Eight hours ago, admin /u/lift_ticket83 posted this update on /r/modnews, titled "Reddit Data API Update: Changes to Pushshift Access."
I think their TLDR sums it up pretty well:
TL;DR: Pushshift is in violation of our Data API Terms and has been unresponsive despite multiple outreach attempts on multiple platforms, and has not addressed their violations. Because of this, we are turning off Pushshift’s access to Reddit’s Data API, starting today. If this impacts your community, our team is available to help.
Essentially, Reddit is removing access from pushshift in order to take it offline. This will impact projects like /r/BotDefense, which rely on it. The admin admits this, saying:
We understand this will cause disruption to some mods, which we hoped to avoid. While we cannot provide the exact functionality that Pushshift offers because it would be out of compliance with our terms, privacy policy, and legal requirements, our team has been working diligently to understand your usage of Pushshift functionality to provide you with alternatives within our native cowtools in order to supplement your moderator workflow.
And they say that they are trying to work with users:
We are already reaching out to those we know develop cowtools or bots that are dependent on Pushshift. If you need to reach out to us, our team is available to help.
Personally, I doubt Reddit will be of any help to the many mods that rely on pushshift, or literally any deleted content hosting site like reveddit.
Users React:
There are so many uses for pushshift and ban flow/removal reasons are at the bottom of that list
The Admin who made the post chimes in with a downmarseyd reply
Not surprisingly, this conversation has spanned multiple teams at Reddit who are all working to ensure mod workflows are minimally impacted by these changes. We’ve hosted a number of calls and research sessions with mods prior to this but would love it if you could elaborate on how you use pushshift so we can make sure we’ve accounted for your use case. ? Tagging in /u/sn00byd00 and /u/Flyinglaserturtle for visibility.
A mod reply to the original post:
Users have questions abut their favorite removed content service
Does this destroy cowtools like removeddit? Because I use that website constantly.
And most people are just fricking mad about it.
Thank you for killing off a useful tool many of us use daily.
/u/thespookiestuser has some words for the admins
Let's cut to the chase here:
You expect us to sympathize with you over Pushshift, for some reason, despite the fact the changes you're making are going to frick up a lot of third party apps and cowtools that lots of mods (and general users too) use daily.
Well, we don't.
You probably do not actually care about this and will not deviate from whatever plan corporate has set out. Reddit will probably not actually see that big of a blow to its metrics, but I can foresee a small dip and a lot of mods leaving, perhaps protesting / closing up shop on the way out.
You continually fail to understand that you have staked the operation of your entire website on thousands of unpaid and unmanageable volunteers, of which you're now pissing off continually in half-baked schemes to wring more money out of the site. Even if this doesn't kill the site, it will definitely lead to a decrease in overall quality as the people who care more about having good communities are pushed out in favor of those who instead like seeing numbers go up when they get to mod more subs.
But it's likely you don't care about this either, because quality ≠ profit, engagement does.
This message will also be ignored and tossed in the shredder, like all the rest. The most I can really hope for is that the low level technicians and community managers actually give a darn even if corporate and shareholders don't.
Personally, I saw this coming since the API announcement
This is horrible for Reddit and it's communities, and only moves this platform to a bots world that we have to live in. I hate this. Frick their IPO.
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I’m so confused, why would mods need push shift as part of their “workflow”? Do they actually need to find bad think comments that were deleted years ago to justify banning someone from their sub?
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Yeah so when you appeal your ban, they can check for problematic content in your past.
That's 99% of their use
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Anybody who unironically uses the word "workflow"...
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Imagine having a “workflow” you don’t even get paid to have.
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easy-to-groom 13 year olds ain't gonna find themselves.
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They got caught with their pants down when they realized how much they could've made by selling user data instead of handing out for free. Really missed the gravy train from the recent LLM releases.
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Web scraping is legal in the US, they can't do shit as long as content is publicly available. Companies are forgetting why they created open APIs in the first place, scraping is way more expensive for them, it's much easier to just send back json.
I wouldn't be shocked if the next step is for reddit to limit views for people who aren't logged in.
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