I’m really not trying to be a dick, but uhh… Look around? The world is literally on fire and efforts to put it out or even to stop pouring more gas on it are put down at every turn by capitalists in the never ending pursuit of more money for it’s own sake.
Let’s start here: are you a capitalist? Do you own any actual capital? I don’t mean your own house or car, that is personal property not private property or anything resembling the means of production.
I ask because many people consider themselves capitalist when really they are just workers who happen to own a bit of personal property, and they make themselves essentially useful pawns for actual capitalists.
And, if you’re not an actual capitalist, why are you so pro capitalism?
I’m really not trying to be a dick, but uhh… Look around? The world is literally on fire and efforts to put it out or even to stop pouring more gas on it are put down at every turn by capitalists in the never ending pursuit of more money for it’s own sake.
Well I mean it’s unclear to me that we’re much worse than previous points in history. I’d rather have the climate crisis over the nuclear one, or either of the world wars, or live under a feudal system where I’m owned by the local lord in his castle.
I sympathize (and agree) with the belief that the current system isn’t serving everyone, much less serving everyone equally. But the world is a complicated thing and we’ve got >7 billion people to feed! I think we should be very careful before deciding “yeah it’s time to tear down the existing systems and hope that there are better systems out there”. It’s easier to make things worse than to make things better.
Let’s start here: are you a capitalist? Do you own any actual capital? I don’t mean your own house or car, that is personal property not private property or anything resembling the means of production.
I guess? I’ve wanted to start my own business a couple of times. I’m a programmer, so I’ve toyed with the idea and done some research into creating a few apps which I believe people would find useful, and might pay my bills. I don’t own a house or a car-- I live in an apartment in a mid-size US city.
I ask because many people consider themselves capitalist when really they are just workers who happen to own a bit of personal property, and they make themselves essentially useful pawns for actual capitalists. And, if you’re not an actual capitalist, why are you so pro capitalism?
I’m guessing you’d consider me a pawn, but I don’t. I fit your description of owning a bit of personal property, and being a worker. I’ve worked for some large companies in the past which are supposedly the “actual capitalists”. But I promise they don’t give two shits about social good (or social bad). They are just desperately trying to make products that people want to buy. In my view, it’s a pretty good system which constrains huge organizations like Apple to making devices, when the alternative is that they could be setting up their own governments.
Yeah, and if they serve the needs of customers better, then they’ll be given encouragement (money). If they don’t, they’ll be given discouragement (they lose their investments). Seems like a good system, no?
Of course, corruption and regulatory capture subvert this system and are bad for everyone, but those are subversions of capitalism.
Are they really subversions? A pure capitalist society is determined purely by incentives and the rules of economy (supply and demand and such). If it’s in a business’s best interest to do something unethical, they will do it. They will band together to price fix, they’ll collaborate to pay workers the bare minimum, they’ll create monopolys and duopolies to get the most money possible, because in a capitalist society, money is the #1 incentive. Government regulations are anti-capitalist policies to prevent these things from happening - although maybe not as effectively as they should be, given how things are.
Capitalism is defined as a set of rules/regulations that allows people to own the capital that they produce. Regulatory capture is when an organization gains control of the regulations to subvert other people’s ability to own their capital. This is why I say that the more regulatory capture that happens, the less capitalist the system.
And yes! Capitalist systems heavily incentivize caring about money and nothing else. But the system also makes it so that when people act purely selfishly for money, that it results in good outcomes for everyone. That’s why I think it’s a good system.
For example, if organizations price-fix, it heavily encourages a third party to undercut them. If they try to prevent the third party by legal means, then that’s not capitalism.
You probably won’t see this, but I hope you will amend your definition of capitalism:
Capitalism is defined as a set of rules/regulations that allows people to own the capital that they produce.
You know this, right? We all know a trust fund baby is perfectly capable of using the wealth they were born into to buy a factory, mine, apartment complex, or shares in all of the above. (Hence profiting off of value they did NOT produce.) We all know capitalism does not distinguish in any way whatsoever between this form of capital ownership and the self-made variety.
“Capital they produce” and “capital they acquire / inherit / use stolen money to purchase” can both be wielded the exact same way. That’s the point of capitalism.
And this is only half of why, “that they produce” doesn’t work in this definition. The other half is that it contradicts the definition of “capital.”
Capital is literally “any form of property that can be used to collect the value of other people’s labor.” That is the opposite of “ownership over the things you produce.”
The exact opposite.
To “own the capital you produce” one must personally build the means of production. Otherwise, the owner is owning the capital someone else produced.
And you’ll find the vast, vast, vast majority of almost every form of capital (patents, copyrights, factories, burger machines, server computers, office buildings, mines, mine equipment, oil rigs, oil tankers, power plants, land, the list goes on) does not belong to the people who turned the screws, drew up the plans, welded the seams, mined the materials, performed the research, wrote the movie script, poured the cement, or otherwise PRODUCED the capital.
It belongs instead to the people who funded it. The people who, under capitalism, own it.
Anti-capitalists are not against people owning what they produce. In fact, in America, there is a distinctly anti-capitalist business model that thrives in numerous cities called a “cooperative” (co-op for short) that is owned by either (a) customers, or (b) workers. And a worker co-op is literally workers “owning what they produce”, but is considered market socialism by anyone who cares about using words correctly.
I would love if co-ops replaced corporations. Any anti-capitalist would. Even Maoists would tell you, “a society full of co-ops would be wonderful. The only reason I don’t find that sufficient is because capitalists would use violence to crush co-ops just as they have used violence to crush governments that didn’t favor US corporations.”
All anti-capitalists want people to be able to own what they produce. The system that robs people of their control over what they produce is exactly what anti-capitalists have been struggling to overthrow.
(Aside: many anti-capitalists support a “corporate death sentence” where any company that commits a crime causing more damage than it can afford to repair can have its assets seized and turned into a cooperative and given to its workers. This allows a company deemed “too big to fail, because too many workers would lose their jobs” to be kept running and keep its workers employed while also punishing the people whose decisions caused the damage. The investors would lose their shares, and the CEO elected by the investors would lose their job and their shares. Everyone else would be fine.)
Main point: I think before asking,
why do so many people dislike capitalism?
You need to first ask,
how do people define capitalism, and is it possible for the thing I like (people owning what they produce) to be protected in an anti-capitalist organization or system?
But the system also makes it so that when people act purely selfishly for money, that it results in good outcomes for everyone.
Why do you think this??
Look at all the constant environmental disasters and harmful products that happen because corporations did the math and determined that paying a few million to lawsuits every once in a while is cheaper than being more careful. “Voting with your wallet” does not work because the big corporations undercut the competition and bombard us with advertising to ensure they will win no matter what.
Hell, most of us are on here because Reddit started doing scummy things in the name of money, and we’re a tiny fraction of their userbase; Reddit is still unfortunately doing pretty much fine. Is that the best outcome for everyone?
For example, if organizations price-fix, it heavily encourages a third party to undercut them. If they try to prevent the third party by legal means, then that’s not capitalism.
If the goal is profit, then using any means available to increase profit is the promoted method. This includes creating barriers to enter into competition. This could be things like temporarily selling at a loss until your competition runs out of money. It could also be using your money to influence politics to get laws in place that make it harder for others to compete with you. It could also be many other methods.
It also means increasing profits through other means, such as cooperating with other companies to not compete (this is called a trust, and it’s supposed to be illegal, but we all know it isn’t always, for example the oil industry). If they all agree to not lower prices to compete with each other then they all make more money at the expense of the consumer. Obviously this is bad, which is why most capitalist countries are supposed to prevent this by law (so, obviously capitalism isn’t that great alone), with limited results.
Capitalism also assumes perfectly rational actors in order to have good outcomes. Anyone who’s interacted with another person knows this isn’t possible. Without perfectly rational actors, the “best” outcomes are not guaranteed. There are far too many ways to obfuscate information and manipulate people. For example, in the case of a trust forming the consumer likely has no way to recognize that in order to work for their own interest over the interest of the companies trying to screw them over.
Basically, capitalism leading to ideal outcomes is a fairytale told by capitalists to ensure they aren’t questioned. They tell you that it’d your fault if you don’t get the best outcomes, but this isn’t true. They know it isn’t true, but it’s in their favor. They use their influence to make sure the fairytale stays intact though. Capitalism is the newest large religion. It asks for faith, takes your money, and provides you with nothing.
You’re forgetting economies of scale. Let’s take phone plans. A few giant companies have infrastructure (cell towers) built across the country. Coverage is extremely important - a phone plan with coverage in a small area isn’t anything anyone will want. How is a third party supposed to compete? They’d need enough money to set up nation-wide infrastructure, contracts with phone manufacturers to make sure phones are compatable, and they need to do all that before they even sell anything. Even if you try to compete, how do you make your prices competitive after spending that huge amount of money?
Just chiming in to say that if organizations price fix, it’s pretty rare a 3rd party can sustainably undercut them. The price fixers can agree to drop prices way lower, sell at a loss until the 3rd party is forced to price fix too or go out of business, and then resume the fixed price
So the outcome from a customer’s perspective is that the price fixers have dropped their prices way lower? That’s good, no?
And then once the 3rd party goes out of business and they resume their high price… they’re encouraging a new 3rd party to try again. So the prices lower again.
Meaning there’s pressure on prices to be lower, which is what we want. Therefore, good system.
Of course, I’m not saying it’s ideal. But is there a better system?
For most purchases, people really only have vanishingly few choices of companies to buy from. A truly free market might work, but the profit motives that have corrupted our political, legal and regulatory systems has made most markets into oligopolies. These companies work together to manipulate prices, without ever directly communicating in a way that can be punished.
For a free market to really drive prices down there needs to be real competition. When eggs went up in price, they allegedly did so because of avian flu. But that flu only affected a small amount of the production. Cal-Maine, the largest egg producer in the country, lost no egg production at all. Yet they increased their prices massively. If the market was working as you say it does, Cal-Maine would have kept their prices low to capture more market share. Instead they saw that other producer might have to raise prices and preemptively raised their prices.
For most purchases, people really only have vanishingly few choices of companies to buy from
Purchases such as…? Because basically all the things I purchase I have pretty solid options for, especially when you consider that a lot of good are interchangeable with each other.
Why would 3rd party #2 even try if they just saw 3rd party #1 just get stomped in that way? Why would you start a business, a very expensive endeavour (monetarily, mentally, and temporally), if you knew how and why it would get driven out of business pretty quickly? In the scenario you describe, the pressure is for prices to be higher on average, with dips here and there.
What you’re talking about is a tendency towards monopoly.
The most efficient way to organize industrial capacity is in large centralized productive systems, because it gets the per unit cost low. These ‘economies of scale’ are the best way to offer the lowest prices to the consumer for industrial goods by far.
The problem arises because this creates a centralized power structure. We call the people who control this power structure capitalists. The capitalists use this structure to force unfair labor contracts on their workforce.
The ‘better solution’ is democratic oversight over the centralized productive apparatus. Which can be in the form of regulations from democratic institutions on the centralized productive apparatus; or just as well workers collectively owning the company they work for.
Matt Bruenig has a some really informative videos on how that might look.
Good outcomes for everyone by acting selfishly? Oh boy! Let me tell you about the distant past of 2008 when selfish/greedy actions could have crippled the entire world economy but instead governments bailed out the selfish/greedy corporations and left all non-corporation people affected to flap in the wind.
And that’s skipping over the COVID-19 capitalism fuckery, dot com bubble, healthcare, housing in 2020’s etc.
Capitalism is a cancer and it is literally killing people for the sake of money. But here’s a $1 so just forget about all those useless bad things.
No, that is not the definition of capitalism. Where did you even hear that? So, in your vision of capitalism, the board of directors gets no money ever, because they produce nothing. The capital they have is produced by laborers.
Well I mean it’s unclear to me that we’re much worse than previous points in history. I’d rather have the climate crisis over the nuclear one, or either of the world wars, or live under a feudal system where I’m owned by the local lord in his castle.
You’d rather have the climate crisis as it currently stands. I think you’ll change your tune on that in coming decades but by then it’ll be far too late to actually do anything about it. You’re also more insulated to it’s effects than many millions of people around the world who are already losing their lives, homes, livelihoods, etc and this is only a sniff of what’s to come. Also, peasants in feudal times on average had more time off, made more money comparatively, and were able to travel more (yes, even serfs) than your average American currently. The chains just look a little different, they aren’t gone.
I sympathize (and agree) with the belief that the current system isn’t serving everyone, much less serving everyone equally. But the world is a complicated thing and we’ve got >7 billion people to feed! I think we should be very careful before deciding “yeah it’s time to tear down the existing systems and hope that there are better systems out there”. It’s easier to make things worse than to make things better.
We’ve got 8 billion people to feed and are doing a terrible job of it. Take under half of Elon’s wealth alone and you could feed the entire world, yet instead we laud these modern day dragons for their “success,” instead of slaying them for the good of the people. It’s easier to make things worse for you, than better for you. Billions of people currently suffering terribly for the profit of others would vehemently disagree. Also, just because the unknown is uncertain doesn’t mean it should be feared. We know capitalism isn’t working for the planet itself, yet people would rather stick to it because it’s enriched a small fragment of humanity. You happen to be in the side of the boat that isn’t currently underwater, but make no mistake that the water is pouring in.
I guess? I’ve wanted to start my own business a couple of times. I’m a programmer, so I’ve toyed with the idea and done some research into creating a few apps which I believe people would find useful, and might pay my bills. I don’t own a house or a car-- I live in an apartment in a mid-size US city.
You are not a capitalist.
I’m guessing you’d consider me a pawn, but I don’t. I fit your description of owning a bit of personal property, and being a worker.
You are a worker, so why look out for the interests of an entirely different class that doesn’t do the same for you?
I’ve worked for some large companies in the past which are supposedly the “actual capitalists”. But I promise they don’t give two shits about social good (or social bad). They are just desperately trying to make products that people want to buy.
Therein lies the exact problem: profit is the only motive. And to get profit, capitalists have shown they are willing to do everything, damn the consequences to others, to society, to the planet. Climate change isn’t a whoopsie, starving, desperate people aren’t a whoopsie, train derailments aren’t a whoopsie, even most wars (every American involved war since WW2) are not a whoopsie. They are all the predictable results of capitalists choosing to rake in more profits at the expense of you and I.
In my view, it’s a pretty good system which constrains huge organizations like Apple to making devices, when the alternative is that they could be setting up their own governments.
Why would they need to set up their own governments when they control ours? How exactly are they constrained? Google is arguably more powerful than most nations’ governments. Sure, most of that is soft power, but if trends continue it won’t stay soft for much longer.
I’d rather have the climate crisis over the nuclear one, or either of the world wars, or live under a feudal system where I’m owned by the local lord in his castle.
Give it a couple of years, because the world is going to get a lot, lot worse than it currently is (which is already pretty bad, for folks around the world). The World Wars will be nothing in comparison, and at least a nuclear war would be a relatively fast end.
You don’t own your own home and you feel this way? Yeesh. Have fun paying your landlord’s mortgage for the rest of your life as buying a house becomes more and more difficult.
Well I mean it’s unclear to me that we’re much worse than previous points in history.
That’s interesting, because to me it’s very clear. After all, small isolated pockets of people ruining their economy and the environment they depend on is quite a bit different from all of humanity everywhere doing this.
That’s an interesting perspective! Care to share some data?
Personally, I think the fact that the median person in capitalist nations has enough food to eat is a pretty big plus! I don’t think that’s been the case throughout most of history.
That’s an interesting perspective! Care to share some data?
Well, of course the data on what our actions (much of which are due to and based upon capitalism) are doing to are environment and climate, and inevitably must lead to given the implicit but incorrect assumption of infinite resources of that system, is everywhere and basically impossible to ignore these days, isn’t it? And, almost as easy to find is the data on other cultures killing themselves off (in the, at the time, limited scope of their part of the planet) due to their actions, such as Easter Island.
I would reply asking if the people that are making these claims are actually the labor. Are service workers actually the ones producing anything? Western labor is compensated quite well relative to the rest of society which is why these ideas never go anywhere in the West. If you are not an actual laborer, why are you so pro-labor power?
Sure but in terms of a general strike, you will know the labor that really matters and what doesn’t. Critical labor in the West is compensated accordingly by the market, even by Western standards.
That’s way too simplistic. It’s not just big corporations that block each and every measure to mitigate climate change.
Ask a small home owner, or car owner, why they are against climate change measures. They will point out that their life would need to change, and that’s why.
Climate is fucked primarily because people are unwilling to look around the next corner. That corporations are the same is more a property of them being comprised of people rather than capitalism per se.
Capitalism would work with wind and solar parks just as well as with coal.
And yet, the giant oil corporations lied about climate change and subverted efforts to develop renewable energy back in the 80s when it could have actually helped. They did that to line their pockets, fucked over the entire world, and have had no repercussions for it. Don’t act like it’s the people’s fault. A large large portion of the damage to the climate was done so executives could save an extra .1% of profit for themselves.
No, a large portion of the damage done was so regular people could keep driving their oversized cars, eat out of season food, and cheaply heat their homes. Socialism does not require good environmental policy. Capitalism does not prohibit it. Climate change is a human problem.
Ask a small home owner, or car owner, why they are against climate change measures. They will point out that their life would need to change, and that’s why.
It’s perhaps a little tangential to the “merits of capitalism” topic, but it’s worth noting that the circumstances that caused such a large percentage of the U.S. population to own single-family houses or cars – the Suburban Experiment – is substantially the result of deliberate policy choices by the Federal government starting around the 1930s:
The Federal Housing Administration was created, which not only published development guidelines that embodied the modernist^1^ city planning ideas popular at the time (they literally had e.g. diagrams showing side-by-side plan views of traditional main-street-style shops and shopping centers with parking lots, with the former labeled “bad” and the latter labeled “good”), but also enforced them by making compliance with those guidelines part^2^ of the underwriting criteria for government-backed loans.
The Federal government passed massive subsidies for building highways, while comparatively neglecting the railroads and metro transit systems.
Of course, that isn’t to say that there wasn’t corporate influence shaping those policies! From the General Motors streetcar conspiracy to the General Motors Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, it’s obvious that the automotive industry had a huge impact. It’s less obvious – or perhaps I should say, less “provable” – that said influence was corrupt (in terms of, say, bribing politicians to implement policies the public didn’t otherwise actually want) rather than merely reflective of the prevailing public sentiment of the times, but I don’t disbelieve it either.
TL;DR: I’m not necessarily taking a position on whether it was proverbial “big government” or “big business” to blame for America’s car dependency, but I am saying that it’s definitely incorrect to characterize it as merely the emergent result of individual choices by members of the public. Those individual choices were made subject to circumstances that both government and business had huge amounts of power over, and that fact cannot be ignored.
^1^ For more info on “modernist city planning” read up on stuff like the Garden City movement started by Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City. In fact, I remember reading somewhere that Wright himself helped write those FHA guidelines, but I can’t find the reference anymore. : (
^2^ It would be irresponsible not to point out that redlining and racial segregation were massively important factors in all this, too. However, this comment is intended to focus on the change in urban form itself, so hopefully folks won’t get too upset that I’m limiting it to this footnote.
It’s not illogical to be pro-Capitalism while not owning any “means of production” if it means you still have better outcomes.
There are no true Capitalist countries and no true Socialist countries. It’s not even a spectrum; it’s a giant mixed bag of policies. You can be for some basic capitalist principles (market economy, privately held capital) and for some socialist policies (safety nets, healthcare) and not be in contradiction with yourself. There’s more to capitalism than the United States.
I think OP was seeing a lot of “burn the system down” talk. Revolutions aren’t bloodless, instantaneous, or well directed. Innocent people will die and generations will suffer. It’s stuff only the naive, the malicious, or the truly desperate will support. And if you’re here posting it on the daily, I don’t believe you’re that desperate.
Hmmm, its those kinds of extreme statements that make me a bit suspicious. Is global warming really an extinction level event? I can imagine terrible civil wars over resources and increasing displacement from natural disasters, but total eradication of the human race is afaik not a possible result of global warming.
It’s kinda like when they called it world war 1 and 2 - it didn’t actually include the entire world, but it did include so many countries that people considered it to be the world. The amount of people that could die or be affected by global warming could kill billions. Billions.
I think this conflates capitalism with lack of coordination. We could fix global warming today via regulation. Even if our government was socialist, it would probably still not be curbing emissions due to trying to achieve some other non-capital goal.
Second, there isn’t any need to falsely imply our species is going to die because of climate change. No model points at that. Billions of people having crappier lives and dying sooner should be enough motivation.
The admins are blatantly censoring the drawing, putting checkerboard squares or circles of random color over that part. Here are some screenshots I took only seconds apart.
lol yes there’s a whole underground imgur social network full of users unaware that imgur was originally just an image hosting website for reddit. By default the images I uploaded were private but I decided to click the button to make them a public post just out of curiousity of what imgur’s opinion on the matter might be. Turns out it’s not interesting for them.
It was hilariously bizarre when it was discovered that a population of mole people had been living inside reddit’s image host for some period of time. Especially since they were were getting up in arms about how much reddit content was crowding up the site.
I was one of those mole people for a while before I made the jump to Reddit, and it was equally bizarre to me as an Imgur user that other Imgur users would get mad about all the Reddit content there. Like… that’s the whole POINT of this place isn’t it??
Mole people! Yeah, at some point the disconnect between the two populations resulted in losing track of history. I just remember browsing the drama and chuckling at the sheer indignation towards Redditors treating Imgur as their personal image hosting site. Redditors got to feel superior after discovering that Imgur existed to serve them, and Imgurians(?) got to experience the horror of learning that the world was not what they thought it was.
There was a surprising amount of confusion on both sides.
Huh I always wondered why the images I uploaded to imgur were always downvoted for some reason. Now it makes a lot more sense, because I was just using it as an image host for Reddit threads.
Nah, that was it’s purpose. It’s like the pantry getting mad that you keep putting flour in it. That said there was more of a divergence once Reddit started hosting media directly and Imgur essentially gained its independence, so maybe they’re more aggressively anti-hosting content these days.
I guess you could always mark everything private so it only shows up by following the link, but I was already out of touch a decade ago when it came to the Imgur community, so I’m basically just a random bystander at this point.
There is tremendous value in pursuing evidence for the things we believe, rather than spending life totally convinced that our first assumption is always the truth
If you spend time watching /r/place you see that pictures mostly form in a natural, progressive way. This is the only place you see hundreds of pixels being changed uniformly all at once. Even bots would be making more gradual changes than this. It’s clearly someone who has a brush tool for censoring.
No, I'm sure that's a "silent majority" of users who support everything that Reddit The Company does banding together to stamp out the minority of noisy rabble-rousers. /s
That’s how it has always been for all places. Admins have the power to erase anything that goes against Reddit’s ToS. Depicting spez under the guillotine is against their ToS, but writing “fuck spez” isn’t, which is why one gets deleted and the other remains.
It makes sense IMO. It’s just like admins having the power to erase swastikas, homophobic or transphobic content, blatant product advertisements and so on. Nothing wrong with it, IMO.
Licking maple trees, trust me, not the same maple flavor. 100% needs to be concentrated in some form, theeen it’s delicious.
I wonder if humans enjoy the taste of maple because of syrup, and if any other tree, should it produce more sugar/enough sap, would be equally yummy… other than like… coniferous… 🤮
Hmm google says walnut, birch, box elder and sycamore, but lower sugar content so more sap meeded… I wonder what walnut syrup would taste like… brb planting a walnut.
They didnt depict him being decapitated, but his Snoo (i believe those are called Snoos) being decapitated. I think those are two entirely different things, especially given the french revolution theme around it.
Admins are being pussies imo. (After making a very bad decision in returning /r/place) They are of course fully within their right to, and that’s why reddit sucks.
I think there's too much focus on spez and not enough on Reddit. He is making some bad decisions for sure, but in the end the problem with Reddit is much greater than whoever happens to be the CEO.
It's easy to direct hate towards an individual, but I think it might not be particularly fruitful.
The problem with reddit is, in my opinion, inherent to the way it’s designed. I think that similar to a monarchy, the previous system needs to be forgotten and improved upon. (Not to say that the aftermath of the French Revolution was a great improvement) Whether its spez or anyone else, you cannot make Reddit a healthy platform and go public.
I like calling communities “slice” better, because even without the context, the people can guess what it may be. The context is a range of sources quoting:
A group of lemmings is known as a ‘slice’ of lemmings.
And at some point, someone looking for a payday^1^ is going to take video of us being herded off a cliff by an asshole^2^ even though we don’t actually do that unless provoked, and it will become a totally wrong impression of us that enters the common knowledge base.
Ironic, since lemmings don't actually jump off cliffs. The people making the documentary (Disney) that's famous from actually threw them over the cliff to make it interesting.
I am an Android user but this comment should be taken very lightly. As this is not the cause the truth is that Apple is at fault here for still using SMS as the default messaging protocol. However, with that being said, SMS breaks messages on iPhone and the devices have been geared towards iPhone users in away that makes it seem like Android is the issue with image quality and texting. The marketing is excellent on Apple’s end towards the competition and it is working.
However, that doesn’t mean iPhone isn’t the problem. I have a sibling who got bullied for having an iPhone. Apple’s answer to these problems is just, “get an iPhone.” This is equivalent to, “can’t figure it out? Just Google it.” The problem with this mentality is it gives more power to monopolizing platforms. Apple is a growing giant and if they had their way you would just have an iPhone and if Apple has expressed anything in the past 8 years it’s that they aren’t exactly the innovators with mobile devices anymore. To me the problem is on an iPhone nothing would change.
A little irrelevant rant but my point is that the average iPhone consumer has been given a marketing ploy so it is a deal breaker because they think it is an issue and in all fairness it is one but only Google is trying to fix. Issue is that Google should have tried to fix it years ago. You can’t blame iPhone users for wanting to use other platforms to message you if your message is compressed heavily by Apple’s shitty and stupid fucking decision to keep using SMS to control the market. The care about user experience is overshadowed by the desire to use that as a means to make money off of a user that doesn’t understand messaging protocols. Fuck Apple.
Problem are the Android users as well that refuse to adopt messaging apps just as much.
Standard protocol on Android is SMS as well. RCS behaves differently from carrier to carrier and many Android phones still don’t support it by default.
Even if RCS worked perfectly fine, if Apple doesn’t want to use it, than RCS is just as worthless as iMessage, when it comes to cross-platform communication.
Keep using SMS? What are Apple’s other alternatives, exactly? RCS is still a mess, the only way it has e2ee is if you use Google’s messaging app, and there’s no way you will see Apple adopting Google’s standard without having a say in it, and rightfully so - Google locks tons of proprietary features out of their APIs - EXIF data for Photos, Categories in Gmail, etc.
I think this is actually more of a comment on Google’s lack of direction with messaging - how many different messaging apps have they sunset by now? Half dozen or so? Messaging has always been a cluster on Android. WhatsApp is supposedly e2ee, but they have backdoor bugs being patched on a nearly basis - ask Jeff Bezos how his dick pics got hacked.
I mean you can install Google messaging apps on iOS (not that I would want to use them…). But try that the other way around. Apples option to not using SMS would simply be to provide iMessage for Android. Problem solved. They would very likely become the main messaging platform by doing so. Currently the majority of the market is likely split between WhatsApp, Telegram and WeChat.
But obviously they fear that this would hurt iPhone sales. At the same time this also leads to iMessage being irrelevant in the majority of markets where iPhone isn’t as dominating as in the US.
If anybody wants to judge me based on the brand of electronics I use, my favorite band or the brand of clothes I wear, I have no interest in interacting with them lol. This whole consumerist worship-culture is just toxic.
If they don’t want to text you because they care what your device is, they’re not friends you want to have.
(this goes both ways. Lots of apple hate in this thread but, wtf, just get on with life folks. if you give a shit what hardware I run, or think i care about your choices, we’re probably not going to be friends).
Seen this sentiment that green bubbles = bad a few times online but never it's never come up for me. I assume this is a teen - early adult specific issue where the idea is mostly to be part of the group
It’s been happening in high schools, to the point teens are bullied and pushed out of peer groups if they have Androids. It’s frankly disgusting that apple willingly creates this division to profit off teenagers bullying each other, and they don’t get called out for it enough.
But in the larger picture, it’s definitely going to be more common among the young, because iPhones themselves are ubiquitous among the younger. It’s something the tech space is slowly starting realize: Apple has almost total market dominance among the rising demographic, and this has led to increasing tech illiteracy due to the way Apple designs its software, and inability/refusal to learn anything else. That is a huge problem for the tech industry when the only thing they can do to find customers is dumb their software down to appeal to people that don’t know how to use anything other than iOS
Oh c’mon now, Apple and iOS apps have too good of a user experience? That’s the issue? You call it “dumbing down software”, I call it implementing user experience research and design.
If you think that the reason Apple makes the bubbles different colors is “to profit of teen bullying” then I think perhaps you might want to go back to reddit or Twitter.
Everyone 30 and under at my office prefers Macs, to the point of bringing in their own machines to do 90% of their work and falling back to the Windows laptops issued by IT for the remainder.
To be fair, as a work machine, I far prefer macs. And there’s a reason why Windows has been implementing steadily more and more MacOS features into their OS over time.
I’m a software developer. MacOS is my choice for corporate dev (cause Linux isn’t an option) because it’s Unix based and has a working command line. Windows causes so many problems around dependency installs and frameworks.
Windows is still on my home machines, but they’re edging closer to going linux too.
They could be accessing virtual workspaces using a company VPN client. Or perhaps logging into a Citrix Receiver Workspace. Could probably access a VDI environment as well. 2FA with a work cell etc
Lots of ways for personal devices to be used in the work setting. Would I recommend it or do it myself? Nah. But it can be done.
About that, yes. Not in-depth and not each day, obviously, but I have quite a sizable crowd I deal with on a regular basis. Comes from having a lot of former students I keep in touch with.
It’s still about 30% here in Germany. It is rising though. And I think this is because of “clever” marketing. The highschools here in Germany started forcing parents to buy Ipads for their children a couple of years ago. Children with low income parents get it from the city for free. Nominally it is, because it is “easier to maintain”, but I honestly really doubt this.
These schools are using iPads in place of computer labs. I’m old enough to have actually managed a computer lab, and I can tell you that a fleet of managed iPads is way easier to maintain than a computer lab.
I had a blanket “Cool guys don’t look back at explosions” policy to posting on pretty much every other site. I decided to turn over a new leaf on the Fediverse, and try not to post anything I don’t actually want a reply to. It does tend to gentle you down a bit. Also, I noticed other people were at least giving themselves a chance to form friendships that way, so yeah, new deal.
The thing that really sucks about social media is how many people are just using you as a vent pillow to scream into. It’s amazing that so many people are using so many websites that pretty much amount to somebody else’s emotional punching bag.
Wait, how do you form a friendship on sites like this? Best I’ve had are brief friendly interactions and then I forget their username unless it’s one of the novelty accounts, in which case “interactions” feel more like celebrity appearances or like a performance than anything else.
I think Lemmy will be a bit like that too, but I can see it happen for example smaller instances where you interact with the same users over and over on the local communities, more than on the other site.
My dude I do not even know. I have managed to be around some people who aren’t like me and gathered the strong impression that people were using social media like it was social, and not anti-social, which I am fluent in. So now I am on a brand-new policy, in the dark and stumbling around. All I can tell you is that the other people are using this thing to meet each other and exchange phone numbers eventually like actual friends. Which makes fuckin sense. If you reply back to other people like you are texting, it changes the nature of the thing. We must both be at peace with letting the thread drop, tho.
I must remind you that the normy world has been using social media to find other people to have sex with for a while, basically pull up the app, swipe swipe swipe until you find a friend for the night and put the phone away, instead of letting the demon consume the next 4 hours somehow. There’s a whole nother paradigm. It seems more entertaining.
But yeah, I think you just treat threads like chats, be cool, and see what happens eventually.
You just avoid that Reddit thing where you come in with your 1500 word truth dunk, that ain’t it.
Yeah it’s crazy to me that people can find a sexual partner on a site like Reddit (or are you just talking about tinder and apps like that?). Meanwhile I’m here avoiding even sharing my province, though I was open about being in Canada. Probably doesn’t help that my desire to be social itself waxes and wanes.
No, I do mean sites like Reddit. The advanced users are making everything act like a dating site when they need it to, because things like tinder don’t work for everyone, so it’s double crazy that they’re making Reddit work for that.
What I was truly referring to is Discord, and all those little communities in there, lots of people making their connections, not just sex, but international friend networking. Snapchat, group chats, all that, they’re busy doing the same, there. Meanwhile, I live as a ghost, interacting with dozens of people a day online, thousands over the years, with nothing much to show for it.
Even out in the real world I’m the kinda guy who can work some place for two years and leave with no new numbers in my phone. It does keep me out of the drama, but I don’t feel I’m striking a balance, either.
Ooooh discord makes a lot of sense. It’s just the modern version of chat rooms which is where people were hooking up long before tinder was a thing and “a/s/l?” was one of the most common greetings between people just meeting for the first time.
Not knocking your efforts to better yourself, but some people may just need someone to listen or validation. There's nothing wrong with that. That said, there are better places to find both.
This may be an unpopular option since I’ve already seen it across lemmy, but the ____porn communities. I’d like to browse pictures of nice landscapes or exotic cars without worry about someone around me noticing “PORN” on my screen.
At this point it seems very old internet, something that made sense when those communities were established, but now is unnecessary gratuitous and not socially acceptable.
Couldn't agree more. It sucks to try to bring someone to a new platform and go "you love decorating right? Then check /r/roomporn! No no, it's not porn I swear... Sigh"
Damn, I had forgotten how obnoxious that was on Reddit. Blocked all of those years ago because it was just unnecessary and a gross way to qualify otherwise unremarkable photos.
I agree, but I also think that porn should still be welcome here. The issue is there needs to be better control over it entering the feeds, not that the communities themselves should be abolished.
I don't think porn should be welcome here. In far too many cases, porn equals abuse and/or human trafficking. I haven't got anything against looking at nekkid people, but there's way too much shittiness going on in the porn industry.
Oh duh I always hated the names of those subs. The only thing worse are subs like InterestingAsFuck and NextFuckingLevel which always gave the same vibes as a Watchmojo video.
Nothing like someone peaking over your shoulder and seeing you’re browsing r/AnimalPorn…
I totally agree with you. Hopefully lemmy can be a little more mature with community names. (Yeah, yeah… I know the hypocrisy of my username… It’s my gamertag)
Indeed. I like ‘Earthporn’ too, but I think it should be all nature pictures that look like genitalia and suchlike. Rocks or trees that look like penises for example.
What a wild site that was, some real loons were on it, but I did appreciate the fact it wasn’t so overly moderated. At the end though it just felt like a sanctuary of hate that had driven out most of the sane people.
"Problematic usage". IT WAS USED FOR SNORTING COKE. DRUGS. DRUG USE. This isn't Facebook, you don't have to come up with cutesy euphamisms and self-censor yourself.
Whenever I go into a store and there’s nothing to buy, I feel bad walking out empty-handed. In those cases I tend to buy a wire coat hanger, to make sure the employees don’t think I’m up to something sketchy.
Glad there was an answer. Because I was thinking like ‘did they break easy?’, ‘were people somehow fucking up stirring?’, ‘was the coffee so hot these melted?’… Drugs… Makes way more sense
Could go into great detail about significant health issues, becoming more and more emotional as you go on, and tearfully asking “why would you make me talk about this? I wanted to keep this private! I haven’t even told my family yet!”.
Exactly. I’m a manager and literally never ask the reason unless it’s longer than a week. They like to tell me anyway even though I’ve told them I don’t care.
Open on up, bro. (But seriously, I believe in authenticity as a manager. I don’t hide anything from them unless I’m told explicitly not to share with them.)
I can’t imagine having a manager like in this post. I had to get a few hours coverage for my on call shift to pick my partner up from the hospital for an outpatient surgery. Manager didn’t ask why I needed coverage but it just happened to come up. They immediately offered to get my entire shift moved without me even asking.
Seriously don’t understand managers like this. Also a manager, qnd I’ll even find the coverage if someone needs a day off. I know how nerve wracking it is as an employee calling around asking someone to cover your shift, its a lot easier for me to send a mass text. Incidentally, the staff seem much more willing to pick up shifts this way.
This isn't just kbin, that's kinda the whole point. A name based on kbin is short-sighted, because kbin is only one small piece of this thing.
Instead of instantly doing the same shit we did on reddit 15 years ago, why don't we do things differently this time? We don't have to call kbin users anything. In any case, please god not "keebinetter."
Isn't this like saying that Chicagoans should just be called Illinoisans, which should just be called Americans, which should just be called Earthicans?
It makes no sense. Without context, I would have no idea that "keebinetter" is supposed to mean "user of kbin." What's wrong with established naming conventions? And who reads "kbin" as "keebin"?
A name based on kbin doesn't make sense anyway, the whole idea is that this isn't just kbin.
I noticed, but it's not me... not yet. The traffic simply dropped to an acceptable level. I'm working on maintaining this state permanently, and I think I'm on the right track. I want to do it really well and make use of the new possibilities we have now. In the meantime, I'm organizing the git/issues and will be on Matrix where we resolve certain technical matters. But I'll be back here soon and will tell you everything :)
ok cool, I already had element but wasn't sure what homeserver kbin was on. I think that would be a good thing to put on kbin.pub (unless it's already there and I just missed it). I've joined now though, thanks!
Don't forget to take breaks, even when there's a lot to do! We're all very happy to be here already, nothing is urgent enough that it's worth burning out over. :)
TIHI had a place saved here yesterday (because I didn't trust Spez) and is going by the name TIHI! (Marvel at my creativity.)
I'm waiting on the kbin developer to tell me WHY I can't add Pfhali, Davis, Blank, Sezar and Funkadelic_Toaster, but once he does the whole team will be back and we will be making the sub just like before.
Did you already send Ernest a message? I've noticed he's really good at responding to messages he's just really busy at the moment for obvious reasons haha. Also weird that you can't add others to be mods on the magazine I haven't seen others have any issues with that yet, wonder if it's a bug on that one magazine for some reason
You are on lemmy so you have to search for !TIHI (note the exclamation mark) to subscribe. Or if someone else on your instance already follows just go to lemmy.nz/c/TIHI@kbin.social
Edit: Federation between kbin and lemmy is still a bit unstable so you might need to wait a few hours for it to show up
You can do like in reddit, expect instead of r/tihi you go m/tihi (since they're magazines here, if it was on lemmy the url would've been c/tihi since they're called communities).
TLDR; go to kbin.social/m/tihi and hit subscribe on the sidebar.
On this note I want to say a big thank you to all our mod team, they did an excellent job all these years!
I'll be thankful for everything they have done.
I want to try something... Less involved in getting me on more lists.
Honestly, people posting unrelated trash to subreddits with new moderators would be good. A dozen new moderators against thousands of non-bots just posting shit to reddit would be fun to try to moderate.
Not even rule breaking stuff so you can contribute more than once. Like submitting wikihow articles for laying down floor tiles in TIHI. and upvoting other posts that don't belong.
Unfortunately that has no chance of succeeding. When you sign up to reddit, you give them a license to use the content you submit. It's in the user agreement, section 5 "Your Content": https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement
Under GDPR you have the right to your content, including data download and revocation. If you are banned from or restricted access to a website it doesn't strip you of that right. However the complain should have probably been through GDPR and not DMCA.
No, under the GDPR you don't have the right to have your content removed. You have the right to have personally identifiable data removed, things like names, IP addresses, phone numbers, ...
I'll link to the EU website that explains what they mean with personal data below, but I don't think a logo qualifies under their definition.
Yeah, I just don't get why this misinformation is so wide-spread. Under GDPR you don't own shit, it's for protecting your personal information. That's all.
You are confused. What you are describing applies to transferring copyright, not for granting a license while retaining the copyright.
If things worked the way you described, free software, for example licensed through the GPL, couldn't exist because then the authors could always take away the users' rights by retroactively revoking their license. Fortunately, it doesn't work that way.
There are cases where artists withdrew consent and their work had to be taken down, and to my knowledge all contracts can be amended or cancelled, especially if they're exploitative like reddits. You have a right to compensation if they profit off of your creative work, be it artwork, music, or writing.
Under GDPR you have the right to your content, including data download and revocation. If you are banned from or restricted access to a website it doesn’t strip you of that right. However the complain should have probably been through GDPR and not DMCA.
I've been on reddit for 13 years. My wife finally got an account last year. She cannot understand any of the fuss. She didn't know there were apps outside the official app. She never used RES. She just scrolls and never comments or posts. I would be surprised if she even upvotes or downvotes. She's not a monster, she just doesn't reddit like I do.
95% of users are like my wife. 5% of users are like me. I haven't even tried to explain this whole Lemmy/Kbin experiment to her yet.
But the thing is, if 50% of the 5% of us who are active posters (e.g., 2.5% of total users) are now over here on Kbin/Lemmy, the 95% who are left are going to notice a huge difference in the experience of the site. Conversations will be dull. New posts will be more ad-focused. They may not be able to explain what happened, but they will notice that Reddit is not as fun as it used to be.
Will this stop spez from getting stupid rich? Probably not. Will my wife switch to Lemmy or Kbin? Never gonna happen. But the people who want to be part of the old culture will find their way here. The stuff that made reddit great is already happening over here. Reddint will not die anytime soon, but it will cease to be relevant. Think of how long yahoo lasted even though no one cared about it. Reddit is going to be like that.
I haven't yet deleted my reddit account. It will probably happen. But I also haven't missed it. I've actually been excited to come over and see what's happening every day in the fediverse! I'm posting more, and considering modding for the first time.
It's well known that most social media, and very much so for Reddit, are primarily consumed by lurkers. There's loads of daily users that don't even have an account because it's not necessary. The lurkers may be good for ad revenue, but they don't make the content. You need the active community there to produce the content that lurkers consume. Without the community, the lurkers aren't going to step in and do it themselves, they'll just stop visiting Reddit. So yes, I'm sure the balance looks like 95% lurkers and 5% community.
think of it this way - back in 2008 100% of the users had accounts made on or before 2008
reddit has doubled something like 8 times since that point. after 1 doubling, that 2008 or earlier becomes 50%. after 2 doublings, 25%... etc
at this point it's below 1~2% depending on where you get your figures
majority of people (and an increasing majority) will only know reddit through new.reddit or the app. my gf just joined reddit because of me a few months ago.. and she only know the official app. that is "reddit" to her.
reddit has moved on past us, the original users. they've decided that we are such a small minority that we essentially do not matter anymore and therefore are sacrificing us to raise IPO price
It's not only the original users that are against all these changes. I only started on Reddit <10 years ago and I'm here. But I'm sure the portion of new users embracing "the old ways" over "the new ways" has still decreased over time, yeah.
I honestly think this is shining a massive light on the core issue of freedom. It shouldn't be "sure, you can use [the app] or not." But that is how the majority of people think. It's disheartening. I hate to bring politics into this, but it's like people saying "don't like what [party X] is doing in this country? Then leave!" Binary decisions suck in real life.
Couldn’t have said it better. I tried explaining what’s going on to my gf and it was.. difficult. The fact that she couldn’t understand who John Oliver was and why he was suddenly a big deal was peak internet for me though lol.
Exactly. Love the vibe here, discussions with ppl of similar stlye and interests (exactly how my forums were a long time ago, also reddit used to be years ago, and how it still was in some communities)
Yep this is the truth. The vast majority of users just go there and scroll and click through stuff. They don't really care. They were inconvenienced by the blackout and want it back to normal.
The real consequences are that a significant chunk of the active and power users have left the site now.
I haven't deleted my reddit account either. I have definitely noticed that my feed on reddit has less interesting content now.
Even if I'm not totally off of Reddit, recent events got me out of a rut for a bit and that's good. Already, the threads on Reddit/all seem stale and even in the past 24 hours what I see on kbin and lemmy.world is starting to give me the tingle I hadn't felt since the early Reddit days or even the period before when I used to browse multiple sites so in a way this is going back to my Internet roots, surfing across multiple sites for nuggets and truly browsing and not doom scrolling a single website aggregator. It's a breath of fresh air.
It's like having gotten used to a favorite diner with a massive menu but when the classic joint starts going off the rails, one decides to explore, finding new culinary niches, pop ups, and little shops with unique offerings. It's no longer as convenient, but then again, maybe it shouldn't be.
I've hard avoided Reddit this week to break the habit and help keep traffic numbers down for their metrics. Will I return to some of my small subs later? Maybe. Kbin and Lemmy have already done a great job at providing more content than I can really engage with already, so there's not a huge need for me to go back. The only time it's a struggle is when the Kbin servers are hugged to death, but I've been lurking squabbles during those dark times.
Same. I've been redditing since 2012 and have tailor made a select group of subs I follow for all of my hobbies. I was an avid commenter, with reply's as long as your own. It was definitely my most visited site. It was as much for stupid pictures when I was going to bed as it was discussing things with fellow collectors or getting advice or tech support. Old.Reddit on my Desktop, RIF on my phone. I am one of the people this hooplah affects. And it makes me mad.
I know a lot of people who reddit in real life, but most of them might use it for 10 minutes a day on the toilet or while on the bus. They primarily lurk and stick to a lot of the easily accessible and fun subs. They also just use the official App, or they just look at it in their phone browser. Like you said, this whole thing doesn't affect most of them.
I'm now spending a lot of time trying to find new communities in kbin and lemmy. But I have to admit the specialty subs I follow either don't have a community here (like Moon Knight stuff) or very small communities (functional print, comic book collecting, etc). I'm sticking to the protest as long as makes sense to me (it still does). But I have a feeling reddit might die before these niche communities find purchase elsewhere.
Yeah a couple of neiches are yet to be filled. There are some forums for my ttrpg like enworld and RPG net it's like going back to 2009. I am missing some of the Reddit about specific shows I watch though
Almost exactly same situation as you. I'm mad, it hurts, I've already purged my Reddit account of all content on it, multiple times since the most recent posts kept getting restored. The account itself isn't deleted yet, I still think I'll keep coming back for some stuff that just isn't here on Lemmy or kbin yet... But as for participating in discussions and communities, I'm now 100% here.
It's just sad. I've met the majority of my current online friend group that I chat with everyday on Discord, through Reddit. I hope at some point that becomes a real possibility in the Fediverse too. That we gather enough weirdos that are way too much into niche things that you can select which of them you'd like to be friends with.
I wouldn't be surprised if discord ended up having a lot of them, but the topic and comment idea of reddit feels like it's here. Discord is like a chatroom, and to analogize further chatrooms feel like where communities gather, but forums feel like where communities live.
She’s not a monster, she just doesn’t reddit like I do.
The way you need to precise she’s not a monster make me doubt it. Does she live by night, avoid the sun at all cost during daytime and drink children blood for dinner ? If so I have bad news.
on a more serious note, I agree that most people come on reddit for a little giggle or to spend time but don't know that much about the backend of it. Eventually they find out after some time and then decide if they care or not about the api price change, in the meantime no one can blame them for just living their life without caring about reddit.
I pretty much agree with this. If you look at the accounts of the people complaining, how many of them have posts hitting the frontpage? I'm not saying I have any data, I'm just speculating that most people who are power users, whether they use 3rd party apps or not, can recognize how shitty reddit went about this and won't complain about the protest.
I mean your not lying. On Mastodon I saw posts about people deleting accounts with thousands of karma, lot's of people with positive reputation in their communities left, and the people who remained either are not active posters or don't really care.
I'm in the process of deleting all my comments but it's taking a while.
I've got probably 100k karma over a few accounts.
I feel kinda bad about taking away all the technical help and collaborative type stuff I've done over the years, but... Reddit wants to use all that data to cash out on it's users, so it has to go.
Helps that to a certain extent a fairly large portion are going to be at least moderately tech savvy (probably less so than 5+ years ago), so switching to the fediverse is a lot less daunting to them than to the average user.
Coming from reddit it's not hard to understand content served to me from elsewhere, so I didn't see the importance of picking an instance I liked. Especially if the idea is they jam together real good.
Well... I've never moderated a subreddit, and I've used the official reddit app my whole life lmao. But I'm also a programmer so I'm not the canonical example of someone in that boat lol.
My biggest concern for the switch over was figuring out what instance I would like best. I think settling on kbin has been a good experience so far, barring some of the hiccups. Luckily, earnest has been crushing it with the fixes the whole time.
I don't think it's hard unless they end up somewhere where signup is difficult. And even then is browsing as a guest difficult? I've only been on kbin.social and lemmy.world and it seems dead simple.
I visited Reddit for years when Google searches led me there. About 2 years ago I got into some niche hobbies/interests, and that motivated me to sign up. I almost always used the official app. I was doomscrolling and posting lots of comments ever since.
It takes me a long ass time to commit to a new technology. But I also heard and understood with the API issue that mods need the proper tools to do their job, and if you take away their tools, they cannot do their job. And once they can't, they will leave and the entire experience of Reddit will change. I also understood that there are 3PA that the heaviest users and commenters use, and once those apps die, those people will not.come back, and with them will go their expertise and all of their posts and comments.
That told scaredy cat me that I needed to find.aome new place(s) for chat and entertainment. I like it here at kbin. I'm also enjoying Tildes, and I've been visiting Mastodon and Substack (I set those accounts up when Twitter went haywire), Hacker News, Fark and Metafilter. I'm enjoying the diversity.
Just mentioned all this to say that relatively new /official app using Redditors might also be making the jump.prior to Doomsday.
Didn't take that long to sign up for reddit myself, but I also only used the main app. But it already feels like reddit has moved here and I'm loving it
I mean most posts on the fediverse have way less votes. But I see similarly many comments as I used to see on reddit. It just feels like reddit is here now.
Stronger evidence: there's documented cases of people's deleted comments being restored. Whether or not that's intentional by reddit, I can't say for certain, but if I were a betting woman, you bet I'd bet on them doing it on purpose. And if they are, then we're talking about reddit losing a substantial enough amount of content just from people deleting their accounts in protest, substantial enough to impact their bottom line. And that's just those of us who are deleting our content - I'm not among them since I still need to occasionally look at my saved posts since there's important and useful information in there. They'll stop getting content from way more people. That's gotta terrify them.
Obviously the fediverse lacks a lot of the polish that reddit had. Mostly by virtue of reddit being around longer and having more developers - lemmy's had like 2 developers for 4 years, kbin came out a few months ago, and I'm not sure about mastodon. But with time, that'll change. A lot of reddit power users are programmers, and now that they can touch the code of the site they care about, I bet we'll see a lot more polish in the coming months. I've certainly gotta get off my ass and dig into the code a little bit.
I wouldn't call myself a power user, or even an especially good programmer, but I have my moments, and I feel more at home here than I've felt on reddit in years.
reddit losing a substantial enough amount of content just from people deleting their accounts in protest
Accounts could be deleted, but, according to ToS, reddit owns their posts:
"When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, etc., etc." –https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement-september-12-2021
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