Given that reddit is making it difficult for users to delete posts and comments [1]. I wonder if it will make it more difficult for them if instead of deleting the comments and posts, but we flood the posts and comments with garbage edits.
Something like this could be easily scripted out. Could use browser automation if you don’t want to use the reddit api.
If they truly have the ability to roll back deleted AND edits on a post and comment level, then flooding the change history log with garbage edits will cause them to hemorrhage money in terms of cold storage (ie, Amazon S3) and database size.
They can’t be infinitely storing all of the edit history. So at some point they have to purge the oldest commits at which point makes it equivalent to deletion of original post, except now they are keeping garbage and paying to keep that garbage stored. Have fun running your LLM on that junk.
Something like this:
- original comment: “Some thoughtful comment here”
- 1st edit: <edited to hit max comment length with garbage content, maybe “lorem ipsom” placeholder stuff>
- 2nd edit: <edit one character in string>
- 3rd edit: <edit another character in string>
- nth edit: …
Again, this assumes they are even keeping the edit history. Would be nice if we can get insider information from a reddit backend engineer to confirm.
I’m going to predict that at the 11th hour they walk back the pricing to a reasonable number, as it attempt to 1) save face and 2) to be able to point to their investors and the media that they tried negotiating.
It’s too late.
Yeah, I think that’s a possible way that this goes down. I also think that if they did that it’d be a mistake. I think Apollo, RIF, and the other 3rd party apps are gone. Even if reddit announced yesterday that they were going to keep the API free, let alone negotiate a middle ground, I think 3rd party apps are gone and not coming back. On the 3rd party level I don’t even really think it’s the cash grab that’s the problem, it’s the lack of communication and trust. Even if reddit were to bend over backwards to try to keep them, I don’t think there’s anything they can do to make up for the lack of trust this has created in reddit’s leadership. Same thing goes for the mods. The mods are arguably reddits most important users. They make the site usable for everyone else and if reddit was ever to become profitable I think the people spez would have to thank for that would be the mods who made the spaces that people wanted to come be a part of. They can’t trust reddits leadership either. It doesn’t matter what shiny new toys reddit may try to roll out to make their job easier, it doesn’t matter what exceptions they try to carve into their new API policy. Common thread here is noone wants to sink their time into something that might change as fast as reddit has shown it can. Being a 3rd party dev or a mod takes a lot of time out of your day. Faced with the choice of leaving or laboring for a company that clearly doesn’t respect the value you add to their service I think that most would choose to flee the sinking ship.
Stop dreaming! Don’t get me wrong, I wish you’re right, but they’ve been too stubborn for too long to change course now. They’ll appear weak and loose the faih and support of their investors.
On top of all that, the corporate side of reddit want to gain control of the community. The way I think they see it is that it’s not a good thing that “mods work for free moderating their forums”. They do not have control of their own platform, and I believe that this doesn’t go down with investors - if I’m dumping my own money into a company, I want to feel confident that the company is moving in the right direction and they have the necessary controls to do so. Many of us will agree that that is what is unique about reddit and why we love it, but when you introcude investors, business and profits, you need to be able to control your own company to be able to make profit.
Yes, there are subtle ways to control the reddit community whilst still giving the impression that it’s free and fair (like what they did with the woman ceo a few years ago, remember?) , but really, all this bad press with the apis is stemming from reddit as a company not being able to control it’s own platform. Twitter did exactly the same thing and I for one hadn’t even noticed.
Reddit is a full trashcan nobody bothered to empty for 10 years. Lemmy it up!
Well, since we are here on Lemmy, it feels like that good damage is already done on Reddit side.
If the injury is a fatal one, only time and the engagement on the alternatives will tell.
Reddit will still be around for a good long while after this I’m guessing, unless the IPO offering goes completely tits up, it may be a long, slow decline, or none at all even. However, just given their attitude in all of this, they’ll likely be pushing people away on a regular basis with even more bad decisions until they it hits a critical mass and people just migrate to the new popular site/app. Whether it’s Lemmy or Tildes or Mastodon or whatever, another platform will likely take the crown from them.
It took many years for reddit to take off to become a huge player on the internet. Digg, Twitter, and myspace where the big players in 2005 to 2010. Then people started to move to Facebook, Snapchat, and Reddit as they became more popular. It only a matter of time until Mastodon, Lemmy and other federated platforms take over. Especially if the community keeps growing and spreading the word.
Yeah does it seems like decentralized (federated or otherwise) systems will be the future of social media. There’s lemmy (only four years old, the most popular I’d say), bluesky (another federated system), and plebbit (peer to peer, uses ipfs) to highlight a few. So there seemsto be a lot of exploration in this space.
I think reddit will be around for quite some time, but it’ll never be the same, and die a slow death.
