• UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Is reddit owned by a malicious entity?

    Always has been.

    ![astronaut-2](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/44f610bb-f69d-4e6c-aa16-061ba9e17df6.png "emoji astronaut-2") ![astronaut-1](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/4792ee89-4c46-475f-aea3-26320e88b247.png "emoji astronaut-1")

    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.

    • Amputret@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Swartz co-owned reddit for around 1 year, 2006-2007. His influence has overall probably been insignificant.

        • Amputret@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          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.)

          • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            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.

      • fox [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        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.