@umbraroze@kbin.social avatar

umbraroze

@umbraroze@kbin.social

Rose here. Also https://tech.lgbt/@umbraroze for non-kbin stuff.

Este perfil es de un servidor federado y podría estar incompleto. Explorar más contenido en la instancia original.

umbraroze, a RedditMigration en
@umbraroze@kbin.social avatar

OK so search has always sucked.
It has sucked especially in the New Reddit era.
Now, they have deployed the Even Newer Reddit user interface.

One of my biggest use cases of Reddit was "what are people in various communities talking about this particular video"?

In Old.Reddit, you could at least see crossposts in the unlikely case that the YouTube URL was somehow equivalent to the actual URL posted to Reddit. You know, because YouTube videos could be called upon by many requests, and Reddit fucking gave no shit about any URL normalisation.

But they at least let you see if anyone had crossposted shit.

Apparently, the New New User Interface fucking doesn't even let you do that. I tried searching for a particular video that was already posted in particular communities. Nothing.
Tried Google Search to find this particular thing. OK, found it.
Slapped "old." to it. "6 discussions."
That's it. Reddit was already shit at finding discussions about particular YouTube videos if you didn't use old.reddit. The new Reddit interface at least pretended the crossposts were there. Crossposts no longer are there. Why the fuck do people even follow the site any more.

umbraroze,
@umbraroze@kbin.social avatar

I literally just looked at Reddit for the first time in ages.

What the fuck.

Here's the thing: Reddit's UI design has always been shitty. Old Reddit was fucking garbage, so admins cheerfully asked RES folks to fix their shit. (Instead of, you know, hiring them.) New Reddit? Always been shit, and nobody's going to fix it.

This Newer New Reddit? I... I don't think they even know at this point. What. What's going on.

If they ask critique from the community, some AI bot will AI-pat the admin's arse and AI-splain the remaining AI-users that things will be just fine. (Now, "things actually getting better" has literally never happened as far as Reddit or its user interface has ever been concerned, as you should well know if you've ever been a human Reddit user.)

umbraroze,
@umbraroze@kbin.social avatar

Yet another thing that was done by the army of volunteer mods for over a decade, and now Reddit higher-ups are going "well that was cute and all, why don't you go home and let us show how it's really done."

umbraroze, a RedditMigration en
@umbraroze@kbin.social avatar

A lot of people are boasting here like "well I just deleted my 15+ year account with quintillion karma."

I'm not going to delete my account yet (but probably won't be posting anything on Reddit either). Instead, I came up with a Strange Hobby.

Because password managers are so ubiquitous and easy to use and everyone should use one, I somehow found a complete list of all Reddit throwaway accounts I had over the years. (You know, from back when you could create accounts in seconds and Reddit didn't make you sign a blood pact or whatever.)

So I've been deleting those accounts. There was a pile of them.

And I like to every time I delete an account, a little siren goes off in Reddit HQ and Spez is like "Aaaaagggh! Not another one!"

Hot take: 18 years of user contributions to reddit will serve as a base model for an AI that generates content and conversations. the reddit experience continues as a simulation, to harvest clicks, sales and ad revenue. (kbin.social) en

most of the time you'll be talking to a bot there without even realizing. they're gonna feed you products and ads interwoven into conversations, and the AI can be controlled so its output reflects corporate interests. advertisers are gonna be able to buy access and run campaigns. based on their input, the AI can generate...

umbraroze,
@umbraroze@kbin.social avatar

SubredditSimulator was based on older generative algorithms, so everyone could fairly easily tell that it was rubbish. When SubredditSimulator got shut down, someone made a new one based on GPT-2 (I think) and everyone was like "OK, this is getting harder to distinguish from real people".

I'm betting someone has made even more advanced bots by now. I'm betting someone's also not concerned about telling other users upfront that they're bots, and they're not confining them into specific subs. Now, the only reason I'm not accusing Reddit Inc themselves of building these bots is that they aren't exactly a bastion of software engineering excellence; the site barely works as is.

umbraroze, a RedditMigration en
@umbraroze@kbin.social avatar

As I recall, Reddit really dragged their heels in implementing GDPR-mandated data checkouts, citing technical challenges and privacy issues, but I'm sure it was more about the technical challenges and laziness (old codebase that has kind of sucked since forever and they're not keen on touching it). This was when the law went into effect in 2018.

I requested archives of my data from Reddit as per GDPR a few weeks ago, and it's still pending. And the page said "oh, uh, we'll provide them within 30 days." ...which is well within the letter of the law, if not the spirit. Other sites I've requested my data from can provide it within days, usually.

All I can say as someone who's been perplexed about Reddit's tech side for a long time is that it's pretty damn emblematic of the whole site.

umbraroze, a RedditMigration en
@umbraroze@kbin.social avatar

Like many others, I've been wondering "Hmm, where the heck do I get all the cute animal pictures now?"
...but the answer to that question was staring me right in the face.
I'd just do what I've always done if I want cute animal pictures.
I mean, Pinterest is right there.
Reject subredditery, embrace tradition.

umbraroze,
@umbraroze@kbin.social avatar

@z3n0x Very true! But at least it's always been a place to dump random images and never really pretended to be a "community" beyond that.

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