I’m not expecting a big exodus, but rather a slow decline in both the number of users and their engagement. With a few peaks here and there that seem to revert the downwards trend, but each peak being smaller than the one before.

They won’t be leaving for the same reason as most people here did, pissed at the IPO-related changes (such as killing 3rd party apps). It’ll be more like “…meh, why would I check Reddit? There’s better stuff elsewhere.” We can already see the decline of the content quality in Reddit now; it’ll get only worse over time.

I think that most will end in Discord. Some in Bluesky, and some will simply touch grass. Conservatives might end in Minitrue “truth social” or crap like that.

Facebook might perhaps absorb some of the former Reddit users. It feels disgusting for the privacy conscious, but for them it’ll be a simple matter of not finding interesting stuff in Reddit.

The same applies to Reddit’s liquid profit - for now, that value extraction still creates a small peak on raw profit, to the point that the bottom line became positive; later on the peak will barely reach the surface; later on, value extraction will be necessary to avoid making the bottom line too negative.

I think that most users there are still human beings, but botting has become a big enough problem that the platform can’t be seen as a place for genuine content any more.

Yup, it is 100% relevant! Selling user data is extremely profitable, specially with a large userbase. However, it lowers the value of the platform - it makes users less eager to genuinely contribute with it (due to privacy concerns, seeing it as a “they’re exploiting me!” matter, etc.). As such the data being generated there becomes less useful, less relevant, and less profitable over time, paradoxically enough.

I fucked it up and switched the terms, sorry. Look for “value extraction” instead; you’ll find multiple references to the concept such as this or Mazzucato’s “The Value of Everything”.

To keep it short: you create value when you produce desirable goods/services for the customers; however, when you extract it, you’re picking the value that was already created (by society, your customers, or even your own business) and turning it into profit. The later is faster but unsustainable, as that value doesn’t pop up from nowhere, so when a business shifts from value creation to value extraction it’ll get some quick cash and then go kaboom.

In Reddit’s case, this value is mostly users willing to generate, curate, and share content with the platform, and other users knowing this:

• someone recommends you a product/brand. The person might be wrong, but you were reasonably sure that they aren’t a corporation astroturfing their own product. Someone else might criticise it instead.
• you hop into your favourite subreddit and, while the content there isn’t the best, it’s still good enough - because the mods gave some fucks about growing their subreddits;
• you discuss some controversial topic. You might get dogpiled, but at least you know that the dogs piling you are human beings, that sometimes might listen to reason; a bot will never;
• et cetera.

All that value was being slowly extracted through the last years, but the changes in 2023/2024 did it the hardest.

The question would be more like “how much of the same thing it is?”.

And kind of off-topic, but what are your current mobo/CPU/RAM specs? I’m asking because I did the same recently, changing quite a few parts of my computer.

It’s less that the identity of the PC slowly changes, and more that you give up assigning it a single identity. Instead you pick a point of reference (let’s say, the PC as OP bought it), and then you measure how much it changed from then to now.

That’s how it works with quantitative logic - you never ask “is this the ship of Theseus?”, you ask instead “how much of this entity is the ship of Theseus, as left initially in the Athenian harbour?”

Let’s take the idea of adding a new piece, say a secondary drive. Does that make the computer a new computer? Of course not, that drive belongs to the whole. Does it make it 6/5? Technically not, since you’re just counting the original pieces…

It can’t be 6/5=120% - adding a secondary drive makes the computer slightly more different. It must be less than 100%.

Since I’m counting long-term storage as 20%, and it changed halfway (the old drive is still there), I’d argue that now it’s 90% of the PC that OP bought. (Of course, those numbers are simply made up, what matters is the reasoning.)

even if said drive becomes integral to your PC by hosting you Linux distro you migrate to. […] Others say it changed when you left your Windows loving wife over her poor taste in OS.

This adds two interesting bits of complexity:

1. Software is part of the PC. Data as a whole is. As such once you save a single file in a computer, the computer isn’t exactly the same as it was before; similarity is now lower than 100%.
2. Relevancy. A drive hosting your system is more important than one not doing it, even if both are being used. Changing the former should count more to decrease similarity than the later.

but to be fair, it’s a thought experiment, not meant to be solved so much as a way to provoke critical thinking.

Yup. It isn’t something serious; just some millenniums old talk. As such losing your train of thought is not a big deal, it’s part of the fun.

As I often mention in other communities, this smells like value exploitation extraction* from a distance. Value exploitation extraction typically generates a peak of profit in the short term, but it makes losses even harsher in the long run.

As such I don’t think that Reddit is getting “bigger”. That profit is like someone who lives in a wooden house, dismantling their own home to sell it as lumber; of course they’ll get some quick cash, but it’s still a bad idea.

In a letter to shareholders, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman attributed the recent increase in users to the platform’s AI-powered translation feature.

Let’s pretend for a moment that we can totally trust Huffman’s claim here. Even human translations often get some issues, as nuances and whatnots are not translated, and this generates petty fights, specially in a younger userbase like Reddit’s; with AI tendency to hallucinate, that gets way worse. And even if that was not an issue, a lot of content is simply irrelevant for people outside a certain regional demographic.

*EDIT REASON: I switched the terms, sorry. (C’mon, I’m L3.)

Quantitative logic solves so neatly the Ship of Theseus problem.

Let’s say that there are five essential components in a functional desktop: CPU, RAM, motherboard, internal storage (HD/SSD), case. Perhaps six if you count the screen (I tend to see it as something attached to the computer instead of part of the computer itself).

Before you took the computer back to the shop, the computer was 4/5=80% the same. (You probably swapped the storage, right?). After they upgraded the mobo, CPU and memory, it’s now 1/5=20% the same, as only the original case remains.

…or alternatively pick some arbitrary component to say “when this one is replaced it’s a new computer”. That’s what I do with the CPU, for naming purposes. (All my computers have names - Hollerith [retroactive name], Turing, Midgard, Tiberis [current])

I also like that I can just keep replacing parts on an existing product rather than buying an entirely new device each time. That’s exceedingly rare feature these days.

Ditto. And I wish cell phones were the same. Even if they were a bit bulkier as a result - it would mean buying less stuff pointlessly, it would be good for customers and environment.

The forest of the Great Tree, in Tales of Phantasia. Near the starting city (I think that it’s Toltus?). It looks beautiful.

A lot of small little things.

I got some brown habanero and biquinho peppers. The seeds were reserved for breeding projects, and the flesh for a hot but flavourful paste.

Sunday lunch pleased my nephew (a picky eater) so much that my sister called the next day, asking me for the recipe. It’s just an adapted version of Made with Lau’s sweet and sour fish (here’s a link).

Now that I bought the missing parts, watching my mum enjoy her new computer (with some old parts). “It doesn’t take a whole hour to boot!”… okay, she was exaggerating, it only took 5min or so to boot. But still, she’s happy with it.

I typically get a common cold every single Spring. (inb4 Southern Hemisphere here.) This year was no exception. However - I only spent a single day sick, I could work fine if I wanted, but I still had room to call the day off and spend the whole day on the bed.

The problem with no voting system whatsoever is that content then surfaces by recency and/or replies, so people generate a lot of noise to make stuff they agree more visible.

That said the current system is by no means perfect, and I agree with you that people should judge content by themselves.

The userbase is overall more mature and can actually discuss complex topics. Different instances have completely different feels, vibes, cultures and userbases, and that’s amazing. Some admin teams are spez wannabees but the federated structure limits the damage that they can cause.

Relative lack of niche communities. Witch hunting is becoming a worse problem here than in Reddit.

In Windows XP/Vista times I used to be the “computer kid”, helping others in the neighbourhood with their computers, in exchange of some pocket money. My brown M&M was a huge amount of desktop icons - nine times out of ten it meant that the issue with the computer (typically “why is it so slow???”) could be easily solved by:

• uninstalling crapware
• updating and running the anti-virus
• updating the system itself
• running disk cleanup
• defragmenting the hard disk

And boom, as if by magic, the computer was over 9000 times faster!

The desktop icons themselves aren’t a big deal, but they show that the person is rather sloppy on maintenance of their own machine. And they probably can’t even move files here and there.

[Warning: I’m no lawyer, nor doctor] It depends on the country. At least in Brazil this wouldn’t roll:

• Article 135 of the Penal Code - demands you to render aid to people under grave danger, as long as it won’t incur in risk for you. That applies to everyone, not just doctors, but if you’re a doctor it becomes really hard to explain why you didn’t render aid.
• Article 33 of the Medical Ethics Code - forces the doctor to render aid to someone seeking urgent or emergent professional care, when there’s no other doctor in a position to do so. Note that failure to follow ethics codes can make a professional unable to exert their profession legally.

At those times I love the two rounds system. It’s a pain in the arse to go vote twice, and it is by no means perfect, but you can still vote based on your conscience without “wasting” your vote.

For example. This month we got mayor elections here. There were 10 candidates in the first round; I voted in a socialist as usual. They had zero chance to win, but showing them some support is a big deal in the long run - it shows that at least some people are interested in their platform.

Then in the second turn we had Total Piece of Shit vs. Somewhat Shitty. Then I simply voted in Somewhat Shitty to make things not so bad.

Sugar - it doesn’t neutralise but mask the sourness, so the resulting taste is a bit more interesting. Bicarbonate will truly neutralise it but the result is a boring sauce.

I had a dream with a neighbourhood that doesn’t exist.

In the dream I know how to reach it - you need to go on a certain direction without crossing the main street, except that it’s literally impossible to do so IRL.

The neighbourhood is poor and dilapidated; we call it a “vila” here in my city. And yet it’s safe enough to let me walk through that neighbourhood for a shortcut. There’s no house yards there, or streets, just a bunch of houses built at random.,

The weirdest part? It was the third time that I dreamt with this neighbourhood.

At those times I’m fucking glad that /ð/ is typically short-lived. It tends to erase into nothingness, or to get fortified to /d/, or fronted to /v/.