This is not true, this change is a recent phenomenon, I believe it came into effect sometime around 2021-2023 (maybe earlier even). I believe it changed when OpenAI showed the value of data.
Before, there was no problem using Instagram or Twitter while not logged in. Now there is a dark pattern that forces you to create an account, or log in.
No, it was a test by some misguided PM who was looking at her signups metric and not much else. It rolled out, everyone hated it, it got rolled back after some senior people complained. When Elon took over they turned the feature back on and then evidently rewrote it to be even more annoying and we have what is in place today. Source: my comments against it are probably in Slack somewhere if Elon is still paying for that
That’s roughly when I stopped opening Twitter links, I still sometimes see posts from that platform, but mostly just as screenshots and with the discussions elsewhere. I don’t care for their dark patterns.
People already knew the value of data long before LLMs were popularised and web scraping has been a thing since the very beginnings of the web.
Why you’re describing isn’t a recent phenomenon. Not even remotely.
Facebook has never allowed people read only views to their platform. And Expert Stack Overflow like Quora used the same dark patterns you described too.
Maybe it’s time to reevaluate whether your perspective is worth sharing, or perhaps some time is needed internally to reposition what you think you know
> You're getting downvoted for stating falsehoods.
I'm getting downvoted because people are either to young to remember the web in the 00s, or just misremembering what the web was like.
> The big platforms were accessible without login a few years ago, now they're not. That is literally a recent phenomenon.
I gave examples of big platforms that weren't accessible without a login. And modern platforms were also heading this way long before LLMs existed.
Redit and Twitter didn't restrict their API use because of LLMs. Meta haven't locked down Instagram because of LLMs. they do it because they need people locked into their ecosystem. LLMs are just the latest way to scrape data, but the practice isn't new. Search engines did it before. And before then, it was just people leeching off other people's work. This is a tale as old as the web. And I remember it well, having been both a web developer and user of the web since 1994.
Lets also not forget all the attempts that Microsoft took to try and control the internet and how AOL had their own walled gardens too. Yahoo had a plethora of cool features, most of which weren't available without a Yahoo account. And so on and so forth.
Walled gardens are not a recent phenomenon.
> In the past, I've often looked at Facebook posts without logging in.
You're misremembering. Literally the only reason I have a Facebook account because I needed to check someone's profile and couldn't without signing up. This was back in the early to mid 00s (I can't recall exactly when, but it was long before Facebook was a household name. Back when MySpace was still cool and before Twitter was launched)
I know people want to blame AI for everything that goes wrong these days be that simply isn't the reason that platforms lock down. They do it because thats how you make money. You either:
1. lock down and charge people for access
or
2. lock down and sell your user data
(or, depressingly too often, both)
Giving people free and anonymous access isn't profitable. It wasn't before and it still isn't now. AI hasn't changed that.
What AI has changed is the increase in invasive bot detection on sites that don't monetise anonymous access.
> Redit and Twitter didn't restrict their API use because of LLMs. Meta haven't locked down Instagram because of LLMs. they do it because they need people locked into their ecosystem.
Yet the recent wave of API & public site lockdowns were mostly kicked off when Musk took over Twitter, and he publicly stated that a big reason was using the data for AI training. Similarly, platforms like Reddit have started selling access to that data for the same purpose.
> LLMs are just the latest way to scrape data, but the practice isn't new. Search engines did it before.
LLMs aren't used to scrape data, they're trained on that scraped data. When search engines did it, it was useful for the sites, since it lead people to them. With LLMs they no longer have to visit the sites, which is why the platforms want to monetize their data directly.
> You're misremembering. Literally the only reason I have a Facebook account because I needed to check someone's profile and couldn't without signing up. This was back in the early to mid 00s (I can't recall exactly when, but it was long before Facebook was a household name. Back when MySpace was still cool and before Twitter was launched)
It's a bit ridiculous to tell me I'm misremembering when you're talking about a different feature. Yes, to look at most profile data you needed (need?) to be logged in. But you could view public posts without logging in as long as you had the link, I used to do that for various types of communities explicitly after I'd deleted my Facebook account.
> Giving people free and anonymous access isn't profitable. It wasn't before and it still isn't now. AI hasn't changed that.
Literally most of the web is open, for free and anonymously, and is profitable due to ads & selling visitor data. This is changing because 1) people are no longer visiting the pages, they're instead asking LLM clients, and 2) free and anonymous access is getting harder due to sites getting hammered by crawlers for LLM training purposes. This has been in the news a lot over the last few months.
> Yet the recent wave of API & public site lockdowns were mostly kicked off when Musk took over Twitter, and he publicly stated that a big reason was using the data for AI training. Similarly, platforms like Reddit have started selling access to that data for the same purpose.
Exactly. LLMs aren't the cause of that change.
> LLMs aren't used to scrape data, they're trained on that scraped data.
Clearly I know that. My point wasn't that LLMs are literally scraping the sites but instead making the differentiation between scraping that happened before LLMs and scraping that happened after.
> When search engines did it, it was useful for the sites, since it lead people to them. With LLMs they no longer have to visit the sites, which is why the platforms want to monetize their data directly.
Actually, that's not always true. Search engines have included snippets from sites for years and that's also been a well-discussed point of contention.
Then there's also Google's attempt to switch people to AMP to further lock people into Google's walled garden. I accept this isn't quite the same thing but it's still an example of how search engines fight to prevent people from leaving their ecosystem.
Some sites, like MSN, literally host news articles from others sites on their own site too. I'm sure Microsoft has an agreement to do this, but it's yet another example of how companies try to lock visitors into their own site.
I accept the AMP and MSN examples are tangential, but they do still illustrate the same point I'm making about how it's not a new thing for platforms to use dark patterns to keep people from navigating away from their platform. This isn't something new that's happened in the last couple of years.
> It's a bit ridiculous to tell me I'm misremembering when you're talking about a different feature
Would you rather I just said you were citing falsehoods like you accused me of?
Also I'm not talking about a different feature. I'm talking about the exact same stuff I was talking about from my original comment in this thread.
> Yes, to look at most profile data you needed (need?) to be logged in. But you could view public posts without logging in as long as you had the link, I used to do that for various types of communities explicitly after I'd deleted my Facebook account.
So you agree that platforms have locked content down and this isn't a recent phenomenon then ;)
Making the distinction between profile data and public comments is a little strained when it's clear that Facebook has invested heavily into their walled garden and the vast majority of content on Facebook has always been hidden behind that walled garden.
> Literally most of the web is open, for free and anonymously, and is profitable due to ads & selling visitor data.
Smaller sites make money from ads. But we were talking about big platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Sites that make money from ads are just making small change compared to platforms.
> This is changing because 1) people are no longer visiting the pages, they're instead asking LLM clients, and 2) free and anonymous access is getting harder due to sites getting hammered by crawlers for LLM training purposes. This has been in the news a lot over the last few months.
This I do agree with. But that wasn't the statement that was originally made. Those sites will remain open or shutdown entirely. They're not going to go private ala Twitter and Instagram. Their business model is entirely different -- often intentionally not run as a business in the first place. Sometimes just passion projects with no ads and/or run at a loss.
The part I was disagreeing with was that the dark patterns seen in Instagram et al are a result of the rise of LLMs. That simply isn't true.
Also Facebook feeds weren’t even a feature back before Twitter was around. Zuckerberg added it to compete with Twitter. So you couldn’t even access “public feeds” in the mid-00s because no such thing existed.
Following an Insta link gives me a dismissible login modal, but still shows the linked page when dismissed. Following any link becomes login only unless you right click to open link in new. Now it does the same previous behavior. I don’t use Insta, only when every now and then someone sends me a link with what looks like might be some other interesting post, but the game becomes boring and and I just close the tab
I have been bitten more than once thinking that my initial assumption was correct, diving deeper and deeper - only to realize I had to ascend and look outside of the rabbit hole to find the actual issue.
This is how I view debugging, aligning my mental model with how the system actually works. Assumptions are bugs in the mental model. The problem is conflating what is knowledge with what is an assumption.
When playing Captain Obvious (i.e. the human rubber duck) with other devs, every time they state something to be true my response is, "prove it!" It's amazing how quickly you find bugs when somebody else is making you question your assumptions.
It's really a pretty strong web of trust system, if you know anyone who's volunteered previous years there are vouchers floating around by word of mouth.
If you don't know anyone in the community, purchasing a ticket online is a crapshoot. IMO this is a feature not a bug.
1) Volunteers (who worked 15+ hrs on last congress for free) get two tickets with priority.
2) Hackerspaces get a number of tickets with priority, thru replicating tickets (you can only buy one per day). The amount of replicating tickets given depends on size of area (a hackerspace can be tasked with giving vouchers to relevant people in their city). There's a limited quantity of these tickets, separate from amount of vouchers.
The main point of the congress is primarily to bring the chaos crowd together, then the rest of interested parties. That model may not fit your vision, but chaos events year after year succeed at not leaving out the core crowd.
Also, this year I have bought 2 tickets on public sale for friends without issues (best way to get tickets is to group up with your friends).
It's always taken high effort to buy tickets for c3, needing to be exactly on time (not 30 seconds late) to each sale round.
37c3 was an exception due to low sales, caused by skepticism in the event returning after years of not happening. This year that trust was regained and buying tickets became hard again.
For me the price of accommodation is pretty prohibitive. It's one of the most expensive times of the year and Germany is also one of the most expensive countries in Europe. I've looked at it once but the hotels were too expensive for me (I think it was in Hamburg then).
But it's ok, I can watch it online. I don't like travelling during this busy period anyway.
It's an option for those on a tight budget aka "beggars can't be choosers". Hotels are a lot cheaper if you book a (fully) refundable stay months in advance instead of waiting until you have a ticket.
True but I'm in Spain. Last time I looked a hotel or guesthouse was around 200€ a night which is really a lot for me. Of course this is a time when lots of people travel.
But I didn't mean to complain, just to say it's not only the ticket availability that's a factor.
And this is not something the organisation can help of course. It's a German event so of course it's in Germany. And the tickets themselves are well priced.
And like I said, I really appreciate them making everything available online.
I do tend to go to the Dutch hacker camps that are being held once every 4 years.
Other way around: Easier tickets is an incentive for volunteers, as a bit of a payment in kind. It helps people known to volunteer come back, and it encourages them to keep volunteering year after year. You need to work, honestly, ridiculous amounts of hours to get a voucher (15-20 hours), and so it'd not be a very good incentive for average person.
You can absolutely get tickets on public sales by knowing when sales start, refreshing on the dot and doing the captcha as fast as you can. Reducing your latency (ethernet, fresh browser profile without extensions) helps. Add some friends into the mix and you'll get all the tickets you need.
Tickets are not that hard to get and you are not required to do anything once you have one.
I believe some core orga members (aka The people contracting the venue, getting permissions and renting equipment etc) are guaranteed a ticket but almost everybody else has to buy their own.
The fact that the "hacker space community" gets preferential treatment is very much intended.
From what I have heard it used to be quite easy to get tickets in the previous post-pandemic years. Before the pandemic and especially before Leipzig it used to be very hard sometimes.
Now is the first year that seems to me where demand picked up it was not a given to get a ticket. This might have contributed to find the system unfair.
I think it was a number of reasons, covid was one of them.
- Congress on years where there's cccamp tends to be planned by people who are understandably more exhausted. 37c3 and cccamp23 were on same year and 37c3 slogan was appropriately "resource extension".
- The venue was back from Leipzig to Hamburg (CCH was doing renovations for a while, so it was moved to CCL for a few years).
- 4 years between events lead to both changes in the orga people, and general concern that the older set of people had been at this point less familiar with running an event of this scale ("can they still do it and make it feel the same?").
- Covid precautions were a divisive topic. Some didn't want precautions, some wanted more precautions. Ultimately some measures were taken, but none were mandatory. We have distributed free tests and masks last year, we'll do it again this year, though mainly aimed at volunteers, so you should bring your own mask and test if you can, see the info page^1 for full recommendations :)
All this lead to people being unsure if 37c3 would be good and not coming. But I think that trust has since been regained, seeing as this year sold out really fast (same as past years).
I think one other issue was that chaos community is getting older and many are having families, which makes going to congress between christmas and NYE difficult. We did, imo, really good outreach since then and now there's more young people joining chaos communities again. Still, coming to congress is costlier for younger people that earn less (175eur for ticket but cheaper options are available on request, plus 400-600eur in hotels, plus trains/flights/visas etc).
(I was/am part of the infection protection team at 37c3 and 38c3 but am speaking on personal capacity.)
Also curios, since I got 3 trickets for me and friends. It's as always, go somewhere with a good ping, refresh at the specific time. Worked in every sale..
If you are part of a hacker space you could always get tickets through that quite easily. I think it’s great that they are supporting their original core audience like that.
Those hacker spaces only get a limited contingent too, and the hacker space will expect you to help set up their assembly if you get the ticket through them.
I can't help but read your "will expect you to help" part as trying to say something negative. But if they helped you get a ticket, helping them for an hour or two to setup their space feels like the least you could do.
Yes, limited contingent, but that's also expected with a limited number of seats at the congress. I'm part of two hacker spaces and none of them expected any help with setting up their assembly.
Have you checked if they have an open day? Many have a dedicated public day every week where you can just drop by and if you are interested someone will probably happily assist you with becoming a member.
Otherwise joining their IRC and asking there could also be an option.
The only way accommodate more attendees and grow would have been to move permanently to a fairground like Leipzig. Unfortunately, there seems to be no willingness to do so. I found the Leipzig events phenomenal and would like to understand the reasons behind this decision, but can only find speculation.. maybe fairgrounds are simply too expensive?
Leipzig’s hotel situation is worse due to having to connect to the fairground outside town. However, due to Leipzigs location at the intersection of two major historic European trade routes (fyi: via imperii and via regia, still has the largest head railway station in Europe), it has much better connections than Hamburg to the rest of Germany and Europe, including Berlin. Also Leipzig (and the fairground itself) have train connections to three airports including BER..
Shoot for sub 10 seconds. A gif. People’s attention spans are much, much, much shorter than that. Think 1-2 seconds. I think if you can’t get the idea across in 1-10 seconds you lose 99% of watchers
People who aren't interested leave early. This has nothing to do with attention span. If you cut it to just a few seconds, then yes more people will watch the whole thing, but that doesn't mean more people will get anything out of it, it's just they don't have time to move on before it's over.
I think you're missing the fact that interest can be piqued by a good video, it is not predecided if someone is interested in a particular product or not
I think part of the solution might be acceptance, that you can accept the situation and “forgive” the offender - which will relieve yourself of your feelings towards them, allowing yourself to let go and move on.
