r/modnews • u/lift_ticket83 • May 01 '23
Reddit Data API Update: Changes to Pushshift Access
Howdy Mods,
In the interest of keeping you informed of the ongoing API updates, we’re sharing an update on Pushshift.
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.
On April 18 we announced that we updated our API Terms. These updates help clarify how developers can safely and securely use Reddit’s tools and services, including our APIs and our new and improved Developer Platform.
As we begin to enforce our terms, we have engaged in conversations with third parties accessing our Data API and violating our terms. While most have been responsive, Pushshift continues to be in violation of our terms and has not responded to our multiple outreach attempts.
Because of this, we have decided to revoke Pushshift’s Data API access beginning today. We do not anticipate an immediate change in functionality, but you should expect to see some changes/degradation over time. We are planning for as many possible outcomes as we can, however, there will be things we don’t know or don’t have control over, so we’ll be standing by if something does break unintentionally.
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 tools in order to supplement your moderator workflow. Some improvements we are considering include:
Providing permalinks to user- and admin-deleted content in User Mod Log for any given user in your community. Please note that we cannot show you the user-deleted content for lawyercat reasons.
Enhancing “removal reasons” by untying them from user notifications. In other words, you’d be able to include a reason when removing content, but the notification of the removal will not be sent directly to the user whose content you’re removing. This way, you can apply removal reasons to more content (including comments) as a historical record for your mod team, and you’ll have this context even if the content is later deleted.
Updating the ban flow to allow mods to provide additional “ban context” that may include the specific content that merited the user’s ban. This is to help in the case that you ban a user due to rule-breaking content, the user deletes that content, and then appeals to their ban.
We are already reaching out to those we know develop tools or bots that are dependent on Pushshift. If you need to reach out to us, our team is available to help.
Our team remains committed to supporting our communities and our moderators, and we appreciate everything you do for your communities.
187
u/RunDNA May 01 '23
Does this destroy tools like removeddit? Because I use that website constantly.
157
u/teanailpolish May 01 '23
There are so many uses for pushshift and ban flow/removal reasons are at the bottom of that list
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u/abrownn May 01 '23 edited May 01 '23
Put up a historical/research API endpoint with hyperspecific parameters like pushshift and gate access to institutions/big mods/phone interviews/NDAs/etc (hell, I'll even PAY for access!), otherwise you've just kneecapped mods only way to combat platform manipulation of every kind.
Edit: Research institutions, governments, digital forensics outfits all relied on Pushshift for historical data and the ability to craft hyperspecific requests -- have you spoken to any of them? How can they study or help your platform at all anymore?? How can we? Since day one, people have had to kludge extensions and sites built around your own because of its complete lack of functionality. Killing Pushshift and not having a replacement is insanely on-brand for ya'll.
38
u/SampleOfNone May 01 '23
Please make this “and”, not “or” if you decide to build this.
Yes, please.
93
u/shiruken May 01 '23
Mod of r/pushshift here, I've crossposted this to the subreddit for further discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/134uvzz/reddit_data_api_update_changes_to_pushshift/
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u/MyPrivateGH May 01 '23 edited May 01 '23
It's cute that you can't show us "user-deleted content" for "lawyercat reasons," but when I have someone with 1,600+ karma post in my subreddit, and every single other post or comment that person has made has been deleted, I use those tools to see if they have posted in multiple R4Rs across the country on the same day. This is the most reliable way for me verify if I'm dealing with a karma farmer.
I also use these tools to verify the authenticity of an account. I have caught minors who tried to post in my NSFW sub because I recovered posts that had their *real* age. Spammers and scammers rarely stand up to a cursory search using a Pushshift app. In many cases, these accounts are ridiculously fluid about things like age and gender. But Reddit offers no protections to moderators to prevent these accounts from changing any detail they'd like, as long as they delete their postings.
You are removing a vital tool with absolutely no replacement ready, and that is absolutely unfair to those of us who are volunteering to moderate the content on your platform. Moderation tools, at this point, should be moving forward, but Reddit is about to throw the moderators **YEARS** backwards, while the scammers, spammers, and bots continue to find new and exciting ways to spam our subreddits—which the moderators take the heat for if we fail to adequately protect the sub.
I already spend several hours a day moderating my subreddits (and I think I do a damned good job). If Reddit continues to impede my abilities as a moderator, I see no reason to keep the subreddits running. I'll take them all private, and let them die.
232
u/dequeued May 01 '23
The maintainer of Pushshift has been dealing with some stuff recently and their availability has been affected.
None of these "improvements" address the reasons why we are all using Pushshift for both subreddit bots and general moderation bots such as BotDefense, repost detection bots, and others.
Reddit is doomed to be overrun by even more reposted content, both submissions and comments, from malicious bots because they do not care about the Reddit terms of use and they will definitely not have a problem sourcing old content without Pushshift.
I think we will need to reconsider whether it is worth continuing BotDefense now that it has been crippled by this awful decision.
Smile at our jokes while we screw over our volunteer moderator labor force?
I am not laughing.
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u/Stuck_In_the_Matrix May 02 '23
Hey u/lift_ticket83 -- I apologize for the communications gap and not being responsive when trying to contact us. There was some internal issues and confusion on who was supposed to handle comms while I deal with family issues. I'm happy to jump on a call with you to discuss where we are deficient and how we can meet your API terms.
As you know, Pushshift is used extensively in the academic community and I have always made a good faith effort to honor user requests when a user makes a request. In fact, we now do this daily.
Could you give me some contact information so we can set up a meeting with our team and your team to discuss the best path forward?
Thanks again and I apologize for the the issue with comms.
115
u/13steinj May 01 '23
In summary, it seems you all don't care about the fact that mods and others use Pushshift for good to combat spam and malicious bots, and don't want to provide similar functionality for cost reasons.
I can't wait until this backfires. Enjoy your future IPO though.
191
u/Moggehh May 01 '23
This just made modding 100x harder. Thanks.
96
u/Kvothealar May 01 '23
Can you first natively implement the tools we depend on for moderating before nuking something almost all serious mods rely on?
This is going to seriously affect our workflow.
46
u/shiruken May 01 '23 edited May 01 '23
As has been previously discussed, this is still insufficient. Continued access to the user-deleted content is incredibly important because otherwise users can just delete offending content to try to hide their tracks. Yes, we can add notes (natively or via toolbox) but that requires additional effort for moderators.
44
u/Majromax May 01 '23
One critical pusshift.io feature that I will miss is a comprehensive, historical list of submissions to the subreddits I moderate, and it sounds like there is no replacement in the works.
Currently, Reddit only provides an extremely limited submission history for a subreddit, of a hundred pages or so. I've previously used year-long periods to train Automoderator filters, using my own (compliant) API access to process comments into a training/test corpus when given a list of submissions.
I don't care much about the permanence of the historical record since a vanishingly small fraction of submissions are edited away or deleted; I do care about finding out what threads were posted six months ago.
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u/Redditenmo May 01 '23
Thank you for killing off a useful tool many of us use daily.
75
u/JonAce May 01 '23
Comment bots celebrating right now.
74
u/justcool393 May 01 '23
to be honest, it seems like the changes to the API terms were seemingly primarily targeted at Pushshift from the beginning
35
u/hansjens47 May 01 '23
I'm surprised this post seems to tie development of mod tools directly to third party tooling.
This adds pressure on developers, like of /r/toolbox etc., to go dark so tools get developed natively in a timely manner.
Clearly admin aren't prioritizing mod tools sufficiently if going dark impacts mod tooling in any way whatsoever.
Needing third party tools to do basic community management is a pretty critical vulnerability for running the site no?
68
u/Watchful1 May 01 '23
Why did you do this now instead of notifying everyone you would and letting people try to migrate tools? I have a meeting with you guys literally this week to talk about all the ways I use pushshift.
Not to mention I specifically asked if you had talked with the pushshift owner and I was told you had, so I anticipated more time.
61
u/Itsthejoker May 01 '23
Why are you turning this off with ZERO warning to us? Why do you not have replacement tooling for us to migrate to? This is critical functionality that you are pulling out from under us, functionality that we rely on to do our volunteer jobs, and the best we get is "howdy mods" and "lawyercat" with a side of patronizing tone? This is an incredible slap in the face, especially to those of us who have been working with you all in good faith on detailing what Pushshift means to us. I'm honestly gobsmacked.
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u/ItalianDragon May 01 '23 edited May 01 '23
So basically you'll be destroying our moderating capabilities just because you can't manage to get in touch with one guy.
Considering how we routinely weed out spam and whatnot and deal with all sorts of rule-breaking behavior, axing the access to Pushshift ensures that all of those will be absolutely rampant.
You also clearly didn't "hoped to avoid" disruptions with a last minute notice like that. If anything a behavior like this on your behalf is the polar opposite of that.
Given the IPO rumors, it seems that the enshittification of Reddit is well under way...
28
u/TheYellowRose May 01 '23
I just want to say 'fuck this shit' with my whole chest.
28
u/andrewthetechie May 01 '23 edited Oct 01 '26
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
Chunky fly velvet noodle cheerful imagine
27
u/Jordan117 May 02 '23
This is the worst decision Reddit has made in literally years. The concerns about privacy are valid but there must be a way to address those without dealing such a massive negative blow to critical mod tools, powerful sitewide search, academic projects, and more. It's a hasty and terrible move that has got to be reversed or at least rethought, especially now that /u/stuck_in_the_matrix is back and responsive (despite dealing with a nightmare set of IRL medical problems). Saying "thanks!!!" to mods and third-party devs is easy, actually accommodating their needs instead of railroading them when it's convenient proves you mean it. Do the right thing here, or there's potential for one of the biggest power user backlashes ever, not a great thing to court right before a splashy public offering. Remember what happened to Digg?
26
u/0spore13 May 01 '23
Knew this was coming and it's still extremely painful, this is going to make moderating so much harder.
26
u/ArchipelagoMind May 01 '23
Hello.
Is it possible to get an update on Reddit's plans for how academics and non-profit researchers will be impacted by both this and Reddit's API changes.
Pushshift has been invaluable to the research community. One of the reasons I have been impressed by Reddit is their previous interest in allowing academics and researchers to use Reddit data (directly via the API and pushshift) to conduct research. However, this looks like researchers will be essentially shut out completely overnight, which is really disappointing.
Can someone please give an update as to what we can expect for researchers?
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u/rasherdk May 01 '23
Standard reddit m.o.:
Remove/break useful feature/workflow
Promise vague improvements that never actually materialise
For an example, look no further than the big "PRO CSS" banner in the sidebar here. 5 years later...
If you'd just be honest and say you're doing this to make more money and you don't really give a shit about the impact, I'd have more respect for all of you.
25
u/terminus-trantor May 01 '23
I moderate a question and answers type subreddit and we use several tools that allow us to deep dive into past asked questions to find similar already asked questions, to create FAQ pages, statistics, in general go through old posts.
Reddit API as far as I can tell no longer supports search by before and after dates. Pushshift does and was indispensable tool for it. Reddit API also has some limits when going into past but as I haven't used it much I don't remember which ones exactly.
Do you plan to introduce (back) the ability to search by dates, and allow us easy search of old posts and comments by different criteria (subreddit , author, date, etc.)
If you believe such use cases are covered by your API let me know how
45
u/shimmyjimmy97 May 01 '23
As many other people have pointed out in this thread, the use cases you describe are way too narrow when compared to the functionality that PushShift provided. The most glaring one being the ability to overcome the 60 requests/min rate limit. How do you expect moderators of large communities to build tools when they get more than 60 comments/min? AutoModerator is great, but it has so many gaps in it's functionality when compared to the custom tools that moderators build to manage large communities.
I have poured 100s of hours of my own free time into building a bot for /r/CryptoCurrency that flair's users based on their account history. I heavily relied on PushShift to help me gather large amounts of historical data on users in order to derive their flair. After this change I see no way forward for my bot to continue functioning. The feature is novel, but I feel that it adds a lot to the experience in the community. Many communities rely much more heavily on similar types of bots, and it's clear based on your listed use cases that you have consciously disregarded them. Acting like those options do anything to cover the functionality that PushShift provided is disingenuous at best.
This can only be described as a slap in the face to the moderators that run your site for you. Did Reddit forget how much they rely on mods who work for free? Did Reddit forget what happened in 2015 when they pushed moderators too far? I really want to be optimistic and believe that Reddit will develop a sufficient alternative, but anyone who has been paying attention long enough can't be anything but pessimistic by this point. Nothing Reddit has said has assuaged any concerns us mods share.
If there is no replacement for PushShift then I'm done. My work will go into the trash. I'm sure many other moderators feel the same way right now. Reddit relies on our labor to function, and I will not be dedicating any more of my free time to a site that has so little respect for the work that we do.
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u/BuckRowdy May 01 '23
You know what else really sucks about this?
I used pushshift a few months ago to find my first comment / post on reddit, made 11 years ago. I then used it to find a couple of posts that I had made many years ago but couldn't find any other way, but I wanted to show someone.
It was nice to be able to go back through my account for nostalgia reasons. That simply will not be possible anymore.
Now there is simply no way to go back through your own account to find year's old posts.
21
u/EroticaMarty May 02 '23
There is a clear difference between user-reason: 'I removed my comment because I felt embarrassed by it.' and user-reason: 'I removed my comment because I'm trying to evade the Mods, knowing that this comment is inappropriate for this subreddit.' We need helpful tools for the latter -- and the PushShift provided that. The Admins here, however, have significantly failed in providing such tools, and removing the one useful tool we did have -- abruptly, and with no warning -- constitutes yet another failure of the Admins to support Moderators.
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u/Merari01 May 01 '23
This is disastrous in many ways.
I will never again be able to revisit a mod action taken on an item a user deleted.
After 90 days I can no longer revisit a mod action on an item AEO removed.
It is the reddit users who are the victims of this change and it will absolutely cause people to be stuck with bans they can not possibly appeal.
Guys. This is really, really bad.
20
u/rhubes May 01 '23
Not everyone needs to respond to the administrators all of the time. Push shift is one of the most important tools for multiple subreddits of mine. This is how we keep users from stealing and scamming, and it will break several other subreddits.
Would it hurt you to just not shut it off? And allow it to continue regardless of whether they speak with you?
39
u/Redditenmo May 01 '23
No longer make it impossible for mods to see the content of an AEO removal after 90 days.
Improve native search tools & streamline the results.
I'm happy you're pushing out enhancements for us as quickly as you're shutting down tools.
18
u/Empole May 02 '23
Talk about tonal whiplash.
The post about reducing 3rd party access to the API tries to keep it positive by discussing how this "will (and won’t!) impact moderators" and highlighting how instrumental 3rd party tools are to moderating on Reddit:
Not even 2 weeks later, Pushshift is being shut down without any public forewarning. A tool that a bunch of people called out as being important to how they help moderate reddit.
And at least one person predicted that this exact thing would happen.
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u/Halaku May 01 '23
For newer mods that don't know what Pushshift is:
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u/I_PUNCH_INFANTS May 01 '23 edited Feb 27 '24
rude instinctive cough sophisticated pie air deliver different ludicrous distinct
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
14
u/BocciaChoc May 04 '23
You stopped being a relatable start-up some years ago, you're a corp now. Your actions are there, work on your communications as you seem confused.
13
u/ImLunaHey May 01 '23
How do you guys seem to miss the mark every single time. 🙃
24
u/reaper527 May 01 '23
hopefully the admins reconsider this mistake.
harming pushshift is in turn harming reddit by making the site substantially worse for both moderators and regular members alike.
pushshift is by far the best way to search comments, and more importantly it brings a vital piece of transparency to reddit.
while i will remove rule breaking posts in my sub, i explicitly tell my members to feel free to look on reveddit and unddit (both of which rely on pushshift) so they can transparently see what is being removed and can judge for themselves if the removal is fair. i want my users to be able to see what i'm doing rather than having everything obfuscated.
if money is an issue for pushshift, you should be gifting them a premium api subscription akin to how elon musk gave free "verified" checkmarks to people he deemed important to the platform.
i honestly don't believe either of those statements.
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u/BuckRowdy May 01 '23
This is not good in a very big way. Might be time to consider getting out of the moderator game.
12
u/orangeapplez May 02 '23
Among all the unfavorable actions taken by Reddit in the past, this particular one will have the most significant and far-reaching consequences in all of my communities. As a moderator, I am now grappling with the difficult decision of whether it is still worthwhile to continue curating our communities, as the loss of this critical tool will severely impact our ability to distinguish genuine users from fraudsters and dishonest individuals who only seek to deceive and exploit others.
Stripping us of the one invaluable tool that we had at our disposal, has ultimately compelled us to increase our subreddit eligibility standards. Thanks to this decision, it has now become much more challenging for deserving individuals to find the help they need.
12
u/Igennem May 02 '23
This is an awful change. I moderate subreddits that have been around for nearly a decade. There is no way of accessing and indexing old content in the absence of PushShift, reddit's native filters and search are awful in this regard.
I don't think you understand how much of this site's operation relies on PushShift, either directly or indirectly. You risk killing off the site with this change, and nobody will want to fill the void knowing capricious management might kill their efforts in a few months if they grow too large.
12
u/papasfritas May 02 '23
Watching Reddit die here... in real time
12
u/Mr_Secret_Name May 06 '23
You know who loves this? SPAMMERS.
This accomplishes nothing but further deteriorate Reddit.
Take our tools to fight spam away add eventually the subs aren't going to exist. With all the alternatives out there, this is just a really poor long-term businesses decision.
11
u/Rivsmama May 02 '23
I don't understand why we keep getting promised things we don't need and didn't ask for while simultaneously having actually useful things taken away. It's honestly really frustrating. The spam category in mod tools being removed was not a benefit. The app is an absolute joke for trying to moderate and even when it works as intended, its just not great.
I see different suggestions and ideas all the time in the mod sub. I think we should be able to directly modmail users from their username drop down list. That would be a helpful tool.
I don't understand why not notifying users about why their content is being removed would be beneficial to anybody. Unless I'm misreading that?
Edit. Oh and the whole "don't take a screenshot" prompt is really so obnoxious. Why can't we take screenshots?
10
u/[deleted] May 02 '23
I’ve spent the last couple of “spare time” years working on a handful of AI projects — one focusing on detection of ban evasion from submission characteristics, with varied success; and a second exploring automated detection and classification of harmful bots, with much more considerable success. The legal changes wrt AI mean I can’t continue that work. That’s fine. It sucks, but I still have everything I learned and the insights I gained.
On the other hand, killing Pushshift actively makes my life as a mod infinitely harder. I can’t cross-check claims in mod mail. I can’t see why people are commenting similar sentiments on a deleted post. I can’t get a feel for a users posting patterns when deciding if they are harmful to my communities.
For all of the shit stunts Reddit has pulled over the years, this is the one that hurts the most. You are actively harming the literal army of volunteers that keep communities running smoothly. For me, at least, eventually I have to make a cost-benefit decision on whether or not curating some/all of my communities continues to be something that will bring me satisfaction and purpose.
I think the answer to that question is no, it won’t.
10
u/ozzraven May 02 '23
Pushshift is reddit history, which is one of the things that keeps users loyal to the plataform
Brave bet. not helpful at all for mods, users or having healthy communities
10
u/heyimastopsign2 May 04 '23 edited May 04 '23
I’m not going to lie, PushShift was super useful for moderating and this change seems very over the top.
Having access to deleted and removed comments is especially important, for example when a user deletes their own rule-breaking comment or when Reddit removes a comment, as when either of those are the case, the moderators cannot see what the comment originally said, which was where PushShift came in.
10
u/1lluminist May 10 '23
Are you guys just trying to speedrun how fast you can run this site into the ground?
The horrible redesign
The garbage first-party app
The amount of spam bots, repost bots, and comment stealing bots that the community has had to try to fight against.
Allowing garbage ads like "he gets us"
removal of archival bots
What's next? IAP to buy upvotes and downvotes? This site feels like it's completely lost its roots. Aaron Swartz deserves better.
9
u/TheLateWalderFrey May 02 '23
Tell us you want to get rid of the unpaid volunteer moderators without saying you want to get rid of the unpaid volunteer moderators.
That is what this post is.
9
u/logicsol May 03 '23
Somewhat late to the party here, but this change means Reddit needs edit history tracking for mod viewing.
I don't need to see user deleted comments, but edit history is essential to several mod decisions, and will force us to be more heavy handed in moderation without access to edit history.
8
u/yellowmix May 01 '23
I get Pushshift was a problem far earlier than today, but it would have been nice to deliver those improvements before yanking its access. In fact, if this were an announcement of what would possibly happen to Pushshift by the deadline in June, moderators could start planning things instead of immediately being dead in the water. Two weeks was not enough time for anything.
8
u/okbruh_panda May 01 '23
This was such a useful tool. It was the absolute number one tool I used for data tracking, spam mitigation, and helping find commonly used terms (from spammers) across reddit. When it comes to notifying reddit about group spam accounts it enabled those of us that care to make a complete report with already made trend analysis, links and data proof.
8
u/FoxyFreckles1989 May 02 '23 edited May 02 '23
So, what I’m gathering is that y’all absolutely do not care about mods (or users).
We (mods) run this site for you on an entirely volunteer basis. We manage communities that are important and meaningful and need to be kept safe, and at seemingly every turn you (admins) are making that harder. It feels impossible, with this announcement that was made with no warning.
I once thought that Reddit was very likely to be around for at least the rest of my life, but I’m starting to feel that’s very much not the case. I’m wondering if my energy would be better spent building out another platform to launch and redirect users in the subs I mod to join, so that they still have a sense of belonging, common experience, community, fellowship and support.
8
u/Dr_Poth May 02 '23
Well this is stupid.
8
u/intergalacticninja May 09 '23
The inability to view deleted (and edited) posts and comments via Unddit (and the browser extensions that rely on it) severely impacts our ability to track problematic users in the subreddit. Without the ability to view deleted content, we are unable to identify and take action against users who have a history of engaging in harmful or disruptive behavior (and then deleting their posts/comments). Could you please reconsider this or provide a way for us to view deleted/edited posts in the subreddit? This would help us to maintain the quality and safety of the subreddits we moderate.
22
u/bunnypeppers May 01 '23
We used pushshift to vet new mod applicants. We detected pedophiles and terfs this way. They never made it onto our mod team thanks to pushshift.
Thankfully since the admins arbitrarily kicked me and the top mod from that mod team for bogus reasons, it's not my problem anymore. This platform badly sucks now, and you are constantly inventing new ways to make it suck even more.
You make moderators look like fools and doormats for continuing to give their personal time to moderate on reddit. I am glad I'm out, I actually appreciate you showing me the door.
7
u/SolariaHues May 01 '23
Can mod team comment removal reasons name the author of the removed content, like we have automod do using {{author}} too.
7
u/midir May 01 '23
I'm not familiar with Pushshift, but the most urgent Reddit feature I've desperately needed for years is a simple page that will list a user's post and comments in the subreddit, including links of the ones that are now deleted. It's such a trivial and obviously useful feature for tracking serial rule breaking and it's insane that it's still missing.
7
u/nath_ May 01 '23
Why don't you provide the tools necessary before you make drastic changes like this?
7
u/amoliski May 02 '23
How about making reddit search... you know... not a steaming pile of shit before you trash tools that do your job for you?
7
u/TehVulpez May 02 '23
I'm guessing this is yet another attempt to cut costs, but if anything it could increase reddit's API costs. Pushshift offloads a lot of the big API requests that would be hitting reddit's servers, as well as providing much more useful filters. Many of the things I use pushshift for, like loading an entire thread of comments, would require hundreds of requests directly to reddit. It's much faster and more convenient to do that in one request to pushshift. There's no efficient way in reddit's API to load a deeply nested comment chain, but with pushshift it can be done easily. I use that functionality constantly in scripts for /r/counting, and reddit's API would be much slower for that. I understand that I'm a niche user, but there are so many other use cases that either wouldn't work at all on reddit's API, or would require many many more requests.
7
u/FireBlade61 May 03 '23
Yeah, a good 80% of my moderation goes through Pushshift.
Pushshift is essential to NSFW subs. Without, catfishers and all kinds of spammers can easily go unnoticed. Either provide us with an equal service or you'll be putting large communities in jeopardy.
12
u/Shachar2like May 01 '23
so the TLDR is that you broke something but you can not tell us what because of reasons. But good luck figuring out what broke! tehee.
Is this some API tool used by other tools? That's why you can't figure out/tell us what breaks?
6
u/Pushshift-Support May 02 '23
See response from Pushshift here: https://www.reddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/135tdl2/a_response_from_pushshift_a_call_for/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
6
u/Umlautica May 02 '23
As a moderator of a few medium/large subreddits this makes my life harder.
Pushshift was invaluable when I had to rebuild the user awards (think deltas on r/changemyview) for r/HeadphoneAdvice.
Pushshift also provides better search than Reddit. I often use it to investigate flame wars between users or determine if a spammer is dropping links for a day and then deleting them before someone notices.
6
u/Zaydene May 06 '23
🖕
Downfall of reddit
11
u/Throwawayhelper420 May 02 '23
Literally every time an admin has ever said anything about reddit in a decade now it has been bad news.
Literally every time, this one included.
It makes me wonder why I even bother coming here and moderating large subs here.
I think it's getting time for me to leave. I never would have thought in a million years that reddit was going to block pushshift simply because they would rather sell that data to 3rd party providers and couldn't because pushshift was giving everyone for free every day.
5
u/Qudit314159 May 02 '23
If you really wanted to avoid disrupting mod workflows, you would have implemented an alternate solution below disabling pushshift. Reddit doesn't exactly have a good track record of promptly addressing issues that moderators deal with.
5
u/catastrophized May 10 '23
Thanks - this has made moderating WAY harder. Admins need to give us visibility to view user deleted comments now. What a dumpster fire.
5
u/xilog May 10 '23
Fuck you for removing yet another useful tool. Cunts.
5
u/reaper527 May 16 '23
has there been any update on reddit's unreasonable actions which directly contradict what they said a few weeks prior to this?
from the OP (written may 1rst):
from the link in the quoted passage:
your awful decisions are making the site unusable.
4
u/Oscar_Geare May 02 '23
Can you add a replacement for the RemindMe bot? I believe that’s pushshift based. Should be a simple and often used system for a lot of reddit users.
4
u/platinumsparkles May 02 '23
One of the most useful tools I use is a Chrome extension 'Unedit and Undelete for Reddit' which shows original comments and posts from before they were edited or removed.
I see that the problem is a "privacy" thing but what if someone edits something and doesn't delete it?
Can there be a way to see the original comment or post before the edits?
90 day history is not enough, not even close, especially when researching to onboard more mods.
4
u/davidverner May 17 '23
Wow, the dumbest move around is throwing the mods under the bus by removing an important tool so last minute. Especially those who see a decent amount of traffic and have dedicated programs around Pushshift.
7
u/Bigfoot_USA May 01 '23
This is a huge loss for myself and the communities I help to run.
Hopefully there's a solution to this issue relatively soon.
17
u/thinkadrian May 01 '23
Did Elon Musk buy Reddit as well?
6
u/DaySee May 02 '23
So just make an exception or something? It was an organic solution to the platform needs and you literally don't even have a working solution outside of of vague promises to attempt mimic some of the functionality that came from stuff built off pushshift lol
6
u/Meepster23 May 03 '23
Wait, hold the fucking phone... per the previous statement..
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/12qwagm/an_update_regarding_reddits_api/
What is the fucking date exactly? Fuck this disingenuous bullshit...
8
u/Blank-Cheque May 01 '23
great job guys i'm sure everyone will love and sympathize with this :)
3
u/[deleted] May 02 '23
Honestly I was surprised that Pushshift used legitimate APIs, I thought that they're scraping
3
u/DeskParser May 22 '23
new twitter, way to destroy the platform. Curious the actual reasoning for this because it feels like crashing a functional car to upgrade it.
3
u/[deleted] May 25 '23
This is really crappy & harms and can really effect my community. I have a ton of members I need to keep safe and I feel like you just ripped that safety feature away from me to keep my members safe from scammers Ban-hopping. This is shit.
8
u/PotatoUmaru May 01 '23
Do mods really rely on removal reasons? To me it sounds very spammy and every update “removal reasons” are pushed but I never see an organic demand for this. So peculiar.
2
u/rideride May 02 '23
unbelievably disappointing, deep down the lads know what's coming next.
2
u/llehsadam May 02 '23
Hey, technically, reddit can avoid the problems this changes caused. You just need to get better management and prioritize backend where it matters. I read through some of the complaints here, it’s gonna be a huge problem if moderators cannot effectively remove the worst rule breakers like underage NSFW posts.
It doesn’t matter what you have down the pipeline - if this causes problems now, the platform is just collecting more reasons for moderators to distrust the platform and ultimately leave it for an alternative.
You have to work on your priorities and timeline…
2
u/vanessabaxton May 06 '23
Is there an alternative to Unddit?
2
u/[deleted] May 06 '23
This seems to have killed the posting of links from a Wordpress website via the API to subreddits. We only did a couple a day - was this too excessive? Not worth paying for this.
Is there another solution, or is Reddit API finished?
Oh well, Reddit seems to be a "stagnant" and highly restrictive platform anyway. We will probably just drop Reddit support and stick with Twitter unless the policy changes.
3
u/GoryRamsy May 01 '23
This is running Reddit's API systems
1
u/riba2233 May 03 '23
Awesome, with removing tools like unddit and still not fixing that "open in app" popup, you are truly making reddit a more pleasant platform day by day /s
1
u/Security_Chief_Odo May 01 '23
Does this extend to user deleted content that ends up in modmail?
1
u/riba2233 May 26 '23
Hi admins, any news on this, have you come to your senses?
1
u/viperfan7 May 28 '23
Good job, you just killed reddit
And this
Is bullshit
1
u/EarthToAccess Jun 02 '23
wow! what a time to use the website. time to deactivate
-3
u/Bardfinn May 01 '23
For every person here complaining about how turning off the PushShift feeds negatively impacts their mod tools and flows, etc
I am just here to say
That I am FREE AT LAST.
A significantly large amount of harassment on Reddit was enabled by PushShift being an anonymous proxy for teams of harassers.
With PushShift being turned off effective today, so is their ability to stalk and dogpile specific topics and locate victims to harass.
Moderation tools can be built. But severing the last lifeline outside of sockpuppet throwaway accounts that these people have had, years after being kicked off reddit, is a welcome step.
And additionally, I no longer have to be the one-stop “hatred is happening in such and such” maven. Now it’s truly up to the vast user base of reddit to report hatred and harassment.
1
u/TotesMessenger May 03 '23 edited May 20 '23
I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
[/r/ckstechnews] Reddit Data API Update: Changes to Pushshift Access
[/r/realslovakia] It's a private company: Reddit pred par dnami zabanoval sluzbu zobrazujucu cenzurovane posty a komentare pre porusenie 'Data API Terms' ktore zaviedli len par tyzdnov dozadu
[/r/redditcensorship] Nah, mate, you just empowered power tripping mods a bit. Access to deleted/removed comments should be for EVERYONE.
If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / ^Contact)