Pons_Aelius

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Pons_Aelius , (edited )

As far as I have heard. It is back working on reddit and there are no plans for a move.

Pons_Aelius ,

Counterpoint: Being proud of something you did not choose to participate in is a post-hoc rationalisation and just a bit self-delusional.

The statement: "I am proud to be a man", makes as much sense to me as "I am proud to be right-handed".

I am proud of several achievements in my life and ashamed of my behaviour in others. A statement I assume applies to most people. My gender has nothing to do with either.

I do not take credit for the achievements of others of my gender (or of the right-handed...) the same way that I am not responsible for their crimes.

Humans, by our social, tribal nature, love to divide the world into in-groups and out-groups usually to the detriment of all.

Pons_Aelius ,

Good point but Lgbt+ people have been shamed and criminalised for simply existing for centuries. Their use of pride is in reaction to that imposed shame. The black pride movement in the 1970s is the same, a group rejecting an innate trait as a reason for shame.

While males have been the dominate gender for basically all of recorded history. While aspects of male behaviour have come under, in my opinion, much needed scrutiny in recent times, I think talking about the issues of males violence (against man and woman) and other problematic behaviours needing to change is a long way from telling a gay or trans person to stop existing.

Pons_Aelius ,

men and women have both been subject to rigid gender roles that they could not choose or get away from

Very true. But you must also consider that while the role in society for pretty much all people in pre-modern life was rigidly defined, in all cases that I have read about the role of women was much more constrained and restricted.

To give a specific example from a period I studied.

The life of a peasant man in Tudor England was rigidly defined and pretty much at the whim of his Lord. But inside his home he had the same authority over his wife and family. The average man had little rights, the average woman had none.

UN chief says the world is in a new era marked by the highest major power competition in decades ( abcnews.go.com )

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the post-Cold War period is over and the world is moving toward a new multipolar era already marked by the highest level of geopolitical tensions and major power competition in decades...

Pons_Aelius ,

The democratic west spent decades after the collapse of the USSR hoping that if they were open and friendly to the major authoritarian powers that they would chill the fuck out and play nice with the world.

It would have been great, if it worked. But it didn't.

Pons_Aelius ,

I hope it was mission accomplished. Who could resist that face?

Pons_Aelius , (edited )

“Cunt” is unacceptable in the US and its days in other English-speaking countries may be numbered.

I assume you have never spent much time in Aus, Ireland, Scotland or England, because the use of cunt is far, far from the taboo it is in the states.

But let’s move away from all sex-negative, and demographic-based cusses.

And replace them with what?

Swearing's whole point is verbal transgressions to convey a level of emotion.

We have often used fellatio as a metaphor for something disagreeable (“suck”)

Something sucking has never had any sexual connotations in my country. It is simply that suck = not good.

All in all, I feel you are talking from a very personal perspective and that is fine, but you then use it to create generalisations that do not apply as widely as you claim.

Pons_Aelius ,

It takes a while for a post (and subsequent comments) to propagate across different instance servers.

Pons_Aelius ,

Part 1

Reddit could slim down management as moves toward an IPO

Thomas Maxwell

Reddit is preparing for an IPO amid controversy surrounding changes to its API.
Reddit employees say the company has a bloated leadership structure with too many managers.
Staffers were told earlier this year that they'd need to do "less but better."

As Reddit prepares for an initial public offering that could come by the end of 2023, it's looking to flatten its management structure, and employees say the company has become bloated with executive- and director-level employees.

Reddit filed for IPO in December 2021, when demand for new tech stocks was at a fever pitch. It said it surpassed $100 million in advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2021. It has also made large investments in artificial intelligence, acquiring the machine-learning startup Spell in June 2022 to help customize ad placements.

Since then, demand for tech stocks has dropped. Reddit laid off 90 employees in early June as it aims to reach profitability. Its revenue growth has slowed, The Information reported.

To prepare for the intense scrutiny of the public markets, Reddit is whipping itself into shape; managers told employees in product earlier this year that the goal was to do "less but better." Part of the mandate could include slimming down middle management.

Reddit is also examining areas of its business where it could squeeze costs. It recently announced a controversial decision to charge for access to its API, or application programming interface, which enables developers to build tools that connect to Reddit. It argued that it couldn't support third-party apps that use Reddit's content but don't provide any money in return.

Insider spoke with five current and former Reddit employees, who requested anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press or had signed nondisclosure agreements to receive severance. They described some leadership moves and road-map changes that caused what one employee described as "thrash."

The 18-year-old social-media company has long had a culture of "trying to do too many things and doing them really poorly and not finishing them at all," the same employee said. Internally, they said, the company would now focus on "having a simplified product plan and sticking to it."

A Reddit representative declined to comment on this story and pointed to a blog post about the company's acquisition of Spell.
A flattening at Reddit

Reddit executives presented a distribution of managers to direct reports during its last quarterly leadership summit in May in New York City. The distribution showed that many managers oversee four to six people. Managers who attended the summit told employees that leadership suggested the company would in the second half of the year consolidate teams with managers overseeing fewer than six employees, two employees said.

Pons_Aelius ,

Part 2:

Employees say this could mean more managers may leave through managed exits.

Reddit is not the only tech company flattening its leadership structure. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year that the company would reduce its number of product managers and directors to make it more efficient. Meta had given managers the option to be demoted, with the expectation that many would choose to leave. Shopify has also tried to flatten its organization.
Lost trust in leadership

Reddit employees said they lost trust in leadership after a series of missteps. For example, they said they were repeatedly told before the company conducted layoffs in June that layoffs wouldn't happen.

Product road maps changed in May as the company focused on the API changes and on boosting content creation by users.

The recent change to charge for access to Reddit's API also led to protests from moderators. While many employees supported the API changes, they said Reddit's moderators deserved credit for helping grow the site. A former employee who left in April argued that company leadership should have invested more in supporting moderators and that building tools for Reddit's moderator community "has never been a priority" for leadership.

"Reddit has long had staff who have worked hard to provide a better mod experience, but the will to improve this has never come from the top, and Reddit has yet to fund them to the extent they need to," one employee said.

Illustration of a Reddit logo on a mobile phone with a laptop behind it
Reddit.
Getty Images

On top of that, Reddit hasn't been able to fully integrate Spell's technology since its acquisition, two employees familiar with the matter said. One employee described Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, as having pushed through the acquisition despite opposition from vice presidents and directors, as well as bringing its founders as vice presidents and directors "despite Reddit not needing more of either."
Leadership shake-ups

Reddit had some leadership changes earlier this year. Jack Hanlon, who was the vice president of feeds, AI, search, and data, parted ways with the company in March, he and the company confirmed. Hanlon led product and engineering for several areas of the company, including machine learning and data science.

In May, Reddit's head of data science, Jose Lobez, was replaced by Tyler Otto, who'd joined Reddit from Hipmunk, a travel website Huffman founded.

Three employees described Lobez's departure as a surprise, as he was well liked within the data-science organization. "He basically grew the data-science organization himself — a big cultural figure internally," one said. They described Lopez as "pretty open both with reports and about the org as a whole," adding that he "helped deal with interorganization disputes pretty well."

Pons_Aelius , (edited )

The perfect site for reddit admins would be endless bots posting, commenting and viewing adds while said advertisers are oblivious to the con.

The first two have been going on at some level for years. The last? Well, it will be interesting to see the official reddit app's adoption numbers in the coming months.

Pons_Aelius ,

Most people expect gradual change when many things in life are more like punctuated equilibrium.

Stable state despite gradual change in underlying conditions.

Then rapid change to new stable state.

Pons_Aelius ,

Sorry to do that, but I believe the world makes a lot more sense when viewed through the lens of punctuated equilibrium. It does not make things better, just makes the chaos more understandable.

The dot com bubble.

The housing bubble.

Basically every economic bubble all the way back to tulip mania.

The Arab Spring.

The changes in the USA post 9/11.

And most disturbing of all, the recent rapid swing of pretty much all environmental indicators into uncharted territory. Our biosphere may be heading into a phase of rapid change.

Pons_Aelius ,

My understanding is that the new API required a new key to use. But the old keys have not been blocked.

I am sure a good contract lawyer would have a field day if reddit tried to charge 3rd parties for themselves not doing the job of cutting off access.

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