This is the best malicious compliance so far, still reddit could ‘force’ them to remove the approval restriction.
But subreddits like pics doing the john oliver thing are completely missing the point, reddit dont care if they do that, it’s still getting thousands of views and upvotes because its ‘cool and funny’, its such a ‘we did it reddit’ moment. Just stop using reddit, let the subreddits go to shit with no moderation, make a sticky linking to alternatives.
I think it will have the opposite effect people want. It will drive traffic to reddit to see the funny pics, it wont suddenly stop the masses using reddit, a garbage experience has to occur for that.
But it will get them talking, which is the main point of it. Regular people will wonder why the sub is full of John Oliver, letting them find out about the API changed and everything.
It’s also a way to get people to see what is actually happening from a more unbiased source. Since spez did a whole interview circuit, that might be all some people know about the situation.
I still don’t know what an API is. But people who know more about it than me have told me in no uncertain terms that spez is scum for it, and I was able to confirm that because he put his whole ass on display in that AMA, and so here I am.
An Application Programming Interface (API) is basically a way to let apps communicate with the server (Reddit, in this case) directly, in ways that are faster and more efficient (but less user friendly) than the site page.
For apps, having an API for Reddit meant that they could just ask Reddit directly for a list of posts, and submit any interactions without having to pretend to be a user and “read” the site, which might break as soon as Reddit changed something, like redesigning the website.
For Reddit, that meant that it didn’t need to send the apps a whole page, and waste valuable bandwidth/processing power. It could just send the relevant bits the apps needed, and save resources/cost.
Running an API isn’t free, since it is basically another part of the site to maintain and deal with. Reddit officially claims that the costs associated with the API (from sending the data to apps) are too great, which why they are clamping down on it, and increasing costs so significantly (although it is worth noting that the numbers are orders of magnitude higher than the API costs for similar services, like Imgur, and higher than what Reddit’s own costs would be, so take with a mountain of salt).
It might get a short bump in traffic, but I don’t see traffic increasing on the longer term because of this. And it certainly does spread awareness while also reducing advertising value.
This is the best malicious compliance so far, still reddit could ‘force’ them to remove the approval restriction.
But subreddits like pics doing the john oliver thing are completely missing the point, reddit dont care if they do that, it’s still getting thousands of views and upvotes because its ‘cool and funny’, its such a ‘we did it reddit’ moment. Just stop using reddit, let the subreddits go to shit with no moderation, make a sticky linking to alternatives.
The point of the John Oliver pictures is to make it hard for him to NOT at least spend a segment of his next show talking about it.
I think it will have the opposite effect people want. It will drive traffic to reddit to see the funny pics, it wont suddenly stop the masses using reddit, a garbage experience has to occur for that.
But it will get them talking, which is the main point of it. Regular people will wonder why the sub is full of John Oliver, letting them find out about the API changed and everything.
It’s also a way to get people to see what is actually happening from a more unbiased source. Since spez did a whole interview circuit, that might be all some people know about the situation.
“what the hell is an A-PI ?”
I still don’t know what an API is. But people who know more about it than me have told me in no uncertain terms that spez is scum for it, and I was able to confirm that because he put his whole ass on display in that AMA, and so here I am.
An Application Programming Interface (API) is basically a way to let apps communicate with the server (Reddit, in this case) directly, in ways that are faster and more efficient (but less user friendly) than the site page.
For apps, having an API for Reddit meant that they could just ask Reddit directly for a list of posts, and submit any interactions without having to pretend to be a user and “read” the site, which might break as soon as Reddit changed something, like redesigning the website.
For Reddit, that meant that it didn’t need to send the apps a whole page, and waste valuable bandwidth/processing power. It could just send the relevant bits the apps needed, and save resources/cost.
Running an API isn’t free, since it is basically another part of the site to maintain and deal with. Reddit officially claims that the costs associated with the API (from sending the data to apps) are too great, which why they are clamping down on it, and increasing costs so significantly (although it is worth noting that the numbers are orders of magnitude higher than the API costs for similar services, like Imgur, and higher than what Reddit’s own costs would be, so take with a mountain of salt).
It might get a short bump in traffic, but I don’t see traffic increasing on the longer term because of this. And it certainly does spread awareness while also reducing advertising value.