cross-posted from: feddit.org/post/37870004

reddit got bad because spez (the reddit admin) restricted API access to the platform for third-party apps, such that people would be forced to use the official app or web UI, both of which display advertisement and collect user data (e.g. scroll behavior).

the reason why this happened is because reddit is a for-profit company and tries to extract money out of the userbase, at the expense of the users.

another example of a bad decision that reddit made was to push a lot of ragebait (“Am I The Asshole?”) because company shareholders want to see “engagement numbers” go up, and if somebody writes an angry reply to a post, that’s “engagement”. but it makes you angry at the stupidity of the “Asshole”, so it makes your day worse. that is another example how reddit makes money at the expense of the users.

size (number of monthly active users) is not what made reddit bad. commercialization is.

we should probably get rid of the “don’t make lemmy grow, it will ruin the platform if we grow” idea.

RE: https://masto.hackers.town/@OffTheHook/117600508309692265

Hey, my colleagues and I are live!

@TheBreadmonkey @miffyhelen

After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this—“If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.”
In fact, this second theory is more literally true of the Belcerebon people of Kakrafoon.

フニャフニャ二度寝

@tinker cats help with work life balance by sitting on us until we pay attention to them

Love that animatronic pizza place band uhhh Broccoflower Explosion?

wow Creance low-key kinda sucks

it's no wonder I won that boss fight against the inquisitor

then again I am comparing a stick with spikes on it to a legendary sword

The API thing and forced logins is probably one of the least shitty things this site has done.

Cannot agree more. That was shitty, but the turds had already filled the bowl.

フニャフニャ二度寝

A free tool makes coding agents claim files before another agent can take the same work

https://lockergnome.com/aisync-stops-coding-agents-overwriting-same-files/

#tech #GenerativeAI

BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG

@nullagent exactly. I like this comment here.
https://youtu.be/ll03oBqqWKg

I expected the "AI" bubble to pop because either one of the IPOs unexpectedly flopped or maybe a debt crisis cascading. It would be very funny if the actual trigger turns out to be a CEO's infidelities leading to an internal investigation discovering fireable shenanigans

@jharris ok I’ll bite, why???

One of the women laughing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was Tami Radabaugh, Deputy Asst for Strategic Engagement to the SoW, #Hegseth.
At FOX News she oversaw FOX & Friends & was Executive Producer of Mornings with Maria Bartiromo.

Will Tami be formally reprimanded or will the soldier who called her out? Reminder, in 2024 an employee at Arlington National Cemetery was shoved by Trump's staff. She didn't press charges, fearing retaliation from Trump supporters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_Arlington_National_Cemetery_incident

I go into one small food coma and when I wake up Jensen Huang has another major sex scandal????

the RAMPANT sexism and racism as thinly veiled intellectualism that has gone on for DECADES

This what I came to associate with reddit.

This kind of very super shallow toxic intellectualism that consisted mostly of call-and-responses opinions play-acted in weird rituals really wore on me. Even the more organic conversations were more like people just slapping opinions at eachother.

Not that we’re immune to ANY of this. Our smaller scale and decentralisation sidesteps the issue a bit, though. For now anyway.

I dont think it is likely to deteriorate in the same way. The mainstream service algorithms reward engagement and make no value judgments about the type of engagement. Since its easier to get engagement by spouting bombastic false claims and unsupportable opinions, that is the bulk of what you see.

Lemmy barely rewards engagement, if at all, so the perverse incentive to be a jerk on purpose is simply just not there. Surely, drawing a broader audience will shift discussion toward humanity’s lowest common denominator, but it doesn’t actively encourage the bad behavior, at least.

@mcc Oh, did he say something in the past 24 hours? Last I saw a few days ago, he was still calling them "bullshit".