Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, has decided to just keep on talking. After his disastrous AMA helped inspire more subreddits to join a 48 hour blackout, and his dismissal of the protesting subred…
“Reddit represents one of the largest data sets of just human beings talking about interesting things,” Huffman said. “We are not in the business of giving that away for free.”
Wow. Clearly Reddit now believes that they own all of the conversations that people have had on the site. That explains why they’ve also been restoring comments that people have deleted when leaving the site. That has major implications for data security, privacy, and even safety in some situations.
This episode has revealed Reddit’s true colors, and they’re not pretty.
When something is free, you are the product. Reddit has been a human farm for ages, using effectively “slave” (free) labor to maintain the herd. That massive data trove is now being sold for profit. That’s why it’s so important that Huffman preserve Reddit and is kicking recalcitrant mods (something I predicted would happen).
I admit, I unsubscribed to Reddit and logged off the day of the AMA, after giving Huffman a piece of my mind about his “double dipping.” I was fine paying him for no ads. I would have been fine paying Apollo a small subscription. There was no way I was going to pay Reddit AND Apollo for the use of Reddit, when Apollo was basically going to be forced to collect the money I was already paying Reddit (using the APIs as a blinder).
I am fine leaving behind a ghost account. And while I get the idea of taking your data with you, frankly, I am not a thought leader in any space, and most of my comment history are stray tidbits across multiple subreddits. Certainly nothing of any value. The only value I have is being someone who could have eyes on to ads, or interact with an ad, and that can’t happen if I’m not there. And I fully believe that there is more harm to cause by being inactive than in not being there at all. Huffman may have 400 million accounts, but how many of those are actively engaged? What if the number of inactive accounts keep growing?
Let u/spez be CEO of a graveyard of rapidly aging data and ghosted accounts. For those who have contributed, I think the best solution at this time is to get your knowledge archived in a searchable format and then just pick up elsewhere. Yeah, there will be work to re-grow the community, but I have found that folks do migrate to where the activity is. As subreddits go quiet, folks will look for where the action is. It’s what happened with MySpace and Livejournal, LiveJournal and Facebook and Facebook and Twitter. Reddit is no different. Nor is Twitter. People just forget and get complacent. Personally, I like to shake things up anyway. It’s time for change.
I keep my account and deleted every single comment or post I’ve made. If you have ever follow any thread, seeing a [deleted] comment is infuriating even if it turns out to be insignificant info. I want to maximize my departure’s effect and that’s exactly what I wanted.
I have been having to rerun my deletion scripts daily. They are actively restoring comments. Even after writing gibberish and deleting. They are now holding more than 1 backup.
Make a GDPR request to delete your data. Use a VPN to be in Europe, how are they going to know if you are or not a EU citizen? Are they going to risk the GDPR fines assuming you’re not a EU Citizen currently traveling in the US?
They definately log IPs. I’ve gotten warnings for voting on a post, switching accounts, and later voting on the same post I stumbled on before. They can probably see that pattern.
Either way it’s fine. I’ll keep running the script. It’s all JavaScript so no api needed. And let them burn compute time on restores.
They log IPs. but your IP has nothing to do with you nationality. And GDPR does’t dicriminate wether you’re standing in the EU or US but if you’re a EU Citizen. If you make a GDPR request, they can A) Ignore it and risk getting a pretty bad fine B) Say “fuck it im not going to risk it” and delete your data.
I guess getting on a VPN in the EU might also help the case.
I would do it that way because if in 30 days some of my comments are still there, I can report them and they take that shit seriously and the fine is pretty bad.
Thats fair. Im not familiar with GDPR personally. I did see a post earlier where someone reached out about invoking it. They basically said its on you and that you ALSO have to delete your account.
Problem is, when ive wiped it, they have restored it. And if you delete the account you cut your own access. I would guess thats not compliant.
So not a lawyer, but I worked as IT/IS in a GDPR heavy industry in Spain. The way it was explained to me, is that we need to have all processes to delete everything of the user. There is no “do all this work and firgure shit out” If they make a request to be forgotten, we have 30 days to erase them from every system we have save some really specific exceptions. There is not “hoops” because GDPR is extremely “biased” towards the users (i don’t mean bias in a negative way).
There is no reasonable way to delete all your comments in 10 plus years of posting. So you can fill out yoru form to delete your account. Then m,ake a GDPR request. and then have some random comments saved (URLs)) so you can check 1-2 months down the line. If you see the comments then you take next steps
That’s not a bad point. I still get the occasional reply notification from comments many years old, from people who were looking for a conversation on a topic and engaged with what I said a decade ago.
I suppose it would be somewhat impactful if those comments were just empty voids, perhaps even moreso if they were all replaced by a message saying something like “I left reddit because of X, look for me on the feddiverse to continue this conversation.”
So if, as he stated earlier, “These people who are mad, they’re mad because they used to get something for free, and now it’s going to be not free,” shouldn’t mods start charging for their services?
Oh, my sweet, summer child. Maybe not phone calls (yet?), but they sell lots of other data they maintain about you. Location data, specifically, is a hot seller.
Yes and no. Google definitely uses location data to improve traffic details, but GPS has always been able to get some level of data about it, despite being mostly a one way system. I don’t really remember the details, I’ll try to dig out an article
I lost count of how many times I used Redact to (re-)deleted my comments. They will simply popup after a few hours. They tends to be older comments of at least a year ago.
What I find interesting is this could be avoided by granting exceptions to the existing app devs and being done with it.
I get the api costs money and theres folks like pushshift aggregating data and using it for their own profit. I’m sure plenty of companies are using data for adverts and more. And there’s an argument there Reddit deserves a cut. Especially if they are using the api to train bots or ai to have conversations for their own inventions.
But just the ass backwards way they handled devs of existing 3p apps that constitute value add to their data sets is just…mesmerizing.
And if these users ARENT a majority of the usage or costs, why bother cutting them off and not just granting exceptions to avoid the PR issues.
I think you misunderstood spez. He wanted no 3rd party app at all. RIF was paying Reddit for using their brand name and spez terminated the contract. It’s all about control.
It would be much easier to just inject ads into data returned by the API. Apps will automatically display these ads and developers will understand that if they filter these ads, their access to Reddit will be either limited or completely cut out.
There are myriad ways to make money off third party apps that benefits both reddit and the apps. Spez is an absolute moron, who has thrown a spanner in the works of both, when he was sitting on a golden opportunity. I don’t think he has any business sense at all.
Shu also tells me that RIF was paying a “sizable revenue share” to Reddit beginning in 2012, which was during Yishan Wong’s tenure as CEO. Shu says he says initiated the talks with Reddit to create the agreement, which allowed for the licensed use of Reddit’s trademarks. (At the time, the app was called “reddit is fun.”) Shu says Reddit terminated the agreement in 2016 — which was the year after Huffman took over as CEO.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/16/23763661/reddit-rif-is-fun-developer-ceo-steve-huffman
Wow. Clearly Reddit now believes that they own all of the conversations that people have had on the site. That explains why they’ve also been restoring comments that people have deleted when leaving the site. That has major implications for data security, privacy, and even safety in some situations.
This episode has revealed Reddit’s true colors, and they’re not pretty.
When something is free, you are the product. Reddit has been a human farm for ages, using effectively “slave” (free) labor to maintain the herd. That massive data trove is now being sold for profit. That’s why it’s so important that Huffman preserve Reddit and is kicking recalcitrant mods (something I predicted would happen).
I admit, I unsubscribed to Reddit and logged off the day of the AMA, after giving Huffman a piece of my mind about his “double dipping.” I was fine paying him for no ads. I would have been fine paying Apollo a small subscription. There was no way I was going to pay Reddit AND Apollo for the use of Reddit, when Apollo was basically going to be forced to collect the money I was already paying Reddit (using the APIs as a blinder).
I am fine leaving behind a ghost account. And while I get the idea of taking your data with you, frankly, I am not a thought leader in any space, and most of my comment history are stray tidbits across multiple subreddits. Certainly nothing of any value. The only value I have is being someone who could have eyes on to ads, or interact with an ad, and that can’t happen if I’m not there. And I fully believe that there is more harm to cause by being inactive than in not being there at all. Huffman may have 400 million accounts, but how many of those are actively engaged? What if the number of inactive accounts keep growing?
Let u/spez be CEO of a graveyard of rapidly aging data and ghosted accounts. For those who have contributed, I think the best solution at this time is to get your knowledge archived in a searchable format and then just pick up elsewhere. Yeah, there will be work to re-grow the community, but I have found that folks do migrate to where the activity is. As subreddits go quiet, folks will look for where the action is. It’s what happened with MySpace and Livejournal, LiveJournal and Facebook and Facebook and Twitter. Reddit is no different. Nor is Twitter. People just forget and get complacent. Personally, I like to shake things up anyway. It’s time for change.
I keep my account and deleted every single comment or post I’ve made. If you have ever follow any thread, seeing a
[deleted]comment is infuriating even if it turns out to be insignificant info. I want to maximize my departure’s effect and that’s exactly what I wanted.I have been having to rerun my deletion scripts daily. They are actively restoring comments. Even after writing gibberish and deleting. They are now holding more than 1 backup.
Make a GDPR request to delete your data. Use a VPN to be in Europe, how are they going to know if you are or not a EU citizen? Are they going to risk the GDPR fines assuming you’re not a EU Citizen currently traveling in the US?
They definately log IPs. I’ve gotten warnings for voting on a post, switching accounts, and later voting on the same post I stumbled on before. They can probably see that pattern.
Either way it’s fine. I’ll keep running the script. It’s all JavaScript so no api needed. And let them burn compute time on restores.
They log IPs. but your IP has nothing to do with you nationality. And GDPR does’t dicriminate wether you’re standing in the EU or US but if you’re a EU Citizen. If you make a GDPR request, they can A) Ignore it and risk getting a pretty bad fine B) Say “fuck it im not going to risk it” and delete your data. I guess getting on a VPN in the EU might also help the case. I would do it that way because if in 30 days some of my comments are still there, I can report them and they take that shit seriously and the fine is pretty bad.
Thats fair. Im not familiar with GDPR personally. I did see a post earlier where someone reached out about invoking it. They basically said its on you and that you ALSO have to delete your account.
Problem is, when ive wiped it, they have restored it. And if you delete the account you cut your own access. I would guess thats not compliant.
https://lemmy.pub/post/12903?scrollToComments=true
So not a lawyer, but I worked as IT/IS in a GDPR heavy industry in Spain. The way it was explained to me, is that we need to have all processes to delete everything of the user. There is no “do all this work and firgure shit out” If they make a request to be forgotten, we have 30 days to erase them from every system we have save some really specific exceptions. There is not “hoops” because GDPR is extremely “biased” towards the users (i don’t mean bias in a negative way). There is no reasonable way to delete all your comments in 10 plus years of posting. So you can fill out yoru form to delete your account. Then m,ake a GDPR request. and then have some random comments saved (URLs)) so you can check 1-2 months down the line. If you see the comments then you take next steps
That’s not a bad point. I still get the occasional reply notification from comments many years old, from people who were looking for a conversation on a topic and engaged with what I said a decade ago.
I suppose it would be somewhat impactful if those comments were just empty voids, perhaps even moreso if they were all replaced by a message saying something like “I left reddit because of X, look for me on the feddiverse to continue this conversation.”
All of my comments that I can access have been edited and left in place. Every one is now simply
“Deleted: I refuse to let Reddit profit off of my content when they treat their community like this”
So if, as he stated earlier, “These people who are mad, they’re mad because they used to get something for free, and now it’s going to be not free,” shouldn’t mods start charging for their services?
Imagine if phone companies started selling our conversations without giving us a cent for the content.
Oh, my sweet, summer child. Maybe not phone calls (yet?), but they sell lots of other data they maintain about you. Location data, specifically, is a hot seller.
Is that where Google Maps gets traffic data from?
Yes and no. Google definitely uses location data to improve traffic details, but GPS has always been able to get some level of data about it, despite being mostly a one way system. I don’t really remember the details, I’ll try to dig out an article
Don’t a lot of calls get recorded now anyway? (I’m just asking, I don’t actually know)
Not without consent of at least one party to the call, no. Unlike most forms of invasive spying, that one is illegal.
Oh my sweet summer child.
Of course security agencies are allowed to make recordings, pretty broadly in the US.
https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/five-things-to-know-about-nsa-mass-surveillance-and-the-coming-fight-in-congress
I’m talking about businesses here. Government security agencies generally aren’t bound by law or morality at all.
deleted by creator
I lost count of how many times I used Redact to (re-)deleted my comments. They will simply popup after a few hours. They tends to be older comments of at least a year ago.
I’ve had one from /r/wellthatsucks turn up today after deleting everything.
https://imgur.com/a/9u1rp5I
What I find interesting is this could be avoided by granting exceptions to the existing app devs and being done with it.
I get the api costs money and theres folks like pushshift aggregating data and using it for their own profit. I’m sure plenty of companies are using data for adverts and more. And there’s an argument there Reddit deserves a cut. Especially if they are using the api to train bots or ai to have conversations for their own inventions.
But just the ass backwards way they handled devs of existing 3p apps that constitute value add to their data sets is just…mesmerizing.
And if these users ARENT a majority of the usage or costs, why bother cutting them off and not just granting exceptions to avoid the PR issues.
I think you misunderstood
spez. He wanted no 3rd party app at all. RIF was paying Reddit for using their brand name andspezterminated the contract. It’s all about control.It would be much easier to just inject ads into data returned by the API. Apps will automatically display these ads and developers will understand that if they filter these ads, their access to Reddit will be either limited or completely cut out.
There are myriad ways to make money off third party apps that benefits both reddit and the apps. Spez is an absolute moron, who has thrown a spanner in the works of both, when he was sitting on a golden opportunity. I don’t think he has any business sense at all.
Wasn’t aware of the RIF thing. Yeah agree in that case 100%
Wait really? Source? I always thought it was unauthorised name use that went quietly unacknowledged for a long time, until they decided otherwise.