57 upvotes, 5 direct replies (showing 5)
View submission: An Update Regarding Reddit’s API
Why?
They said it. It’s to keep people from Fusker-ing Reddit.
In the past, Reddit has served images using a specific naming convention. They start with https://i.redd.it/ and then have a BASE36 randomly generated file name for the image.
Those images could be viewed without any particular watermark or overlay or the surrounding context they were first published in —
So any NSFW subreddit could be “scraped” by a suitable JavaScript and the contents of the galleries there streamed to a client computer, absent Reddit’s html, css, and notably also absent any authentication by Reddit’s servers that the client was logged in, and had represented to be legally able to access material that — for example, in the US — is illegal for minors to access.
These changes counter and prevent that exploited loophole, where some arbitrary person uses Reddit’s infrastructure to host and distribute material while circumventing the required check to ensure that it’s not being served to minors.
Which also put a load on Reddit’s infrastructure costs.
Comment by Ghigs at 18/04/2023 at 17:41 UTC
106 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I don't know why you are talking about scraping in a post about the logged-in API.
Comment by EmbarrassedHelp at 19/04/2023 at 02:16 UTC
10 upvotes, 1 direct replies
What part are you specifically using getting the fusking stuff from? As far as I can tell the Admins are staying silent on what the actual changes are going to be and why.
Comment by hahahahastayingalive at 19/04/2023 at 03:35 UTC
9 upvotes, 1 direct replies
If I'm understanding correctly, you're describing an issue they have(had?) with images being accessible directly because of reddit's infra.
And either it's fixed, and all images are now unaccessible without login. Or it isn't, and you can still come one the site, farm the URLs, and share them anywhere to be directly accessed.
In which of these scenarii does having NSFW images staying on the site but not available in the API make a difference ?
Comment by sadie-the-hunter at 28/04/2023 at 19:40 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Reddit doesn’t allow direct uploads of NSFW content though. Users can only post links and have had to upload the content to sites like Imgur or RedGifs for linking
Comment by ACCount82 at 19/04/2023 at 16:07 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
That sounds to me like a solution far out of proportion to the problem.
I've *never* seen Reddit abused as a CDN stand-in in this way. CDNs are cheap enough as they are - and you can skip CDNs entirely with certain P2P tricks.