I think Reddit’s biggest mistake wasn’t the API moves, but image and video hosting. I can’t even guess how much more it costs them to have all of those unnecessary features to be what? Anon Facebook?
I think it was a pretty good move – for them. You cannot just hotlink a Reddit image anymore, so reposts from Reddit on the Fediverse and other alternatives will need their own image/video hosting, which increases cost. Otherwise, it would be too easy to migrate a subreddit.
I’m just saying the choice to host instead of letting res or 3rd party apps clean up the interface while they built a huge archive for the low low price of archiving links and conversations. It was inflated more than it could sustain without becoming more commodified so it kept doing that and here we are.
Also you can't share a reddit image or video easily. It takes you to a reddit thread that you view the video in. And if you don't have the app the mobile browser shoves a "install the app" message every single time you visit.
Even when I used reddit that meant I never shared a reddit video with a single person because that's so fucking obnoxious I was never going to subject my friends to that.
You’re a good friend. I’d just send screen recordings if I ever wanted to share something.
It further locks you into Reddit's garden. And they also ensure the content remains available. If you want to link to it, can forces you to utilize their interface.
At the time I was a bit puzzled but totally makes sense.
Exactly, they have this habit of making things worse for its userbase to consolidate more control over the value we made for them. I can’t help but feel a kinship with the domestication of cows, ‘cool all my favorite grass and cows, huh that fence is new, damn they’re starting to milk us pretty hard, shit are we stuck here?’
For real let me just open image in new tab ffs don't keep redirecting me to new reddit
Ok I posted that last comment from my phone, but I'm on my computer now, so here's a link to save you the trouble.
[Chromium extension (via Chrome store)](https://web.archive.org/web/20231208063744/https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-load-images-direct/fpimmmjbglpnlpbfikgekaaeinminolo/
Reddit's
image hosting isgarbage.FIFY
Wait until you see the videos.
I mean, really, wait... And keep waiting... Wait more... More... Ok, now you can see it! Oh, no, it lasts more than a second, just wait a bit...
...and even if it loads, it'll be grainy and ugly and consists of eight or so pixels - maybe nine if your connection is top tier. Before I nuked my account, I redownloaded all videos I had uploaded over the course of the last couple of years, but then decided against reuploading them to youtube because all of them look like sh*t now. I'd be embarrassed to put something like that into my YT account.
... and it is defo reddit's fault, because when I uploaded the videos back in the day I often struggled to keep the file size under 1GB, whereas the same videos downloaded later now have 87 MB on average ... less than a tenth of the original data, still the same lenght and content, but the quality took a huge, very noticable nosedive.
You don’t say?
