Reddit Will Require You To Log In To Use Old Reddit (arstechnica.com) 89
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Reddit will start requiring people to be logged into Reddit to use old.reddit.com. The new requirement will take effect "over the next month," a Reddit employee going by the username boat-botany announced on the social media platform today. The person claimed that the change is part of an ongoing effort to "tighten how automated systems access Reddit."
The Reddit employee wrote: "Old Reddit's logged-out experience is a significant source of abusive scraping and automated traffic on the platform. It's also an important interface for many long-time mods and Redditors. To strike the right balance between preserving your access to Old Reddit while preventing abusive scraping and automated traffic, over the next month we will start requiring everyone to log in."
In a follow-up comment, boat-botany defined abusive behavior as that which violates Reddit's rule prohibiting activity that interferes with the platform's "normal use" or that "create[s] programs or applications" that break Reddit's (controversial) API rules. "By logging in, we get a lot more signal that allows us to detect whether an account is breaking the rules, and then we can block that traffic or enforce those accounts," boat-botany said. Asked why boat-botany scrapes New Reddit less frequently than Old Reddit, the Reddit employee pointed to another commenter's explanation. "[T]he shape of malicious traffic is always changing," the user, Nestramutat, wrote. "It's going to be a constant cat and mouse game[.] As you ban one method, a new one gets developed. It's easy to see abusive traffic in hindsight, but it's harder to pre-emptively block it. Given that they're claiming Old Reddit doesn't have the modern security stack, this is likely proving to be an even greater challenge."
Nestramutat said that the login requirement will add a barrier against threat actors. "You're also now attaching an account ID to every malicious request, plus account creation is only available on New Reddit (with the enhanced security stack)."
As for how long Old Reddit will exist, boat-botany left the door open for its retirement. "We can't promise it will be around forever, but [Reddit CEO Steve Huffman] himself has said we'll keep supporting it while folks are still using it," boat-botany wrote. "That said, it doesn't have the same modern security tech stack reddit.com has, so we need to tighten security on old reddit to keep it viable."
The Reddit employee wrote: "Old Reddit's logged-out experience is a significant source of abusive scraping and automated traffic on the platform. It's also an important interface for many long-time mods and Redditors. To strike the right balance between preserving your access to Old Reddit while preventing abusive scraping and automated traffic, over the next month we will start requiring everyone to log in."
In a follow-up comment, boat-botany defined abusive behavior as that which violates Reddit's rule prohibiting activity that interferes with the platform's "normal use" or that "create[s] programs or applications" that break Reddit's (controversial) API rules. "By logging in, we get a lot more signal that allows us to detect whether an account is breaking the rules, and then we can block that traffic or enforce those accounts," boat-botany said. Asked why boat-botany scrapes New Reddit less frequently than Old Reddit, the Reddit employee pointed to another commenter's explanation. "[T]he shape of malicious traffic is always changing," the user, Nestramutat, wrote. "It's going to be a constant cat and mouse game[.] As you ban one method, a new one gets developed. It's easy to see abusive traffic in hindsight, but it's harder to pre-emptively block it. Given that they're claiming Old Reddit doesn't have the modern security stack, this is likely proving to be an even greater challenge."
Nestramutat said that the login requirement will add a barrier against threat actors. "You're also now attaching an account ID to every malicious request, plus account creation is only available on New Reddit (with the enhanced security stack)."
As for how long Old Reddit will exist, boat-botany left the door open for its retirement. "We can't promise it will be around forever, but [Reddit CEO Steve Huffman] himself has said we'll keep supporting it while folks are still using it," boat-botany wrote. "That said, it doesn't have the same modern security tech stack reddit.com has, so we need to tighten security on old reddit to keep it viable."
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I've never had an account. I wish Google would stop indexing it altogether. Whenever I click a reddit link in search results, it's just pages of people arguing over wrong answers.
Maybe you're the issue? + complaining about porn?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hive mind / echo chamber hell is all Reddit is these days.
I haven't had that experience at all, but I don't do political or racist rants. Reddit is a treasure trove of information for my various hobbies and I learned a lot of extremely specialized knowledge for very specialized interests....plus free porn! I just feel bad for you...a website let's you follow your interests to an intensely specialized and niche degree...AND offers unlimited free boobies and you get upset about their politics? You must be one miserable prick!
As they say "If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole."
Re:Maybe you're the issue? + complaining about por (Score:5, Interesting)
I must 100% agree with this. I've never subscribed to any of various politics, religion, pop culture, or other such subs that are sure to be a cesspool. But I've found great value in homeowner, personal finance, robot lawn mower, retirement (crossing my fingers), tech, hobby, and other special interest subs. The only ones that get crappy with any regularity are the local state/city ones, as political bowels inevitably dump their load there.
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Youtube and Reddit are the best examples of "just ignore and discard everything it tries to gives you by default".
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I will agree that specific sub-reddits are useful. Especially for niche / strange topics.
However, it largely depends upon what sub-reddits you visit and if you dare to question anything within said
sub-reddits that does not fall in line with the group think found therein.
An example would be jumping into a Linux sub-reddit and praising Linux. Thus would you be accepted and
praised. However, make any comment critical of Linux ( factual or otherwise ) and your karma would get carpet
bombed back into the Stone A
But why do you need to criticize? (Score:2)
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It is remarkably hard to find good discourse on the internet because as soon as you create a place for people to do that income the advertisers and the Russian bots and the pussy pics in bio spammers and everyone else to ruin everyone's fun.
Then the next thing you do is you have a karma score and you hide posts or block users who have karma that is too low. So the scammers and the Russians show up and do low effort posts o
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How do you delete an account here? What's the procedure? And please be *precise*.
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Just fill out this form. [onetrust.com]
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You are my hero! I just filled the form with rsilvergun's credentials; Damien Lee and damien.lee@gmail.com !
Thanks!
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NO, NO, NO, JUST NO!!! No one needs to Cmdr Taco in any form, much less naked.
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There are still low-volume subs that are worthwhile, and good communities that use it. I've got an account, and interact with mostly friends in a few subs, most are in the low hundred users, but a few like /r/cooking and /r/photography are higher traffic.
I understand requiring accounts for the interface, anonymous use is unfortunately abused.
That said, the day they kill off old reddit or subvert my ad blockers is the day I stop going back. The endless scroll design and ad-powered updates are unbearable fo
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Reddit was nice enough to do it for me, by claiming that telling someone to "jump up their own ass and die" is somehow a threat of violence.
Don't miss it even a single little bit. Too many precious snowflakes that seem to think disagreement is assault.
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Re:Anyone with common sense (Score:4)
Reddit was nice enough to do it for me, by claiming that telling someone to "jump up their own ass and die" is somehow a threat of violence.
You got banned for being a dick. Was it a threat of violence? No. Were you a dick making Reddit and the world a worse place? Yep. Can anyone really be bothered to fuck around changing your ban from "banned for threats of violence" to "banned for being a massive cockwomble"? No, not really. You're banned either way.
Maybe next time, don't tell anyone to die either before or after ass-self-insertion.
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You probably shouldn't use words when you don't know what they mean.
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So you have a problem with me responding to someone being a dick in a similar fashion, but not with the original comment that precipitated it.
Good to know you're pro-bully as long as the moderator agrees with the bully.
In other words, go jump up your own ass and die. I can say that here without meaningful repercussion.
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LOL sounds just like this place these days. There are many good reddits still that are well moderated and are home to experts in many fields. Funny but /. used to be like that as well. I don't login very often but the requirement will kill it for me.
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I miss independent forums (like /. of old) (Score:4, Insightful)
I really hate how reddit has eaten the world. 15 - 25 years ago I had a stable of fun forums I would visit for my various technical and leisure interests and they were great. Now everything is getting slowly enveloped by the grey goo of AI slop. It's really hard to tell sometimes if you're interacting with a human there.
And making you log in so they can get your data is frustrating. I mean, if I'm not logged in I'm looking at the ads.
Reddit is addictive so it's taking a while but I'm trying to let it go. It just isn't worth it as it is actively being enshittified.
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(cough, cough...bullshit) (Score:1)
I disagreed with someone and was banned from the whole site.
Kewl story AC...but I call bullshit. You can disagree with people all you want. They can't ban you from the site unless you did a LOT MORE than "disagree" with someone....threatening to find someone and kill them is not disagreeing!
Re:(cough, cough...bullshit) (Score:4, Informative)
I posted the phone number to a police station and got permabanned from all of Reddit for doxxing, so no - you really don't have to do a whole lot to become persona non grata on EVERY SINGLE HOBBY FORUM on the internet.
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I took Reddit to Small Claims Court for failure to process a GDPR Subject Access Request (SAR), and as part of their defence they accidentally admitted that their system is badly broken. The particular account I was requesting data for was apparently automatically banned because the system thought it was a bot, and then when I appealed a *manual review* also decided that it was a bot. To compound the error, they then lied about it in emails and on their login page, and failed to process the SAR.
I expect tha
Re: (cough, cough...bullshit) (Score:1)
I was posting on Reddit for years under my real name on various technical subreddits only to get banned because I quoted something very racist arguing against that quite. The ban was a simple string search that happened to read the quote as if I was saying it. Know multiple people in the same boat.
Anyway I no longer post on reddit at all. It's on a slow decline.
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Well then you don't know how Reddit moderator snowflakes work.
Someone reports you for "inciting violence" and they ban you. And when you "appeal" they don't bother to look at what you actually wrote, they just deny it and leave the ban in place.
I was literally banned for "inciting violence" because I told someone to jump up their own ass and die. This is clearly not a threat of physical harm, as I'm suggesting they do it themselves, and it's physically impossible.
Yet I'm still banned. So explain that to
Would you tolerate me saying that in your home? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well then you don't know how Reddit moderator snowflakes work.
Someone reports you for "inciting violence" and they ban you. And when you "appeal" they don't bother to look at what you actually wrote, they just deny it and leave the ban in place.
I was literally banned for "inciting violence" because I told someone to jump up their own ass and die. This is clearly not a threat of physical harm, as I'm suggesting they do it themselves, and it's physically impossible.
Yet I'm still banned. So explain that to me if you're so "on the inside" enough to accuse someone of something.
OK...ask for your money back! Moderators are unpaid and if someone told me that, I would think they are a huge asshole. You're not guaranteed a full trial and due process. However, you did more than "disagree" with someone...you told them to go die. I wouldn't call that "inciting violence"...but frankly, the subreddit is a lot better off without you if you behave that way. No one will miss you if you behave like that.
So think of it from their perspective...they're unpaid and doing it for love. The
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No, but they can report you to the admins that can - and moderators' words weigh far more heavily than those of an average user since no one at Reddit wants to actually read every single report they receive.
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I posted on there trying to figure out why my Synology NAS was only letting me use 16 TB even when using much larger drives and 64-bit hardware, got an irrelevant lecture about gigabytes vs gibibytes and some negative karma, then found my account permanently suspended without explanation or recourse soon after, and that was the only thing that was even remotely controversial that I ever posted there.
The answer (in case it matters) to my question was
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Kewl story AC...but I call bullshit. You can disagree with people all you want. They can't ban you from the site unless you did a LOT MORE than "disagree" with someone....threatening to find someone and kill them is not disagreeing!
False. Moderators absolutely have the ability to escalate and get accounts banned. The problem is Reddit moderators are a bit like American police. A bunch of low-IQ fuckups on a power trips.
I got a 6 month site ban after someone doxed me, I told them to go fuck themselves (apparently that made me the toxic one, though they did get a subreddit ban too), and then I told the moderator he was a victim shaming arsehole and I will never *not* tell someone to go fuck themselves if they act like that. Suddenly I h
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They use browser fingerprinting.
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I also miss traditional forums. It seems like now they've rolled up all the worst attributes of every form of communication and came up with Discord. And Slack. I wish my company would institute a $1 charge for every new post so people would use "Reply in thread" the way God intended.
They just want to get rid of it (Score:5, Insightful)
old.reddit has less space for enshittification, so they are trying to push users to the new site. They would have long deleted it, but they know that the users who still use old.reddit are the ones contributing the content the other ones merely consume. The new site is for ads and users that are fed an algorithmic feed and the old still exists so the people contributing actual knowledge don't quit.
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They really want to get rid of old.reddit. As you say, the majority of contributing and active users are on old. Most mods I know use it because it is smoother and cleaner to moderate.
When they do get rid of old I think that is going to be it for many users, me included.
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When they do get rid of old I think that is going to be it for many users, me included.
"Many users" is going to be relative. I saw some numbers recently that only around 1% of users go through Old Reddit, and in many of the largest subs, it's a fraction of a percent. I don't think it will have the impact that some people think. I prefer Old Reddit on desktop, but it's clunky on mobile, so I stick with the new interface (I don't use the app).
Lemmy has become just as bad (Score:2)
I must be malicious (Score:2)
Got it.
This is good to slow bot/scraper abuse, IMHO (Score:3)
Now...we're all adults...you post shit online and you run that risk...but at least reddit is making steps to make it difficult to steal. I was really upset when I found there were sites serving my deleted posts in an easy to search format. Again...I guess I should have thought about that...but they are stealing from me and from reddit in my view.
It's like if a musician gives a performance in a park for free. You have the right to watch. You have the right to record on your phone. You don't have the right to make money off their performance....that's both illegal and very unethical.
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It's like if a musician gives a performance in a park for free. You have the right to watch. You have the right to record on your phone. You don't have the right to make money off their performance....that's both illegal and very unethical.
And it's different when Reddit does it, how?
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Reddit doesn't do it. Reddit is the owner of a private club, and they make money off the people who go there agreeing with explicit terms that entitle Reddit to monetise.
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One is a bug, one is a feature (Score:2)
It's like if a musician gives a performance in a park for free. You have the right to watch. You have the right to record on your phone. You don't have the right to make money off their performance....that's both illegal and very unethical.
And it's different when Reddit does it, how?
If you're talking about reddit monetizing content...it's posted by a redditor....if it's illegal or against copyright, moderators will take it down. You can also request content be removed if you're a copyright holder. Inappropriate monetization is a bug, not a feature and reddit makes attempts to correct it.
The 3rd party reddit aggregator search engines? They don't care one bit what they post or if it should be removed.
A redditor posts child porn? death threats? suicide notes? It's deleted as so
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You are mixing at least two topics:
- Bots farming karma (probably to spam later) are now driven by LLM instead of badly paid people
- Crawlers may or may not collect data using the freely accessible web interface. For some reason reddit seems to believe their new site is making it harder than the old one
That's nothing that new either. If you're using unusual IPs they force you to login (both old and new website) since quite some time. I tend to believe their scraping fears, as they make deals with AI compani
Their point of existence is advertising (Score:2)
You are mixing at least two topics:
- Bots farming karma (probably to spam later) are now driven by LLM instead of badly paid people - Crawlers may or may not collect data using the freely accessible web interface. For some reason reddit seems to believe their new site is making it harder than the old one
That's nothing that new either. If you're using unusual IPs they force you to login (both old and new website) since quite some time. I tend to believe their scraping fears, as they make deals with AI companies that would not work if the data could be scraped. I think they have the infrastructure that scraping does not affect their servers in a noticeable way, but they want to monopoly to monetize their users' data.
Reddit offers a service for free. In exchange, you get targeted ads. That's how the world works. LLMs ensure their content and communities than many worked so hard to build deliver content to other services without paying reddit a cent. It's a legit and reasonable step to ensure you're correctly compensated for your content. Also, I consented for reddit to host my posts as I am consenting for /. to have my comment. I didn't consent for Grok to serve it and monetize it.
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"Their content" or the users' content?
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at least reddit is making steps to make it difficult to steal. I was really upset when I found there were sites serving my deleted posts in an easy to search format. Again...I guess I should have thought about that...but they are stealing from me and from reddit in my view.
wank wank, flonk flonk.
I remember a time when Slashdot was peopled mostly by humans who looked down on copyright law in general as a farce. Those were better times in a lot of ways, and this is only one of them.
It's like if a musician gives a performance in a park for free. You have the right to watch. You have the right to record on your phone. You don't have the right to make money off their performance....that's both illegal and very unethical.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Everything is coercive.
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Every subreddit I enjoy (hobbies + porn)
Ok but bro you've told us MANY times in this thread how you get your porn on reddit.
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he scraping abuse on reddit used to be quite terrible. Every subreddit I enjoy (hobbies + porn) was well moderated, so not a ton of bot bullshit on the actual site, but I saw a lot of my old posts content farmed on shitty websites.
[...]
I was really upset when I found there were sites serving my deleted posts in an easy to search format.
Most people wouldn't share ANY of the facts that (1) they actively make creepy posts on porn subreddits, or that they 2) got "really upset" when they found out that their creepy posts on porn subreddits were archived elsewhere, OR that they 3) consider copying their creepy posts on porn reddits as "stealing from me"
So when you found this out, did you demand to talk to the manager of the arc
Feel better shitting on folks with your ignorance? (Score:2)
he scraping abuse on reddit used to be quite terrible. Every subreddit I enjoy (hobbies + porn) was well moderated, so not a ton of bot bullshit on the actual site, but I saw a lot of my old posts content farmed on shitty websites.
[...]
I was really upset when I found there were sites serving my deleted posts in an easy to search format.
Most people wouldn't share ANY of the facts that (1) they actively make creepy posts on porn subreddits, or that they 2) got "really upset" when they found out that their creepy posts on porn subreddits were archived elsewhere, OR that they 3) consider copying their creepy posts on porn reddits as "stealing from me"
So when you found this out, did you demand to talk to the manager of the archving websites?
Sorry, buddy, I was upset because I posted something on a hobby site saying a manufacturer didn't have anything that would fit his needs, had out of date information not realizing the manufacturer released a new model, and my answer was completely wrong...so I deleted it to not muddy the discussion. I didn't want to confuse people finding that post.
/. Feel better? Do you feel like a bigger man now? You put me in my place!!!!
But hey, jump to conclusions and shit on random people on
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Risky Business (Score:5, Interesting)
Reddit isn't wrong about bots but odds are what they really want is your identity. That earns money.
The trouble is people in Saudi Arabia will use old. to read about liberation topics or people in the US will read about drug topics, or whatever the mala prohibita are that will land you in prison for things that are perfectly legal in other jurisdictions.
Even people with accounts who read other subs logged in.
"Just create a new anonymous account" is what people will say who don't understand how identity correlation works. Sure there are ways that 0.0000001% of the population can manage securely, but that's not how this will go down.
The UK just arrested an American attorney who was critical of UK politics and they have multiple people in prison for clicking 'Like'. If you think they won't arrest somebody for reading the wrong sub, give it a few months.
Also, don't connect through Heathrow ever again.
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Since quite some time Reddit disabled signing without mail address. I am not sure if they ban trashmail yet, but probably they will start blocking them if they get too many anonymous accounts.
Smells Like Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
No anonymous reading of old.reddit. "Cuz bots."
But, they'll still allow anonymous reading of new reddit?
Thai smells like bullshit.
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Remember that saying about don't allow a new install of an old version of Windows on the internet or it will become infected within minutes? Imagine that but trying to start a website on the internet will soon be overwhelmed by an invasion of anonymous bots. Eventually search engines will be the only way to even know a website exists, and to
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But, they'll still allow anonymous reading of new reddit?
New reddit is a continuously dynamic updated infinite scroller. Those are actually very difficult to scrape in a meaningful way compared to easily indexable unique pages.
In that case.. (Score:1)
there is one fix and you won't do it (Score:5, Insightful)
The fix is to come up with a news reader with cryptographically managed identities (not verified, just consistent) and go back to USENET with it. This does everything valuable that social networking does, but without the malevolent overlord.
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Reddit Transparency Report (Score:3)
Transparency Report: January to June 2025 [redditinc.com]
“As for global legal requests from government and law enforcement agencies, there was a 27% increase in legal requests to remove content from Reddit and a 12% increase in non-emergency legal requests for Redditors’ account information.”
reddit sucks (Score:2)
I can't stand Reddit UX is horrendous always showing tiny amounts of data always requiring you to expand expand expand drives me absolutely nuts. Old is the only thing that made it usable. Governance is far worse... the whole site is a series of disjointed echochambers enforced by Nazi moderation. Really sad to see sites like Reddit eating so much of the Internet.
The other day was searching for something on a mobile which I rarely do and a nag came up demanding I install the reddit app... you couldn't d
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Governance is far worse... the whole site is a series of disjointed echochambers enforced by Nazi moderation.
You just said you got banned for being a dick without saying you got banned for being a dick.
The solution is stay away from Reddit (Score:2)
Will this end brigading and bots? (Score:2)
I'm a open source developer who created an application which eliminates the need for another, competing, but far more popular open-source application - beats it hands down on every benchmark. It's a very niche application for a small hobbyist community, so like, nobody should even care that it exists. I barely care myself - it's just a hobby.
Yet, whenever I mention my app on Reddit, every one of my posts are systematically down-voted to zero, and my comments down voted deep into negative territory. The only
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Yet, whenever I mention my app on Reddit,
Yeah but where? I mean if you're on "competitor's app" subreddit and keep plugging your own one, yes people will be annoyed and just downvote you. Or maybe the other app has a super-fan who's obessively stalking you.
The only engagement I do get are from their users calling my app AI slop and questioning my four decades as a professional software developer.
I'd suspect that the users of the existing app are somewhat happy with it and don't want to keep being plugged an
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Yeah, I hear you. I've questioned myself more than once if I'm just being paranoid. And perhaps I am.
That particular subreddit is a discussion forum for a specific host app, both my app and this other app are just plugins for that host app, so discussions about plugins are frequent. Thing is, those bots never attack my other unrelated posts in the same forum, nor do they attack other peoples posts about their own plugins. These bots trigger off of keywords specifically related to my app - if you mention my
Sigh. (Score:2)
So, I don't understand why it's taken them all this time to add logins to prevent anonymous access.
But that aside... why is "old Reddit" anything more than a skin / display layer over "new Reddit"?
It's the same shite that always happens. Hey, we completely redesigned everything from the ground up, but it's an absolute impossible to just... make it look like it always did.
It's just skinning/theming, effect. This is the whole point of things like GUI libraries and CSS. The content is the same. The metadat
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It seems like it should be just theming, but there's a separate architecture to it. Even the APIs are different, with new using a GraphQL-based API and old using a more traditional structure. The core data (users, posts, comments, etc.) is the same, but the pathways are completely different. New has links into capabilities that old doesn't have (especially around abuse and scraping), and old has capabilities that new doesn't always have (especially around mod tools, which new apparently breaks on a regular
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"But that aside... why is "old Reddit" anything more than a skin / display layer over "new Reddit"?"
I'd say the "new" reddit is the skin, not the old, and it's more than just visual. New reddit gives subreddits and mods more power over what you see and how you can interact. I recently tried at least allow subreddit custom themes on the old reddit interface and a sub has a rule (paraphrased) "no downvoting unless you meet $ArbitraryCriteria" So I turned off the stupid theming crap and then hit the downvote l
Old Reddit? (Score:2)
Isn't ALL of Reddit 'old'?
Steep decline (Score:3)
Sounds like reddit is really trying to make the entire platform tank and treat all customers as hostile, judging by the decisions they made over the last couple of years and the fostering and nurturing of completely ideologically captured, radical mods of all couleurs.
The entire site is less and less useful for anything, really.
People still use Reddit? Why? (Score:1)