I hate that the main issue reported is third party apps are dying. That’s a side effect, not the main issue.
The main issue is the access of the reddit’s data. We all built that. The volunteers who gave all of those hours to supervise that content is the real MVPs of reddit. Not the useless execs. The real founder of reddit has been gone for a while now (he was a true freedom fighter of access to knowledge).
The execs of reddit realize two main things. The first is the known idea that third party apps have the option to change how reddit looks to the user (including blocking ads). The other is that academic types and AI builders could use the content that we cultivated together in order to build datasets to train AI. The reddit execs know groups like these would be willing to pay extra for our data.
R.I.P. Aaron Swartz. It’s been 10 years and these are the issues you warned about and fought against.
I hope this whole ordeal, no matter how it goes down, ends up being a landmark for “social media as a monopoly”. I think there’s been a lot of talk about this in past years, with little real interest, because people are more interested in their next dopamine fix no matter how much they say they care about their data being sold. I hope this is the push we need to start considering these things for real. Most of us are uncomfortable with personal information being sold to 3rd parties, or knowing that users of these sites are technically the product being sold. It’s more weird and uncomfortable knowing the CEO and other execs are throwing a tantrum because user data and user submissions AREN’T being generated for them to sell to earn money to buy some yachts and golf courses.
Should social media be a public commodity, same way a community center or library is? Something paid for by taxes and regulated by government. I think it’s interesting in concept but odd to consider once you get into government censorship and surveillance aspects. Not a good idea either.
I guess I never thought about that. Technically, due to the first amendment of the US Bill of Rights (freedom of speech, press, right to assembly, etc.) the government has less authority to censor a public forum than any company has to censor their own private forum. Still, it would be an easy way to speak propaganda.
Government agencies already sell data (California bureau of vehicles, Florida in general). But I agree that the government would be much less incentivized to maximize profits like the way current social media platform are doing. This would keep the product focused on making conservations better (even the boring ones that don’t attract high volumes of people/viewership).
Also, I would think the content would belong to the public. Does this mean bad actors have access to identifying information as well?
I hate that the main issue reported is third party apps are dying. That’s a side effect, not the main issue.
The main issue is the access of the reddit’s data. We all built that. The volunteers who gave all of those hours to supervise that content is the real MVPs of reddit. Not the useless execs. The real founder of reddit has been gone for a while now (he was a true freedom fighter of access to knowledge).
The execs of reddit realize two main things. The first is the known idea that third party apps have the option to change how reddit looks to the user (including blocking ads). The other is that academic types and AI builders could use the content that we cultivated together in order to build datasets to train AI. The reddit execs know groups like these would be willing to pay extra for our data.
R.I.P. Aaron Swartz. It’s been 10 years and these are the issues you warned about and fought against.
I hope this whole ordeal, no matter how it goes down, ends up being a landmark for “social media as a monopoly”. I think there’s been a lot of talk about this in past years, with little real interest, because people are more interested in their next dopamine fix no matter how much they say they care about their data being sold. I hope this is the push we need to start considering these things for real. Most of us are uncomfortable with personal information being sold to 3rd parties, or knowing that users of these sites are technically the product being sold. It’s more weird and uncomfortable knowing the CEO and other execs are throwing a tantrum because user data and user submissions AREN’T being generated for them to sell to earn money to buy some yachts and golf courses.
Should social media be a public commodity, same way a community center or library is? Something paid for by taxes and regulated by government. I think it’s interesting in concept but odd to consider once you get into government censorship and surveillance aspects. Not a good idea either.
I guess I never thought about that. Technically, due to the first amendment of the US Bill of Rights (freedom of speech, press, right to assembly, etc.) the government has less authority to censor a public forum than any company has to censor their own private forum. Still, it would be an easy way to speak propaganda.
Government agencies already sell data (California bureau of vehicles, Florida in general). But I agree that the government would be much less incentivized to maximize profits like the way current social media platform are doing. This would keep the product focused on making conservations better (even the boring ones that don’t attract high volumes of people/viewership).
Also, I would think the content would belong to the public. Does this mean bad actors have access to identifying information as well?
For me its just the third party apps that I care about