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AtheistAndroid ,

The answer is AI. Amongst other things. Reddit is about to go public and wants everyone on their main app for advertising and tracking. Twitter is dealing with hosting issues with Google.

Plus AI companies are extracting content from Twitter and Reddit to train their AI models like chatGPT which is a huge money maker, and these platforms aren’t getting any money from it so they’re trying to make it more difficult to get access to it. They want companies like OpenAI and Stability and Microsoft and Google to pay large sums of money for access to their content to train AI on.

PR_freak ,

The thing with AI is that it is both a parasite to the content it is trained on and an alternative to it because people who ask AI don’t ask in forums

These tech giants are searching for a way to keep everyone happy but I honestly don’t see any

Reddit just realized it has been sitting on a pile of gold the entire time and now it wants to reap its rewards

Captain_Nipples ,

Makes me wish there was a way to force them to remove everything I ever posted on their site.

But… It’s their site and I put the shit there. Who knew it would come to this, though?

atretador ,

You can tho

PR_freak ,

You can use powerDeleteSuite to delete everything from your reddit account

ArcaneSlime ,

Word on the street is reddit just restores the comments and posts you mass delete. Haven’t tried myself so I’m not sure but that’s what I’ve been seeing around lemmy.

PR_freak ,

Not in my experience, only a handful of comments were restored after 2 weeks in my account, just delete them manually and you’re good to go

ArcaneSlime ,

Good to know, thanks. I think the people who did have that happen used reddit delete suite or one of those

GoodKingElliot ,
@GoodKingElliot@feddit.uk avatar

I know there have been some programs that rewrite your comments with other content. This makes it so that Reddit can’t restore what you had there originally.

ProffessionalAmateur ,

It’s easy to work around the AI issue by providing the devs an API key for Apollo, RIF, etc. and charging a reasonable price. Instead Spez took the nuclear option like all platforms these days. They don’t give a single fuck about the users.

Anyway it’s been happening for years like others have mentioned. Once stakeholders are involved if you have to ask a question the answer is always money

Poglathegrate ,

All of a sudden?

My dear, sweet summer child.

rob64 ,

I was just thinking yesterday I hadn't heard that phrase in a while...

65gmexl3 OP ,
@65gmexl3@lemmy.world avatar

english is not my first language, maybe I should’ve used a different phrase but my context is recent events

CodeInvasion ,

You used the phrase correctly, and your English is great!

The above commenter was rudely stating that your observation is not correct as it’s has always been this way.

PorradaVFR ,

I’ve worked in the tech sector for a LONG time and have met and worked with some of the most shockingly brilliant and insightful people in my life….and many that are far less so.

As with any population.

Bad decisions, lack of strategy or plain old monetization motivated by greed or a desire to cash out before the cash runs out are sadly commonplace. The method taken says everything about the quality (or lack thereof) of leadership.

Some real stinkers lately.

Fizz ,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

I don’t think it’s all of a sudden. They always do this but this time it’s all lined up.

x7tYnC6c ,

While these changes will eventually happen, as all of these companies are meant to make a profit from the start. The reason they’re all happening now is because of the coming recession, or at least the believe that it will come.

RandallFlagg ,
@RandallFlagg@lemmy.world avatar

There’s a coming recession?

Obi ,
@Obi@sopuli.xyz avatar

Maybe, maybe not. You like betting?

Gradually_Adjusting ,
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.ca avatar

It’s 2008 again. Bad bets taking advantage of dovish monetary policy that has now ended.

rainfern ,

I don’t think reddit started out as a for profit company. iirc it started as some dudes sharing links. I knew a site like that back in the day. Link aggregator and forum made by one dude because he liked the community.

thea ,

i hope that the internet becomes sort of how it used to be, made by the people for the people and ran by the people instead of made by a few huge corporations that sell our data and constantly try and squeeze profit out of their platforms. i love the sense of community in decentralised social media and there seems to be next to no arguments most places. im really enjoying everything so far after joining

maajmaaj ,
@maajmaaj@lemmy.world avatar

Me too. I feel much calmer scrolling through Lemmy as opposed to Reddit or Twitter. I have way less of an urge to troll over here.

CantankerousGay ,

Same. Well I didn’t necessarily troll reddit, but I also had no problem telling bigots where to go or what to suck. Less people to yell at on this platform lol

afraid_of_zombies2 ,

You are the product and right now the product is falling in value. I have known a few people who raise exotic animals and they treated them as nicely as a parent treats their own child. Now compare this to people who raise chickens.

The easy money is drying up. Hence you, the product, are worth less money. I personally don’t really care all that much. The market was due for a correction well over a decade ago. The average person is worth about a dollar to Alphabet and when you think about how much you are getting the numbers never made sense. This dead weight mismatch has been skewing our entire economy. Engineers and project managers that would have gone into tangible items and paid for services instead were recruited to keep you on social media all day.

There are only a finite amount of techies and no one is going to care if slack integrated with Google maps if we are drowning in human sewage.

AlexisFR ,
@AlexisFR@lemmy.world avatar

Don’t worry, YouTube blocking will be easily bypassed, like on Twitch.

gaussian_distro ,

Go on. How do you circumvent ads now on yt?

AlexisFR ,
@AlexisFR@lemmy.world avatar

You keep using an ad blocker but on Firefox.

PaladinSaladin ,

Personally, I use NewPipe

PopOfAfrica ,

At least so far, this three strike your out style blocking doesn’t seem to work unless you have an account.

I watch YouTube as embedded videos in my RSS feed.

Etterra ,

YouTube can try lol. But they’ve never cared about users. They’re just all at about the same point where they have to stop pretending in order to feed that capitalism machine (or try to at least). It looks like hostility, but it’s just them finally being honest.

DashboTreeFrog ,

It’s so common there’s even a term for it now, “enshittification”

To quote the article that describes it:

“Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”

Source: www.wired.com/…/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/The source is about TikTok but the author has gone on to describe how this applies to basically every modern tech company in various interviews.

nobody5050 ,

Cory doctorow is an incredible (journalist?) (blogger?) idk something, his posts are good

DashboTreeFrog ,

I first encountered him through the “This Week In Tech” podcast where he’s a frequent guest. I’m not sure what he is off the top of my head either but he’s brilliant

zos_kia ,

His blog “Boing boing” was a luminary of the early blogosphere when that was a thing people believed would replace traditional media. He was very active with the EFF, copyleft/CC culture, the early maker scene. He was an okay novellist too ! All in all if you grabbed a copy of “Wired” from 2009 there’s a 100% chance his name would be mentioned at least once in it.

Excrubulent ,
@Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

Writer is a good catch-all, especially since he’s written some banger novels too. I read Little Brother right on the cusp of becoming an actual leftist and it had a big impact on me.

meldroc ,

Here, now, with the Fediverse, we are going Little Brother on enshittfied social media!

Viva la Révolution !

Strangian ,

It’s all about money

balrog ,

Capitalism.

Capitalism is like cutting off your wings because you believe the reduced weight will make you fly higher.

Smoogs ,

It’s shocking how accurate at how the oblivious and infuriating it is.

SapienSRC ,
@SapienSRC@lemmy.world avatar

Because they don’t have too be. Most people are so dependent on social media that they’ll keep using a service even though they hate it. Like a drug addict who keeps using even though it’s killing them.

Flemmy ,

That’s certainly what the companies believe, is it actually true though? Musk said everyone but the bots came crawling back… Without showing numbers

I think tech CEOs badly want to believe this is true, because it would be an easy solution to all their problems. And with everyone doing something similar, there’s no competitor for them to jump to

I think they’re about to realize no one has to go to them, entry were just the convenient choice. Once they’re no longer convenient, people will turn elsewhere

Flemmy ,

That’s certainly what the companies believe, is it actually true though? Musk said everyone but the bots came crawling back… Without showing numbers

I think tech CEOs badly want to believe this is true, because it would be an easy solution to all their problems. And with everyone doing something similar, there’s no competitor for them to jump to

I think they’re about to realize no one has to go to them, entry were just the convenient choice. Once they’re no longer convenient, people will turn elsewhere

SapienSRC ,
@SapienSRC@lemmy.world avatar

I agree with you of course, proven by where we are having this conversation. However, I have my doubts about the majority of Reddit users switching, at least currently. Most people don’t understand what is going on and are even more confused by the alternatives.

hydra ,
@hydra@lemmy.world avatar

Tech companies were only favorable to their users during the corporate Web 2.0 genesis when these companies had to lure educated users in with extremely convenient free services, but they always did and continue to do so under terms of service that are intentionally made as hard to read walls of legalese bullshit, so they always click accept and hand them power by moving there.

These companies usually are either publicly traded or aspire to be publicly traded, and are backed by venture capital loaned to them by banks and investors.

Then during the late 2000s and early 2010s these corporations gobbled up web traffic by having all the valuable information and communities behind their walls. This drove their operating costs up a lot but it was no problem, since the zero interest rate policy was in effect so these now-megacorps had basically interest-free loans to get infinite money to finance the platform. However they realized around the mid 2010s that they controlled the vast majority of the web so they realized they could be as greedy as they wanted since no one is going to ever step up to them (YouTube is a shining example of this) and ever since the mid-late 2010s they started nerfing and crippling the user experience in order to please their investors and ad networks. This process was extremely slow initially to minimize the backlash. They applied the boiling frog strategy and it worked.

By the early 2020s this was in full effect: websites do not respect your privacy and try to shove trackers and ads whenever and wherever they legally can, search engines are manipulated to put sponsored and SEO spam links first rather than useful answers, sites are implementing login walls to make sure the valuable content they hold hostage can only be accessed once they have the data of users, discourse is being controlled and micromanaged by corporations with automated censorship, mystery echo chamber algorithms, shadowbans and wordlists, news sites have article limits and paywalls now. It got so bad that it’s already harming society as a whole because it’s causing polarization and these platforms now have enough power to theoretically manipulate elections in some really bad cases.

This is a process known as enshittification: start great then become shit and die. Now that the zero interest rate policy is over, and interest rates started climbing up it means silicon valley free money is over so they can no longer afford to be boiling frogs, they are turning up the heat to 11 and just roasting the frog alive. In other words, the enshittification cycle is becoming exponentially faster and it’s only going to get worse for the corporate web and its users. The only solution is returning to decentralized technologies like Web 1.0 used to be, but it’s extremely hard since free as in you pay with your data services are addictive like crack cocaine.

afraid_of_zombies2 ,

I am starting to miss the echo chamber of YouTube. I am a fairly leftwing atheist in a solid blue state that ranks near last in religious observance. And yet roughly a quarter of the suggested videos/ads I get are for things like Epoch Times, Prager U, HeGetsUs, PJ Media.

Alright so the only way I am clicking on that stuff is by accident. From the advertisement point of view this is worse than selling iceboxes to Inuit, this is like trying to sell ribeye steaks to vegans with no money.

Which makes you wonder what the future holds. Say you are Epoch Times and you find out the YouTube is pushing your product on people who actively don’t want to buy it how much longer are you going to pay Alphabet for a failed advertising campaign?

rob64 ,

It's either that, or these specific groups are opening up their parameters and trying to reach/convert outside their base. Which sounds about right for religious groups.

meldroc , (edited )

There’s also a political agenda at play. The Wall Street madman caste finds left wing popular movements to be obnoxious, as they undermine their business model and cost them money.

Note how Reddit’s admins would turn a blind eye to Nazi subreddits and shit like r/The_Donald for years, until the entire planet screamed at Reddit to exercise some basic asshole control.

But when people started talking about punching Nazis, the banhammer came out immediately. Gotta love Reddit’s totally unbiased policies…

When left wing groups get big enough to get things done, Wall Street pulls strings and then you see bans, shadowbans, biased policies & enforcement against activist groups and marginalized groups (LGBT groups getting NSFW’d out of existence), trolling & astroturfing campaigns, mass propaganda, abuse of user data (Cambridge Analytica), ratting activists out to authoritarian governments, nerfing community moderation and letting Nazis go to town while yawning when users complain, while at the same time, anyone left-wing gets instabanned for jaywalking…

Pillarist ,

enshittification

Give it a Google.

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