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Microsoft is Locking Down Search for Public Code on GitHub
(news.itsfoss.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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Companies are putting moats around their data (or the data they host) because AI needs data to train its models on. It is the same reason Reddit changed their API access.
I'll even wager 20 imaginary internet coins that Wikipedia will require logins to do any searching within the next year.
I'll take that bet. Being a community-driven non-profit, Wikipedia is different.
I don't buy that as the reddit reason for their API change.
For a group that wants to feed AI models, web scraping reddit is barely a speed bump compared to having a nice API to use.
Reddit did what it did to force users onto their mobile app so they could better harvest user data and keep them from avoiding ads.
This made me go check on OpenRed, a reddit app for iOS that didn’t use the API (a more than likely no-no - scraping the site, essentially).
Not only is it missing from the App Store, but the dev and his subreddit were both banned.
It’s crazy how long Reddit was such a huge part of my life and then just like that, doesn’t exist.
The only thing I miss are the videos.
Videos don’t get traction here it seems.
In this case I don't think that's the reason. All code on github is not Microsoft's data, is open source and easily downloadable by whoever needs it to train the models.
This is an inconvenience only for humans to force them to have an account