So the same MO as always. To take a stranglehold of the internet. "Creators" or "influencers" or whatever buzzword will be all over this as it's an opportunity to monetize. I'm sure reddit corporate will be taking their piece of rent seeking of course.
The bigger implication that everyone always ignores is that this is going to lock users into the walled garden. Up to now posters have been driving people off site. The comic artists are a good example. They post their comics as image posts. They direct people off site to access more content. They will no doubt jump on the chance to have a paid subreddit. This is an attempt to kill off whatever sites the artist use. If they had some other service providing monetization then that company is probably panicking a little right now.
I'm certain those replies are in bad faith to discourage people from leaving reddit. The first one is obvious for your aforemention reason. The second one. I mean the internet has been around for decades. People haven't suddenly forgot how to use it. Even normies have been able to figure out how to click a server. They're fomenting lazy inertia.
People are still thinking in 20th century. The 21st century tech oligarchs are more powerful than nations. They control digital infrastructure. The ones who own social platforms can incite civil unrest. They control the algorithmic knobs of the population.
It's literally in your face how obvious it is. Musk has Trump cowering at the Resolute desk. The most powerful seat in the world.
I think people must be in denial. Trying to justify with some other reasonings other than what is. Musk isn't an asset. It isn't a side business. He's taken over the world superpower. Nation states aren't the highest theater anymore. It's tech oligarchs.
There isn't a 4-8 back and forth cycle anymore. This paradigm no longer exists because the GOP has abdicated. It took the two parties to agree on this unwritten understanding.
The Dems are continuing to muddle around under the guise that a bygone era of decorum still exists... That maybe the old Republican party will come back. After each Dem term, MAGA will continue to do whatever the fuck they're doing with reckless abandon. They know the Dems are cucked. One or both disappears as a party. We're past that point for the GOP as it's clear MAGA isn't an aberration of 2016. So it must be the Dems re-invent themselves as something that can actually challenge MAGA.
This isn't just a setback for Democrats. This needs to be a realization that the Dems are no longer a viable party. Sure on paper and in a bottle they are indeed a political party. Not one that is going to rise to the challenges.
People have been wondering if the party will be listless if Trump dies. Maybe that's when MAGA finally reverts to the old Republicans. It's clear now it won't. They'll elect a puppet president. The real president will be Musk or who ever else manages to worm their way in.
It's been like that since 2016. You're saying it's gotten worse? Oh well.
Besides. Belligerent conservatives have always been a core component of reddit. Doesn't anyone remember much the left leaning atheism type of users were ridiculed. What I find more interesting than anything is how everyone even leftists accept the default view that reddit is center to left. While everything right leaning is a minority and an aberration. They're not seen as actual reddit for some reason. Spoken of as if conservatives are outsiders. It's bizarre. Old reddits favorite politician was Ron Paul. They were a bunch of Ayn Rand loving pseuds. How the hell does anyone get the remote idea that reddit is historically anything but at least right of center.
By the way Musk bots have been on reddit for a long time. Once upon a time the mods of /r/technology tried to limit the amount of musk posts on that subreddit. Otherwise they would be flooding the top posts of the subreddit all the time. The musk bots caused quite a scene. I think it led to that subreddit getting removed as a default. I might be remembering wrong though.
It did happen before the IPO. It's been happening for several years. They have not been doing mass bans all at once. They've been surreptitiously taking down subreddits over the years. Mostly smaller ones that woujldn't draw much attetnion. Looks like they went for the bigger targets now.
This isn't a sudden change to ideologically align with the current US administration either. They have been at this for a long time.
It's schrodingers social media platform. Simultaneously had an impact on the zeitgeist and none at all. Objectively speaking it did. The thing about reddit is it's the one that everybody uses but nobody talks about using. So people have developed this strange cognitive dissonance. Where reddit seems to exist but also did not... because it's required that reddit was peoples secret hideout so it can't have been too popular because that would ruin its historical cachet.
And now the phenomenon has morphed into some other strange beast. Where reddit is right now undeniably a popular platform so that dichotomy can't hold up anymore. Now people refer to reddit in the third person while being redditors themselves. Lately it's very obvious seeing on reddit the users referring to "reddit" as if they aren't themselves a part of it. This post is a very example of the phenomenon. Conservatives screeching about a fictionalized "reddit" in their head that is some kind of far left caricature. A thing that never existed. This kind of thing cuts across all kinds of intersections. People using "reddit" as a label for whatever the other side of the argument they have in their head with zero self awareness that they are "reddit" themselves.
The reality is that reddit is a sibling platform to 4chan. You cannot separate /pol/ from 4chan any more than you can separate the far right parts from reddit. To say reddit is left wing is as delusional to say 4chan is left wing. One can point to the lgbt board on 4chan and say, "look it's the lefties". Some how that is more digestible than selectively picking some lgbt subreddits as proof that reddit is left echo chamber.
The venn diagram of reddit, 4chan, and any given social media platform is a lot closer than people want to admit. Because apparently reddit is a secret that everyone has but nobody wants to cop to. And it's also everyone's favorite strawman. Except when it comes time to talk about the impact its had on the world. Then poof it doesn't exist at all.
Dear Penthouse Forum reddit, I'm a 20 year-old college student and I never thought I'd be writing to the Penthouse Forum reddit, but...
It's the lowest common denominator of smut entertainment. The tech companies have managed to veil it all in prestige. It should be called gossip media or something.
Instead people think there's some kind of real human connection. Some kind of deep discussions happening.
Yeah obviously we've completely lost the plot a long time ago. Nobody even remembers when tech was bands of ragtag nerds making something out of nothing. Now they are the rich whose only purpose to is extract more wealth. Tech what? Who even knows anymore.
That includes the average tech workers. If that angers you then you're lost too.
Nobody has noticed that there's more bragging about compensation than accomplishments. It used to be the other way around. Nerds eagerly showing off to anyone who will listen about whatever thing they cooked up. It's been this way for the past long time long before this LLM AI era.
Well bluetooth doesn't carry enough bitrate to accomplish this. Besides. Apple won't and doesn't need to because their AAC encoder is superior. There is no other bluetooth codec that comes even close. Every codec that claims to be the best one yet is more marketing than anything.
Vendors reframed the narrative for SBC to be dog shit so they can push their own as cutting edge new tech. In reality SBC isn't that bad. The vendor codecs aren't that good. And Apple has some kind of secret sauce in their AAC encoder that results in really good quality reproduction of audio.
As far as I've seen most of the gimmicky codecs are spins of existing old technology. AAC itself is old too but at least one vendor Apple has focused on making their implementation good. We don't need another standard+1. We just need a common standard done well. If only Apple would open theirs.
Nothing happened. The generational war another facet of culture war. It doesn't make sense because you have to ask what the fuck happened to Gen X? Why don't they fit into the picture? Why doesn't the data add up? That should tell you something. Your experiment is flawed. The culture war doesn't make sense.
Yeah it worked for the first part of internet history. You talked to people from all over the world.
Now people use the internet like a carnival freak show exhibition. They don't talk to others. They scroll to gawk at what oddities and tap the glass and jeer at the inhuman thing. Social media is designed this way.
The world has been in a gigantic psychological experiment.