The landed gentry are only in charge until the king comes to town and chops off a few heads. At least that seems to be the case at Reddit, where CEO Steve Huffman pretended his complaints about current moderators — who were protesting his decision to effectively cut off API access to tons of useful…
WE made the content. The community. No doubt the majority of level-headed folk would have accepted ad requirements in 3rd party apps. Hosting isn’t free, something needs to be monetized.
But that’s not what it’s about. It’s about locking down content from the new wave of AI models and charging for it. Charging for content we created freely to be shared.
Ads? No, I would not accept ads. What I would have accepted was a subscription payment. Hell, I went so far as to purchase Apollo lifetime ultimate.
I am more than willing to support things I use. I am not willing to deal with ads though. Especially when they sneak in like they are posts, and take up entire scroll widths.
I don’t get how people put up with that either. My wife said that we were being over dramatic about the 3rd Party Apps protests, but will agree that the ads are annoying. Hopefully she’ll convert over here before to long and get a taste for how a message board should be.
Stockholmed into thinking ads are acceptable. They’re not. No social contract says that you have to put up with ads, they’re simply unregulated in the USA and people have mostly given up.
Reddit ads are way too intrusive and irrelevant.