#Subscription api

[bankcloud-blog]

API Recurring Payments

API recurring payments simplify and automate billing for businesses, ensuring timely, hassle-free collection of recurring revenue.

[bankcloud]

Automate Recurring Payments Using API | Call Now - Bank Cloud

BankCloud s recurring collection API stack provides a unified approach to various subscription channels and makes collections seamless and automatic Supports SI on cards, eSI, NACH, and UPI

[ancileo]

AI-powered claims automation raises ethical questions regarding fairness and transparency. Ensuring fair decision-making, preventing prejudice, and offering clear explanations of AI-driven results are critical for confidence and compliance in automated claims procedures.

[digitalpole1]

How to Turn Satisfied Customers into Vocal Advocates: Encouraging Google Reviews for Your Business

In today's digital landscape, your online reputation is everything. And when it comes to building trust and attracting new customers, Google Reviews reign supreme. Those star ratings and heartfelt testimonials hold immense power, swaying potential patrons and influencing purchasing decisions. So, how do you get your happy customers to sing your praises through Google Reviews? Here are some effective strategies to keep those positive vibes flowing:

1. Make the Ask (Politely!): Don't be shy! Simply asking your customers to share their experience on Google goes a long way. Train your staff to casually mention review requests at opportune moments, like after completing a successful transaction or resolving a customer's issue. Remember, keep it polite and non-pressuring – a genuine "We'd love to hear your feedback on Google" can work wonders.

2. Timing is Everything: Strike while the iron is hot! Send automated review requests shortly after a positive interaction, when the experience is still fresh in their minds. Consider triggering emails upon purchase completions, successful service appointments, or even after resolving a complaint (showing you value feedback even for less-than-stellar moments).

3. Simplify the Process: Eliminate friction by making leaving a review easy as pie. Include direct Google Review links in your email or text message campaigns. Display QR codes on receipts or in visible locations around your store. Embed Review buttons on your website or social media pages, leading them straight to the review form. The simpler the path, the higher the review-completion rate.

4. Personalization Goes a Long Way: Generic requests lack impact. Take the time to personalize your appeal. Address customers by name, mention their specific purchase or service, and remind them of the positive aspect of their experience. This shows you appreciate their business and genuinely value their feedback.

5. Sweeten the Deal (Without Bribery): While offering direct incentives for reviews is against Google's policy, you can still show your appreciation through subtle gestures. Run a "Featured Review of the Month" contest with small prizes. Offer exclusive discounts or early access to new products for those who leave detailed reviews. Remember, it's about showing gratitude, not buying reviews.

6. Make Reviews a Conversation: Don't let the interaction end with the review submission. Respond to each review, thanking the customer for their feedback and addressing any concerns. This not only showcases your dedication to customer service but also encourages others to engage in the conversation, boosting your review visibility.

7. Champion Your Reviews: Positive reviews deserve to be showcased! Feature snippets on your website and social media pages. Include review quotes in marketing materials. Create video testimonials highlighting your amazing customers. Let the good vibes permeate every customer touchpoint.

8. Be Open to Feedback (Even the Not-So-Good): Remember, negative reviews can be just as valuable as positive ones. They offer insights into areas you can improve. Respond professionally and promptly, demonstrating your commitment to addressing concerns and improving your services. This transparency can actually turn a negative experience into a positive one, showcasing your commitment to customer satisfaction.

9. Celebrate Success, and Keep Going: Building a strong review base takes time and effort. Track your progress, celebrate milestones, and acknowledge your team's efforts. But don't become complacent. Continuously refine your review-encouraging strategies and adapt to changing customer behavior. Remember, a culture of feedback and appreciation is key to fostering loyal customers and thriving in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

By implementing these strategies, you can transform your satisfied customers into vocal advocates, amplifying your business's online presence and attracting new customers through the power of genuine Google Reviews. So, start asking, simplifying, and showing appreciation, and watch your online reputation reach new heights!

[hi3-updates]

Hi! I was down for a while because I rely on an RSS feed to read Twitter, but my bot mom’s free trial ended. Luckily, she just got another free trial with a different account, so I’m back! She’s working on finding a different solution soon!

[jukain4216]

Somebody drop a good desktop app idea I wanna play around with iced.rs

[pinolitas]

I was actually gonna do the menstrual cycle project so I can show my doctor how insane I'm posting when I'm in the luteal phase and how delusional I get when I'm ovulating but Twitter api doesn't let me make any GET calls for free and the basic subscription is $100 a month they're actually worse than Apple lmao like... who is paying for that... anyways I'm gonna scrape my own fucking profile I'm not respecting your robots.txt boss 🫡

[exeggcute]

the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators;  reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

[pancakeke]

Looks like reddit is about to get a whole lot worse. AI companies have been scraping reddit's content to use in language learning models and reddit's owners have decided that they should start charging for API use so they can cash in.

Unfortunately this will fuck up a number of 3rd party moderation and accessibility tools. These tools were built by users out of necessity reddit refuses to implement desperately needed functions themselves. reddit claims they will allow free use of their API for developers who build things to improve reddit, and they also claimed they will create better moderation tools for the site. But they have a long history of making bullshit promises like that.

Mods are extremely concerned about the rollout for the API changes. They are unsure how the communication (if any) will be provided and how quickly their mod teams can react. Mods and the developers for their 3rd party tools contribute an unbelievable amount of unpaid labor toward keeping reddit usable, which in turn contributes to reddit's overall value. Moving forward with switching to a paid API makes user lives harder without providing any compensation just to make money that will not be shared and, let's be real, will not be invested back into the site.

3rd party reddit readers are also in trouble with this change, which is bad news for every mobile reddit user. Reddit's official app sucks shit both in terms of features and stability. The developer of the free reddit app Apollo has obtained reddit's API pricing and it would cost him $20 million USD per year to obtain access for Apollo. This is more money than the app generates with paid subscriptions.

There are a lot of rumors that reddit wants to take its stock public which would explain why they are making money first, users last decisions such as this.

NYT article about this via archive.org (no paywall).

mod post from r/historians discussing the API access issue as well as reddit's history of failure to support its moderators.

Verge article discussing the API restriction impacting accessibility (note: no one from r/blind was not contacted to comment and the sub has a years long history of pushing reddit for better accessibility with reddit never once making any real commitment).

mod post from r/blind.

Additional mod post from r/blind with letter template for users to email reddit in protest of the API changes, as well as additional info about the changes.

mod post from r/apolloapp with info about API pricing (which is ridiculously expensive compared to other sites using a paid API model).

edit: btw if you make some kind of dumbass "this is good because I don't like reddit" comment you're a piece of shit.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The monetization creep has been evident for a while. Reddit has added a subscription ”Reddit premium”; offered “community rewards” as a paid super-vote ; embraced an NFT marketplace; changed the site's design for one with more recommended content; and started nudging users toward the official mobile app. The site has also been adding more restrictions to uploading and viewing “not safe for work” (NSFW) content. All this, while community requests for improvements to moderation tools and accessibility features have gone unaddressed on mobile, driving many users to third-party applications. Perhaps the worst development was announced on April 18th, when Reddit announced changes to its Data API would be starting on July 1st, including new “premium access” pricing for users of the API. While this wouldn’t affect projects on the free tier, such as moderator bots or tools used by researchers, the new pricing seems to be an existential threat to third-party applications for the site. It also bears a striking resemblance to a similar bad decision Twitter made this year under Elon Musk.

[...]

Details about Reddit’s API-specific costs were not shared, but it is worth noting that an API request is commonly no more burdensome to a server than an HTML request, i.e. visiting or scraping a web page. Having an API just makes it easier for developers to maintain their automated requests. It is true that most third-party apps tend to not show Reddit’s advertisements, and AI developers may make heavy use of the API for training data, but these applications could still (with more effort) access the same information over HTML. The heart of this fight is for what Reddit’s CEO calls their “valuable corpus of data,” i.e. the user-made content on the company’s servers, and for who gets live off this digital commons. While Reddit provides essential infrastructural support, these community developers and moderators make the site worth visiting, and any worthwhile content is the fruit of their volunteer labor. It’s this labor and worker solidarity which gives users unique leverage over the platform, in contrast to past backlash to other platforms.

[maypop-the-dragon]

PSA: Free Software

Reading this may really save your time, privacy, and money! Reblog or share to spread awareness!

Folks often use software that’s expensive and sometimes even inferior because they don’t know there are alternatives. So to those unfamiliar: basically, free and open-source (FOSS) or "libre" software is free to use and anyone can access the original code to make their own version or work on fixing problems.

That does not mean anyone can randomly add a virus and give it to everyone—any respectable libre project has checks in place to make sure changes to the official version are good! Libre software is typically developed by communities who really care about the quality of the software as a goal in itself.

There are libre alternatives to many well-known programs that do everything an average user needs (find out more under the cut!) for free with no DRM, license keys, or subscriptions.

Using libre software when possible is an easy way to fight against and free yourself from corporate greed while actually being more convenient in many cases! If you need an app to do something, perhaps try searching online for things like:

foss [whatever it is]

libre [whatever it is]

open source [whatever it is]

Feel free to recommend more libre software in the tags, replies, comments, or whatever you freaks like to do!

Some Libre Software I Personally Enjoy…

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is an office suite, much like Microsoft Office. It includes equivalents for apps like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, which can view and edit files created for those apps.

I can't say I've used it much myself yet. I do not personally like using office software except when I have to for school.

OpenShot

OpenShot Video Editor is, as the name suggests, a video editing program. It has industry-standard features like splicing, layering, transitions, and greenscreen.

I've only made one video with it so far, but I'm already very happy with it. I had already paid for a video editor (Cyberlink PowerDirector Pro), but I needed to reinstall it and I didn't remember how. Out of desperation, I searched up "FOSS video editor" and I'm so glad I did. There's no launcher, there's no promotion of other apps and asset packs—it's just a video editor with a normal installer.

GIMP

GNU Image Manipulation Program is an image editor, much like Photoshop. Originally created for Linux but also available for Windows and MacOS, it provides plenty of functionality for editing images. It is a bit unintuitive to learn at first, though.

I've used it to create and modify images for years, including logos, really bad traceover art, and Minecraft textures. It doesn't have certain advanced tech like AI paint-in, but it has served my purposes well and it might just work for yours!

(Be sure to go to Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Colors. I have no idea why that's not enabled by default.)

Audacity

Audacity is an audio editing program. It can record, load, splice, and layer audio files and apply effects to them.

Audacity is another program I've used for a long time. It is not designed to compose music, but it is great for podcasts, simple edits, and loading legacy MS Paint to hear cool noises.

7-Zip

7-Zip is a file manager and archive tool. It supports many archive types including ZIP, RAR, TAR, and its own format, 7Z. It can view and modify the contents of archives, encrypt and decrypt archives, and all that good stuff.

Personally, I use 7-Zip to look inside JAR files for Minecraft reasons. I must admit that its UI is ugly.

Firefox

Firefox is an internet browser, much like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Safari. While browsers are free, many of them include tracking or other anti-consumer practices. For example, Google plans to release an update to Chromium (the base that most browsers are built from these days) that makes ad blockers less effective by removing the APIs they currently rely on.

Aside from fighting monopolies, benefits include: support for animated themes (the one in the picture is Purple Night Theme), good ad blockers forever, an (albeit hidden) compact UI option (available on about:config), and a cute fox icon.

uBlock Origin

As far as I know, uBlock Origin is one of the best ad blockers there is.

I was on a sketchy website with my brother, and he was using Opera GX's ad blocker. Much of the time when he clicked on anything, it would take us to a random sponsored page. I suggested that he try uBlock Origin, and with uBlock Origin, that didn't happen anymore.

Linux

Linux is a kernel, but the term is often used to refer to operating systems (much like Windows or MacOS) built on it. There are many different Linux-based operating systems (or "distros") to choose from, but apps made for Linux usually work on most popular distros. You can also use many normally Windows-only apps on Linux through compatibility layers like WINE.

I don't have all four of these, so the images are from Wikipedia. I tried to show a variety of Linux distros made for different kinds of users.

If you want to replace your operating system, I recommend being very careful because you can end up breaking things. Many computer manufacturers don't care about supporting Linux, meaning that things may not work (Nvidia graphic cards notoriously have issues on Linux, for example).

Personally, I tried installing Pop!_OS on a laptop, and the sound output mysteriously doesn't work. I may try switching to Arch Linux, since it is extremely customizable and I might be able to experiment until I find a configuration where the audio works.

Many Linux distros offer "Live USB" functionality, which works as both a demo and an installer. You should thoroughly test your distro on a Live USB session before you actually install it to be absolutely sure that everything works. Even if it seems fine, you should probably look into dual-booting with your existing operating system, just in case you need it for some reason.

Happy computering!

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[ancileo]

Big Data is acute for personalizing travel insurance suspension since it analyzes the massive capacity of client data to determine individual preferences, behaviors, and risks. This allows insurers to adjust their plans and pricing to suit customer needs, and increase consumer satisfaction and conversion rates. Insurers may create more accurate and relevant insurance packages by merging data from many sources, including travel history, demographic information, and social media activity, resulting in a more personalized and user-centric approach to travel insurance.

[joelwindows7]

Top betrayal of websites & where people migrated to

That I know of right now.

YouTube. Community Guideline Strikes & DMCAs, & moar bad things. Go to Odysee now.

[tumblr] (formerly). Deleted & purged 69420. Go to idk, 888blr, and Twitter, and Newgrounds, and any Mastodon instances out there. Unbetrayed!! 69420 is back!!! But the damage has been done.

Twitter. Wait, what again? No, I forgot what Elon Musk did? Uh.... I still... idk... well let's say... did not make things better for all part (just few make betters are not considered enough), damn.. what is it?!. Go to idk any Fediverse like Mastodon or whatever it is. Also bot account or whatever API was that I forgor,... paid, coz spammers.

What was this Minecraft Launcher?. Lead dev gone rogue and deleted contributors, could possible lead to malware commit. Go to Prism Launcher.

Ubuntu. Uhhh... proprietary blobs increasing and more ironic proprietarisms (Snap is proprietary), and one example sauce here this. Go to different Ubuntu forks or maybe jump to another diffferent Linux Distro like Arch, btw.

VRChat. Implemented Easy Anti-Cheat instead of officializing community fixes like Anti-crash, anti-exploits, etc. etc. Go to different VR social media, like ChilloutVR. This is also Unity based VR social media, with mods allowed and many community patch and fixes (yes, mods) turned official. Heck, 69420 is even allowed, with a free DLC provided!!! No kidding!!! If you want to add me, same, JOELwindows7 & I was wearing BZ Protogen right now. Oh, one more thing. The Premium account is buy once, unlock forever!!! In VRChat, there is only subscription (temporary buy). There is also NEOS VR, which is Unreal Engine, I think.. idk... huh, no Godot VR social media?! Aw man..

Reddit. API is now paid because API does not serve them money through those intrusive ads in the original interface (effectively making maintenance way too expensive as lots of users use them, & it no longer worth it). Go to [tumblr], Lemmy (& maybe any Mastodon instances). See r/Save3rdPartyApps. Many subreddits gone privated in protest. Some come back, others forever. Some again restricted like mine. Basically private but still can be accessed, just no comment, no post, or neither. Fun fact, because of this, Reddit admin ironically active eradicating this protest by force removing mods and handing it over to somebody else who will, especially to basically force them public again. I mean, yeah, it's egregious, peck neck 💀, privated no access anymore. Your fault, spez. Why has Private in 1st place? Just restricted & public that's enough. And you yeeted their hard work away because of this? There is a better way bruh! Don't yeet mods and replace them, they'll further damage the subreddits, no idea what to do with them! Instead, if you want, just set them Restricted, keep mods, wtf man?!?!?!?!?!? Ugh, very awry.

Okay that's all I know, thancc for attention

By JOELwindows7

Perkedel Technologies

CC4.0-BY-SA

[jellyfisharcade]

I live tent in the Redwoods (by Choice) - over 2 years no rent baby!!! That way I can work far less and spend much more time on what's truly important in my life - aka unapologetically flooding the internet/social media with as much SOTA, highest quality AI Art you'll find anywhere!! Why, you may ask? Because.

Certainly not because of money tho. I've made 0$ and have probably sunk close to $1,000 into it, altogether. Subscriptions and APIs and such. 100% Worth it!!! Am obsessed - longest, deepest obsession ever! Anyways, here's some cool shit that I make for the enjoyment of my inner child. Hope it does something for all y'all too! ♥️

I mean just look at this shit!! Are you not mind-blown?! Cause I sure as hell am...

Jellyfish Arcade Midjourney V6