• slazer2au
    220•8 months ago

    Did the actual comments fall or did the tool get hit by the API change?

    • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
      68•8 months ago

      That depends on how it’s written. The fact that it’s not showing zero completely makes me think they’d been iterating over threads counting comments, and they’re hitting API limits. But that’s just a blind guess without having looked at their source code.

        • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
          19•8 months ago

          If they’re only able to get the comment counts for a smaller number of threads, those individual numbers would be noisy but lower.

          For example, before they got 100 threads with counts ranging from 0-100. Now they only get 10 threads with the same range of counts.

          • @Fades@lemmy.worldEnglish
            10•8 months ago

            Yes but then what? When you hit the API limit you’re fucking done… There should be big gaps every time this scenario triggers unless what, they have api keys for each sub or something lol

            As of July 1, 2023, we will enforce two different rate limits for those eligible for free access usage of our Data API. The limits are:
            If you are using OAuth for authentication: 100 queries per minute (QPM) per OAuth client id If you are not using OAuth for authentication: 10 QPM

            QPM limits will be an average over a time window (currently 10 minutes) to support bursting requests.

            https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16160319875092-Reddit-Data-API-Wiki

            so maybe it’s not that bad, depending on what the scheduler looks like but that would slow the entire tool down considerably if they have to wait many minutes each time after hitting a rate limit, which as you say wouldn’t take long with bigger comment sections

    • @DrQuint@lemm.ee
      21•8 months ago

      Funny enough, if it is an API problem, then this is one of the scenarios that a scrapper could easily solve the issue and grant accurate results again. A playwright script written by ChatGTP could do it.

      I read reddit with a client that uses a scrapper now. The fuck is reddit gonna do, block Chromium? They said they wanted to stop this, well, congrats, they started it instead.

      • @Traegs@lemmy.world
        14•8 months ago

        ReVanced can patch most of the popular apps with your own private (free to use) API key.

        Step by step guide if you’re interested

        I’m sure Reddit is seeing private key usage sky rocketing on their end since ReVanced released these patches. Whether or not Reddit chooses to do anything about it remains to be seen, but I can’t help but wonder how long it will last.

        Nowadays I still stick with Lemmy for general scrolling and only go to Reddit for my niche subreddits that don’t have active equivalents here.

    • @bizarrocullen@lemmy.world
      16•8 months ago

      Yes, a big factor, many users gradually left the site after the API changed. Also the sub mods have become increasingly ban-happy in the recent years.

      • @Camilo@discuss.tchncs.de
        5•8 months ago

        While you may be correct, I think op was referring to the the tool that counts the comments for this chart.

        It maybe used the APIs to count comments and that’s why the sudden drop in the comments count. It just can’t count them as reliably anymore.

        But it’s just a guess.

      • Uranium3006
        1•8 months ago

        The admins are banning anyone whi questions a mod these days, assuming they’re not puppets of them in the first place. Any sembalence of a distinction between mods and admins is gone

    • gullible
      8•8 months ago

      Subredditstats logs about 1/4 of the comments posted on a given subreddit. Pick any small subreddit and check its comments to verify for yourself. Takes about a minute. 25 comments/page. Old.reddit.com/r/____/comments