We laugh but this does an excellent point of underscoring the whole power dynamic in Reddit.
Who normally keeps these subs on message, and controls content? The mods.
The mods are volunteers that curate the content of Reddit. And Reddit did a shit job by getting into a pissing contest with their own best assets.
If they had charged API fees such that 3rd party apps would have had to charge a monthly fee to users…I would have probably just paid. And I know I’m not the only one.
But they priced it intentionally to kill 3rd party apps, because they wanted to channel access through their garbage app with its “promoted” ads all over the place.
It’s not about “free vs. not free” it’s about intentionally killing off the applications that made reddit likeable as a platform.
Not stiff enough, I’d say. And honestly, steel wool breaks into small pieces pretty easily too.
I love donating blood and do it as often as I can.
But with 2 kids in daycare it’s so often that my appointment comes and I’m some form of under the weather.
I’ve learned to just re-book in those cases, as if you say “no” to their questionnaire they don’t like you rebook for 3 months. So perhaps they should revisit their policy on that at least? No reason why having to take an Advil for a headache once should mean not donating for 3 months.
Insightful, evocative, well-written, and 100% pertinent to what is going on these days.
Thank you for sharing this.
Anyone reading my comment who just read a bit of this article or skimmed it - please do yourself a favour and devote 10mins to reading the full thing.
Fully agreed that the sports betting ads are out of control and need to be toned down / regulated.
But the REAL problem I have is with how - in just one year or so - gambling has invaded all sports broadcast. The intermission panels are talking about odds, live odds appear during the game, talking heads mentioning how much X dollars could would make if placed on team Y to win right now etc etc.
Even if you try to avoid the commercials, that content gets to you. And if you have a gambling problem, do you just accept that you can’t watch sports at all without risk of being exposed to that?
We treat all other addictive properties with heavy regulation about exposure to the general public. Gambling should be no exception.
That’s really cool!
Love the little bar graphs filling up
Preach.
I’m honestly still using Reddit but mostly just lurking now, and really prefer Lemmy / kbin due to how completely awful the official app is (using Apollo now just makes me sad).
So I love participating here and plan to do so more and more! Whereas with Reddit, I can see myself opening that up less and less.
We’ll likely always be smaller, but we can be big enough while being better - and that would be fine by me.
This is why everything you hear from pop-evolution theories in sociology is likely bs.
“Women like shopping because they used to be gatherers” or other such garbage.
It’s all trying to simplify human behaviour based on half-baked knowledge of the past, and to pass it off as scientific insight. It’s not much different than the pseudoscience used to fuel racism 100 years ago.
Human behaviour is complex. And even though our societies are more complex now than 10000 years ago, it doesn’t mean people back then were simple.