Reddit Orders ‘SaveVideo’ Bot to Shut Down or Face Lawsuit
u/SaveVideo was a Reddit video downloader bot that helped users download and save videos from Reddit. The service was used by millions of people but according to its operator has now shut down following an ultimatum from Reddit. "The gods of Reddit have decided and I am obliged to obey or risk a lawsuit," SaveVideo announced yesterday.
Reddit is one of the most popular sites on the Internet, ranking 19th in the world and 8th in the United States according to Alexa data.
The social sharing website is built around users submitting text, images, and videos, allowing users to vote on content and pushing the most popular items to the top. While much of Reddit’s content is hosted externally, millions of items of multimedia content are hosted locally – unless users make use of services designed to help them download it to their own machines.
When locally-hosted videos appear on Reddit, users can call on help from so-called ‘downloader bots’. These automated tools allow people to download videos and similar content to their own machines, meaning that they can be viewed without the use of Reddit. Once liberated, this content can also be uploaded to other platforms, if the user desires.
