this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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Technology
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It appears as if reddit is trying so hard to fuck everyone off the site. And yet so many people aren't paying attention and just visit it every time.
They should just make a new landing page: "We don't want you here! Go somewhere else!"
Reddit has so many users now, that they can filter out everyone who is in the very least problematic or not fully profitable, and still sell ads to millions.
That's not how greed works, nor how reddit works.
The only time they'll do something that reduces profits is when they're confident it will mean more profits in the near future (and they can't figure out a way to have both).
That's why they were happy to platform mask off neo-nazis, the dangerously stupid and communities dedicated to getting as close to child pornography as possible without technically breaking any laws and why they waited until the last possible moment to pull the plug on them.
That's when they were in the "growing" phase, they used every tactic in the book, or even slightly off the book, to increase their numbers.
Now they're in a "distilling" phase, where they can get rid of the unwanted 1% to end up with a 99% pure zombie base whose ad consumption won't get interrupted by some undesirable critical thinking.
After they enroll enough ad purchasers or "content creators", they'll go into a "squeezing" phase, possibly after the IPO, where they will tighten the monetization mechanics in search of a balance between maximizing ad revenue and alienating advertisers... until they overtightened it, and go bust... only for another zombie-targetting platform to take their place.
Wash, rinse, repeat! The online golden days are far behind us.
Momentum is hard to change
Reddit has high inertia 👍
I mean it literally does. It's the same reason Twitter hasn't completely imploded yet, despite Musk doing his best to turn it into a cesspit. People stay on it because it has lots of people and their niche subs, which makes it harder for people to leave and coalesce in new areas and recreate niche subs, which feeds into the cycle
Agree 👍
And some would say Elon succeeded with the cesspit.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they are doing it to block AI from hoovering up all of their data.
To block AI from hoovering up all our data, without paying them.
Are AI using VPNs now?
Those little buggers!
I Imagine they’ll use whatever connections are provided to them by their AI overlords.
The VPn may be necessary if their IP address ranges are being blocked, or it could be to get around an API limit?
More likely, they blocked IP addresses belonging to a cloud service provider which happened to also be used by the VPN service.