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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29231 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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I can still see it. But I'll paste it here:

Yishan:

In 2006, reddit was sold to Conde Nast. It was soon obvious to many that the sale had been premature, the site was unmanaged and under-resourced under the old-media giant who simply didn't understand it and could never realize its full potential, so the founders and their allies in Y-Combinator (where reddit had been born) hatched an audacious plan to re-extract reddit from the clutches of the 100-year-old media conglomerate.

Together with Sam Altman, they recruited a young up-and-coming technology manager with social media credentials. Alexis, who was on the interview panel for the new reddit CEO, would reject all other candidates except this one. The manager was to insist as a condition of taking the job that Conde Nast would have to give up significant ownership of the company, first to employees by justifying the need for equity to be able to hire top talent, bringing in Silicon Valley insiders to help run the company. After continuing to grow the company, he would then further dilute Conde Nast's ownership by raising money from a syndicate of Silicon Valley investors led by Sam Altman, now the President of Y-Combinator itself, who in the process would take a seat on the board.

Once this was done, he and his team would manufacture a series of otherwise-improbable leadership crises, forcing the new board to scramble to find a new CEO, allowing Altman to use his position on the board to advocate for the re-introduction of the old founders, installing them on the board and as CEO, thus returning the company to their control and relegating Conde Nast to a position as minority shareholder.

JUST KIDDING. There's no way that could happen.

Sam Altman:

Cool story bro.

Except I could never have predicted the part where you resigned on the spot :)

Other than that, child's play for me.

Thanks for the help. I mean, thanks for your service as CEO.

Not sure why it’s not working for me.

Anyway I had to look up Yishan Wong on Wikipedia and this paragraph I find hilarious

“In 2012, when asked about various controversial Reddit communities, Wong said that the site should offer a platform for objectionable content: "We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it."[10] In 2013, he hired Ellen Pao as the Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships and later recommended her as CEO.[11]”

Maybe Ellen Pao wasn’t quit the censorship type back then but the paragraph reads to me “We strongly support our Jewish community in X,Y,Z country we have therefore appointed our Secretary of State to be Adolf Hitler.” Either he truly believed what he said and just made an awful hirer or cultures of all involved in Reddit changed over time.

2012 - 2016 is when the SF tech industry switched from "free speech and neutrality are critical for our growth" to "kicking around our political enemies is a whole lot of fun". I think Obama's re-election campaign was the turning point.

Ellen Pao was probably always more comfortable with censoring and control. But in her actions she was just following the prevailing winds in SF.

I think Obama's re-election campaign was the turning point.

No, it was pretty clearly the Trump campaign. That was the empirical proof (in their minds) that free speech cannot suffice to ensure the triumph of good over evil. They kept expecting that the negative coverage, universal condemnations, and yes, polite conversations with Trump supporters would work. They didn't.

No, it was pretty clearly the Trump campaign.

No, it was not. It was 2014 at the latest. By the time Trump came around, the "freeze peach" people were in full control. See also, "Gamergate".

It wasn't the turning point (indeed, Trumpism was a reaction to SJ turning stifling), but They did escalate, a lot, when Trump showed up.

It wasn’t just gamergate. I think it roughly coincided with the end of a major growth phase in social media— around 2010 to 2015 it became clear that nearly everyone in the country was on some form of social media. The social media platforms no longer needed to attract users, they needed to attract advertisers. And advertisers want to have some control over what kinds of things appear on the same page as their ads, and don’t want to be guilty by association of unsavory content or opinions. A post that is racist in some way next to an ad for Coke gives the impression that Coke sponsors that racism.

I think it roughly coincided with the end of a major growth phase in social media

I think this is right, but...

The social media platforms no longer needed to attract users, they needed to attract advertisers.

...this is mostly wrong.

I think there are a couple of trends, one slow and one fast, which are relevant here and which coincided by apparent coincidence.

  1. (Fast) The normies showed up on the Internet, because smartphones. The political opinions of nerds are systematically different from the mainstream and tend toward liberalism (in the old, real sense, not the modern US perversion of the word); as such, when the Internet became less nerdy, this naturally encouraged a loss of liberalism. But also, the kinds of bullies and social climbers who make a hobby of shunning people suddenly got a tool for "instant outrage mob, just add spark"; this turned out to be a powerful weapon to cow people and send society in general into a less-liberal mode.
  2. (Slow) SJers were increasing in numbers. SJ is, in large part, what happens when you feed counterculture liberalism to a conservative-by-temperament. As such, this was a time bomb planted in the 60s and sprouted in the 90s, but it took until the 2010s for them to grow into politically-active teenagers.

I think that in the counterfactual that the counterculture did not exist, you'd have still seen a crackdown due to #1, but it'd have been with opposite political valence.

No, it wasn't just advertisers, though they were indeed captured and used what you said as an excuse (@ArjinFerman points out the evidence it is just an excuse below). They censored not just reddit but 4chan, which certainly never cared about advertisers.

Huh... is pinging by username broken? Or is it because my username is parentheses?

@The_Nybbler

(@The_Nybbler) (must...resist... parentheses... joke...)

Edit: yeah, it's the latter.

Here let's see (((@ArjinFerman))).

And advertisers want to have some control over what kinds of things appear on the same page as their ads, and don’t want to be guilty by association of unsavory content or opinions.

What's important to remember here, is that what they want is the control over expressed opinions, rather than ensuring there will be no negative impact on their bottom line. None of the guilt by association with "nazis" resulted in anyone's sales dropping, but resulted in massive restrictions on speech. Conversely the one advertising controversy that did cause a massive drop in sales - Dylan Mulvaney - resulted in no restrictions on speech.

Not sure why it’s not working for me.

Try it while logged out (or in a private window). Reddit's blocking functionality is a bit strange.

He really does sound like the most annoying kid at your high school.

My question with Sam has always been whether he fucked Thiel to get what he has, or whether Thiel gave it to him for ‘free’ and saw him merely as a kindred spirit.

If you were a guy, you'd know.

Explain as best you can.

Men are far more promiscuous than women for very obvious reasons.

And Altman seems somewhat psychopathic to me based on his past exploits so he'd do it if it was needed.

Also Thiel is an impressive guy, and is probably way out of Sam's league.

I can't really tell with men who is good looking and who isn't instinctively, but Altman has a weird face and bit bulging eyes. Thiel looks fit and way more near median male face.

I agree wet Altman's appearance but given that he also married a dude out of his league he clearly has something going for him.

something going for him

He's smart and he's rich? His husband has a cloyingly sweet face, though. If that's Sam's type, then I doubt he would be enamored with Thiel's "spy thriller villain" looks.

I’m sure Altman would do it if necessary. Altman is kind of weird looking but he has a big-headed appearance that a lot of gay guys ime seem to like. Thiel is a bottom so it probably depends on Altman’s proclivity. Always interesting to speculate about.

Thiel is a bottom? How do we know, I wonder..

That’s what my rich gay tech friends say, but I’m less informed than other people here, probably.

This is not interesting to speculate about at all. I did not consent to imagining Altman and Thiel fucking.

Neither did I, but now the cat is out of the bag, so let's have a look.

By the images of him online, Altman is okay looking. I wouldn't say he's super handsome, but he's at least high average. Thiel is okay-looking too. While I don't want to imagine any exchange of favours for favours, hypothetically let us say that if Altman offered a foot rub, so to speak, I don't see why Thiel would refuse on grounds of looks.

Probably it was more traditional currying favour with the boss and being the kind of guy that is "I like you, you're not a yes man!" "Thanks boss, that's your innate good sense and amazing instinct for making the right choice at work once more" that got him any positive attention and support.

Thiel is a bottom

Kinda curious how you know this.

I'm surprised that someone as driven as Thiel is a bottom, but I guess these things are not as correlated as I thought.

If you want to be a top, the best way to get hands on training data from an expert who knows what they're doing is- Well I'll give you three guesses. Needless to say the best tops are also bottoms.

It's just base rate, there are many more bottoms than tops.

Always interesting to speculate about.

No it isn't. I have to go watch cat videos after reading this thread.

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