In light of recent events, I'm really starting to wonder about Reddit, /u/MaxwellHill, and Aaron...

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨JasonDJ@lemmy.zip⁩ to ⁨showerthoughts@lemmy.world⁩

So, maybe crazy conspiracy guy. Probably, actually.

But l mean…

/u/maxwelhill is still silent since Ghisilaine Maxwells arrest. This was a long term power user and has been around pretty much since the beginning. At the time it went silent, the account was #8 in total karma.
Aaron Swartz was a founder of reddit and died by “suicide” in 2013. Lots of controversy around all events leading up to it. He was hanged, just like Jeff Epstein. Perhaps he knew too much?
Reddit was scarily protective of /r/theDonald.
Spez was a mod of jailbait subs. And was quite reluctant to do anything about them, too.
I still contend that monetizing API was a strategic move to get long term tech-savvy users off the site…they wanted us gone.

Idk. Maybe I’m just being really paranoid, but man…I’m really looking at reddit, Spez, and the past decade or so in a different light.

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MotoAsh@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
All of that can be separately true without any conspiracy tying it all together.

The world has plenty of terrible people in it that want to diddle kids. The capitalistic model of BS is very often anti-left, but not for conspiratorial reasons: They just like money and control.

There’s no need for a grand conspiracy for most of those points to never the less be roughly true, except the first two. I’m certain Maxwell had and has plenty of better channels than reddit for finding and contacting traffickers. You don’t get that successful using a fucking public forum…

Similarly, Aaron probably had plenty of other reasons to be unhappy. It’s not a terribly uncommon way to go on purpose.

We all know Reddit and Spez are a cesspit. That takes no speculation at all. They always wanted shitstirrers off the site, because they wanted to monetize the shit without all the stink.

That’s how the world works. Welcome to capitalism, where the least honorable are made to get ahead. You should try to do something more productive than trying to tie a handful of terrible people together, though.

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- IronBird@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  so…do you think there’d be value in sort of re-creating the original facebook? ie. connecting colleges across the country/world together, except this time instead of basing it around how to stalk college girls…actually make around the idea of freely sharing ideas/knowledge.
  
  how would one even go about doing that at a serious level, as far as actually spreading it across the school system?
  
  ignoring technicalities for a second, how does one even get that spread around seriously, via pitching to some highup teachers union rep perhaps?
  
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Test_Tickles@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I don’t think you need some big coordinated Illuminati-type group to explain what’s going on. It’s way more realistic to see bad actors as behaving like bacteria or viruses. They don’t sit in secret meetings plotting everything. They just act independently in ways that benefit themselves, and the harmful effects add up on their own. Bacteria don’t plan. They find weaknesses, take advantage of them, multiply, and adapt when something stops them. They’re not masterminds. They’re just opportunistic. One person finds a loophole, another copies it, someone else builds on it, and suddenly you have a whole system bending in a bad direction without anyone actually coordinating it.

And this is where billionaires fit in. Realistically the traits that get you to billionaire status are usually closer to aggressive mutations in an ecosystem. Not kindness or wisdom, more like: ruthlessness, willingness to exploit gaps, willingness to push harm outward while collecting gains.

Once someone becomes a billionaire, their resources act like a multiplier. A normal bad actor is one germ. A billionaire is the same germ with unlimited food, a weakened immune system around them, and the ability to reshape the environment to favor their own growth.

And then you get a feedback loop. The more safeguards and regulations get weakened, the easier it is for aggressive “strains” like this to emerge. Those new billionaires then use their wealth to weaken safeguards even more. Each round speeds up the next. It’s basically the same dynamic as a compromised immune system getting overwhelmed by infections that would normally be manageable.

But most of all, there’s no way you’re going to get that many extreme narcissists to work together nicely and follow some long term plan.

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- Quexotic@infosec.pub ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Tell ya what. Go listen to the extremely American podcast start to finish, and then tell me how uncoordinated extremest groups, the christo-fascists, and the Republicans are.
  
  The podcast makes the argument much better than I ever could.
  
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  - Test_Tickles@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Oh, I don’t doubt you are correct about that. I’m not trying to say that there isn’t any coordination. The GOP is definitely and completely overrun with extremists that openly work together to implement plans like project 2025. But we are also at the terminal stages of this disease and the patient is on life support.
    Project 2025 is a perfect example of what I am talking about. It was supposed to be a secret agenda that flopped right out into the open almost as soon as they are done writing it. In a healthy society it would have been attacked and overwhelmed from multiple directions in the same uncoordinated way that a virus or bacteria would be dealt with. But instead, the infection has reached a point where 1/3 of the nation decided that it wasn’t their problem, and another 1/3 was actively helping the infection. We are at that point in the covid infection where the body is now harming itself.
    
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breadsmasher@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
who gives a fuck about reddit?

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- JasonDJ@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Considering its huge reach and userbase, I’d be pretty concerned if the founders were in the whole Epstein circle, and Reddit’s overall impact in world politics.
  
  You’d be a fool not to recognize the site size and influence.
  
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  - breadsmasher@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    The literal president of the USA is in that circle. Anything happened yet?
    
    reddit is waay down that totem pole
    
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- TheFogan@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  We should give a fuck about reddit, twitter, facebook etc… as controlling mechanisms that are poisoning the overwhelming majority of the population. Keeping an eye on their impact to society kind of matters.
  
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possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This feels very much like a conspiracy theory to me. Fine for the shower though.

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Aatube@kbin.melroy.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
is there any reason to suspect foul play with Swartz? his life was upended through facing the lawfare of "$1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release" he could only get rid of by effectively renouncing his beliefs.

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- CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It seems pretty cut and dry to me. He was the victim of an insanely overzealous investigation to the point that they were literally following him around everywhere and even got his girlfriend to turn on him. There have been numerous other people that have gone for the same reason previously. The second guy they tried to pin the anthrax mail killings on from the early 2000s suffered the exact same fate as one notable example.
  
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db2@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
You’re probably on to something, but it doesn’t matter beyond data points to use when the new Nuremberg trials start. Reddit that was is long gone and I think it was a veneer covering poison the whole time anyway.

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- IronBird@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  when the new Nuremberg trials start
  
  i like your optimism
  
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iii@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I struggle to see what question you’re asking?

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- JasonDJ@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  This isn’t a questions forum, it’s a thoughts forum.
  
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  - iii@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Hmm, I’ll rephrase. I fail to see the connecting thought between the list of random thoughts?
    
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FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Being a moderator of a sub doesn’t mean anything since at the time sub owners could just make any Reddit user they wanted a mod.

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- LordMayor@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Lemmy seems to have this problem. I’ve seen people added as mods who had no say in whether they were made a mod.
  
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- JasonDJ@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I’m aware, and wanted to make mention of it being done by existing mods “as a prank”, but still…he was quite protective of those subs, too.
  
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  - FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Don’t get me wrong, he’s a weird dude but the subs that had him as a mod aren’t evidence of anything.
    
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HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I just have no perspective into things like this. The only social media I am on is linkedin which is going to be hard not to be on till im homeless and facebook which is about a sorta email alternative for people I know who want to get a hold of me and some groups that use it as the virtual space. Which reminds me that I need to do my kinda weekly check of facebook to see if someone is trying to contact me or if the group has an update.

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