If you’ve been trying to find information on Reddit in the last week, you may have had a hard time.
Thousands of subreddits, the one-on-one communities where people talk about dog breeds, allergies, influencers, dating, and extremely NSFW topics, have shut down in protest of some recent changes to Reddit’s business model.
The platform recently announced that it would start charging other companies who want to access its content through an API (application programming interface). Reddit announced the changes earlier this spring after the rise of generative AI companies like OpenAI, which used Reddit’s rich trove of human conversations to train ChatGPT for free.
It wasn’t just about AI
The Reddit app itself is considered by many as garbage, but there are a number of third-party apps like Apollo that make browsing more enjoyable. Until now, those apps could access Reddit data for free. Once Reddit starts charging at the end of the month, Apollo has said it will close instead of paying an estimated bill of $20 million per year.
Reddit has long been supported and operated by a network of unpaid moderators who keep subreddits from disintegrating into chaos. The API fee became a tipping point for those superusers, who worry that the company is prioritizing its business over the needs and preferences of the community. Reddit’s CEO has explicitly said that he is looking for ways to weakening the power of the moderator.
Many, but not all, of the subreddits that shut down in protest are now back online. The question that remains is what this will mean for the platform in the future.
The thing is, Reddit users love Reddit. That’s in stark contrast to platforms like TikTok, where the prevailing ethos is to figure out how to leverage the platform for personal gain. Redditors invest time and attention in their specific communities and quickly protect them from outside invasions. They’re what make the best parts of Reddit work.
As with all things online, Reddit has had no shortage of hate and trash. But if we’re talking about the ideal Reddit, the many, many subs where people come together in good faith to discuss the genuine, the scary, the supernatural, and the gross, these new platform changes may screw up the very thing Reddit once did. platform good.
Earlier this week, Alex Pareene on Deserter wrote: “We are living the end of the useful Internet. The future is informed discussion behind closed doors, on Discords and private forums, with the public web increasingly littered with detritus generated by LLMhaving only a stylistic similarity with useful information”.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot.
Ultimately, Reddit needs Redditors more than Reddit needs Reddit. If forced, Reddit users will simply find new places and ways to ask strangers, “Am I the asshole??”
‘I’d like to buy a placenta’ and other autocorrect errors
There is a lot going on in the world right now. I don’t know about you, but I really found myself over the last week in need of a good, goofy giggle. Fortunately, they responded when I asked for their best stories about self-correcting failures.
Their responses were so good that it seemed unfair to keep them locked away in my inbox. A special shout out to the poor readers with self-correcting names. Marijo said that they are frequently renamed “Marijuana”, and Annick said that her name becomes “Annoying”. (Which is, well, annoying!)
Today we are going to play a little game here at the OHI. Below are seven examples of autocorrect gone wrong. Try to guess what the person was dealing with type. The answers and context are below.
1. I hope your day is as sexual as you are!
2. I would like to buy a placenta.
3. Polk Polk!
4. Hey, jerk.
5. Love, Manufacturing.
6. Run DMC
7. Nudist ranch.
the duck answers
How did you do with your guesses?
1. I hope your day is as sexual as you are!
Joyce was just trying to wish her son’s girlfriend, who she thinks is special, not sexual, to be very clear, a happy birthday.
2. I would like to buy a placenta.
Jennifer’s job as a department store buyer involved ordering items like placemats. Not to be confused with placentas.
3. Polk Polk!
Gillian was trying to spell the word poke. “Why do you suppose she would send messages so frequently about dark american presidents?!”
4. Hey, jerk.
Another name mistake from Lisa, whose friend Maureen luckily had a good sense of humor about the mistake.
5. Love, Manufacturing.
These were Ellen’s attempts to text her children “Love, Mom.”
6. Run DMC
Perhaps the strangest of the bunch, Deb was simply trying to type “Thank you.” Deb said: “Something about the inclusion of the period after the word ‘thank you’ seemed to trigger the innermost old-school hip-hop fan on my phone.”
7. strip ranch.
Lisa’s phone was determined to thwart her attempts to discuss the matter. nudibrancha colorful snail without a shell.
internet candy
Here’s what’s happening online this week.
Do you have comments? send me a note to iho@nytimes.com.
You can also follow me on twitter (@4evrmalone).
Callie Holtermann contributed to this newsletter.
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