Potentially. They are denying it’s true, and I don’t think any more evidence has come out besides this one claim.

I became a paying subscriber for kagi today. The way I justify the cost is it’s saved me time digging up technical information at work and that increase in efficiency is worth money to me. Also, I hate ads and SEO crap, and $5 isn’t really that much these days. I’m trying to reduce my reliance on Google so it’s nice having an actual superior search experience, even if I have to spend a little money for it.

I’m still on my trial period but I think I’m going to pay when it runs out, I’ve been really happy with it so far. I think it’s saved me a good chunk of time at work I would have wasted digging through Google SEO crap so it feels like it’s worth spending a few bucks on.

Thanks for the link!

Can you share your argument with Stross? I’ve always enjoyed his writing.

I don’t remember the numbers but their ads division has been showing massive growth over the past several years, they make billions selling ads these days.

That may be what happened but Reddit management definitely knew about what was going on because they created a special “Pimp Daddy” trophy just for that one mod as a kind of public reward for his work. Reddit was complicit to some degree.

I don’t really have enough experience with them yet to have specific thoughts but my impression is they are very basic currently and need a lot of work. One thing that’s really important is being able to do bulk actions against multiple users quickly. I remember the times when big attacks would happen and we would have a sudden flood of obvious problem users posting comments blatantly intended to cause disruptions, being able to efficiently respond in the moment to that scenario can be really important. It sucks when the mod team lacks the ability to respond quickly because in the meantime users trying to have a real conversation end up getting harassed, angered, and driven away with the impression the mods are worthless. You don’t want to have to fight your tools and spend a bunch of time per individual action because by the time you get to dealing with the full swarm of trolls the conversation might have really taken a turn or be basically over so you end up cleaning things up after it doesn’t make much difference for the users. Also, bots like automod are extremely useful and important so I would say the fediverse needs them ASAP. I never messed with the bots when I was mod but they were definitely like a force multiplier for the mod team.

Not that I’m aware of, but this was many years ago now so things could be different. I personally wouldn’t have wanted any kind of public reward because that can paint a target, you get direct messages from problem users and other issues that come with recognition. I never publicly mentioned being a mod anywhere on Reddit, it was one of the things the mod team warned new mods about because trolls and other problem users will start targeting you directly.

I was a mod on a big sub for awhile many years ago and it was a literal horrowshow every day. It was an endless torrent that never stopped, the mod team basically ran 24/7. It was guaranteed you would see at least some fucked up bigotry every time you looked in the queue because the sub was a regular target for those people. It was really just a nonstop firehose of all the worst the internet has to offer, one reported Reddit comment at a time, forever. The tools I had access to were janky browser plugins and things like that, stuff previous mods had built themselves years before because the actual Reddit tools were inadequate. The sub involved so much moderation the team was very organized and you had to put in a certain amount of work every month, it really was like a part time job where you get to set your own hours but can be “fired” for slacking. You often feel emotionally drained afterwards just like a real job, and you start feeling anxious when you “clock in” because fuck not this same miserable bullshit yet again, just like a real job. I have so much respect for quality moderation, it is not at all easy in any way.