This is hilarious tbh. Please don’t get me wrong, I really feel for the mods who put so much time and energy into the sub (all subs for that matter). It sucks.
But god, watching reddit implode feels so fucking good. Spez is an abrasive asshole and, it turns out, also a moron, and it’s nice to see his web site fall from grace so publicly.
I don't think it will. They will go with the "single greatest resource for AI data" angle and make bank. They aren't ignoring this backlash just to kill some apps.
Yeah, which is precisely why it's important to ruin the product with random spam, racism, overly sexual comments, lorem ipsum and for good measure some fetish porn and gore images.
Wasn't Microsoft training an AI from Twitter and it basically turned into the aforementioned garbage?
I doubt that companies would enjoy to train their models on a foul dataset filled with nonsense, hatred, porn and gore.
Spez is an abrasive asshole and, it turns out, also a moron
Is he really abrasive? I haven't seen him say anything outside of what I'd expect an exec of a company to say.
Is he really a moron? Dude is walking away with a lot of zeros in his bank account. From what I can tell, it sounds like he's pretty happy with the outcome.
I'm not supporting him, but assuming he makes money from it, it would be childish to call him "dumb".
People aren't smart because they stumbled into a handful of zeros. Everyone blows Musk but he was just born into blood diamond money. He didn't actually do anything. Neither did Spez, he just makes money off other people's content.
Strip all these CEOs of their extra zeros, strip them of their user generated content, then ask them to rebuild their wealth by actually providing a good or service and watch them flop.
See, that's the thing. I'm not a fan of Musk or Spez, and I never claimed to be.
Ultimately I think Elon Musk gets a ludicrous amount of attention.
My whole point was that (a) it seems like Spez doesn't care, which really begs the question of how much energy this is worth investing in and (b) people in his position often get what they want (money) because they have to deal with this exact kind of situation.
If Reddit dies, it dies, and I'll consider myself wrong. If Spez totally gets owned and loses, great!
Either way, I think it's ok to move on.
I also wouldn't be surprised if they expected this reaction.
Anyway, Lemmy is fine; it's a nice alternative. I'd rather just let Reddit go in whatever direction it ends up going in than keep getting angry about it.
I'm glad that there is an alternative. Maybe we can try and learn from Reddit and do what we can to prevent Lemmy from going in that direction, yeah?
They successfully navigated a system that was more likely than not highly stacked in their favor thanks to their rich family and the other people like them that they know. They then horde all the wealth while other people who can't get their teeth fixed or decent medical treatment applaud them from the slums. It's pretty depressing how this is all considered normal thanks to right-wing influence on social media.
Most likely one of their great grandparents embezzeled, smuggled, lied, betrayed, killed, or stole to get rich and the person you are dealing with has not done jack squat.
That's actually the whole point of this Reddit shakeup, Spez is taking marching orders from Musk to chase off everyone who wants a functioning platform so he can just monetize not banning you for using racial slurs as the primary selling point.
Spez is a liar, a cheat and a habitual editor of comments that insult him. He’s also incredibly petty and rude.
is he really a moron?
He hired 2,000 employees to run a site like Reddit, has effectively destroyed the website’s image and the ongoing protests have revealed to people why it’s such a shitty investment.
His riches are all luck, not brains; he can’t even sell one of the most visited sites in the world without gutting it first.
I haven't seen him say anything outside of what I'd expect an exec of a company to say.
Then you really haven't been paying any attention whatsoever.
For example, do you honestly expect a company exec, on the eve of an IPO, to tell a news reporter "We've never made any profit" on the site that's been billed as "the front page of the internet" for at least a decade, with hundreds of millions of users? That's a smart executive business move to you?
They are not smart for the future of reddit and its users. Not to mention the effect of destroying the knowledge transfer and denying people the curated resources to improve their lives.
I'm not saying his actions are smart. I'm saying they're not "dumb". I'm saying they're practically expected.
That's the environment we're working with at the moment.
He made a play that got him what he wanted at the expense of the interests of Reddit's users.
So did Zuckerberg with Facebook. So did Tim Cook with Apple.
This is nothing new - it's the same old, battered story of a CEO fucking over its users for their own gain as well as the gain of their shareholders.
They do not care about long term outcomes. They can afford to not care. They do not give a fuck about anything that you give a fuck about, and they definitely don't play by the rules you play by.
Calling them "dumb" is like throwing a rock at a killer robot who's out to destroy you: not only does it do absolutely fucking nothing, you just spent energy and time that went nowhere.
And then you have the people telling the rock throwers not to do that, but then the rock throwers flip out and throw rocks at them.
The idea that forcing subs to go "dark" is going to reverse anything is also ludicrous.
They can do whatever the fuck they want with Reddit, and they have their reasons (good or bad, for better or worse).
They also don't care what you have to say about it, because at this point, your interests are fundamentally at odds with theirs.
They knew that a certain type of user would leave, they knew that a certain type would stay. They took a calculated risk, knowing that subs would do something like go private.
But they also knew that there were more than enough users who would stay, and that those users, based on countless analytics, would be willing to put up with their changes.
Because that's a large part of how decisions are made these days. Because that's now how the world works.
So, no. They're not dumb. They're acting entirely as expected; they're going to walk away with money, and because so few are so attached to Reddit that they care enough to childishly moan about its fate on the Internet, Reddit will slowly whither, while they continue to profit.
All that can be done by people who are unhappy is prevent people like them from gaining control over any alternatives.
Stopping Meta from entering the Fediverse would be a step in the right direction.