What I would actually do with a time machine.
PunchingBag
joined 2 years ago
EDIT; I forgot this was the internet when I wrote this comment. Hopefully editing helps remove it more thoroughly.
They did last year as well. I recall there being some racy stuff that was being blocked out by black boxes placed by the admins, and people were able to track admin and mod accounts (like spez) that were placing pixels instantly with no cooldown. People were pissed then already, and the admin/mod response was basically "get wrecked we too smort lulz"
Place even last year was blatantly a ploy to give reddit more free and controllable content.
Which is the point of all of this. They've been flexing their ability to control the flow of information on their site to show off for investors since the minute they announced the API changes. They're going to use Place to further demonstrate the level of control they have over the userbase by "shutting down the protests." Advertisers and investors are going to be eating this up, especially since so many people are still engaging and giving hate-clicks along the way. Imagine how attractive a completely pliable and obedient userbase of literal millions of progressive swing voters is going to look.
Klaatu, baranda, nikto...
I wanna be, the very best...
Get me a Millenium Falcon-sized interstellar freighter and a stable supply line, and I'll never set foot planetside again.
I feel like they're going to release some very ancient, very unsatisfying reports and a few fuzzy videos and claim that's all they ever had. I hope not, but I'm skeptical this is as revelatory as it seems.
Quality has been dramatically better here than Reddit has been for many years. Finding people actually discussing the post in the comments is rare on Reddit, you have to sift through endless lines of off topic puns and memes being promoted by bots for karma farming. The goal of comments on Reddit is to be funny, not interesting or useful. The fediverse is more like Reddit eight or nine years ago, when they were figuring out their control algorithms, building their own bot network to game their own site (remember the subreddit where the reddit-built bots used to exclusively talk with each other for practice? I wonder what those bots are doing today...), and learning how to control the flow of information on their page while also finally making some things more stable.
I'm really curious if any parts of the fediverse can avoid the same pitfalls that Reddit eagerly jumped into. It's probably doubtful since once the advertisers get here, greed will win. It always does. But maybe.
Rupert Murdoch, to answer your question.