Christ they're dumb. Here is a golden opportunity to protect your business and build great PR.
As everyone else is pushing people back to the office, be the champion we're all looking for, run the studies, offer incentives, anything to prove that working remotely is a viable alternative in a modern world.
Then, expand the use cases, it's not just WFH, but working on-site (for companies with manufacturing in different locations), working on the move for managers, emergency preparedness, and, of course, webinar/training.
So I haven't used Facebook in ages but what's its relevance? Do people share articles, memes, etc. on Facebook? What about celebrity AMAs?
I think Reddit won't fail in a long time, being so established now. And say what you will about Fediverse but shared "front page of the internet" is really useful when every other popular social media spews garbage customized just for you. (And I hope I'm wrong but quietly afraid I'm not.)
Facebook being used as a way to keep up with friends has been fading for a while. It's mostly only older people left on it, Elder Millennial and older (I'm an Elder Millennial fwiw).
Facebook's real social media power is in its groups and pages. There's usually local town groups, like you'd have with NextDoor. But there's also giant meme groups. New Urbanist Memes for Transit Oriented Teens (NUMTOTs) is huge, and is basically posts about trains and hating landlords, but it was big enough to the notable when the group endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. Another huge one is Wild Green Memes for Ecological Fiends, which is memes about nature and wild animals. Facebook has become a lot like reddit, in that it's what you make of it in terms of weird friends and niche groups.
The current go to joke about facebook goes like this:
"Facebook is lame, there's no one on it anymore and it's no fun."
"Facebook is still fun if all your friends are gay communists."
I use Facebook to talk to about a dozen or so people I wouldn't otherwise. I know, because I dropped off for a couple years and didn't really connect with them, which sucked.
But on a day to day basis? It's the absolute worst dregs of boomer humor and low effort, brick stupid content. It took a long time to screen out the political garbage I hate and slowly unfollow the various people who've gone insane in the past 8 years. I was left with like ... purposefully bad cooking videos, advertisements, the occasional comic book page (why?!?), more advertisements, old/bad memes, more advertisements, and most important of all, advertisements.
In fairness my wife uses it to coordinate with other parents from our kids school. Why we can't use something else to do that coordination I don't know, but eh.
tldr: It's for older millenials on up and mostly garbage algo promoted content thoroughly seasoned with advertising.
Yeah, it's been a slow boiling pot of water, but the problem has been the same basically the entire time.
Community: reddit, we do not like this thing you are doing. Insert thing here. All of ViolentAkrez's messed up porn subreddit stuff, r/jailbait, r/thedonald, firing the woman in charge of AMAs, Ellen Pao's drastic attempts at monetization (which was just her being the scapegoat for Huffman and crew) and now these API changes. Stop doing this thing that is hurting your community.
reddit: Here are a lot of words to say that we don't care about what any of you think, and we believe we are making the right decisions. While we understand you are all upset, we do not care and do not plan on changing.
Community: OK, well we're going to continue protesting this and escalating until you change it.
reddit: that's all great but we still don't care.
repeat x5 escalations
The matter finally hits mainstream media. Gawker, or a major online news site, if we get really lucky, there's a CNN segment on it.
Within 30 seconds of mainstream media coverage, reddit caves and does the thing the community asked for the entire time.
This is why the protests for this escalated so quickly. We've done those steps over and over again, for over a decade. The point of protests at this point is never to get the reddit admin's attention or change their minds. The point is to cause a big enough stink to get major media attention. The protests ramped up so quickly because there were only 30 days to change reddit's mind, they showed no indication they wanted to change, and we needed the media attention. We got plenty of media attention this time. Unfortunately, media attention isn't going to be enough to change their minds now, because this is all for an IPO and the execs want their bag of money. Even if reddit folds entirely, they'll get to walk with the bag.
But in reality, we should've ditched years ago. Because, does any of that cycle sound healthy? It's not that reddit's admins don't care. It's that they haven't cared in a long time. Huffman doesn't care. I don't think Alex Ohanian did by the end either. Aaron Schwartz cared, but too much. But if a community can only get a site's staff to stop actively harming them by putting a gun to their head every time there's a problem, there's no future for that relationship. This was just the exclamation point. Even if reddit staff totally caves, we should not go back.
Well said. Boosted and upvoted... whatever those two things mean. Internet points to you, good sir!
I'll edit to add that the main thing you point out that I think most fediverse folks want to avoid is the investment that leads to the IPO bag of cash. When the incentive is profit, I think social media can only ever get worse for the average end user. Keeping these things small and non-corporate is great in theory, but who pays for the servers and other costs when/if it needs to scale?
That's kind of the problem, though. That insane cash grab is profit driven. Spez said it himself in the AMA: Reddit is profit driven. That goes beyond makiong money to survive. That's investors seeing a return on their money. That's generating value in preparation fo that big IPO. That doesn't usually mix well with the way a site like Reddit generates value: free community created content. Right now, Reddit is banking on enough users not caring about the protest, or the fact that the site is arguably on a downward trajectory. Looking valuable is more important than being valuable at this point.
Thanks Jack Welch for that kind of mentality. I hope you're burning in Hell.
It's not going to instantly die, no. But once the power users and the ones who truly cared start leaving the content will start dwindling to the point that the normal users start noticing and leaving as well. It's a slow spiral that will likely take a few years and reddit probably won't truly "die" for a while, but it will never be the same again. Time will tell what rises to take its place, whether it's kbin or lemmy or something else.
"Maybe we should have checked where content is being created from before we cut that off." - Some guy before getting fired at Reddit.
How delusional is that stance though? Charging someone to post their created content on your platform then turn around and sell access to that content to users through advertising. Did Mac come up with this plan?
This, a lot of the people who remained on reddit don't seem to understand that this wasn't a single incident, it was the culmination of years of smaller problems. I found it easy to leave because these newfound spaces are much more like the reddit I remember in 2012.
I don't really care either way if reddit stays or goes. I'll be on kbin and lemmy regardless.
Whether Reddit goes on successfully forever or goes down the drain next week I don't really care. Things like this have shown me the Fediverse is the future, that's where I'd rather make my "home" on the internet.
Regardless of how great a service like Reddit may have been, putting all of your eggs in a basket owned by a single company who's inevitable goal is to make money just isn't going to work out well. I'm not faulting a company for trying to make money, that's the world we live in and they're just playing the game. By continuing to contribute to services like that, though, we're only increasing their value, not ours.
The only chance we've got for an internet we actually want to spend time on is one that can't be controlled by a handful of corporations. Hopefully that's the Fediverse, but who knows.
I don't think Zoom really has much of a moat surrounding it. Slack, Google, Microsoft, and others offer alternatives that are about as good or better (often for free if you use their chat offering). They sprang into popularity from nothing around 2018 due to being just a little more stable and reliable than the competition, and someone could take their place just as easily.
"We are not in the business of giving that [Reddit's content] away for free."
but...you are spez. That's what social media is. A useful medium with a value determined by the size of its network. Restricting access makes your network less valuable.
Honestly treating hosting like for-profit media company is the biggest delusion of the 2010s-20s. It really only works in a system like email (see:fediverse) or maybe a wikipedia and Internet Archive nonprofit model.
A lot of the mods won't want to give up the power. That's why the original "protest" was only 2 days, it was never meant to be serious. A lot of users have left to come here, but there are way more who will never leave reddit, no matter how bad it gets.
But I bet that we're getting a much higher proportion of the users that make actual content and have real conversations. The ones that only type out two word replies or pick arguments over trivial things can stay on Reddit.
Yeah, for sure. A lot of people aren't looking for actual content or discussion though, they just want their cat pics and stale repetitive jokes. The fediverse will grow but reddit isn't going isn't going to die.
This is it exactly. The users and mods that are leaving and protesting are the ones who make the site what it is (was). Reddit corporate knows it too. If they didn't, I feel like we'd have seen some stats put out about how "these third party app users don't contribute".
"Quite often, you come up with great ideas, but when we are all on Zoom, it's really hard," Yuan said, according to Insider. "We cannot have a great conversation. We cannot debate each other well because everyone tends to be very friendly when you join a Zoom call."
We cannot debate each other well because everyone tends to be very friendly when you join a Zoom call
Jesus Christ the idiot hasn’t even identified the actual problem with his product. Namely being that everyone talks over each with no dynamic volume scaling.
People have made better products by themselves in an afternoon.
Well, maybe they should take a page from the open source book and use text as a medium more often.
If you want collaboration, use a chat room software with sub threads, like Slack. If you want announcements, email works, or a common chat room. If you want to present something, use a video meeting.
So it sounds like the CEO doesn’t know how remote work actually should work. Which means they need to do more of it so they can effectively market their product.
For gaming, it’s one of the more immersive experiences ever. But I haven’t put on my headset in about a year because playing flatscreen is just so much more convenient
Yeah, I got a Samsung Odyssey HMD cheap (for a VR headset, ~$300) while they were in production and I used my headset to play Half-Life: Alyx, Phasmophobia, and Boneworks. Alyx was very well polished (for a VR game) and nothing came close to that. The rest is varying levels of jank and it will take about 20 mins to set up the headset every time when I could boot up any other game in less than a minute.
And on top of that anything that wasn't those 3 games just didn't feel like it was worth the work to play for me. Boneworks got close to Alyx in terms of polish but if someone was prone to motion sickness at all it would be unplayable. I haven't ever been motion sick in my life but my stomach turned the first time the game "dropped" me down a hole. And Phasmo while it was far more immersive and scary in the headset it just wasn't worth the hassle of setting up the headset only to get a headache in 20 mins of playing because the glare was not great on my headset making dark rooms hard to see in. Better headsets might fix a lot of those issues but the price point, ease of use, and QoL features are not in favor of it ever being more than a party gimmick.
The average person isn't going to want to pay what I did for a few good games that might make them motion sick and a lot of janky garbage. And now most headsets are more expensive than that unless you want the Meta ones that are locked down.
The Reverb G2 can be had for also $300 on sale and the experience isn't nearly as bad as you describe. There's also tons of great VR content out there, it's just not advertised.
Some of my favorites:
Vertical Shift: fairly short and barebones but it's got a full range of powers for you to play with around an open world. Fun VR mechanics worth the sale price, despite the minimal gameplay.
You mentioned Boneworks and Phasmophobia which are also both a lot of fun, but motion sickness and multiplayer can make them not as convenient to always be ready to play. Of course, if we mention Boneworks then we have to talk about Duck Season. Blade and Sorcery should be on the list as well, it's just too good to pass up. And well, if we're talking about B&S we can't ignore GORN.
Pistol Whip is basically a rhythm John Wick simulator. Very worth the cost of the game, lots of content, multiple free content updates - just a stellar game through and through. Also much more engaging than BeatSaber IMO, never been a fan of flailing my arms to slash blocks on beat. But shooting and dodging? Give me more!
Bonus: They just released a map creator. The life of the game is virtually infinite now, so that's exciting :)
Superhot VR pre-content removal. Still a great game without the ending though.
V-Racer Hoverbike is a great VR game oriented Hoverbike Racing. Great sense of speed and feel, motion sickness is somewhat a given given the nature of the game...
Rez Infinite for anyone who remembers Rez for the PS2.
Pavlov VR is also a good popular fun game for your VR FPS itches. For more, there's Into the Radius, Arizona Sunshine, ARK and ADE, Naked Sun, Bandit Point, Risk of Rain 2 VR (mod).
Speaking of mods, Subnautica in VR...
And one of my favorite pass-times, Holo-ball! It's basically racquetball :)
There's a couple party games that are fun as well, Wii Sports style with Pure Bowl VR, NVIDIA's VR Funhouse, Tennis Arcade VR. All pretty decent (particularly compared to others that are available). Oh, also check out VRNoid which has brickbreaker and Hyper Psychic Gauntlets for a unique game. You can also play all your NES roms in VR with 3DSenVR which is pretty awesome. While we're here, give Metroid Prime a playthrough with Dolphin VR, or all 3 if you get it running :)
Then there's the whole world of productivity/not quite gaming programs.
I love, love love SynthVR. It's just one of the smartest uses for VR, period. Create your virtual environment and just make it a giant music setup. Absolutely stellar. Similarly, Vinyl Reality for using your own music to DJ and mix! There's also a drumming program called Paradiddle which is awesome for the same reasons. For painting, Vermillion.
If you've got a HOTAS or a racewheel there's also a number of games that work great in tandem, Elite Dangerous for your space trucker sims (for this one, be sure to get SCRCPY for your android phone and run XS Overlay or OVR Toolkit to bring your phone with you in VR), Star Wars Squadrons, Drone Hero.
All in all - I'm with you. I bought a ton of VR games and these are just some of the most memorable, but they are all very easy to jump in and play, no setup required with fairly minimal issues regarding compatibility or potential for motion sickness.
Especially the hobby oriented one, any music and art programs in VR are just such great concepts that are executed very well.
As an OOOOLD geek who has listened to the promise of VR for decades, it's AR I'm excited about. Give me lightweight glasses that provide an overlay to interact with either everything or even only specific things and I am so there.
I don't mean something like Google Glass, I mean more like an affordable, compact Hololens. (and I hate MS, but damn Hololens is cool)
Edit: I probably used a couple too many 'O's there. I'm OOLD, not OOOOLD yet. ;-)
Had the opportunity to try out and develop for the hololens 2. I don't dig it at all. It's still big, has a tiny field of view, and when I compare it to VR, it's so much less immersive. Not that it's not impressive technology - it totally is. The best IMO would probably be a mix of both - high FOV, direct, no-camera passthrough that can be blacked out on demand. Meanwhile, VR is king, although a bit of a niche because of all the setup, required room etc.
I was just using it as the only example I know of that has really demonstrated some of what AR can do. I agree (based only on what I've seen) that it's not ready for primetime, and plus it's expensive.
However - my son has a Quest 2, we've played it, I love it. But whereas I can't imagine wanting to spend my day in VR all day every day, even if it were smaller and lighter, I would LOVE to reach the point before I die where everyone has some normal looking glasses (or even contacts) that are adding a functional or decorative (but mostly functional) layer over everything they do all day long - that seems both useful and futuristic in a way that could be a paradigm shift as big or bigger than smartphones were.
VR is cool, it's fun, and I'm sure it will get cooler and more fun - but while I am guessing it really will finally revolutionize gaming someday, and may also revolutionize very specific industrial or medical uses, AR seems (to me) like it's got a lot more potential to become ubiquitous and life-changing for more people in more circumstances.
Lol, but I get that. A proper affordable heads up display will add so much more value to my life. I ride motorcycles and that is where it can be really useful. A Kickstarter tried ot a while ago with a helmet,but that flopped badly. A pair of glasses that will fit in my helmet, beaming useful info to my eyeballs could be lifesaving.
I had a long rural night ride a while back and it was bloody tricky navigating with the mounted phone. Not out of choice, more of a needs must scenario. The Gaiman map app was very useful in indicating the road ahead, bit the split attention needed was insane.
Really don't agree with you on that. I think consumer VR has a bright future but some big technical hurdles to clear first. Primarily comfort and image quality. It may take 10 years but it'll get there.
Every single person I've shown VR to has thought it was fucking amazing and was surprised how good it already is and this was just a Quest 2.
I want a VR rig like the gaming devices in that TNG episode where everyone got addicted to the games. Lightweight, overlaid onto the real world, and beamed directly into your eyeballs.
I'm only interested in the gaming at the moment, so I'm not necessarily looking for it to solve issues with using a computer. Fully immersive games are pretty cool, and being able to play beat saber is exactly why I like it. Things like that and Half Life: Alyx are uniquely suited to VR, and you can get more out of them than you could on a monitor.
I tend to agree, we had some some with the Rift S, but it’s been probably a year since we’ve put it on. When I wanna game I wanna relax, and VR just requires too much movement to be something I wanna do after work. Superhot is fun tho.
I can see consumer VR having a couple killer apps that could make it (maybe) worth it. The first is walking through driving trips. It's extremely helpful when going to a new city to be able to walk through your route to get a better feel for what it looks like, how the lanes are laid out, etc.
The second is doing 3D design work. Give me a simple way to scan my house and then let me see what it looks like if I knock a wall out, or move the furniture around. I haven't found a way to do this easily yet, but it should be fairly straightforward considering how the Quest's boundary cameras work.
But, yeah, beyond some beat saber or super hot are fun but ultimately not worth it. (And I got mine for free.)
I mean, talking specifically of the Quest Pro, it was too expensive with a lot of half baked features at launch. It's main feature being pass through, and that's probably the most complained about thing from reviewers. So this news isn't really surprising. As for VR itself, it may be a niche, but it's still a growing market. A veeerry slowly growing market.
Consumer VR as currently envisioned is not going going to ever get out of the niche it’s in.
You mean, with Oculus Quest 2 being a cheap headset offering great performances and satisfying many customers (10m units sold in nov. 2021), with many good and great games being ported, major video game editors publishing games with VR support, and headset appearing in museums and other cultural places?
Maybe Apple' and other « pro » headset sold at outrageous prices are not going out of the niche they are, but affordable VR is a thing many people use. Majors exhibitions now often have VR discoveries for everyone and games are of a great quality for anyone taking more than 2 minutes to find what they like (so beyond beat saber and demos). Meanwhile, AR is nowhere to be seen despite Microsoft, Google and Apple' big investments in APIs, OS support and hardware.
The move is a wise one from Meta: they focus on affordable yet great quality headset that anyone can buy instead of focusing « pro » market which, in reality, doesn't have a market. I haven't heard of any company or cultural places willing to buy any of these « pro » stuff given how expensive they are. They instead buy from the many affordable brands like HP or Samsung and, obviously, Meta.
It's like connected watch: nobody really needed them, they took time to kick off, but affordable ones are now everywhere, not only for tech-savvy people.
Yep, so true. Even before it wasn't such a great place. It encouraged anger and fights, doomscrolling, and negativity even before Musk took over. I was seriously considering leaving it for good before he bought it. He just made a bad thing worse, honestly. It was already on a downward trend. Even their internal research had shown that all of their top tweeters who had the most positive engagement had already gone away.
It wouldn't surprise me if the constant loud and vulgar presence of the orange shithead and the hashtag-maga shitheads, splashing their shit all over the place, was the main catalyst to dishearten and drive away many of those who wanted to make Twitter a positive experience.
It's not a loss of volunteer manpower, its just a changing of the guard. Sadly there will always be legions of scabs willing to take the place of those protesting.
It takes more than warm bodies to maintain a large community. There's tons of people lining up because they imagine being a moderator of a large sub is a power trip. What they'll actually find is that the job sucks. There's not a whole lot of power tripping to be had. It's mostly boring administration, filtering out obvious trash, all for the low low price of free.
I foresee a ton of turn over as scabs abandon post and Reddit admins scramble to keep finding more fresh meat to grind.
What? Remote work is awesome. It can be highly productive and liberating. The CEO of Zoom comes across as the most confounding and paradoxical Luddite. I'm so confused.
Yeah, if I was a board member, I’d be asking for his resignation. Zoom’s primary activity at this point is running studies to prove remote work is better. That’s it, that’s the business they’re in.
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