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this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
1775 points (98.3% liked)
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Always has been.
As with many things under capitalism, the ongoing mandate is that profits must go up, and must go up at a higher rate no matter what, or investors panic and the price drops steeply which can lead to a collapse. Reddit is just another ravenous profit-seeking vehicle of the same kind and is going into the same "line must go up" death spiral.
I wouldn't say Reddit always has been owned by a malicious entity, Aaron Swartz was a cool guy. And if you're telling me a man who freely distributed thousands of needlessly paywalled research papers is a some kind of arch capitalist, then there's no helping you.
Swartz co-owned reddit for around 1 year, 2006-2007. His influence has overall probably been insignificant.
True true, I just specifically took issue with it always having been run by bastards. (I know it's a meme template, but I just wanted to point to evidence that there is hope that not everything we use has always been yoked with pure greed. Call it a cope, IDC.)
If your basis for believing that is Reddit having one co-owner you liked for one year and that's the best evidence you got, that isn't a strong basis.
You can do sophistic tricks like exaggerating other people's positions to try to make yours seem more tenable so you can mine for supposed exceptions, but the reality remains that capitalism requires increasingly unsustainable profit margins over time for the lifetime of each product and that consequently results in systemic enshittification of things that were previously decent and bearable. That is an inevitable ongoing process in this present system.
Swartz had good beliefs about freedom of information but politically was kind of a weirdo. What happened to him is an unlimited tragedy and outright criminal.
That
tone isn't necessary.
One co-owner being around for one year doesn't absolve the skullduggery of the other that is still here to the present day, as another poster already mentioned.
Honestly as a capitalist (I know, blasphemy) Aaron did the world a favor when he dropped those papers. Elsevier Wiley IEEE et al have a cartel and so many of them are NIH or DOD funded papers they should be public domain period.
The premise of our system depends on controls to avoid instilled entries extorting capital. Capitalism isn't: it's feudalism with extra steps
Before you congratulate yourself again for internet bravery, do you actually own capital? Do you own the means of production? If not, you're not a capitalist even if you wave pompoms and otherwise do apologia for capitalism.
Well damn, ya got me. I own a car. That's about it.
You're not really a capitalist in a meaningful way. You might cheerlead for it, but that isn't a means of production no matter what Uber/Lyft might tell you.