← Back to context

Comment by rekabis

1 day ago

> it doesn’t have the same modern security tech stack reddit.com has so we need to tighten security on old reddit to keep it viable.

This is how you justify it to anyone who doesn’t know web dev.

For those who do, it’s an idiotic statement. The only difference between new Reddit and old Reddit is the visual styling and how content is presented. Both have all the same security.

8 comments

rekabis

Reply
altairprime  1 day ago

They don’t mean websec, they mean textsec. The old site doesn’t have the level of text scraper defenses that the new site does, without which Reddit can’t monetize the written output of their userbase for AI training. Putting old behind a login wall solves that.

Having previously recommended on HN that blogs put up a simple basicauth that takes any password to stop AI theft dead in its tracks, I definitely agree with their reasoning; if nothing else, it’ll result in an honest accounting of users left using it.

  • bardan  1 day ago

    Potentially related is yt-dlp getting a 403 lately when downloading from Reddit. The extractor uses old.reddit.com. Hopefully they'll find a way to use the regular Reddit gateway instead.

    But I can't stand new Reddit so maybe I'll take this as an opportunity to give it up entirely.

    • altairprime  1 day ago

      Yeah, that would align; this probably also cuts off most of the “download Reddit videos” websites. More textsec, though I guess that’s more like contentsec? CONSEC there we go.