Wager more care about corporations pushing around a volunteer workforce, though. I'm genuinely surprised by the fatalistic / why bother attitudes expressed here on HN, as if those attitude aren't the dominant factor enabling those outcomes.
Reddit has already said moderator APIs and disability related APIs will remain free. They are keeping their subreddits closed because they don't want to be inconvenienced. Mods don't have the moral high ground.
A lot of folks here will commiserate with reddit's position - Microsoft and Google and ChatGPT are making billions from programs that were built using data gleamed from reddit's API's, and they didnt have to provide reddit with a single penny in return. Reddit has to do something to prevent the gold rush of data mining that is bound to occur from other companies building their own copycat LLM's.
Reddit wants to make money off user-generated content. To my mind this is like a paper manufacturer claiming it has a copyright interest in any printed matter than ends up attached to its product.
that analogy only works if reddit were charging you for each comment you post on their site. A more accurate analogy would be times square selling advertisement billboards because lots of folks congregate in times square.
They're trying to get money from people using their API, which is like demanding a cut from people selling maps of Times Square (which are better than the official ones).
