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Is reddit owned and operated by a malicious entity? I used to be addicted to that platform, but now I can't stand 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.
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
From https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
This is going to be the most quoted literary work of the 21st century
they are preparing for IPO, the most inherently malicious owner there is!
Are they really still just preparing?
Have been for years. Reddit is mismanaged, and the IPO is just an effort to get whatever they can before letting suckers hold the bag. They will never reach the valuation they had.
yeah they aren't IPO yet, I think a lot of stuff didn't play nicely for them, with the ukraine war, the tech bubbles popping and the general global economic conditions things aren't exactly favourable. I think also the backlash to 3rd party apps and their general shittiness has been hurting them a bit more than they have said.
Is reddit owned by a malicious entity?
Always has been.
As with many things under capitalism, the ongoing mandate is that profits must go up, and must go up at a higher rate no matter what, or investors panic and the price drops steeply which can lead to a collapse. Reddit is just another ravenous profit-seeking vehicle of the same kind and is going into the same "line must go up" death spiral.
I wouldn't say Reddit always has been owned by a malicious entity, Aaron Swartz was a cool guy. And if you're telling me a man who freely distributed thousands of needlessly paywalled research papers is a some kind of arch capitalist, then there's no helping you.
Swartz had good beliefs about freedom of information but politically was kind of a weirdo. What happened to him is an unlimited tragedy and outright criminal.
Swartz co-owned reddit for around 1 year, 2006-2007. His influence has overall probably been insignificant.
True true, I just specifically took issue with it always having been run by bastards. (I know it's a meme template, but I just wanted to point to evidence that there is hope that not everything we use has always been yoked with pure greed. Call it a cope, IDC.)
there is hope that not everything we use has always been yoked with pure greed
If your basis for believing that is Reddit having one co-owner you liked for one year and that's the best evidence you got, that isn't a strong basis.
You can do sophistic tricks like exaggerating other people's positions to try to make yours seem more tenable so you can mine for supposed exceptions, but the reality remains that capitalism requires increasingly unsustainable profit margins over time for the lifetime of each product and that consequently results in systemic enshittification of things that were previously decent and bearable. That is an inevitable ongoing process in this present system.
then there's no helping you
That
tone isn't necessary.One co-owner being around for one year doesn't absolve the skullduggery of the other that is still here to the present day, as another poster already mentioned.
Honestly as a capitalist (I know, blasphemy) Aaron did the world a favor when he dropped those papers. Elsevier Wiley IEEE et al have a cartel and so many of them are NIH or DOD funded papers they should be public domain period.
The premise of our system depends on controls to avoid instilled entries extorting capital. Capitalism isn't: it's feudalism with extra steps
Honestly as a capitalist (I know, blasphemy)
Before you congratulate yourself again for internet bravery, do you actually own capital? Do you own the means of production? If not, you're not a capitalist even if you wave pompoms and otherwise do apologia for capitalism.
Well damn, ya got me. I own a car. That's about it.
You're not really a capitalist in a meaningful way. You might cheerlead for it, but that isn't a means of production no matter what Uber/Lyft might tell you.
The largest owners are Advance Publications and Tencent. Advance also own Condé Nasty (Reddit even used to be under the Condé Nast banner). Weirdly they also own everyone's favorite plagiarism detection service Turnitin.
I know of Tencent and the controversy about them... I don't know anything about Advance though. Are they also controversial?
how much does tencent actually own? I could swear they only bought company stocks and not direct controls over reddit.
Certainly by a greedy one. Greed and stupidity are often better explanations than outright malice, but... yeah, they're a bunch of assholes, too.
I mean, I’m not denying they’re making wrong choices, and I’ve left Reddit myself, but given that they’re losing money I don’t understand how it’s considered ”greedy” to try and change that.