I am a community rep of PullPush - a project to bring back the tools lost to APIcalypse. We just got Camas-like search and Unddit undelete tools online. AMA!

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Comments: 37 • Responses: 9  • Date: 

stacecom26 karma

You have the following statement on your website:

Does a free API render Reddit's shutting down of 3rd party apps pointless?

Yes. Anybody with a database, a server, and a 3rd party browsing app can throw together a copy of Reddit.

How is that statement an answer to that question? How is that accurate?

stefan_mohai11 karma

Let's get one fact out of the way. Section 5 of Reddit ToS. The content on Reddit belongs to the users. Reddit just has a license to do whatever they want with it.

As you might have noticed, Reddit has been trying very hard to monetize that content. Of course the irony is that you can plug in a third party reader to /u/pullpush-io and have a copy of Reddit without Reddit Inc being in the loop at all.

They would of course sue, but one thing they wouldn't be able to claim is that the hypothetical app is stealing their content. The same content they try to monetize so hard right now.

stacecom19 karma

I didn't ask about copyright.

I'm wondering how the plug on this won't get pulled. Is it not using the API? How would someone plug a third party reader into u/pushpull-io?

stefan_mohai12 karma

I'm wondering how the plug on this won't get pulled. Is it not using the API?

Scraping is an extremely difficult thing to stop. Even if you put a captcha popup before every page, at this point AI solves captchas better than humans.

How would someone plug a third party reader into u/pushpull-io?

This is a dev question that probably has much more nuance than my understanding, but the way I understand it - PullPush serves archived Reddit data. Apps like RIF used to take data from Reddit. You "just" (I'm 100% sure it isn't a simple matter) take the data from another source.

ProtossLiving3 karma

What happens when Reddit changes their TOS and adds a clause like Craigslist has? "You agree not to copy/collect CL content via robots, spiders, scripts, scrapers, crawlers, or any automated or manual equivalent (e.g., by hand)."

They don't need to own the content to enforce terms on how you access their website. Those terms can and have been successfully enforced.

stefan_mohai0 karma

It doesn't stop Google from crawling it.

anthonyjr212 karma

Anything people do to fuck over reddit after their bullshit makes me happy, thanks for these tools. I’ve been missing unddit for a while. Any plans for additional tools?

stefan_mohai6 karma

What would you like to see?

RunDNA5 karma

What date does the Camas-like comment search go up to?

stefan_mohai1 karma

It is up already.

RunDNA5 karma

Sorry, I meant "How recent are the comments in the archive?"

I ask because I searched for a comment of mine from last week and I got no results. It doesn't seem to have recent comments. What date do they go up to?

stefan_mohai3 karma

Ingestion changes won't be announced, that would make it easier to ban the ingestor. You will simply find that the results in your search and undelete get more current as the weeks pass.

I can't comment on the exact date, but the starting date is the last PushShift export at the end of March,

coffincolors3 karma

I love workarounds but does your tool scrape the site data? Is that within reddit's ToS?

stefan_mohai22 karma

I don't think Google scraper ever agreed to Reddit's ToS.

Arnoxthe12 karma

Is it really a good idea to continue encouraging the use of Reddit, even through a new 3rd-party tool? Maybe we should be supporting other true-blue forums instead.

stefan_mohai6 karma

Reddit has chosen a path that will lead to a decline in content quality, either temporary or permanent. I if something is going to turn Reddit into Digg v2 then this will be it, not any kind of app support.

That being said, I can personally say that I like Lemmy, and I don't buy into "but the lead dev is a tankie" argument. Assuming it works as described in terms of federating and de-federating servers I don't see why it would be a problem for the system.

Arnoxthe11 karma

That being said, I can personally say that I like Lemmy

Actually, I don't like Lemmy either. lol I was thinking ACTUAL forums sans all voting systems like XenForo, Simple Machines Forum, or vBulletin.

stefan_mohai2 karma

We use Flarum as a replacement for a subreddit. Those things are never as popular though. I think it is the registration issue. Registering on a forum is always going to be a higher barrier to entry than joining a subreddit.