conicalscientist

It started with gmail IMO. That was an early milestone of the evil empire. They announced mining your emails to build an ad empire. I remember being bewildered that nerds on forums were going nuts over 1GB of storage. What a shit trade off I thought. But what did I know then especially relative to the expertise of internet nerds.

Gmail was launched around 2005 which means the concept was in development several years before. That puts the timeline around 2000 probably. Google was evil from very early on.

So the same MO as always. To take a stranglehold of the internet. "Creators" or "influencers" or whatever buzzword will be all over this as it's an opportunity to monetize. I'm sure reddit corporate will be taking their piece of rent seeking of course.

The bigger implication that everyone always ignores is that this is going to lock users into the walled garden. Up to now posters have been driving people off site. The comic artists are a good example. They post their comics as image posts. They direct people off site to access more content. They will no doubt jump on the chance to have a paid subreddit. This is an attempt to kill off whatever sites the artist use. If they had some other service providing monetization then that company is probably panicking a little right now.

I'm certain those replies are in bad faith to discourage people from leaving reddit. The first one is obvious for your aforemention reason. The second one. I mean the internet has been around for decades. People haven't suddenly forgot how to use it. Even normies have been able to figure out how to click a server. They're fomenting lazy inertia.

People are still thinking in 20th century. The 21st century tech oligarchs are more powerful than nations. They control digital infrastructure. The ones who own social platforms can incite civil unrest. They control the algorithmic knobs of the population.

It's literally in your face how obvious it is. Musk has Trump cowering at the Resolute desk. The most powerful seat in the world.

I think people must be in denial. Trying to justify with some other reasonings other than what is. Musk isn't an asset. It isn't a side business. He's taken over the world superpower. Nation states aren't the highest theater anymore. It's tech oligarchs.

There isn't a 4-8 back and forth cycle anymore. This paradigm no longer exists because the GOP has abdicated. It took the two parties to agree on this unwritten understanding.

The Dems are continuing to muddle around under the guise that a bygone era of decorum still exists... That maybe the old Republican party will come back. After each Dem term, MAGA will continue to do whatever the fuck they're doing with reckless abandon. They know the Dems are cucked. One or both disappears as a party. We're past that point for the GOP as it's clear MAGA isn't an aberration of 2016. So it must be the Dems re-invent themselves as something that can actually challenge MAGA.

This isn't just a setback for Democrats. This needs to be a realization that the Dems are no longer a viable party. Sure on paper and in a bottle they are indeed a political party. Not one that is going to rise to the challenges.

People have been wondering if the party will be listless if Trump dies. Maybe that's when MAGA finally reverts to the old Republicans. It's clear now it won't. They'll elect a puppet president. The real president will be Musk or who ever else manages to worm their way in.

Sundar PIchai was front and center at the inauguration. Right next to Musk himself.

Where did this come from? Is this a precursor to pushing some blockchain shit or something?

I had a bad feeling when tech was turning out more like Zuckerberg and less like the Swartz. I didn't think they'd go full dystopia.

In other news the first arrivals are at gitmo concentration camp.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/us/politics/guantanamo-bay-migrants.html

It's been like that since 2016. You're saying it's gotten worse? Oh well.

Besides. Belligerent conservatives have always been a core component of reddit. Doesn't anyone remember much the left leaning atheism type of users were ridiculed. What I find more interesting than anything is how everyone even leftists accept the default view that reddit is center to left. While everything right leaning is a minority and an aberration. They're not seen as actual reddit for some reason. Spoken of as if conservatives are outsiders. It's bizarre. Old reddits favorite politician was Ron Paul. They were a bunch of Ayn Rand loving pseuds. How the hell does anyone get the remote idea that reddit is historically anything but at least right of center.

By the way Musk bots have been on reddit for a long time. Once upon a time the mods of /r/technology tried to limit the amount of musk posts on that subreddit. Otherwise they would be flooding the top posts of the subreddit all the time. The musk bots caused quite a scene. I think it led to that subreddit getting removed as a default. I might be remembering wrong though.

This quite a historic geopolitical paradigm shift. It's been implicitly assumed that the two countries are forever allied out of mutual interest.

I'm still waiting to see if the second amendment is actually real.