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I ~~can't~~ won't use the new ( decade+ old? )reddit.
From the Reddit Post announcing this, :
"In case you are wondering . . .
Q: Is Reddit shutting down Old Reddit?
A: Not right now! We can’t promise it will be around forever, but u/spez himself has said we’ll keep supporting it while folks are still using it. 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."[0]
That's unfortunate. Rather than using rate limiting or access control over a singular user which would have significant different usage to say scrappers ... I'm not making an account ... I guess I won't be visiting old.reddit threads ... the new makeover reddit moved to, never played well with my browser but died almost entirely some time ago one when I added one of the many PII scrapping trackers to my deny list -- maybe they'll give up on their usage of including a PII tracker ...
> Rather than using rate limiting or access control over a singular user
Rate limiting by user is much easier said than done for anonymous (not logged in) users. How do you define a user? The same person (or bot) can hop from IP to IP using a number of methodologies on a scale of sohpistication. They can take or leave any cookie you send their way. They can avoid browser fingerprinting and spoof their user agent.
And they literally are using access control. The first step in access control (also known as authorization) is authentication. You can't perform access control on anonymous users, you need to know who you're speaking with.
> I'm not making an account ... I guess I won't be visiting old.reddit threads
That's your choice, of course, but you have to understand you are the least valuable user on Reddit's platform (other than abusers) right? A user who steadfastly refuses to ever log in or give a single concession - what makes you think they care if you never open reddit again? You are indistinguishable from a bot.
3am page: "old.reddit down for some users, not all." Turns out it's login-wall, not outage. Support ticket queue fills with that for weeks. Good luck with that.
They can tell abusive scrapers from regular users, they choose not to distinguish. I might give in and create an account eventually but damn. Had deleted my reddit about a decade ago.
How do you meaningfully use Reddit without an account? Do you really navigate to specific subreddits and read them one by one, rather than assembling a home feed of subs you have joined?
You never want to participate in discussion, or vote on comments and posts?
I don't really understand how you all were regularly browsing and using the site without an account.
We ran an API for our app for years and the accounts-only push always comes down to the same math: anonymous traffic costs you compute and gives you nothing back, no login, no ad targeting, no retention numbers to show investors. Doesn't matter if most of it's legit users, it gets treated like scraping because it looks the same on a dashboard.
By “abusive” they probably mean “doesn’t let us track them”. I’m surprised they’ve kept old.reddit.com going this long, it’s actually an un-enshittified version of the product, which is basically unheard of.
Un-enshittified until it isn't, though—old.reddit still serves the same ads and same backend, right? So is this really about tracking, or is old.reddit just costing them more to maintain than the login wall costs them in users?
In related news, Imgur seems to be a/b testing a website that just pushes you to the mobile app and doesn't allow you do anything in browser beyond viewing the one picture you clicked the link for.
I stopped using Reddit daily when they killed Apollo. Now it looks like I’ll stop using it entirely. Good riddance, thanks for killing my doomscrolling addiction for me.
If they wanted to actually prevent abusive users they would make the API more affordable. Its just sites like reddit, twitter/x, etc. storing valuable social data that can't be found elsewhere. It's the exclusivity and the difficulty to obtain the data that is being protected.
That reasoning is complete nonsense. If someone scrapes the data, that’s not a big deal, and Reddit has no more claim to the data than anyone else. The data is public and created by users, not by the platform itself. If the traffic is too much for them, they could use rate limiting or simply offer an archive of the data as a torrent once a month. That way, a company training an LLM could access a complete dataset without generating a lot of traffic.
if you don't give every iota of your physical makeup to our benevolent leaders, this is labelled as abusive behaviour. for example, talking over communication channels that aren't completely monitorable is clearly terrorist activity. using your brain is directly harmful to corporations, therefore unauthorized intelligence is harmful.
I'm starting to see a pattern here and it starts with reverse demonization, like a begging succubus. you wouldn't want to get hurt now would you. that's not in your best interests. now while you're in a fearful state, please give your responsibility to me. it'll be easier this way, I promise I have your best interests at heart.
People saying they'll never use Reddit again is just noise.
I'm sure you've seen the "protests" and sub closures because of {$change}. Two weeks later the same mods and users realise they can't get their power trip or dopamine hit from anything else and are back on Reddit - with the mods proudly back working as unpaid janitors for a company with a billion dollars valuation.
Discussion for certain hobbies and interests, among those seriously interested in them, has long since moved to WhatsApp groups. Sure, WhatsApp is not a libre platform either and has its own dopamine-hit issues, but you’re underestimating how much Reddit has alienated its user base (namely that portion of it who care about close-knit community and skillsharing) since the 2018 redesign.
Disagree. Reddit's power move works precisely because there's no real alternative for niche communities, not because mods are addicts. Try finding a replacement for a 200k-subscriber hobby forum with a decade of searchable history. That's the actual lock-in, not dopamine.
I had already deleted my account, and using the site has gotten far more hostile especially without willingness to use the app.
On mobile you now have to use incognito in order to not get cut off and told to download the app.
I guess I can’t complain too much. Old Reddit lost money for, what, a decade? Longer?. Public company Reddit runs a pretty good business.