>you can't just give away the community's content to train LLMs

The API has always existed, it's just a lot more expensive so if OpenAI really wanted to, they still could train their LLMs on Reddit comments just fine.

And as other users said, this is yet another platform catering solely to shareholders and giving no second thought about the users of the platform before making decisions that only maximise profits, which is a discomfort to lots of users to say the least.

>But do 99% of users really care?

I use the website and official mobile app, but if a subreddit that I really enjoy stopped being enjoyable because of these changes, I do indeed care(and so do thousands of users across so many different subreddits).

>Most people browse Reddit through an official UI. Instagram, Snap, a bazillion other private social networks don't have 3rd party apps

Well atleast their UI is better than Reddit's, and as far as I can tell, a lot more accessible than Reddit's official UI . Also those platforms went down the "maximise profit margins by not caring about users" route a long time ago, this move from Reddit feels like the last straw for a significant enough amount of the userbase to participate in these blackouts.

You may not have a horse in this race but I think it's worth understanding exactly how this impacts you as a user before bringing out the "but I don't care" take(which is fair enough, but I would be slightly surprised if that was still your take after fully understanding the implications of these changes).

I will probably be indirectly affected by any migration of people who do care, people like the mods who keep that local group sane. Why should they continue donating their time to a corporation who is actively making their life harder? Why would I want to visit a forum where that is full of crud because noone care to moderate it? Why would I want to visit a forum that lacks insightful gems because the people who care to post those gems have moved on because they don't want to deal with the crud either.

Realistically speaking, the API thing is unlikely to alter my use of Reddit. Reddit probably wouldn't care if it did anyway since I'm unlikely to be in their target audience. That said, potential changes in the atmosphere of Reddit are very likely to alter my use of Reddit. I've also been on the Internet long enough to see platforms rise then fall from grace, so I view it as a real possibility. (Albeit, I also realize that the fall takes much longer than many would have us believe.)

Instead think of it as a labor movement where reddit are the owners and mods/posters are the laborers, and the 3rd party app creators are the union leaders.

This isn't about reddit trying to kill 3rd party apps. This is about the enshitification of one of the few "free speech" platforms left on the internet: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

It's actually pretty astounding that reddit has not brought the hammer down, but when that happens, that's when we'll know it's over and the investors have won the short game (maybe at the cost of everything).

Reddit used their power unilaterally and said "what are you gonna do about it?" I really can't remember the last time (with the exception of ukraine) where a powerful entity said "what are you gonna do about it" and then they "found out."

This is part of a larger fight against monopolism and walled gardenism, theft and privatization of free information & data provided by users.

Good thing you can hide stories.

Evidently, lots of users care: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36251707

I do appreciate the fact, however, that I can connect to Fastmail and read my mail using my client of choice and not Fastmail’s web interface or iOS client. Fastmail does not care because they get my money anyway. I like that model.

So I am siding with Reddit on this one. I’d prefer Reddit to be self-sustainable at least. If there are clients that deliver the value to the users bypassing their ad revenue stream, it is reasonable to ask users to pay for it. Now, whether API pricing is reasonable or not - it is hard for me to say, but I will let market forces figure out this one.

Free (or cheap) APIs have been a way for whoever makes them to discover new segments/markets with low risk/investment. If its good enough, its an opportunity for an indie dev or start-up to get acquired and make an exit, if it isn't, then all the risk was on the indie dev or start-up to begin with.

If you go back years into these API ecosystems, you'll see stories like this Apollo/Reddit one aren't new, since the API owners aren't required to buy anyone out, they could either cancel your access or simply clone the way you're using their API and be done.

What is new, is how these API dramas are accelerating, either APIs are no longer free, they are putting more locks on how the data can be used or they are getting so expensive you can't make a business case waiting to get acquired or noticed. Simply search for stories about APIs related to Youtube, Reddit, Bing in the past months.

My suspicion about this dynamic, is the bigger elephant in the room is ML/AI. For many sites, their lifeblood is their data and they're not going to part with it as easily, since a couple of API calls can mean they're going to get passed over entirely in this ML/AI era. Its do or die for many sites, even if it means pissing off the symbiotic relationship many had indie devs & start-ups.

This is not a story of progress but rather a treadmill. The story is "try platform Y, it's like platform X was a few years ago before platform X got broken", and then you move to platform Y, and then platform Y rots.

People don't seem all that amazed that a Verizon customer can call a T-Mobile customer or that a iPhone user can call an Android user but the idea that communication apps or social media apps could interoperate is like science fiction or nuclear fusion or communism or something.

Since what happened to Twitter I think a lot of people are in an inflamed state and I think other "platforms" have gotten the wrong message and decided to follow Musk's playbook of accelerating enshittification. For years Reddit has insulted our intelligence by putting a banner at the top of their mobile website saying "download our crapp for a better (worse) experience" and if you tried it you got exactly what you'd expect to get. Reddit has some good subreddits but it takes a huge amount of cognitive effort to see content between the ads. The third-party cutoff will force people to wade through that crapp.

And maybe can actually anything be done. Is there some models that would effectively serve both users and company aiming for IPO. And then later the retail investors.