They have done so already for a few subs where a few of the mods were willing to budge. In others, all mods were removed and the subs were made restricted.
If people want to crawl back into Meta's clutches I'm not going to stop them. Don't give the one nice thing we have to a corporation that only wants to exploit us.
It's not that the votes don't count, it's that Reddit uses a particular technique where the karma you see is randomly modified every time to make it impossible to see if your vote has an effect.
The goal is to prevent bots from realizing when they have been shadow banned. It makes it easier to control automated vote manipulation since bots will just make a new account if they realize they're banned.
They will not do anything overtly malicious. But, in 5-10 years the entire fediverse will be under their control:
First, they will be early adopters, they will provide insane amounts of funds to improve the platform and ecosystem.
As the platform improves and the user base grows, they'll start pushing for additional features to the standard under the guise of improvements. Even if the standard doesn't accept the changes, if the biggest platform does, it becomes the defacto standard.
New features will be introduced faster than anyone else can develop them, essentially shutting competitors down. They will also start offering proprietary services to form an ecosystem under their control.
Once they control the pie, they'll make it increasingly difficult for small instances to operate via things like security updates and increasing the prices of their now essential services. Of course, this won't affect them.
At this point, the decentralized, free, and open fediverse will effectively be fully under the control of Meta.
This is not speculation. This happened with chrome and web browsers. This is happening with GitHub/VSCode and Microsoft. This is how tech giants expand.
Companies like Reddit are expected to be non profitable for some years. It's why they rely on VC funds in the first place.
However, they are expected to become profitable at some point. Which is what Reddit is "working" towards right now.
The problem is that the CEO let Reddit's value be stolen when he let Reddit's data be harvested for AI training purposes. The bigger problem is that his solution to that problem was to hurt Reddit's user experience. And the biggest problem was that in response to users being pissed off, he picked a fight with Reddit's most valuable and cheapest asset: mods.
They don't want to deal with the legal implications of it. Spez has said ad nauseum that they don't want to risk 3PA providing NSFW content to users that Reddit is not allowed to serve because they don't want to be held responsible for that. Especially now that some US states are requiring actual ID verification for 18+ content.
While Spez is a lying weasel, I don't doubt that Reddit is worried about NSFW-related lawsuits, bad press, and ad revenue impact.
And, the next step after having control of the content is to further restrict it.
For example, leather in second hand products it's great because it's durable and often high quality. And, whatever you do, the animal has already been killed and paid for.
I would also buy leather products if it's for something that I intend to use for many years. It sort of offsets the environmental damage from buying multiple synthetic products.
They are not power tripping, if you've read their posts you'd know that they have a very concrete view of the story of community they want to build and unfortunately their manpower and moderation tools just don't allow them to stick to it while staying federated with rapidly growing communities.
Users are people capable of making their own choices. It they don't like the moderation approach they can just make a new account elsewhere. You don't get to tell them what they like.
They have done so already for a few subs where a few of the mods were willing to budge. In others, all mods were removed and the subs were made restricted.
Because for some piracy isn't simply about being a cheapskate but also about activism
If people want to crawl back into Meta's clutches I'm not going to stop them. Don't give the one nice thing we have to a corporation that only wants to exploit us.
This is not exactly true.
It's not that the votes don't count, it's that Reddit uses a particular technique where the karma you see is randomly modified every time to make it impossible to see if your vote has an effect.
The goal is to prevent bots from realizing when they have been shadow banned. It makes it easier to control automated vote manipulation since bots will just make a new account if they realize they're banned.
It was one of my favourite subs. No drama, little to no politics, engaging content. Shame.
What privacy? Everything here is it in the open for everyone to see
Think of it as a mailing list. There's a bunch of people in it getting updates from others. Some use Gmail, others use outlook, others Yahoo, etc.
We need Accidental Renaissance here
Reddit: you must do what the community wants
Reddit: no, not like that
Sync is a popular third party app for Reddit.
MVP means minimum viable product. Basically, the simplest thing that will do the job.
They will not do anything overtly malicious. But, in 5-10 years the entire fediverse will be under their control:
First, they will be early adopters, they will provide insane amounts of funds to improve the platform and ecosystem.
As the platform improves and the user base grows, they'll start pushing for additional features to the standard under the guise of improvements. Even if the standard doesn't accept the changes, if the biggest platform does, it becomes the defacto standard.
New features will be introduced faster than anyone else can develop them, essentially shutting competitors down. They will also start offering proprietary services to form an ecosystem under their control.
Once they control the pie, they'll make it increasingly difficult for small instances to operate via things like security updates and increasing the prices of their now essential services. Of course, this won't affect them.
At this point, the decentralized, free, and open fediverse will effectively be fully under the control of Meta.
This is not speculation. This happened with chrome and web browsers. This is happening with GitHub/VSCode and Microsoft. This is how tech giants expand.
In a text post, yeah. Not in a link post
Makes sense. SE is profit driven. They want to be at the top of the list when people Google stuff.
For a service like this tho, is that really that big of an issue?
Companies like Reddit are expected to be non profitable for some years. It's why they rely on VC funds in the first place.
However, they are expected to become profitable at some point. Which is what Reddit is "working" towards right now.
The problem is that the CEO let Reddit's value be stolen when he let Reddit's data be harvested for AI training purposes. The bigger problem is that his solution to that problem was to hurt Reddit's user experience. And the biggest problem was that in response to users being pissed off, he picked a fight with Reddit's most valuable and cheapest asset: mods.
I was afraid they were trying to turn Reddit into TikTok. Turns out it's worse, they are trying to turn it into Pinterest 🤢
They don't want to deal with the legal implications of it. Spez has said ad nauseum that they don't want to risk 3PA providing NSFW content to users that Reddit is not allowed to serve because they don't want to be held responsible for that. Especially now that some US states are requiring actual ID verification for 18+ content.
While Spez is a lying weasel, I don't doubt that Reddit is worried about NSFW-related lawsuits, bad press, and ad revenue impact.
And, the next step after having control of the content is to further restrict it.
It's a political torus. Walk of one end and you end up in the other
It has its place.
For example, leather in second hand products it's great because it's durable and often high quality. And, whatever you do, the animal has already been killed and paid for.
I would also buy leather products if it's for something that I intend to use for many years. It sort of offsets the environmental damage from buying multiple synthetic products.
Then again, I'm not vegan.
They are not power tripping, if you've read their posts you'd know that they have a very concrete view of the story of community they want to build and unfortunately their manpower and moderation tools just don't allow them to stick to it while staying federated with rapidly growing communities.
Users are people capable of making their own choices. It they don't like the moderation approach they can just make a new account elsewhere. You don't get to tell them what they like.