News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by matheusmoreira on Friday June 16, 2023 @11:39AM (#36358480)
Stats? Come on. Reddit pesters every mobile user agent to install their shitty app every time. It's like Google pushing Chrome. How many people install their malware just to stop getting nagged about it? People even say they made reddit web bad on purpose to drive people to the app.

Show those users better third party apps with no ads and then ask them which they like more.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by taude on Friday June 16, 2023 @11:52AM (#36358714)
Why do you deserve to have no ads? Reddit isn't a community service.

I do think that for moderators, they could have some special app to help them do their jobs easier, but for regular users, meh, the ads are easy enough to scroll past, like in other social media outfits.

I also don't agree that the mobile app is shitty.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by moi2388 on Friday June 16, 2023 @11:57AM (#36358825)
Because ads are worse than cancer. The fact companies are allowed to jam them into your eyeballs without consent is absolutely ludicrous.
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by kulahan on Friday June 16, 2023 @12:35PM (#36359504)
Bro, you're walking into their property and getting pissed at their decorations. They need to make money, and Americans at least have shown that they vastly prefer to pay for things and services by looking at ads, rather than by paying with money.

If you don't want ads, pay for the privilege and get reddit premium. If you don't want to pay and you can't handle ads and you refuse to use an adblocker but MUST keep visiting for some reason, then stop whining - you've directly refused every solution.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by matheusmoreira on Friday June 16, 2023 @12:42PM (#36359631)
We're walking into nothing. Our user agents are making a request to their HTTP server. It's not our faults if it replies with a free web page. All they have to do is return 402 Payment Required.

But they want that mass media appeal that comes with giving things out for free, don't they? Guess they'll have to deal with it. If they send ads along with their free pages, we'll delete them. I used to rip out the ads from the magazines too. Same thing.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by nvr219 on Friday June 16, 2023 @02:22PM (#36361327)
> If they send ads along with their free pages, we'll delete them.

IDK who "we" is in this sentence, but if you mean "the average internet user" then you're wrong. There are ads on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Google, YouTube, Twitter, PornHub... No significant percentage of the population has "deleted" these apps or websites because of ads.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by matheusmoreira on Friday June 16, 2023 @02:38PM (#36361615)
It means people like me, like the users of this site. It also means people who know me personally because I make sure to tell them about uBlock Origin and install it on every browser I use. You bet they like the ad-free web.

I can't help everyone but I try.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by HappMacDonald on Friday June 16, 2023 @08:31PM (#36365832)
I don't know who "we" is either. Which means I'm just extra confused by the large number of ad-blocker-blockers that exist on the internet. I mean, what disobedience surface are they even targeting? Literally nobody blocks ads, it's an urban legend! xD
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by taude on Friday June 16, 2023 @12:22PM (#36359256)
how so? I just slide by them and move on with my life.

It's absolutely mind-blowing to me the entitlement people have thinking they should get things for free.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by matheusmoreira on Friday June 16, 2023 @12:28PM (#36359361)
Oh please. They're the ones who are entitled. They literally think they can sell our attention to advertisers. It's not theirs to sell.

They chose to have a free site. Don't want to give things away for free? Charge for access then.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by danem on Friday June 16, 2023 @01:04PM (#36360050)
This is must be a parody, right?

No, they chose to have a site funded by ads. If you don't want to be advertised to, get off Reddit.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by matheusmoreira on Friday June 16, 2023 @01:11PM (#36360165)
No.
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by basq on Friday June 16, 2023 @02:04PM (#36361006)
The shareholder need their profits!! won't someone think of their needs?
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by jayGlow on Friday June 16, 2023 @01:06PM (#36360093)
the site isn't free, the cost of using it is the ads.
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by matheusmoreira on Friday June 16, 2023 @01:13PM (#36360210)
We're under no obligation to look at ads.
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by nvr219 on Friday June 16, 2023 @02:25PM (#36361397)
Correct.
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by matheusmoreira on Friday June 16, 2023 @12:04PM (#36358950)
> Why do you deserve to have no ads?

Because my attention belongs to me. Exclusively. It's not yours. It's not reddit's. It's not Google's. It doesn't belong to anyone other than I, certainly not a corporation. It's not a currency that can be used to pay for services. They do not have the right to sell it off to the highest bidder.

I deserve not to be advertised to for the same reasons women deserve not to be raped: basic human dignity. I don't consent to it. I don't consent to their forcible injection of their silly little brands and taglines into my mind. As far as I'm concerned it's mind rape and anything I do to kill ads is legitimate justified self defense. I couldn't care less how much money they lose either, find another business model or disappear.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by goykasi on Friday June 16, 2023 @12:21PM (#36359244)
Wow wtf. You have some serious issues. First, I agree that your attention belongs to you, and you are 100% in your right to go elsewhere. Reddit is not forcing you to view their ads.

But second, you are unhinged if you think this is a reasonable comment:

> I deserve not to be advertised to for the same reasons women deserve not to be raped

Wow

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by pferde on Friday June 16, 2023 @12:35PM (#36359506)
What's unhinged about it? It's the same principle, the only difference is severity of the violation.

Of course being raped is miles ahead of the weak form of mind control attempt that is advertising, but it's the same damn scale.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by nvr219 on Friday June 16, 2023 @03:14PM (#36362254)
>the only difference is severity of the violation.

the difference in severity is huuuuuuge

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by HappMacDonald on Friday June 16, 2023 @08:35PM (#36365863)
Just FYI it's impossible for me to read this without mentally running s/huu/yuu/ first
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by matheusmoreira on Friday June 16, 2023 @12:32PM (#36359447)
I'm glad you agree. I don't really mind if you think I'm unhinged or whatever. The exact same moral issue of consent applies. I don't consent to my mind being violated. It's that simple. If that makes me unhinged, so be it.
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by HappMacDonald on Friday June 16, 2023 @08:33PM (#36365850)
Wait.. you can downvote? Sorry, Reddit expat exploring other sites and all I see on HN is upward-pointing triangles.
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by matheusmoreira on Friday June 16, 2023 @08:43PM (#36365926)
Welcome, it's very nice here. You need karma > 500 to downvote, you can't downvote direct replies to your own posts and you can't see how many votes other people's posts have received. It's pretty reasonable in my opinion, downvoting is much more rare on HN in my experience. I think it's best to just ignore things instead of voting.
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by bbarn on Friday June 16, 2023 @12:08PM (#36359003)
That is an absurd and frankly insulting comparison to make.

Rape is an act of physical violence, and you're arguing about a small price to use a free service.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by matheusmoreira on Friday June 16, 2023 @12:15PM (#36359133)
Oh is it? Your mind isn't part of your body? In civilized society, people can't even touch you without your consent. Why do they have complete freedom to inject disinformation and spam into your mind with complete impunity? I won't accept it.

I don't know about you but I consider my mind even more sacred than my body. It's not some advertiser's playground for them to spam their bullshit with complete impunity. I will resist that abuse. I don't need to "deserve" it. I'm not alone either. It's hard enough to cope with attention deficit without these spammers around.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by bbarn on Friday June 16, 2023 @12:57PM (#36359952)
So don't use reddit.
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by matheusmoreira on Friday June 16, 2023 @01:04PM (#36360054)
I don't have to abstain from using reddit. They're the ones who need to stop sending me free web pages. If they care so much about getting paid, all they need to do is have their web servers return 402 Payment Required and only resume service after payment is confirmed.

Their advertising bullshit though? They're knowingly sending me stuff for free. They chose to do it. I won't be guilted into accepting abuse based on that. They did so hoping I was gonna look at the ads but the truth is I'm under exactly zero obligation to actually do that. So I won't.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by basq on Friday June 16, 2023 @02:09PM (#36361088)
I can only hope that your level of sanity is more commonly adopted because judging by the replies to you it appears many have just given into the machine. Unwitting servants of Moloch.
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by taude on Friday June 16, 2023 @12:22PM (#36359265)
The moment you log into someone else website, your attention no longer belongs to you, FYI. Not sure who told you it should work differently.
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by matheusmoreira on Friday June 16, 2023 @12:37PM (#36359542)
> The moment you log into someone else website, your attention no longer belongs to you

It absolutely does. What nonsense. My cognitive functions don't belong to some corporation just because I visited their website. They are inalienable.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by stOneskull on Friday June 16, 2023 @01:48PM (#36360776)
i wish more people would stick up for themselves like this, and i hope you inspire others to do so. i think this spamming into the mind actually contributes to this mindset where the person sticks up for that abuse itself rather than their mind and self. like a stockholm syndrome. thanks mate. keep on truckin'!
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by matheusmoreira on Friday June 16, 2023 @02:05PM (#36361024)
Thank you. The reason I go out of my way to post my opinions on this matter is I discovered I wasn't alone over my years here on HN. I've interacted with like-minded people many times here, discussed these matters plenty of times and refined my thoughts. Plenty of what I said in this thread, I learned from talking to others here.

It's really difficult to say these things because people come at you to call you entitled, unhinged, a freeloader, downvote you. I always say it anyway. I hope it inspires others too. We aren't alone.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by 542354234235 on Friday June 16, 2023 @02:43PM (#36361715)
You are choosing to use an ad based service. No one is forcing you to view reddit. Your attention belongs to you and you can choose to direct it where you want. You knew reddit included ads, you consented to use reddit which includes ads. Just because you don’t like ads doesn’t make it “mind rape”. If you don’t like penises, but consent to have sex with a cis man, it isn’t rape because he has a penis that you don’t like but knew he had. It isn’t rape because you want to have sex with anyone and everyone and want none of them to have a penis. The answer is not that no one is allowed to have a penis, the answer is for you to stop having sex with people with penises. It isn’t the world’s responsibility to only be populated with people you want to have sex with, it is your responsibility to only consent to have sex with people you actually want to have sex with.
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by matheusmoreira on Friday June 16, 2023 @03:22PM (#36362377)
> You are choosing to use an ad based service. No one is forcing you to view reddit. Your attention belongs to you and you can choose to direct it where you want.

True.

> You knew reddit included ads, you consented to use reddit which includes ads.

It's not really an all or nothing, take it or leave it proposition. Just because they sent me ads, doesn't obligate me to view them. I get to view just the parts that I want to view.

We're not some captive passive consumer audience that reddit can jerk around at will. We are in control. We own the machine and we decide what it's going to display. If we decide we don't want to see ads, we're not gonna see ads and that's pretty much the end of it. What reddit wants or needs has pretty much zero bearing on the matter.

If you send me a page with some annoying element and I decide I want to get rid of it, it's within my power. All I have to do is inspect the element and delete it. Alternatively, I can download an annoyance filter extension with a huge database of those annoying elements to do it for me. It's called uBlock Origin.

This is called adversarial interoperability and it's an essential freedom.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...

If I'm handed a magazine and it has annoying ads on it, I can rip out the pages and throw them in the trash. Same thing.

> Just because you don’t like ads doesn’t make it “mind rape”.

I think it does. I don't consent to having information I didn't ask for forcibly inserted into my mind for someone else's profit. When I opened this post, I wanted to see the comments, not irrelevant brands of products I don't care about. If I wanted to see products I'd have visited Amazon or gone to the market.

It's really simple. If you add noise to your signal, I'll filter it. I don't care if you make money by adding that noise. Find some other way to make money or go bankrupt.

> It isn’t the world’s responsibility

I'm having difficulty understanding what you're saying. I think you mean "it's not reddit's responsibility to cater to your needs". Well it doesn't have to. I'll look after my own needs -- by blocking its ads unconditionally and with no exceptions.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by enlyth on Friday June 16, 2023 @01:07PM (#36360108)
>Reddit isn't a community service.

Who do you think creates all the content? The community is all there is, and Reddit the company adds zero value other than paying for servers to host the data. They managed to create one of the worst performing and buggy websites on the internet by burning through millions of investment money. It's more pathetic than anything.

Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by skeaker on Friday June 16, 2023 @02:16PM (#36361231)
Your quip about deserving no ads has precisely 0 to do with the comment you are replying to. Nothing does but the last tiny sentence where you voice your own unpopular opinion with no substance to back it. Really strange post.
Re:Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking thei... by goykasi on Friday June 16, 2023 @11:58AM (#36358839)
I dont know. All I know is that at least 2.6mil[1] people were pestered into installing the app. And all of them decided to leave a positive review of it. Past that, I wont make any assumptions.

Ive never used it. I rather be using Alien Blue, but the auth stopped working earlier this year. So, I had to start using Apollo.

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reddit/id1064216828