With Reddit Working for Wall Street, Even More Than Before, Time to Contribute to Readers-Supported Sites Instead (E.g. SoylentNews)
Related: Reddit Misapplies NSFW Tags (/r/stallmanwasright Too Hot to Handle) | Reddit is a Linux-Hostile Censorship and FUD Machine | Microsoft Crime Persists: AstroTurfing a Regular Practice, Reddit Full of Paid Microsoft AstroTurfers | Censorship on Reddit Has Gotten (Condé) Nasty and Silent, Even Actively Silenced
THE thing about Reddit is, few people understand what Reddit truly is. As someone who knows Reddit very well, I am appalled by it and I am appalled by people who defend it.
A few days ago this article ("Reddit’s I.P.O. Is a Content Moderation Success Story") got published to basically hail censorship.
It would be simple to ignore or overlook if it didn't come from the so-called "journal of record" in the United States.
As an associate put it, NY Times is "whitewashing the anti-FOSS censorship and conflating it with clearing out trolls."
Just to give a very recent (days-old) example of their censorship, Reddit recently flagged an rms (Richard Stallman) story in the stallmanwasright/rmswasright (RMS Was Right) sub; it was a Daniel Pocock story. As we'll explain in a moment, just because it says "rmswasright" or "stallmanwasright" (old meme) doesn't mean it is controlled by rms proponents. Reddit has a habit of hijacking subs, taking them away from their creators.
So Reddit is even censoring rms/RMS information (support of RMS) in the stallmanwasright/rmswasright sub.
Are you pro-rms? Get out of here!! You dirty Commie!
So what is Reddit anyway? Did it even make money? No! But in the age of legal embezzlement we're meant to think this is perfectly normal. Reddit is basically being offloaded for being a financial failure/burden in spite of the censorship and despite running Microsoft marketing campaigns for nearly two decades (we covered some of those). As explained here in relation to other social control media, the business model is control ("you can't follow [...] external platforms from within Threads") and mental influence. That's what Reddit does, for profit or for ideological, commercial gain. That's why Saudi Arabia spent so much money buying a large share of Twitter and many other things. It didn't bother the Saudi elites that Twitter hadn't made any financial gains and instead built up a large mountain of debt.
Recently we saw stories about RMS (Stallman) marked "NSFW" for no good reason. One reader recalls, "isn't the RMS-Was-Right subreddit labeled NSFW or something? I just checked, no, not at this moment, but it is filled with crap..."
Maybe they try to rope in actual supporters of the person and then project back to them nonsense while filtering out the signal. Incidentally, TechDirt has just released this podcast about free speech and Reddit. Reddit, as NY Times puts is, censored many people and then became "SUCCESSFUL"! That's what they want us to think.
But no, Reddit always made losses. ALWAYS. Moreover, the censorship isn't a merit; they just merely censored people for the 1%, cashing in on the FILTERING behind the scenes. Reddit only functions as censorship-centric penalty box, not as a discussion/communication/brainstorming tool. The way we see it, people who play Wikipedia and pay Reddit (without a salary) are fools. They give jobs to Microsoft's AstroTurfers, who are there to confront them (they got exposed years ago). Those with the money have the last word!
A friend told me that Reddit "is very anti-FOSS and even more anti-RMS. Some years ago, a great many moderators were kicked out of their own 'subreddits' which they themselves had founded. Reddit is about propaganda and controlling the narrative and was built as a counter to and to kill Slashdot."
"Slashdot reflected the zeitgeist of the 90s and 00s and that mean that it was FOSS through and through. Some interests, which back Microsoft, could not stand that. I presume they were responsible for the lion's share of the trolling and shilling there to drag it down like they have done many other sites."
"With redddit, they can just fire and replace the moderators and have done with it. That could not be done with Slashdot due to the community nature. I understand that [Rob] Malda wanted to try something else but his move accelerated the demise of Slashdot."
Slashdot never went to Wall Street with an IPO, but it went nowhere good. Those of us who miss the old Slashdot are nowadays following the readers-centric SoylentNews, which has just been "approved by the IRS for Not For Profit status."
Money or might don't make "right". We need accurate information. We need honest editors, not a bucket of corporate sponsors who control editors by threats to revoke (or not renew) sponsorships. █
