It’s possible that the enforcement of a rate limit isn’t because of AI scraping, but rather because they failed to migrate before the June 30th deadline.

      • jarfil@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Depends on where you go.

        Subs like r/worldnews and r/tech have bottom of the barrel comments, but still manage to get some posts.

        r/IAmA had many of the mods leave, so the remaining ones are stopping all “out of Reddit” activities, like recruiting celebrities, verifying identities, and so on. It’s pretty much worthless now.

        Small niche subs are still working, but the equivalent communities on Lemmy are getting better quality right now.

        • OctopusKurwa @lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Worldnews has always skewed a little to the right but the comments I read on a post about the immigrants drowning absolutely disgusted me

    • TheHog@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I, and many others, truly believe it is deliberate and orchestrated, primeraly to shut down the likes of r/superstonk and other subs that are fighting wall street corruption.

  • Tandybaum@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I used to work for a local company that sold parts to Tesla. They were a huge nightmare and wouldn’t pay us. I think that is their whole deal. Not paying the small companies.

    FUCK them

    • MerfMerf@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Unfortunately that sort of behaviour is common in many sectors where large companies subcontract with smaller companies.

      The tactic basically created the whole factoring concept (buying invoices, or using invoices as security for a “loan”/credit).

      Over here in Sweden it was construction companies that initially fuelled the development, and the large companies basically required very long payment terms (60+ days) from their subcontractors and then waited to the very last day to dispute the invoice by complaining on some part of the work, further delaying payment. A small subcontractor could often not front being out that much money (2+ months of salaries, materials and other operating costs, cost of fighting the dispute etc) and ended up going bust. Enter financial institutions buying (or “lending” with the invoice as security) the invoice, letting the subcontractor get paid immediately, but of course not the full amount since the factoring company wants to profit from the deal. The factoring companies being backed by large financial institutions (banks typically) have enough money that they can sit out those long payment terms and other “bullshit” since they know those large construction companies ARE good for the money they are owed EVENTUALLY.

      Still carves into the margins for the small actors.

  • WorldWideLem@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I don’t know what will happen with Twitter. Maybe it succeeds, maybe it fails, maybe it just keeps humming along in mediocrity. But what I do know is that wherever it ends up, there was surely a much simpler way to get there.

    • Prior_Industry@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Well he did try pulling out the cables going into the server clusters. Maybe he got tired and bored before he could pull them all out

  • BornVolcano@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Image Transcription: News Article Screenshot:


    [A screenshot of a section of an article by the news outlet “Engadget”. Text reads as follows.]

    More platform instability could be in Twitter’s near future. In 2018, Twitter signed a $1 billion contract with Google to host some of its services on the company’s Google Cloud servers. [Hyperlink begins] Platformer reports [Hyperlink ends] Twitter recently refused to pay the search giant ahead of the contract’s [Highlighted in yellow] June 30th renewal date. [Highlighting ends] Twitter is reportedly rushing to move as many services off of Google’s infrastructure before the contract expires, but the effort is “running behind schedule,” putting some tools, including Smyte, a platform the company [Hyperlink begins] acquired in 2018 [Hyperlink ends] to bolster its moderation capabilities, in danger of going offline.


    ^I’m a human volunteer transcribing posts in a format compatible with screen readers, for blind and visually impaired users!^

    • Teriser@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      1 year ago

      You’re doing important work! Just wanted to drop a small correction, the news outlet is actually called “engadget” Cheers!

    • OasissisaO@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I especially enjoy that, no matter how much he drives the value down, he’s always going to owe the full value of the loans.

      • Apenas um Gaucho @lemmy.eco.br
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        1 year ago

        Yeah and he used tesla actions as a collateral. So if he is not able to make money to pay for the loans, he will lose control of Tesla. I´m savoring every moment that things are blowing up in his face. After this venture fails, he will probably still be rich, but surely not a billionaire anymore and i will vicariously enjoy his fall from billionaire extraordinaire to just a legacy common stock millionaire.

  • Khrounose@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I see that a lot of people complain about reddit, twitter, and whatever mainstream website completely fuck the consumer, but fail to realize one crucial thing. The only time change happens in mob settings is when the pain of no change is greater than the pain of change. I applaud Elon, spez, and who ever else wishes to put there services behind their paywall whether it’s an API or just simply viewing tweets. Anyone in the know knows that it’s a crock of shit and anyone who isn’t is annoyed to the point where change is preferable. The sooner people figure out posting information, entertainment, and other forms of media/knowledge to the benefit of a company is horrendous the better. Now we have the opportunity to get rid of the corporate greed and basically open-source peoples knowledge from around the globe. Although like with reddit, mob mentality poses a real threat to communities like this one, I trust that you all are normal and level headed individuals who can come to disagreements but still respect eachother (as corny as that sounds). I much prefer it over giving more information to companies who use it to profit off of my content, while I receive nothing.

    *Edit: Thank you kind stranger for the reddit gold! Glad you spent real hard cash so I can have reddit premium and reddit coins! The lovely people at reddit will be spending your money sitting on a yacht eating grapes in one hand and lobster in the other. I’m sure they are real thankful too! :) *

  • wanderingmagus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think it’s probably a combination of self-DDOSing and not paying providers. Which any intelligent experienced dev could’ve told him, but they all got fired months ago.

    • Capt. Wolf@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      When all this crap started, my guess was that he is some sort of captured asset that’s using his position to sabotage the platform to hinder free speech. Initially, he was so strongly targeting any anti-trump/anti-republican assets that it seemed blatantly obvious, but my money is on Russia or China. China being the more obvious option, given they supply a lot of Tesla’s materials.

      That’s all conjecture of course, he could just be an insane despot cutting his nose off to spite his face like Steve Huffman.

    • wwaxwork@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Someone owes some Russian & Middle Eastern Oligarchs a lot of money for his Twitter buying fiasco. Same as Trump did for his fiascos. The business model is just them doing what they were told to do.

      • psilocybin@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        Lol, what?

        He is one of the richest oligarchs in the world, its people like him that the whole system caters to.

        Nobody is controlling him, he can do whatever the fuck he wants and he just happens to want a lot of dumb shit.

        • just_browsing@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          It’s not like he just wrote a check. He took out loans and got other investors to sign on to fund the Twitter purchase. Even someone as wealthy as him has to answer to others.

  • existential_crisis@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    To be fair, Google Cloud is an overpriced and unreliable dumpster fire of a service. I’m surprised Twitter was using them at all. Although, I guess when you’re paying billions of dollars, the service you get is different.

    • many_bees@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Doesn’t change the fact that if you agree to pay someone for their service, you must pay someone for their service. I guess being a deadbeat is different when you’re purportedly worth billions of dollars.

      • the_itsb (she/her)@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        This is so much more true than I think most people believe.

        My husband and I have a small engine business, and I took a free “community entrepreneur bootcamp” class through the local university this spring in the hope that we might learn something helpful. Instead, I learned fun things like leaning on your customers’ fears as a marketing tactic (?? 😔🤦) and that the most prominent local accountant - brought in as an expert speaker by the university! - advises his clients to pay as little as possible as late as possible, and most appallingly, I’m not exaggerating, these are the actual words I heard this man say in front of a room full of people: “if one of your employees gets hurt at your business, it’s better for you to stand on their neck until they stop breathing than to call for help, because it’s so much easier and cheaper to settle a death claim then an injury.” And he actually said that it sounds like he’s joking but he’s not, this is his understanding of the situation.

        I genuinely want to see the best in everyone, and I have never before had the experience of fantasizing about a person’s death while they were talking in front of me, and it was abhorrent and awful but also… Wtf? How do we even help someone who sees other people as expendable tools the way this person does?

        What can we even do about people who not only don’t want to live up to their agreements and commitments, but are just straight up out to fuck everyone else over? How do we help/fix that?

        • MysticSmear@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          It sounds very similar to when I was in seminary. They literally had classes on how to manipulate your audience. How to “use vocal patterns and body language to make yourself appear more sincere.”

          People severely underestimate how many shitty people there are in this world (and even those who appear trustworthy) that would eat your firstborn to increase their net worth if it wasn’t illegal.

          • MikeHfuhruhurr@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I read an article years ago that explained why so many people get “religious” feelings at big revival-type events at Six Flags, Carowinds, etc, even if they’re not particularly devout.

            There’s a thing called respiratory alkalosis (essentially hyperventilation) which makes you light-headed and confused. At it’s really easy to trigger by making people stand up quickly, sing really hard, sit back down, stand up and cheer, etc.

            • Deestan@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              That sounds interesting! Do you remember where you found it? I would love to read it.

              • MikeHfuhruhurr@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                I’m back! I couldn’t find the specific thing I read, but I found something probably better, an actual study published in Pubmed:
                https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8871314/

                Statistical analyses showed that the psychological disposition during the religious worship experience speeds up the physiological responses, which was indicated by increases in HR [hear rate] and RR [respiratory rate]. Hence, the activation hypothesis was accepted, and the pacification hypothesis was rejected.

                • Deestan@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Thanks! You made my day, my good lemming.

                  The conclusion fits what you said earlier, and it is easy to see how this is probably used cynically for these cult bro events:

                  The first analysis was an exploration of the physiological data, where it was seen that HR and RR were significantly correlated. The values of how strongly the participants were able to focus on God were strongly associated with the intensity of the experience as well as with the physiological variables

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Twitter was an important unifying communications tool during the Arab Spring. The Arab spring was a threat to biz as usual in places like Saudi Arabia. The second largest investor in Twitter is Saudi Arabia.

    Saudi Arabia killed and dismembered a journalist from the US, more or less in plain sight. Elon is now killing and dismembering Twitter in plain sight to limit its power as a unifying tool that stands as a demonstrable, active threat to capitalism and oligarchs around the world.

    Billionaires do favors for other billionaires. It’s part of why spez is trying to tank Reddit. Remember how dangerous Reddit was to capitalism’s status quo around the time of GME/Robinhood/Antiwork recently.

    The specific moment we’re in right now is meant to shatter consolidated organizing power on Reddit as we splinter into several smaller alternative platforms (or for some, disconnect entirely). Not saying we shouldn’t be in Lemmy, but calling out the larger reality of the moment.

    Billionaires do favors for other billionaires.

    • Myro@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      That’s a bit too much conspiracy for my taste, but for sure, billionaires don’t do anything for our good.

      • rbhfd@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Exactly. Billionairs look out for themselves first and foremost. They try to maximise their profit.

        Musk wants to push more people to pay for verified. The reddit board (not only Spez) wants people to download their app to make it seem like their growing right before their IPO, while simultaneously forcing more ad views. Probably downloading the app also lets them track a lot of extra data about you as well.

        No conspiracy needed to explain all this.