Reddit will start requiring people to be logged into Reddit to use old.reddit.com.
The new requirement will take effect “over the next month,” a Reddit employee going by the username boat-botany announced on the social media platform today. The person claimed that the change is part of an ongoing effort to “tighten how automated systems access Reddit.”
The Reddit employee wrote:
Old Reddit’s logged-out experience is a significant source of abusive scraping and automated traffic on the platform. It’s also an important interface for many long-time mods and Redditors. To strike the right balance between preserving your access to Old Reddit while preventing abusive scraping and automated traffic, over the next month we will start requiring everyone to log in.
The way of the zombie accounts.
Bad idea.
Got to shout Redlib from the rafters.
You can still visit - and scrape - the new Reddit without logging in, so the scraping is obviously just an excuse for what everyone saw coming from the start: the gradual complete shutdown of old Reddit.
If I ever browsed Reddit that was the only method I used. Guess I’ll just not use it at all
I use it while logged on to keep trying to sway people over to Lemmy, haha. After all, that’s how I found this place…
My browser clears all cookies from Reddit when I close it down. And every time I go to the new Reddit site, it auto logs me in with my Google account. In some other sites there’s the annoying “log in with google account” popup at the top; it doesn’t do anything if you don’t click to log in. But Reddit doesn’t ask. Just says: “Logging you in” and you can click cancel if you’re fast enough.
They even auto create you an account if they do this for the first time.
Awhile ago they were also experimenting forcing mobile users to use the app
And now they’re also rolling out age verification in the EU (just got an email yesterday). One of the ways to verify your age is with Persona which Discord also tried to use and got a lot of backslash.
You can fix this on the google side
When they close old.reddit will be the best time to advertise the lemmy instances that use that similar looking theme by default
Keep in mind that rystaf/mlmym has been last updated years ago. old.lemmy.world uses the FHF’s fork, which has had a few fixes made to it.
self promotion
I actually have a fork of that fork at mschae23/mlmym which is significantly different (in terms of new features and bugfixes) from the others by now. In fact, this is what’s deployed by your instance at old.lemmy.today :)
Though it unfortunately seems to be having issues with rate limits at the moment.
If only they’d integrate the RES features
Wow, I only knew of the
p.subdomain, haha. This is great, thanks! That’s hilarious that they copied the same subdomain, even… I wonder how to tell if an instance supports it apart from just blindly trying.I love how the GitHub entry just calls it “a familiar desktop experience” and nothing more. Perfect. 👌🏻
I wonder how to tell if an instance supports it apart from just blindly trying.
They don’t have to stick it at the same prefix, so there’s no reliable way to check by just guessing the name.
It looks like p.lemmy.world is running the Photon frontend. On lemmy.today, we have it at photon.lemmy.today.
Lemmy.today lists the alternate frontends in the instance sidebar, but there’s no requirement for an instance to do that.
this is the first steps to require facial recognition and ID down the line, much like FB does.
No, the first step was all the governments literally forcing them and all the other big social media sites through legislation to add age verification. It makes it much easier to throw people in jail for online wrong-think if they have to verify who they are.
I haven’t touched reddit in years, and I have no sympathy for anyone still using that garbage site, so doesn’t bother me that they’re getting rid of the only good way to view it on a desktop. It won’t change anything, most reddit traffic is through the apps.
I use old. as the only way to access reddit, but I’ve noticed that more and more pages are sending me to the new pages. I tried new for a day the other day and didn’t really like it. So I guess I’ll use it until old is gone.
abusive scraping
As opposed to the plain old scraping they do to train AI, and generate revenue by selling user comments for others to train AI.
I read a half-cocked internet theory that a certain someone might’ve purchased twitter just to gain access to an ex-gf’s personal tweets. I judged it as possible but unlikely, as that’s a lot of money to spend on such a thing.
Now, we’ve all heard stories about reddit blocking accounts for no published reason, and tracking folks down across accounts/IP addresses/etc. That code must be pretty expansive to do the things they’ve done. So one has the thought: if you’ve ever reached out to the reddit hive mind for some kind of support with a personal issue of any kind then that data about you is still floating around in their database and tied to whatever alternate accounts you have, even if it was the “good old days” when you did it.
Abusive scraping, my ass.
reddits moderation is very expensive, which is why they allow google to scrape thier data. the V3 captcha system is googles thing, reddit cant afford that but google lets them use it in exchange for AI/datamining. reddit and google is quite intertwined, like with mozilla and google.
reddit cant afford [the V3 captcha system] but google lets them use it in exchange for AI/datamining
Had no idea they used that. I edited all my comments to crap then deleted them around the time the admin monkied with the backend database, and stopped using old.reddit to browse once I found lemmy. I once went through the effort of making a temp account to comment on someone else’s comment there because they had suggested trying something specifically dangerous and didn’t seem to know about it. I doublechecked later and the comment I wrote was caught in some filter, likely the result of the account being too new. I can’t imagine what garbage that site will be in the years to come.
Perfect timing. Today i received a mail that in a few weeks i have to verfiy my age. So now i have two reasons to delete the account.
Wow, I haven’t seen that email. What country are you in, if I may ask?
Darn. Old Reddit is the last way to access NSFW subreddits without logging into Reddit.
There’s a website called Reddtastic that works great!
Yes, this is exactly my use case for Old Reddit. For obvious reasons, I use private browsing mode when viewing NSFW stuff. Private browsing mode does not retain my logged-in Reddit session, so that’s where Old Reddit comes in.
Huh, I… didn’t even think of that. I suppose people could download all the old content before this kicks in, at least, but yeah, that’ll be the loss of new stuff moving forward, unless people can sway them over to nsfwlemmy.
Yeah, this will be quite a loss… genuinely a shame. It sucks that we can’t scrape and rebuild a copy of the whole site…
Oh you know old.reddit its next.
I can still log in after my mass banning. So I get all the subs I like (not mains, hobbies), they get no ad revenue as I adblock everything. They just get a BS stat that I was there and they killed off my engagement stats because of the frivolous ban.
Its like they can’t see they are driving towards a cliff.
Here is the thing, I don’t think they are driving towards a cliff. In olden times, reddit was one of several options for doomscrolling, with Slashdot, Digg, et Al. When Digg shot themselves in the foot, Reddit was ready to take up the slack, so eternal September happened, and Digg essentially withered away.
At that time the combined user base of these sites was probably an order of magnitude less of present day reddit.
I believe that reddit has achieved critical mass, and they can pretty much do any shit they want. They may lose users, but they’ll be a drop in the bucket.
The inertia is too large.
The inertia is too large.
Myspace, Digg and Slashbot thought that too. Look at FB basically a bot farm like reddit. Something new will come along, maybe its Lemmy, it was Voat for a second. Discord, IG, TikTac have all be chipping away at them.
They all will fall down if they over reach.
Not being combative, its just how this goes imo.
Do I have to login to use Lemmy? No, no I do not.
Bruh you don’t even have to be using lemmy to use lemmy. I seen @mastadon people all the time up in here.
piefed too.
Hello from piefed
How do you like it? I’m thinking about trying it out.
And mbin!
And my axe!
Sorry its a old one.
Thas the best thing about the fediverse. As long as your on, you can communicate with others.
That still only counts as one!
@TropicalDingdong @Lexam damn right!!! lol
There’s even an instance that pulls in Reddit posts, but it’s a one way bridge unlike mastodon.
lemmit.online
It stull punishes new users just trying to comment. It is a garrrrbage!
Oh no! Anyway…
Hopefully this will be the push I need to quit Reddit.
I feel like apart from niche communities, Lemmy now has critical mass to survive on its own!
