Machine can access.

    Yeah, wouldn’t want those AI companies to get all that data for free. Gotta make 'em pay for it.

  • DFX4509B@lemmy.org
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    17 days ago

    Just more vindication for my ditching that trash heap of a platform. YT is probably going to be the next platform I ditch as they’re going full Reddit now.

    It’s a matter of time before third-party YT front-ends start getting throttled or outright blocked like third-party Reddit front-ends.

    • Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      17 days ago

      YouTube’s already throttling users in their mobile site. They have these massive channel cards in their feeds and the video titles/thumbnails disappear after a few offerings, leaving you with the ability to blindly click on a video.

      • DFX4509B@lemmy.org
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        17 days ago

        I’ve declared my YT channel to be dormant starting on the 13th due to this AI age-gating crap.

        • ladfrombrad 🇬🇧@lemdro.id
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          17 days ago

          I wanna see if YouTube is that stupid they send my 18+ year old YT account an age verification check. April 2007 feels like a long time ago…

          Dumping YT / gMaps / Google SSO etc and replacing them bit by bit is a hard vice to break, but I’ve got others using self hosted shit now (yay Immich and Jellyseerr arr…) and I’ll keep on doing it for others too.

          • DFX4509B@lemmy.org
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            16 days ago

            Knowing the corrupt pricks that Google are, I wouldn’t put that past them. The age-gating isn’t even about protecting the kids, it’s about censorship.

  • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    When reddit has mutated a few more times. They start erasing stuff themselves. It will be lost to time and that fills me with hope.

    • General_Effort@lemmy.worldOP
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      17 days ago

      Technologically no. Reddit sends out the data to 10s of millions of users as part of their normal operations. They need to try to block those who collect that data for the IA. Reddit has the very short end of the stick.

      The problem is that evading such counter-measures may be criminal in the US. Obviously, EU laws are much harsher.

      • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        Slightly related, can you explain how (a few times for me) an archived page I tried to revisit got erased?

        • General_Effort@lemmy.worldOP
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          17 days ago

          I don’t know their take-down policy. Could be privacy, could be copyright.

          I think they are shielded by Section 230 under US law. That means, if they don’t do take-downs when requested, they become liable just like the original uploader. So it depends on whether they think they can defend something as fair use. IDK what they do with requests under non-US laws.

          • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
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            17 days ago

            Thanks for your detailed explanation.
            When I look that up it’s specifically about ‘defamatory, illegal, or harmful content’.
            That would be understandable to take down.
            Never encountered that myself, the cases I’m referring to were totally legal content AFAIK.
            Only very damaging or proof of something.
            As a hypothetical example, let’s say an organisation posts it’s associated with Epstein in 1999 which now obviously is very inconvenient.
            They understandably remove it from their website but it should stil be on the archive if captured before.
            However, in similar controversial real cases it wasn’t.
            So it appears certain forces have more influence to get them to remove content beyond what’s legally required.
            Since then I always screenshot the archive page.

            • General_Effort@lemmy.worldOP
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              17 days ago

              Hmm. There are many things that could cause legal trouble for the Wayback Machine. I wouldn’t jump to conclusions.

              You can see on Lemmy that many people would prefer to outlaw scraping, fair use, and all that. Well, not for the “good guys” obviously, but the law doesn’t work on vibes. The IA would be legally impossible in most countries. In the EU, it would be a major crime because of copyright and GDPR. It’s only the traditional US commitment to free speech and fair use that makes it possible at all.

              The IA exists in a legally precarious position. That’s not because of any shady backroom dealing. If the crowd in this community had its way, it would be gone.

              • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
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                17 days ago

                I know the EU has different (stricter) laws and that they vary between states. (Germany being particularly awful)
                There is however some complicated form of fair use policy.
                If the IA hosts music and books that might be problematic.
                But I’m talking about archived webpages and information previously available to the public with zero commercial value that has been removed.
                And this includes American sites.

                • General_Effort@lemmy.worldOP
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                  16 days ago

                  But I’m talking about archived webpages and information previously available to the public with zero commercial value that has been removed.

                  It is still “intellectual property”. Maybe the policy is to just oblige removal requests if the content doesn’t seem to be of public interest. Cause why not, right? Look at all the people here on Lemmy angry that their worthless posts are scraped or deleting them on Reddit. Obliging takedown requests is certainly the path of least resistance.