I'm a casual daily/weekly user of reddit but rarely post and have never been a moderator. I only access the website via my desktop or mobile browser. I don't care about API prices per se.
However: this whole episode has left me with the impression that Reddit is a company hostile to its own users - that they don't care about putting users and user experience first. That makes me consciously want to cut down my usage and explore alternatives, because I trust the brand less than I did before.
I'm a long time reddit user and post frequently but have never been a moderator. I'm quite aware that reddit users are and have always been quite hostile to the company and especially advertising based attempts to monetize the site (and it would be fair to number me among those users). I've never understood how it was supposed to be profitable or create some huge exit for those who want out.
People get pissed off because they often end up doing the opposite of what makes sense for the business and the users.
In advertising terms, subreddits are analogous to special interest magazines. Despite this, Reddit's initial approach was to spam subreddits with low quality ads that had nothing to do with the subreddit's purpose. Going to /r/golf I saw an ad for a Samsung phone and then:
> r/movies tell us who you’re most excited to see in ASTEROID CITY. In cinemas June 23
They've also made the ads barely distinguishable from regular posts.
> I've never understood how it was supposed to be profitable
Not hiring 2,000 people would've been a strong start. Improving long-standing issues with the platform rather than churning through poorly implemented and largely irrelevant features would be another.
They could easily have monetised the 3rd party apps with a much less negative reaction by requiring users to purchase Reddit subscriptions for access. Users that didn't want to pay would migrate to the official app and the subscription earns more than the API fees would.
Neeva failed because they didn’t understand distribution. Sundar became a rising star and ultimately CEO of Google because he directly managed more paid distribution and user acquisition for Google search than anyone else. Not a coincidence. Google promotes the narrative that they organically grew to dominate the search market when in fact they spent many billions of dollars on user acquisition (while also, for most of that time, having the best product).
Yea, distribution > product (most of the time) is almost startup 101 these days. It's dismissive to think the team and its big-name VCs behind it don't know the importance of distribution
Yahoo never had great search, they started life as a directory rather than a full search engine. Their first search functionality only searched their directory. Later they used Inktomi's crawler based search.
Indeed, they had an excellent search back then. But in a world before auto-complete in the URL bar, I wondered why they hadn't come up with a shorter and more catchy name. I usually was just too lazy to type "alltheweb.com", and I always had to think for a second to remember the URL in the first place.
There are privacy "promises" and then there are privacy laws like CCPA in California which companies are supposed to comply with. CCPA requires data brokers and large tech companies to maintain at least two channels by which users (including users who have no account / nothing to do with the company) can submit basic privacy requests like right to know and right to delete.
I searched for a couple hours last week and couldn't find a single way to submit a CCPA request to Google.
If anyone has the links, I'd love to be proven wrong here, but the sense I came away with is that Google is somewhat hostile towards real, accessible user privacy.
The privacy policy can differ from country to country, I had to proxy into the US to get the section on US state law requirements, otherwise from the UK it's replaced with a European requirements section instead.
> CCPA requires data brokers and large tech companies to maintain at least two channels
My interpretation of the CCPA is such that a business that operates exclusively online only needs to provide an email address and the two or more designated methods does not apply.
Demographics are destiny. America can probably attract and assimilate enough immigrants to be OK. That has always been and continues to be America’s superpower. As global birth rates continue to plummet, most of the rest of the world seems headed for a hard landing.
The West has been importing its population for decades, full gas since 1965. Not only is this strategy failing, it is a significant contributor to the West’s current decline. The core problem is more centered on the dynamics of the 20th century that led to mass immigration.
But new immigrants will need a vibrant economy they can assimilate into and pay taxes. If not, we will just be swamped and become another shithole country. That helps no one.
There's several places poised for good demographic growth. Egypt, parts of Africa, Mexico. Not China, most of Europe. USA should be fine as long as the quality of the human capital stays high (education, law and order, etc).
Those are certainly big factors but don't underestimate their future potential. There's some big mega projects happening in Egypt that most people in the west are not even aware of, for example. I think Mexico is the really interesting one to keep an eye on as the world bifurcates (huge near-shoring manufacturing potential).
Growth =/= divident. Demographics is more than just pyramid, have to consider workforce / productive composition and actual ability to realize potential, especially when comparing polities with order(s) of magnitude difference in population and human capita catchup/potential.
> Not China
Hence especially China.
Scale of PRC moving workforce from currently 25% skilled to 70-85% over (developed economy level) next few generation even with net population decline is roughly creating 3-5 new Japans, or another 1-1.5 US worth of high productive divident. Within a few generations, through system largely with good track record ability to move up skill/value chain. Most other developing countries have been spinning wheels for too long to take face value postive prognosis seriously. But PRC doing so at PRC scale is special case, no other country is structurally able to replicate this feat, because they lack scale (US even with immigration), or coordination (India on other in same pop class but systemically incapable and not trending towards being so).
I mean China regarding pop growth. China will be fine because like you said, highly skilled workforce and fully developed modern infrastructure. And I think AI and robotic automation will fill the void of population decline.
Mainly I'm alluding to the up and coming places that aren't developed. With all the negativity out there now, I see tons of potential - but it's outside of the western world (in particular, outside of Western Europe).
I agree there's a lot of potential, but IMO forces working against pop growth potential is increasing. I'm more weary of associate pop growth with assumed developement potential, there some analysis showing old pop heavy export oriented industrial model working less well - trend last few decades is industrialization opportunites being milked dryer sooner and at lower levels of income. What helped East/South Asia is may not be uplift LATAM or Africa to nearly same degree. Geopolitics and labour saving technologies is going to remove a lot of human potential from being realized, meanwhile a lot of the govs of developing countries are futzing hard themselves.
I'm feeling we're entering era where developing opportunties will be limited, and more people will simply mean more people left behind. And if developed countries with declining pops decide to pivot to immigration, brain drain from developing countries is going to get harsh, especially with opennings in western highered if PRC decides to turn off talent taps i.e. PRC demphasising English to limit talent flow out in future gens. If India gets wise decides to not export their demographic divident away, that's ~2M extra braindrain west will be taking from global south. Countries with 1B+ may have surplus to keep going, large countries with 100s of millions may not.
TLDR is I think potential is going to be harder to realize going forward.
I didn’t mention anything about leadership. What I’m interested in are raising standards of living and the markets that opens up. People who need to buy their first washing machine, etc.
Economically OK, but expect more social fissures between cultures and generations, especially when welfare and upward mobility will diminish with more bodies.
I'm surprised the malware origins weren't scrutinized more in the press when the deal was announced. Ultimately it seems like the Unity CEO was trying to buy his way to profitability, without realizing that the two companies were a total culture clash.
The search index is relatively easy, the ad marketplace is hard. DDG is likely hooked on tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in Bing revenue which is a tough habit to kick.
Once you’re hooked on Google or Bing search ads for revenue, they can control everything you are allowed to do within a product via compliance requirements. It’s a clever and effective form of regulatory capture.
“They say sufferings are misfortunes, but if I was asked whether I would stay as I was before I was taken prisoner, Or go through it all again, I would say, "For God's sake, let me be a prisoner again”.
For me, when our lives are knocked off course, we imagine everything in them is lost. But it is only the start of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal. A great deal still to come.”
Yellen says unsecured depositors at TBTF banks will always be bailed out, but those at smaller banks are on their own. It's one of the most incredible moments I've witnessed. I'm not sure if there's some hidden agenda being pursued, or if Yellen is just so far removed from the real world that she doesn't understand the consequences of her statement.
I'm not sure why any company or individual would hold >$250k at a non-TBTF bank after this. It borders on financial malpractice.
I never understand things like this. She looks like a deer caught in the headlights when he asks her the most predictable and basic question about her decisions. How can you be in such a position, make such decisions, and be unable to offer a compelling answer to the most basic questions?
Even if it some sort of a hidden agenda and [further] centralizing banking is just seen as a convenient stepping stone towards CBDCs or whatever, you'd come up with some passable explanation ahead of time. I mean it's not like the Senator there pulled out some gotcha she couldn't have expected.
There is a concept in the armed forces for making decisions in a given timeframe (struggling to find a source for this). Essentially you do the best you can in the time you are given. Then you move on and iterate. If you dither too much you probably don't have to make a decision anymore as the enemy has made it for you. In that framework it is accepted that a solution is not perfect.
I think about these crises the same way. They had 48h to sort it out and they had to make a decision. The decision has side-effect-like consequences. Should she now lie about this?
So now, why did they only have 48h to make a decision? I don't know. I doubt nobody has thought about this before. But I assume that regulating banks is particularly hard, because of lobby pushback and the banks ability to exploit any loop hole quickly. They are literally organisations that look out for how to make money by exploiting asymmetries. These organisations work against the slow democratic decision making that involves non-aligned actors (who are also often not trained in this particular issue) in the upper and lower houses of parliaments of different countries.
Another question is. Why are small banks treated differently than big banks. I have read somewhere that small banks have less regulatory oversight. Maybe the decision is much more to support heavily regulated banks and not so much those which are for various reasons not as much regulated. Why would the government want to hold the bag that it was not allowed to look into?
They had 48h in this case, but who gets bailed out and on what terms is a massive strategic decision that should not be made on the hoof. I must be naive because I thought planning for this kind of problem was part of her job.
First up, I do not have any particular insights what happened behind the doors and how government planning _really_ works. But if business / engineering management is in any way similar, there would have been a huge amount of uncertainty at the moment the hand was forced.
One would hope that there were some specialists at hand that know parts of the system, laws, implications on the overall economy etc.
There are likely a couple of plans available how to deal with this kind of situation. But likely not for this exact situation. Plans that exist but have not been implemented as policy likely are too rough around the edges or have significant opposition for different reasons.
On top of this, at this level of complexity and abstraction everything is kind of an opinion until tested and proven (but no time for that). Because no one truly understands all details and system connections.
On top of this in government you never know 100% what the motivations behind all these suggestions and plans is. What is factual, and what is politically tainted.
So all of the sudden things turn from certain to probabilistic. The leader has to figure out how to weigh the opinions and how to make a coherent enough decision (remember this is a system, and individually good decisions can be bad when taken together) to be net positive until the structured decision making can catch up.
Hopefully this is what is happening now and a general policy is decided on based on structured analysis. And hopefully it is quick enough to be ready before the next crisis hits.
>> you'd come up with some passable explanation ahead of time
Central bankers are appointed based on two criteria:
1. A willingness to print money for the government so it can spend more than it raises in taxes.
2. Looking presentable, sounding sophisticated and emitting enough bafflegab that (1) seems scientific instead of ideological.
Thinking deeply about economics and the role of banking/central banks in society is an anti criteria, because if you did think about those things you'd end up concluding that the only fair and stable solution is way less money printing and quite possibly none. That would directly undermine the government that appoints you. Your salary depends on you not understanding your own area of specialism.
I do feel like the defining characteristic of the 2020s is turning out to be people's struggle to accept the horrible truth that government officials/scientists who claim to be experts systematically have no idea what they are doing.
You can make a point about the administration, but if you’re talking about nepotism, specifically, you’re making a point about the wrong administration. There’s a much better example of a recent administration engaging in “peak nepotism”, a recent one that had the president’s children working in the White House.
I’m assuming the point you’re trying to make isn’t actually about nepotism and you’ve simply misunderstood what the word means.
Sure. I wasn’t trying to declare which administration was “peak nepotism”, only that calling the current one so is disingenuous when you have only to look as far as the previous one to find one that was more so.
You keep using that word nepotism. I do not think it means what you think it means. It’s not like Biden hired his daughter and son-in-law to bring peace to the Middle East and modernize the US govt among other tasks.
This is accurate. Don't you know his son had an infamous laptop that exposed all of his illicit dealings with Ukraine, never mind the straight up insane things regarding their family affairs.
I mean, if there was ever a time to know the people supporting the current regime are in a cult, look no further.
> Yellen says unsecured depositors at TBTF banks will always be bailed out, but those at smaller banks are on their own.
I agree SVB and Signature uninsured deposits shouldn't have been guaranteed, but that's not quite what Yellen said. The $250K guarantee applies to deposits at all insured banks. Having clarified that, Yellen said:
> A bank only gets that treatment [guaranteeing all deposits] if a [super] majority of the FDIC, a super majority of the FED board, and I in consultation with the president determine that the failure to protect uninsured depositors would create a systemic risk and significant economic and and financial consequences ...
Exactly. The subtext to this clip is that she cannot do what the congressman is acting without an act of congress, and he should know that. It’s well executed grandstanding.
As I understand it, the piece you are missing is that she legally/procedurally cannot guarantee depositors prior to a bankruptcy - that would require an act of congress. The congressman know this as well, so it’s just grandstanding.
They didn't act fast enough to save any of the SVB brand value which is now probably negative. I look forward to the SVB employee Halloween costumes reminiscent of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
It deserves to be dragged through the gutter for the hubris and incompetence demonstrated by the CEO, CFO etc.
And hopefully a reminder to everyone that they should due diligence on their banks. The fact that they had no CRO and openly lobbied for deregulation should have been major warning signs.
The short answer would be because the SVB brand is essentially owned by the bank's unsecured depositors at this point. You have to balance their recovery against the moral hazards of too earnestly sweeping failure under the rug.
I heard from a well-placed source that over 50% of SVB's balance sheet has already been liquidated by the FDIC. This matches up with what Bill Ackman tweeted. We'll find out early next week.
However: this whole episode has left me with the impression that Reddit is a company hostile to its own users - that they don't care about putting users and user experience first. That makes me consciously want to cut down my usage and explore alternatives, because I trust the brand less than I did before.