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Reddit is killing RSS feeds and ending public API access because of AI bots (techcrunch.com)
submitted 3 days ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 243 points 3 days ago* (58 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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  • [–] 1 point 1 day 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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  • [–] 76 points 3 days ago (38 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 3 days ago (28 children)

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

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  • [–] 23 points 3 days ago (11 children)

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

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  • [–] 6 points 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days 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 3 days 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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  • [–] 33 points 3 days 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 2 days 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 2 days 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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  • [–] 23 points 3 days 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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  • [–] 11 points 3 days 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 2 days 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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  • [–] 6 points 3 days 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 3 days ago (1 child)

    You guys see ads on reddit? I laugh in ublock

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days 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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