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Reddit is killing RSS feeds and ending public API access because of AI bots (techcrunch.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 351 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Obligatory Fuck Spez

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    • [–] 107 points 1 month ago (14 children)

    Reddit is slowly dying. It will eventually be 100% bots.

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  • [–] 34 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Anything with an even mildly AI-adjacent topic is a solid 75% bots right now...

    /r/nvidia, /r/amd, /r/hardware, etc, etc..

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago

    I'd like to believe it is but I also know that the majority of people online do not give a damn about user experience and things getting shittier. I do not understand these people, but its because of them this shit is still happening. If they all left sites like reddit there'd be no incentive to become shittier and shittier.

    Not trying to shift blame though, in the first place its companies like reddit even coming up with strategy who are to blame.

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    • [–] 86 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    because of AI bots

    We all know they really were just looking for any excuse

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    I'm glad to hear that from someone that's as anti-ai as you

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Honestly like I hate AI but I still use it

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago*

    there are some very narrow uses where AI is actually useful. Most of what it's used for is junk though. The early internet was the same way, but at least that was charming about it. I doubt that a website comprised of 1200 clipart hamster gifs and a pitch toned clip of a song from Disney's Robin Hood is going to hack a competing Sites mainframe looking for ways to inflate its page veiws.

    The AI bubble will burst, companies will actually sit down, pull their heads out of their asses, and actually apply it to something useful, as it was originally conceived.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    They killed access to old Reddit without an account a couple months ago. Also i saw some people can't access the new one without an account but i guess they are rolling out that one slowly.

    They're making the website viewable only with an account.

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    • [–] 242 points 1 month ago* (59 children)

    Reddit never gave a shit about bots. To them it's something that pumps up their active users numbers to woo their investors. They're only doing this so they can force people to view their ads that are designed to look like posts.

    Who goes on Reddit nowadays anyway?

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  • [–] 24 points 1 month ago

    Seems like most people don't really care about or understand stuff like "private platforms enshittify". Certainly not enough to be inconvenienced. People will be like "that's where the good memes are" or "that's where my video games post". Heavens forbid you miss the hot memes.

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  • [–] 32 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Unfortunately a good chunk of linux distro resources and troubleshooting, and also many hobby stuff is over there.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Yeah, and it's worse the more niche. I have no idea if Lemmy has a Fortnite community or if it's active, but I seriously doubt it has a /r/StarWarsDroidTycoon community (a Fortnite mode), which is what I care about. Or /r/FortniteLeaks

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Or a specific gamepad brand sub that might have some info for a problem i face, or 3ds hacking resource. Reddit win in this because they have years of discussion on the specific subject.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    They're concerned about AI scraping. They want to sell access to users' content for training, not let the AI in for free.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Exactly. They definitely care. They want the AI companies coughing up dough for all that data.

    Thankfully redlib still works

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  • [–] 75 points 1 month ago (39 children)

    I still go on reddit often since that's where most of the game communities I want to hear from are.

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  • [–] 41 points 1 month ago (28 children)

    Same, Lenny isn't mature enough to have some of the very niche communities yet

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  • [–] 24 points 1 month ago (11 children)

    It's not even mature enough to support some mainstream interests, like sports.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago (10 children)

    no laundry community on Llemmy either....

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (9 children)

    Lol what is this, I’m out of the loop here lol

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  • [–] -4 points 1 month ago (8 children)

    Lemmy doesnt have a laundry dedicated community anywhere that Ive looked.... reddit does however....

    So I guess the Lemmings let mama and dada do their laundry for them still 😅

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    so its nothing more than a community that talks about Laundry? sorry if this sounds dumb but man I had been on reddit since the 2010's and I am just now learning about this lol

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (3 children)

    there's so many things that go into laundry care that mostt people need to know about but will never choose to learn about

    Like iif your detergent uses certain enzymes then you cant use that detergent to clean wool clothing....but the thing is that like 95 % or more of all detergents have enzymes in them....so....

    Also if you live in apartment building what rights do you have to clean out your washing machines' filters? What ability do you have to clean those filters?

    Also which detergents are asstastically bad scams and should never be considered as detergents? Which detergents are actually good? Which companies have bribed those in the media to make it look.like their laundry based products work bbetter than theey actually do? Which detergents shoupd you consider for different msterials? How mucj will they cost over time? SHould you just make asnd use your own homemade detergents?

    also Do homemade eco friendly fabric softeners exist and should you even use fabric softeners at all?

    How good are copper and lamolin coated clothing at clesning themselves as both of these substances have been found to have anti microbial properties?

    How do other regions that dont have easy access to washing machines and dryers do their laundry? Can we take any advice from theiir methods?

    How eco friendly are certain types oof clothingsa and even certain types of washing methods? It has been. shown that some of the biggest polluters of microplastics into our world today are microscopic specks from cleaning aritficial fabrics like polyester

    Ar ethere any scam washing machines or dryers in the msrket today? How can we tell that they are garbage at cleaning and drying clothing?

    When you hhang dry clothing what types of methods could you use to ensure that you dont promote the growth of certain hydrophobic microbes?

    The topics go on and on....

    Lemmy has no community dedicated to talking about any of these topics...

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    hahaha, well consider me one of today's lucky 10,000 then. Well if you ever decide to start a dedicated laundry community, I'll subscribe. Sounds like you already have the perfect sidebar material written out already lol. Cheers!

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Honestly I dontbhave the time in my average day to moderate the community so who would moderate it? I dont have the time T-T . Others probably do. They can start it if they want and moderate it if they want .

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    That's the problem with Lemmy. It's not large enough to have active niche communities like gaming handhelds like Retroid ones, Anbernic ones, Steam Deck, etc.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    True. And it sucks.

    The way I see it is that as long as Lemmy doesnt become as amazingly terrible as reddit or faceboook or twitter there will be such communities created eventually....may take a decade or two for people to birth them and moderate them but they are almost inevitable to come into existence if the demand for such communities gets big enough.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    That's the problem with changing social networks.

    People goes where people are. So it takes some major scew up from the current networks. Or a newcomer that have some killer feature everybody will want / need.

    And lemmy lacks that "killer feature"

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Lemmy/Piefed/Etc has a killer feature (or maybe characteristic), but one that only a fraction of users find appealing. Being decentralized makes the network more resistant to many of the problems we see on Reddit and other networks, or at least, reduces their impact.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    That killer feature is also very unappealing/confusing to the average user. Very similar to Linux in that regard

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    They will get it eventually it just takes time for people to realize they need to try again. That's the main issue is people are just lazy.

    But I've been through multiple conversions like from slashdot to digg then to reddit and now federated. There will always be slow people that take awhile to figure out there is something better to be had.

    I still go on Reddit in some cases because google seo or niche communities that are already pretty small. I mean I don't login anymore and I've replaced all of my 10,000 comments. You can definitely tell there has been a massive brain drain. I still get a chuckle when occasionally people reply to my altered comments saying "aww darn that was actually the correct answer". All my comments now point to federated communities and call out Reddits awful behavior.

    Sites come on and enshitify and then people move on (I'm used to it) bit its just nice to know I might not have to do that here. It's a little annoying to manage multiple accounts with Lemmy/piefed but it also gives me a layer of redundancy. Reddit blocking mobile anonymous users has actually helped me a lot because I was hardcore addicted to reddit.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I think what there users who mostly post and users that mostly comment (I belong to the later). Lemmy could try to bootstrap some of those communities (note: to not make it to specific) by just reposting the same posts that are posted in Reddit and see if that could increase activity.

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  • [+] -6 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    Lemmy never will be big enough without a change in thinking from the feudal nature to a more liberal democracy, alas.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Can you expand a bit? What do you mean "feudal nature" and "liberal democracy"? Do you mean society as a whole or Lemmy in general?

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  • [–] -4 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Yes I would be pleased to expand thank you for asking.

    Lemmy is a mini reddit, moderators own the space, like a feudal lord. To take off, as an alternative to the feudal spaces of big social media, we need to offer a better alternative.

    To that effect, a clear set of moderation rules would help, and for that set of rules to end in a jury trial of members.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    What I don't get with this federated software, Lemmy and Mastodon. It's ripe for essentially, server level verification of identity. And I don't mean check every ID of every user.

    But like, this threat talks about game communities. Some larger company, Microsoft, maybe even Valve with Steam, could easily run an instance, and have "official" forums this way. Any anyone on any instance can subscribe and visit. But that way you know that like, I dunno, lame.microsoft/halo is the proper community for Halo. Sure, there may be others, but it can become the place of record with announcements etc.

    Same for Mastodon stuff. But that would be more for individuals. But also stuff. Like you could have movie.studio/tom.cruise and it's verification that it's the proper Tom Cruise posting. That sort of thing.

    Plus, smaller communities have less potential burden from a few large accounts loading the system down.

    Etc.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago

    I go on Reddit read-only fairly often, but these days it's quite rare that I'll post or comment. And when I do I always take the opportunity to promote the fediverse.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    You should start a community for those games. Or contribute to an existing one. Be the change

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    I think the issue is also related to how Reddit makes money. Reddit makes money from selling advertisement. I would guess they are charging a certain fee based off subreddit activity the ads are shown in. When most of that Reddit activity is bots and fake clicks on advertisement then the company won't see the return on their investment because they thought a million people would see their ad but only 100k real people actually saw it.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    You guys see ads on reddit? I laugh in ublock

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    the problem with uBlock there is thst sometimes on reddit they post like 'Advertisement Posts' ...Like actual posts that are not about that niche community in anyway but are nothing more than an advertisement for a comoany and uBlack obviously cant block that.

    Ive seen it a few times in the past but its been like 4 years since Ive been on reddit so I dont know if theyve stopped doing that.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Reddit at one point filtered millions of bots monthly and transparently filed public reports on the actions they had taken, even citing the source of these bot networks if a notable number of them came from places like Russia, China, Myanmar, etc.

    That was a long ass time ago, though. Before they killed off the free API access in 2022, and the 3rd party apps and accessibility layers with it.

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    • [–] 72 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    Sooo Reddit is doing this to get rid of bots… except the only users they have left are bots… weird.

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