[HN Gopher] Reddit's Recently Announced API Changes, and the fut... ___________________________________________________________________ Reddit's Recently Announced API Changes, and the future of /r/blind Author : nickcotter Score : 308 points Date : 2023-06-07 18:19 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (old.reddit.com) (TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com) | whyenot wrote: | Reddit is shooting itself in the foot by effectively banning the | tools that moderators use to do their free labor. I'm surprised | Reddit didn't take a slower and more gradual approach instead of | a drastic change like this. I guess Steve Huffman has IPO fever. | jerglingu wrote: | And it's not like they don't understand the importance of mods' | free labor to keep subreddits clean of filth and users | visiting/contributing. I know somebody who worked there years | ago, and it was understood that they had to preserve the good | will and trust from mods of subreddits to keep Reddit in a | functional and orderly state. | thih9 wrote: | The community seems to overwhelmingly support the protest. | Perhaps this is an opportunity for a coordinated move elsewhere? | wvenable wrote: | Need somewhere to go. There is no second-tier reddit | alternative that's good enough for everyone to migrate to. | | Seems like there's a good opportunity for a single service that | is a Facebook/Twitter/Reddit alternative. | EdSchouten wrote: | Interesting! TIL there is a Windows desktop application called | "Reddit for Blind" that can be used to access Reddit with a | screen reader: | | https://www.redditforblind.org | | My instinctive reaction was: "No screenshots on the page!" A | couple of seconds later I realised how silly that was, but now as | a non-blind person I am interested in knowing what the overall | user experience is. Respect for the person maintaining this app! | benced wrote: | It's a real bummer that computers should be strictly superior to | non-digital technology for accessibility (a book is a book and | doesn't change after it's printed) but for economic reasons, it | won't be. I can't even super blame Reddit - they're just | capitalists trying to make money. It just feels like an own-goal | by humanity. | SilasX wrote: | Yep. Every time someone suggests a special blind-friendly API, | I remind them that HTML _was_ that API, and it just got | bastardized over time, so you need to figure out how you'd keep | it from going through that same process with whatever new thing | you propose. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30727672 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20224961 | pierat wrote: | As an example of how this has beeen completely perverted.... | | Here's a snippet of HTML from Facebook advert | https://imgur.com/Wx8rIOm.png | | Just for "Hydrow <blue_checkmark> Sponsored" is the following | HTML | | <div class="xb57i2i x1q594ok x5lxg6s x78zum5 xdt5ytf x6ikm8r | x1ja2u2z x1pq812k x1rohswg xfk6m8 x1yqm8si xjx87ck x1l7klhg | x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k x2lwn1j xx8ngbg xwo3gff x1oyok0e x1odjw0f | x1e4zzel x1n2onr6 xq1qtft"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf | x1iyjqo2 x1n2onr6"><div class="xjm9jq1 xg01cxk x47corl | x10l6tqk x1i1rx1s x13vifvy"></div><div | class="x1xmf6yo"><div><div><div data- | visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="padding-left: 8px; | padding-right: 8px;"> | | Also, attempting to highlight "sponsored" also jumps back and | forth because their scripts basically jigsaw the letters | together from bits. And, almost all of their content on pages | look like this. My guess is to jam up adblockers. But it also | screws over anybody with visual difficulties (reduction of | visibility to blindness). | pixl97 wrote: | Yea, randomized to avoid adblockers catching the div. | EamonnMR wrote: | On the contrary, I think you can blame people who make | antisocial choices. In fact, you have to. | wahnfrieden wrote: | hate the player not the game eh | JohnFen wrote: | It's fine to hate both. The players allow the game to | continue as it is, after all. | kadoban wrote: | In what sense is this white knighting? If anything it's | approximately the opposite. | jmclnx wrote: | This is interesting, I did not realize (but should have) APIs | were used to help blind people. | | In this case, I think reddit could face legal issues, at least in | the US. So now to me, looks like this change was not fully | analyzed. | tiedieconderoga wrote: | There might be precedent, if their site and app don't make | reasonable accomodations. | | https://casetext.com/analysis/national-association-of-the-de... | azemetre wrote: | There's a difference between accommodations and full blown | not designing an accessible website. I'm honestly shocked to | find out much of reddit is inaccessible and not following | WCAG AA spec. | | Seems like a slam dunk for a law firm looking for an easy | payout. | SLJ7 wrote: | > but should have | | Not really, as the entire reason the API helps us is because | Reddit has done such an appallingly bad job at accessibility. | There were great third-party Twitter apps and I used them, but | when they all shut down, I wasn't left with nothing; the | Twitter app (and even the website) are usable. (Although | Twitter fired their entire accessibility team so time will tell | if it stays that way.) | BeetleB wrote: | I doubt it: What laws are they violating? If you get federal | grants, your site needs to be accessible. There are other | categories (e.g. OTA broadcasts). Not sure there is anything | that would apply to a site like Reddit. | EMIRELADERO wrote: | > I doubt it: What laws are they violating? | | The ADA? | BeetleB wrote: | Specifically which clause? | EMIRELADERO wrote: | Courts have found websites to constitute "public | accomodations". | ncr100 wrote: | for websites? | | https://www.ada.gov/resources/web-guidance/ | | HOLY HELL: https://archive.ada.gov/peapod_sa.htm | | You can sue Reddit ! ! ! | | DO IT! | endisneigh wrote: | Unpopular opinion but I bet Reddit survives this just fine. Those | complaining probably aren't clicking the ads and there are enough | people who are addicted to Reddit to replace any mods who leave. | | The energy is better spent getting Reddit to improve their | official app imho | netfortius wrote: | If the survival is of the Twitter type, then good luck with the | IPO | deckard1 wrote: | Digg is still around. So is Slashdot. For some definition of | "still around." | | > The energy is better spent getting Reddit to improve their | official app imho | | The market forces of a site like Reddit (or most web sites, | frankly) are fundamentally against accessibility. The mobile | web site nags me _constantly_ with a banner popup to install | their native app. How does one even talk about accessibility in | the presence of dark patterns that make a site inaccessible to | even those without the need for a11y? | | If I'm being blunt, a11y is nothing more than a sledge hammer | that devs use to bash other devs over the head with. A lot of | "thou shall nots" with not a whole lot of actual user testing. | Sprinkling aria attributes and "semantic" tags all over your | DOM doesn't make your site accessible. Not when you're _also_ | putting in ads, carousels, and various other things that go | completely against it. | ShakataGaNai wrote: | It will survive, but in what manner? | | Reddit is currently deeply integrated into the cultural | zeitgeist. Much in the way that Digg used to be _the_ discovery | mechanism for the forefront of internet culture. Then v4 hit | and everyone fled to reddit. Yes, Digg is still there but it 's | not the Digg of pre-2010. | | Twitter is still around post-Elon, but with a lot less | relevance and lot fewer legitimate users. | | Reddit will still be here in a year, no matter what. But it may | look _very different_ than how it looks today. | onionisafruit wrote: | Is Twitter less relevant? I'm not an active user, but I | haven't seen a decrease in links to tweets over the past few | months. | motogpjimbo wrote: | I think the phrase "legitimate users" is worthy of scrutiny | in the comment you replied to. | mustacheemperor wrote: | I've only ever really consumed twitter secondhand like you, | but I have observed that since the acquisition the quality | of discussion in replies to tweets I am linked seems to | have significantly dropped, and as objectively as one can | opine about that kind of thing. Just angry graffiti and | dumpster fire arguments about at-best-tangentially related | culture war topics in reply to _everything._ I 've made | this comparison once already in this thread, but it reminds | me of comments on youtube in the mid 00s. | | But hey, youtube comments never improved much and that site | is still highly relevant today, so hard to make a | prediction based off my observed anecdote. And I've never | used twitter much at all, so maybe I just hadn't noticed | before. | petersellers wrote: | I wonder if the observed decline in discussion quality | has any correlation with the "boost" that is given to | comments from accounts with blue check marks. | TylerE wrote: | Yes. A large number of the people I followed who actually | posted interesting content (as opposed to bots retweeting | press releases) either greatly curtailed posting, or quit | all together. I followed them out the door. | onionisafruit wrote: | I keep seeing people say this, and I expect to see a | decrease in the number of tweets I see linked from the | subreddits I follow. But the tweets keep coming. Maybe | it's subject matter. I primarily see tweets in sports- | related subreddits, so for all I know athletes and sports | writers could be the only people still using twitter. | TylerE wrote: | Most of the sports accounts would fall under "Retweeting | press releases". I'm talking about people I followed, | many of whom were historians so would often publish | original analysis, pictures they'd personally combed the | archives for and digitized, that sort of thing. | | Very much NOT pop culture/politics/etc. | phpisthebest wrote: | So because your circle left Twitter is dead... | | The massive arrogance it takes to believe that is very | amusing... | | So allow me to add mine... I refused twitter until after | Elon bought it, Lots of people I know did the same, now | we are all on their daily, and enjoy the shit out of post | elon Twitter, so Twitter is clearly the best site ever. | onionisafruit wrote: | That's not cool to call a fellow hackernews massively | arrogant. | TylerE wrote: | What's even weirder is someone obviously worshiping Elon, | probably the single most arrogant person to ever exist, | accusing someone else of being arrogant. I'm not going to | waste mental cycles on one who's post history clearly | reveals them as a Qultist. | raverbashing wrote: | But the power users are the ones who feed the community (and do | moderation, etc) | | On a second thought, maybe that's Reddit's idea, just turn it | into a GPT generated and Astroturfing maelstrom and see what | happens | zouhair wrote: | How can Reddit survive without mods? Reddit will start hiring | mods? Most of the content on Reddit is made by a minority of | hardcore users, most of them are angry now. | | You could argue Digg is still alive right now, I won't call it | that though. | jacurtis wrote: | Reddit will survive just fine. | | But potentially consider this comment from the linked reddit | post. It is heartbreaking. | | > I'm just so tired! That is all! I'm so tired of feeling left | behind by people who aren't aware, and who don't care. The | choices we have for social media really aren't much, and if | they don't care about third party apps, what else are they | going to throw away? Will we lose this place too? | | The decision has many side effects that Reddit is not | acknowledging and it is important to recognize the importance | that an API can have, particuarly on accessibility. | | Will reddit survive. Oh yeah, they will be absolutely fine. But | their decision does negatively impact the world and that is the | important story here. | endisneigh wrote: | You don't need an api to be accessible, hence why pressure | should be put on Reddit to make their app and site accessible | to begin with. | | I do feel for the poster, though. | websap wrote: | Yup, this is the Silicon Valley model. Burn and churn people. | yakkityyak wrote: | I'm not so sure. Non ad-clicking/viewing users still generate a | lot of content. | | Official apps always struggle to balance shoving ads in your | face and being an actually nice to use app. | parasti wrote: | It seems a safe assumption that nobody is clicking the ads. | Beached wrote: | I think Reddit will continue, but I see it getting worse. | moderation with bots already sucks enough, I can't imagine how | horrible reddit without bots will be. | gnulinux wrote: | On a second thought, I completely agree with this. I think | people have a lot of hope because reddit sucks but the reality | is way too many people are addicted to reddit. I know because I | struggle not to check reddit all the time. People will likely | need a good replacement for reddit to go down. | rightbyte wrote: | Install the Leechblock browser extension. Begin with | timeslotting Reddit and then just make it permanent. It is | just muscle memory to go there. I did not miss it. | johnnyanmac wrote: | History serves you as correct. Though, I think the energy is | more properly spent weaning off of Reddit and fostering a new | community. I've seen feature requests from almost a decade ago | being promised and there's not even a shred of progress on | them. At that point, why not make it yourself? | | 100k people leaving reddit won't kill reddit, but 100k people | can definitely form it's own active community. That many more | people than most reddit alternatives as of now. | shmatt wrote: | No way these apps actually shut down | | An app like Apollo - which is so important Apple is featuring | front and center at their biggest announcement of the decade, | won't attempt to add some caching, poll less for push | notifications, and/or charge $5/month, before shutting things | down for good? | | All of these app developers are fear mongering, and hiding | their true plans, im 100% sure of this | | At the minimum they could sell to someone else for many | millions of dollars, and they'll do the things I described | alpaca128 wrote: | _> An app like Apollo - which is so important Apple is | featuring front and center_ | | Being featured by Apple doesn't pay the bills and Reddit | obviously doesn't listen. | | _> won 't attempt to add some caching, poll less for push | notifications_ | | The Apollo developer has repeatedly asked Reddit to offer a | more efficient method of getting notifications that doesn't | require polling. The app backend already uses caching and | only a small fraction of the allowed request budget. Reddit | doesn't care. | | _> and /or charge $5/month_ | | $5/month are not enough, in case you didn't notice Reddit's | new pricing is insane. Also according to the developer about | 10% of users pay the monthly premium subscription. Make it | mandatory and most users will be gone. | | _> At the minimum they could sell to someone else for many | millions of dollars, and they 'll do the things I described_ | | Even if the things you described weren't already long | implemented, they don't change the prices which are simply | too high for third-party apps to survive. | occz wrote: | Time will tell. I'd bet that a sizable amount of people posting | the content that actually drives engagement with the website | cares about this change, and I think that there's not as many | people excited to do unpaid labour in the form of modding as | you may think. | digging wrote: | It will survive, but the quality of conversation will continue | to degrade. It will gain users, but they will be less | productive and less engaged. But they will also see more ads. | iLoveOncall wrote: | > Those complaining probably aren't clicking the ads | | The ONLY real reason people are complaining is because using | the official app means seing ads. | | All the arguments thrown around there are whataboutisms to try | to justify the fact that they want to keep profiteering off of | Reddit, that's it. | [deleted] | dbg31415 wrote: | How is Reddit not required to be WCAG compliant? | tarboreus wrote: | They are, but lawsuits take years, and management is often | ignorant about their responsibilities. | twh270 wrote: | Are they? Link I pasted above | (https://www.ada.gov/resources/web-guidance/) tells me they | aren't. | | Happy to correct if I'm wrong. | paddw wrote: | The definition for public accommodation is purposely | ambiguous, but so far, it seems no one has tried to make | the case that a site like Reddit would count as one. | twh270 wrote: | They aren't a "public accommodation" | (https://www.ada.gov/resources/web-guidance/). | themerone wrote: | From that page: | | Title III prohibits discrimination against people with | disabilities by businesses open to the public (also referred | to as "public accommodations" under the ADA) | | Reddit is definitely a business open to the public. | tiedieconderoga wrote: | According to that link, it sounds like they are: | | >Title III prohibits discrimination against people with | disabilities by businesses open to the public (also referred | to as "public accommodations" under the ADA). The ADA | requires that businesses open to the public provide full and | equal enjoyment of their goods, services, facilities, | privileges, advantages, or accommodations to people with | disabilities. [...] | | >A website with inaccessible features can limit the ability | of people with disabilities to access a public | accommodation's goods, services, and privileges available | through that website--for example, a veterans' service | organization event registration form. | | >For these reasons, the Department has consistently taken the | position that the ADA's requirements apply to all the goods, | services, privileges, or activities offered by public | accommodations, including those offered on the web. | | The courts also found that Netflix was a public accomodation | in 2015 as part of a lawsuit, and Netflix was forced to | provide subtitles on 100% of their programming. | TylerE wrote: | I'm not convinced. Reddit is a platform, not a store. | | Stores are expected to follow the ADA for things like wheel | chair accessibility. | | If they put up a community bulletin board, no reasonable | person would expect them to rip down anything that doesn't | include Braille. | Marsymars wrote: | > If they put up a community bulletin board, no | reasonable person would expect them to rip down anything | that doesn't include Braille. | | If there was a readily-available bulletin board that cost | somewhat more, but that automatically displayed in | Braille to the side any posted items, a reasonable person | might expect that they go with the expensive Auto- | Braille-Board. | | And a reasonable person would very likely expect them | _not_ to go with the bulletin board that actively | obfuscates the ability of people to use their own photo- | to-speech devices on posted items. | TylerE wrote: | If horses had horns they'd be unicorns. | yieldcrv wrote: | disruptive, but you _can_ pay for it......... | | like the costs are absurd... for existing communities... but if | there is utility then...... | | I dont know I can tell I'm stepping on eggshells here for | something thats clearly going to happen the way I describe, and | not how the protest describes | paulcole wrote: | > On May 31, 2023, Reddit announced they were raising the price | to make calls to their API from being free to a level that will | kill every third party app on Reddit, from Apollo, to Dystopia, | to Reddit for Blind, to Luna for Reddit, to BaconReader | | This is what I don't get. Nothing's been killed. They can keep | existing, they just have to pay. Why is nobody talking about just | passing the cost along to the consumer and seeing how | objectionable the cost really is? | alephaleph wrote: | We know the costs and they're ridiculous. Under the new pricing | the _average_ user of one third party app (Apollo) uses $2.50 | worth of requests per month. | paulcole wrote: | OK so charge people $9 a month to use Apollo? | petersellers wrote: | Doing that is going to kill a huge percentage of Apollo's | user base. It's not a foregone conclusion that the app will | die, but the chances of that happening are much much | greater now than they were before. If you were the | developer of Apollo I think you'd have every reason to be | worried about that, and any opposition to this change would | be justified. | paulcole wrote: | > Doing that is going to kill a huge percentage of | Apollo's user base | | Wait until you find out what happens to Apollo's user | base if they pay less than the API costs. | petersellers wrote: | Not sure what your point is here? | | We're talking about the fact that Reddit's API prices are | going to be extremely high going forward. Your response | was a dismissive "just charge 9 dollars". Obviously that | is going to cause a lot of pain for all third party | developers, which is the whole reason why everyone is | complaining about this. | flangola7 wrote: | I know the popular sentiment is that Reddit is doing this to look | good for IPO but won't investors _google the business they 're | about to invest a lot of money in?_ | | 10 minutes of research makes it completely obvious they're | endangering their core business. | | Reddit doesn't work without functional moderation. Despite years | of asking, the native mod tools are no where close to parity with | 3rd party tools. This alienates good mods who are not generic | gears you can just swap out, building a strong subreddit culture | and rapport takes years of good faith effort. Then they're | alienating a sizeable block of the most engaged users, and on top | of everything they're shameless discriminating against the | disabled. | | Who looks at all that and thinks "yes this is definitely a stable | venture ran by competent management and a reliable place to | expect RoI." | | Investors are soulless but they are not stupid. | throwaway202351 wrote: | I would guess that they'll sell it as "we were able to monetize | our api and all it cost us were a small subset of users, which | are more likely to use ad blockers anyway" and then try to hand | it off to the public before the long term effects of those | changes happens. | JohnFen wrote: | > Investors are soulless but they are not stupid. | | To be honest, tons of investors are stupid, don't research | anything, and/or just go with whatever sounds cool to them. | | The idea that "investors" as a group are any more rational than | other group is a myth dearly held by investors. | [deleted] | lelanthran wrote: | > 10 minutes of research makes it completely obvious they're | endangering their core business. | | It's not that obvious. | | To me, at any rate, it's not at all obvious that reddit is in | any danger of losing a significant number of their members. | crazygringo wrote: | Yup. It's just as "obvious" that this shows that management | is willing to make the big necessary decisions to preserve | revenue and take back full control of the user experience. | | I'm not defending Reddit at all, but very often what annoys | users is what's good for business (e.g. ads), and so users | complaining isn't necessarily a bad sign to investors at all. | | I would actually say _nothing_ here is obvious yet. Reddit | doesn 't seem to be in any danger _yet_ , but it really | depends on whether user dissatisfaction snowballs or fizzles | out, and that's one of those chaos-theory things that nobody | knows, and different potential investors will have wildly | different opinions on. | jareds wrote: | As someone who's blind I never looked at Reddit because it was | not particularly easy to use with a screen reader. Now's a heck | of a time to discover there are accessible ways of accessing it | for the next two months. | nerpderp82 wrote: | You can at least for now, download any page in json format by | appending .json to the url. | | For instance https://old.reddit.com/r/hackernews/.json | wget https://old.reddit.com/r/hackernews/.json -O hn.json | jq -c '.data.children[] | {title: .data.title, domain: | .data.domain, url: .data.url, upvotes: .data.ups }' hn.json | | Results in {"title":"Service Rents Email | Addresses for Account Signups","domain":"krebsonsecurity.com"," | url":"https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/06/service-rents-email- | addresses-for-account-signups/","upvotes":8} | {"title":"Dell in hot water for making shoppers think | overpriced monitors were discounted","domain":"arstechnica.com" | ,"url":"https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/dell-in-hot- | water-for-making-shoppers-think-overpriced-monitors-were- | discounted/","upvotes":12} | baggachipz wrote: | Correction, the next 3 weeks. :) | squokko wrote: | If it's any consolation, virtually every subreddit with more | than 10,000 members is completely worthless | jahsome wrote: | Outside of some niche communities, it's been a real crap shoot | for many years though. I think you may have been spared a lot | of garbage. I can't really put a finger on when or what changed | but feel it definitely lost the sheen. | pawelduda wrote: | What are better alternatives to Reddit? Yeah, a lot of subs | are echo chambers, circlejerks and struggle with quality in | general but if I counted how many times I found it useful | compared to the rest of Internet on average, I'd be pretty | rich. I often default my searches to site:old.reddit.com | <query>, the new UI and app are garbage though. | asdff wrote: | What worries me is that this isn't a sustainable position. | Already the googling for reddit posts sometimes backfires, | says hey here's a recent comment from two weeks ago but | then you open it and its the same 5 year old post you've | already read somehow. Then you have a general decline of | the quality of the community, more people posting in a | biased manner than an unbiased one, among other issues. Not | to mention, advertisers know about reddit too, and are | probably shilling the crap out of their products to | respective subreddits who link their offerings in the | sidebar or the subreddit faq or wiki page. Eventually it's | going to be no different than any other enshittified corner | of the internet, which is scary because where do you go | then? I'd be hunting for actual books again for | information. Pretty sad that the world wide web is reaching | a point where the old brick and mortar library is the | better source of information again, given all the promise | it had at the start as being a step forward from that. | ok_dad wrote: | There is nothing better in terms of information and all-in- | one knowledge, probably, but I have been using forums and | some Discords (not much better than Reddit though) for my | hobby recently and though it's annoying to check several | places rather than one "front page", I still find I can | engage with my hobby community perfectly fine. I lost a lot | of top knowledge that's locked away on Reddit, but I | honestly just spend a bit more time to research things now | rather than having an answer at my fingertips with the | search "{insert search topic} reddit". It's harder, but as | I get older I find I have a lot more free time than I | thought I had if I just ignore social media for most of my | day. Hacker News and my hobby communities are my social | outlet, because they aren't as bad for my mental health, | though I have to avoid the more-political topics on HN. | asdff wrote: | Eternal september happened. The original crop of users was | generally pretty good about following reddiquete and not | downvoting. Today, the average user seems a lot more hostile | in their replies, more willing to downvote your post in | disagreement even if it is relevant to the topic, less able | to see sarcasm or nuance, more willing to die on ideological | hills. | yarg wrote: | The down-voters are the good faith players - people are | getting permabanned for political disagreements. | mustacheemperor wrote: | The community zeitgeist across the board just seems so much | more argumentative, contrarian, and angry than it was years | ago. Even on the niche subs. On /r/academicbiblical people | get banned for spitting nasty stuff at each other in | comments. The AnalogCommunity subreddit has a frequent | drumbeat of negativity about new film stocks and is enraged | about "shilling" if anyone who as much as includes a logo | on their gear in a post - as if we, the analog film | community, don't want new companies to succeed in analog | film? The outrage isn't logical, it's strictly emotional, | and it seems like people are drawn literally to the | _emotion of rage,_ not an emotional reaction to anything | specific and tangible. | | It reminds me of trying to find value in YouTube comments | around 2008 and realizing there's some kind of community- | wide attitude problem completely destroying any chance of | it. It's not a discussion forum, it's one of those rooms | where people pay $20 to smash stuff up with a sledgehammer | and yell. | arjonagelhout wrote: | I tried to find the meaning of eternal summer, but it | appears to be a movie. I think you mean Eternal September | [0] | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September | asdff wrote: | Very true good catch | tarboreus wrote: | r/blind is a great community, however. | akiselev wrote: | I feel like we need a new XKCD for this situation like the | "today's lucky 10,000" [1] one. | | Congratulations! You're one of today's lucky million! You | discovered a feature that's useful instead of anti-user just in | time for a tech company to shut it down in the name of ~~user~~ | shareholder experience! | | [1] https://xkcd.com/1053/ | onionisafruit wrote: | I think this has happened to me a few dozen times on Hacker | News when I've seen "X is shutting down" where this is the | first I've heard of X and it seems useful to me. | Marsymars wrote: | For me this week, it was Blaseball: | https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/3/23744507/blaseball- | shutdow... | onionisafruit wrote: | That's one more for me. IDK if I would have actually | played Blaseball, but it looks pretty fun. | ulrikrasmussen wrote: | Since the GP stated they were blind, here's a textual | description of the comic: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/in | dex.php/1053:_Ten_Thousan... | ok123456 wrote: | Since this change makes a service less accessible to the | disabled, is there way to bring injunctive relief under the ADA? | ncr100 wrote: | Maybe the Mods could claim they are denied service. | | Some references https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36234827 | lxe wrote: | Reddit is having a Digg v4 moment | RobotToaster wrote: | It's infuriating how these massive companies refuse to make their | apps accessible. | nonethewiser wrote: | These subreddit blackouts are so dumb. All it does is reinforce | that Reddit can do what they want and communities won't go | anywhere. It's like a teenager running away then showing up for | dinner. If you want Reddit to get the message migrate your | community and nuke the subreddit. | ink_13 wrote: | The goal here is to negotiate. You don't open a negotiation by | going scorched earth. | alephaleph wrote: | /r/me_irl is doing that, they're going to permanently go | private if the changes aren't reversed. | vultour wrote: | That's one of the most pointless subreddits out there. They | need to nuke the default ones to have any meaningful effect. | 58x14 wrote: | I pretty strongly disagree with this take. I've used Reddit for | over a decade almost entirely as a "lurker" meaning without an | account. The majority of what I watched and read has depended | on that reaching the "front page of the internet." | | While I've followed these recent changes since the Pushshift | shutoff, it's really only been in the past week that I've seen | this gain "mainstream" attention. The more of these subreddit- | going-dark announcements reach the page, the more people | realize this is a widespread issue - even if they don't click, | read, or even think about what's going on or why, they're | _aware_ of it. | | I've seen several dozen of these posts reach the front page, | plus a litany of media outlet publications. That legitimately | matters as an input to financial projections in the context of | their upcoming IPO, and it matters even more as a signal to | prospective investors, retail or institutional. | | Our modern reality is often served to us via algorithms that | are trained to optimize for things; the most common thing for | content platforms to optimize for is engagement, and the most | common signal for these platforms is the upvote. In over a | decade I've never seen _any topic_ reach front page across such | a variety of posts and subreddits, and that is a direct result | of individuals upvoting these posts. | | I think this demonstrates, already, the collective ability to | mobilize action across communities, even if the action is | reduced to the simplest Boolean upvote. And that's an | indication that widespread collective action _can_ be | coordinated. | prmoustache wrote: | The funny and ironic part is seeing people kind of contesting | decision of a proprietary service, then flee to another | proprietary service like discord. | | Like, will they ever learn? | pachorizons wrote: | Ok, what should they do? | asdff wrote: | Its really sad more than anything. The modern march of | technology has been to take what used to be open standard | technologies used by the average computer user at the time, | privatise them, wall up the gardens, and lock people in. Now | you have people beholden to reddit and discord instead of irc | and a self hosted web forum. It reminds me of those quick | change oil places: an entire industry with serious real estate | holdings exists solely because most people have no clue how to | unscrew three things and pour in oil themselves. Its an example | of yet another industry with a financial incentive towards | widespread ignorance. | deely3 wrote: | You are currently made a comment using a proprietary service. | | Your pc and phone also partly proprietary service. | | You make calls, send and receive money by using proprietary | service. | fsflover wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy | | Sent from my Librem 5, which runs an FSF-endorsed OS. | johnnyanmac wrote: | I would indeed say that hoping for a perfect open source | free (as in freedom) scalable web solution with a bustling | community is an unrealistic, idealistic alternative. At | least, as of now. | fsflover wrote: | I disagree: Mastodon works quite well and has an amazing | community: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36185731 | iLoveOncall wrote: | But he's not contesting the decision made by Reddit as far as | I can tell? | Havoc wrote: | Shout out to reddit execs for spectacular job tanking your rep | ahead of IPO. | dom96 wrote: | I still hope that Reddit will reverse its plans to charge money | for its API, but with every passing piece of news like this it | just feels less and less likely. | | In the interest of preparing for the worst and offering an | alternative. I have created https://api.reddiw.com. If you're an | app developer that is affected by this price increase please | consider adopting it, feel to reach out to me if you have any | questions and we can work together. | rektide wrote: | Reddit is doing so much injury to the free labor mods. They are | so massively disproportionately injured by these changes, as | people who direly need advanced changes. Absolutely wild own | goal. | not_a_shill wrote: | It's not an own goal if the mods will continue to keep doing it | because that's all they have. | georgeburdell wrote: | A lot of mods try to diversify their communities across | platforms (Discord, Mastodon) | Clent wrote: | Keep it in what form? | | How little will it take for the communities to spiral? | | How would a developer's performance be if you removed their | tooling? Could they still develop, sure. Will they want to? | Is there some where for them to move. | | If not, how long until the pain forces a thousand clones? | | I've been around long enough to see the decline of Reddit. | Predicted many times but eventually, the bottom will fall out | and with the sentiment of the world towards big business and | reddit wanting to IPO. I see this as a place people may make | a stand. Because what better place than the place itself. | ruined wrote: | there is a class of power moderators who are monetizing their | position, who are dependent on the population of reddit. but | most topic-focused communities on reddit are only there | because reddit is the most convenient platform. as soon as | that is no longer the case, the community will move on, and | ultimately that is the same population that supplies the | larger monetizeable subreddits. | zem wrote: | as a mod of a few topic focused subreddits, yeah, if they | ever get rid of old.reddit I'm probably gone. I'll miss the | communities but not enough to put up with the interface. | gaoshan wrote: | I'm a mod (of an insignificant subreddit), have been active for | 15+ years, 6 figure karma, even had the single most upvoted | comment on all of reddit one day...they notify you and give you | an award when that happens in case you wonder. | | My feelings about the site have evolved so much over the years | but in the past couple of years the vibe has been turning | consistently negative. I'm getting fed up and I imagine a lot | of others are as well and I can't imagine this will end up | benefiting Reddit in general. | pierat wrote: | Congratulations for working for free for a for-profit | company? | | Might I recommend you to turn towards places like Lemmy or | other less-commercial and less exploitive websites? | | Reddit relies on free work, but doesn't value or help the | mods. And now, they're doubling down on screwing everyone and | manufacturing fake content for what appears their IPO. | | I think it's time to skedaddle. | autoexec wrote: | I think I'm out of the loop... what is this about | manufacturing fake content? | EamonnMR wrote: | Probably referring to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Subr | edditDrama/comments/13p889x/red... | morkalork wrote: | Can't fault them for following a tried and true strategy | from the same platform: | https://arstechnica.com/information- | technology/2012/06/reddi... | tester457 wrote: | Lemmy is too slow to take off. And federation is too | inconvenient for the average user. | digitallyfree wrote: | It's not easy to move a group to a new platform, and | there's very little people using Lemmy currently. The | thing about Reddit despite its flaws is that it allows | access to many large communities with a single account. | unethical_ban wrote: | You mean "volunteering to keep a community forum polite and | productive". | | I wish people would quit shitting on mods like they're | idiots for taking out the trash. | | Yes, though, the larger subreddits are political and repost | astroturf. Anti-american garbage. But not every sub is like | that. I'll look into Lemmy though. | surgical_fire wrote: | I was a moderator for a fairly large subreddit (6 figures | subscribers). | | I was a moron doing free work for a for-profit company. | | I _deserved_ to be shat on. | unethical_ban wrote: | That's fair, but that isn't how I felt. | | I was the mod for a city subreddit for a while and while | it was tiring, it was easy to do (especially with a | medium sized group, each pitching in a little bit). Keep | the spam and trolling down, and community engagement up. | (Then I got banned for calling a spammer on a large | message board a spammer). | | Name an online community space that isn't a for-profit | company, that more than a few hundred people could name. | | Facebook Instagram Nextdoor Meetup Reddit | | Whoops. | surgical_fire wrote: | > Name an online community space that isn't a for-profit | company, that more than a few hundred people could name. | | I have nothing against for profit companies. | | I am vehemently against of donating labor to for-profit | companies. Especially when they will betray those that | provided free labor when it becomes convenient. | | Reddit proved me right. | BaseballPhysics wrote: | > You mean "volunteering to keep a community forum polite | and productive". | | Both of those things can be true. | | The reality is those communities--which only thrive on | Reddit because of effective moderation--are built on a | private platform whose primary method of generating | profits is to monetize the attention of those community | members. | | So, yes, those mods are absolutely contributing free | labour that Reddit is turning into private profits, and | that labour comes in the form of volunteering to keep | those forums polite and productive. Whether or not that's | a reasonable tradeoff is up to each individual, though I | have to confess I don't personally understand it | (despite, in the past, benefiting from it). At least my | day job pays me for the labour that they monetize. | | And now Reddit is taking a dump all over those free | labourers by taking away critical tools that they use to | make those forums polite and productive in the first | place. | pierat wrote: | Thank you. | | That's why I recommended putting "volunteering time" with | actual non-profit orgs and groups, so that 100% of the | labor goes to all. I didn't advocate "quit volunteering | for a community", cause that's the wrong thing to | advocate. | | There's mastodon, Lemmy for 2. Discord isn't great, given | earlier in the curve of monetization. Same for other for- | profit areas. But again, I'd recommend finding | communities in a not-profit-driven area and work there. | | The for-profit side of things has the same death spirals. | I'm just sick of this "web2" crap profiteering and | killing useful community stuff. | bmacho wrote: | > Congratulations for working for free for a for-profit | company? | | They work for themselves, and use reddit resources free. If | anything, this relationship is beneficial for the | community, but reddit. | JohnFen wrote: | > in the past couple of years the vibe has been turning | consistently negative | | As a regular user, I gave up on reddit a couple of years ago | because of exactly this problem. | postalrat wrote: | I deleted my 15 year old account this week and don't miss it. | My hn account is next but isn't that old. Why make it easy | for the world to track you? | treis wrote: | Mods are as much of a problem as they are a help. They rule | subreddits like gods and (lots) abuse the shadow ban/delete | system to silence opinions they don't like. Lots of others sell | out to various influencers/advertisers and help promote | whatever they want. | Seattle3503 wrote: | Mods cannot shadowban users. Only admins can do that. | ink_13 wrote: | Enh, sort of. You can write an Automod rule to always | remove content from one or more specific users. | surgical_fire wrote: | As someone who moderated a couple of communities in the past... | Good. | timf wrote: | Related: | | _Reddit is creating an exemption to its unpopular new API | pricing terms for makers of accessibility apps, which could come | as a big relief for some developers worried about how to afford | the potentially expensive fees and the users that rely on the | apps to browse Reddit. As long as those apps are noncommercial | and "address accessibility needs," they won't have to pay to | access Reddit's data._ | | _"We've connected with select developers of non-commercial apps | that address accessibility needs and offered them exemptions from | our large-scale pricing terms," Reddit spokesperson Tim | Rathschmidt says in a statement to The Verge._ | | From https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/7/23752804/reddit-exempt- | acc... | digging wrote: | So if reddit's official app is difficult to use, at what point | can regular 3rd party apps claim to be accessibility tools? | cwkoss wrote: | Society needs 'allergic to UX dark patterns' to be included | in the next DSM | nerpderp82 wrote: | There needs to be a preferences setting sent in the HTTP | header to activate high contrast and low motion modes. Just | having "dark mode" is not enough. | chaosharmonic wrote: | Would high contrast not be a CSS thing? I know `prefers- | reduced-motion` is... | notatoad wrote: | yes, high-contrast is a CSS media query just like | prefers-reduced-motion is | digging wrote: | I agree, but I think you misread the comment you're | replying to. They were referring to "dark patterns," a | design feature used to trick users into taking actions | they otherwise wouldn't. Much harder to flag :P | nerpderp82 wrote: | Sorry, I want all dark patterns to be surrounded by a | high contrast "dark pattern border". | digging wrote: | this is what the internet was meant to be | MrStonedOne wrote: | Some of those UX dark patterns would qualify as making the | site inaccessible to people with add and adhd, others make | it inaccessible to people with autism. | | engagement driving bullshit could very easy become banned | under ADA if the right public servant gave it enough | thought. | hoherd wrote: | It sounds like being accessibility tools wouldn't be enough | because they would also need to be non-commercial, which | excludes most of (all of?) the popular third party apps. | goda90 wrote: | RedReader is entirely open source and has accessibility | features. | thorum wrote: | Separate "accessibility" apps for people with disabilities | always lag behind in features compared to apps that target a | wider audience while still being accessible. Basically | relegating people with disabilities to a second class | experience. | jacobsenscott wrote: | Translation - if we can exploit your free labor we'll allow it. | Otherwise get bent. | kmeisthax wrote: | >noncommercial | | This is a water sandwich. | | There is no unambiguous single definition of commercial | activity in the law: some parts of the law define it one way, | some jurisdictions differ as to what is and isn't commercial, | and some parts of the law explicitly deny the existence of | noncommercial activity (e.g. copyright law). So Reddit has | promised _literally nothing_ here. | | Furthermore, their explicit goal is to prevent scraping by ML | training companies. This is inherently opposed to | accessibility. If you add accessibility to copy protection, you | weaken the copy protection[0]. So Reddit can either tell blind | people to go fuck themselves, or they can accept that there's | always going to be at least some backdoor for AI to scrape | Reddit. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Elcom_Ltd. | ncr100 wrote: | .. And how can a developer not charge for their specialty- | app? | | Reddit is requiring Disabled to use an app developed at the | LOWEST COST - this is clear discrimination, in the legal | sense. | | It may not be illegal, but legally they are "discriminating", | based upon the legal usage of that word. | no_butterscotch wrote: | Yup. | | Whatever blind dev is making a living providing an app (or | other software) as an accessibility layer for the blind over | reddit will now have to potentially do so for free. | mustacheemperor wrote: | On the other hand, quoth the OP thread | | >One of our moderators, u/itsthejoker, has had multiple hour- | long calls with various Reddit employees. However, as of the | current time, our concerns have gone unheard, and Reddit | remains firm. | | Doublespeak from reddit's management is not exactly uncommon, | and it seems like something is mismatched between what they | communicated in that article and what's related in the thread. | tedivm wrote: | The AskHistorian's mods put together a small list of reddit | admin promises to moderators that were broken: | | Admins have promised minimal disruption; however, over the | years they've made a number of promises to support moderators | that they did not, or could not follow up on, and at times | even reneged on: In 2015, in response to | widespread protests on the sub, the admins promised they | would build tools and improve communication with mods. | In 2019 the admins promised that chat would always be an opt- | in feature. However, a year later an unmoderated chat feature | was made a default feature on most subs In | 2020, in response to moderators protesting racism on Reddit, | admin promised to support mods in combating hate | In 2021, again, in response to protests, Reddit's admin | promised a feature to report malicious interference by | subreddits promoting Covid denial. | dopa42365 wrote: | /r/blind going dark? | DoreenMichele wrote: | One of the comments: | | _Yes, modding is where the biggest problems are. When | moderating, most of the buttons are unlabeled. It would be quite | easy to delete a comment when I meant to lock a thread or | whatever, if I forget the exact order I 've memorized for the | buttons. And adding stuff to sidebars or changing the layout of | the sub isn't really possible at all. There are also a lot of | dialogues, alerts, etc, that pop up without getting focus. | There's also a lack of headings, landmarks, or other mark-up in | modmail, making it slow and difficult to use. This stuff really | matters when you're helping mod a sub with thousands of users. If | all you're doing is reading, and leaving the occasional comment, | it's...fine. Not good, but fine._ | | ---- | | It's important for a sub for disabled individuals to have mods | with that disability. | | I didn't care about this protest and haven't much followed | articles and such about it, but this feels like a kick in the | gut. People with disabilities can have their lives substantially | enhanced by the internet, _if_ accessibility isn 't a bar to them | connecting with people, finding info they need, taking actions | online (like bill paying), etc. | | I hope this gets satisfactorily resolved for blind users of | Reddit. Ugh. | axegon_ wrote: | It is worth pointing out that even with a 10/10 sight, | moderating reddit is a nightmare. If it wasn't for the mod | toolbox plugin, I would have probably resorted to making CLI | tools instead(many of which I have since reddit offers an | extremely limited options for moderating, nuking comments, | threads and so on). That said, this is absolutely nothing | compared to the unholy mess that is moderating from | android/ios. Most moderators plainly refuse to do it. I | moderate a big sub and what we do is we have a discord chat and | whenever something needs to be taken care of fast and someone | notices it on mobile, they simply alert everyone on discord so | someone near a computer can handle it. | DoreenMichele wrote: | I agree that their mod access on mobile leaves a lot to be | desired and will add that for some people, use of a mobile | device _is_ for accessibility reasons. | mrj wrote: | It's especially shameful that a large company like Reddit can't | manage to.. do HTML right? It really doesn't take that much | extra time to do the basics. They need buttons with _labels_. | | How did they not get sued already? Was it just because users | had access to 3rd party apps? | miki123211 wrote: | Because (to oversimplify things by a lot) you don't have to | care in most cases. You have legal requirements as a public | institution, when selling to governments / educational | institutions or as an employer (depending on country), but | requiring all privately-run, commercial websites to be | accessible is usually not a thing. This is not legal advice | by any means, and the actual situation is way more | complicated than that. | jjoonathan wrote: | Modern design philosophy is that buttons with labels are | messy and complicated so they should be replaced everywhere | by hamburgers and hieroglyphs. | | What started as spatial triage on mobile is now the universal | design language everywhere, and it sucks. | edflsafoiewq wrote: | Regardless, there's still aria-label. | alephaleph wrote: | I think they're referring to aria-labels, not visible text. | 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: | As a non-web-dev who sometimes builds my own toys, when you | say someone building buttons without labels is lawsuit- | worthy, it makes me think you're all saying something other | than what I'm interpreting. I'm guessing you mean more than | <button type="button">My Label</button> | | or something like that? | denimnerd42 wrote: | sounds like they will be sued now! ADA trolling is a thing | and it does catch big fish. | barkingcat wrote: | if you look at the regular reddit "new" interface you'll | totally understand how this occurs. | | the interface is a mess, accessibility concerns or not. It's | truly an equal opportunity offender in all the worst case. | phpisthebest wrote: | Having a site good for accessibility means it is also easily | scraped, if it is easily scraped no need to pay for API | access, and there goes the money grab | | It is not they cant do it right, they do want to do it right | because they need to monetize the site to appease the VC's, | | Anything that can prevent that, including accessibility, goes | nitwit005 wrote: | A custom program can find the buttons by label. It's just | not labeled in a way the screenreader is looking for. | [deleted] | geraldwhen wrote: | Product owners don't care about accessibility. They care | about time to market for 99.999% of your users, or for many | products 100% of the users. The products I build are not | accessible. Designers work hard to ensure they're not or | quite hard to make accessible at best. Modals on modals on | modals with important content changing all over the place! | User23 wrote: | Fortunately the ADA[1] means that you can easily reach | their real customer support AKA legal department. | | [1] https://www.boia.org/blog/the-robles-v.-dominos- | settlement-a... | m4rtink wrote: | Wasnt there some push in the US to make websites acessible | or face some very hight fines ? I do remember something | like that. | lesuorac wrote: | It matters a lot when you have a Gov. contract of some | sort. | | Reddit doesn't sell to the USG or any US schools or etc. | kshahkshah wrote: | Is it on a "product owner" to care about accessibility? Or | engineers to build things properly? If this was any other | engineering field - civil, mechanical, electrical, there | would be standards which we seem to lack / fail to enforce | hiatus wrote: | > there would be standards which we seem to lack / fail | to enforce | | This is by design. Software developers are hardly | "engineers". They build what the business wants, quickly, | and worry about the "properly" after product-market fit | is found (or so they're told). This dynamic would be | upended if software engineering were licensed. | geraldwhen wrote: | I can't even convince design not to make the text grey on | grey. It's not just "disabled" users who are suffering | this nonsense. | | I get paid the same not to fight. More even, because I'm | a team player. | willcipriano wrote: | If the product owner directs work at a ticket level and | never assigns it to anyone, it's their fault it isn't | there. If the engineers have more autonomy than I've seen | at a company are were able to decide what to work on, | then sure blame the engineers. | OfSanguineFire wrote: | "It's important for a sub for disabled individuals to have mods | with that disability." | | Reddit is notorious for having mods on various special- | demographic subreddits where members of that demographic would | not necessarily recognize the mod as a fellow member. The cloak | of anonymity means, however, that few get any inkling unless | they bother to investigate (unlikely on a website and an app | that invite passivity) or it eventually erupts into scandal. | dingledork69 wrote: | For example the /r/Netherlands subreddit is ran by trolls who | are not from the Netherlands, and does not allow the usage of | the Dutch language in the subreddit at all. Instead | /r/theNetherlands is the proper subreddit. | | The fact that reddit allows moderators to hide the modlist | nowadays only makes things worse. You have absolutely no idea | who is running things anymore. | jhatemyjob wrote: | These protests are pointless. Let reddit kill itself. It had its | time. | bagels wrote: | They directly cut into ad revenue. It won't change Reddit's | mind, but is noticed. | asdff wrote: | I think they might actually help kill reddit faster. A lot of | people have joked already that these protests will finally be | the kick to get them to quit wasting time on the site. I'd bet | that numbers do drop a lot after the protests and at least a | few users end up leaving for good. | Dudester230602 wrote: | Going freemium did not kill mobile app stores and going woke | did not kill Hollywood/streaming. So don't raise your hopes. | Sometimes bad side just wins. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-06-07 23:00 UTC)