If they had charged API fees such that 3rd party apps would have had to charge a monthly fee to users....I would have probably just paid. And I know I'm not the only one.

But they priced it intentionally to kill 3rd party apps, because they wanted to channel access through their garbage app with its "promoted" ads all over the place.

It's not about "free vs. not free" it's about intentionally killing off the applications that made reddit likeable as a platform.

We laugh but this does an excellent point of underscoring the whole power dynamic in Reddit.

Who normally keeps these subs on message, and controls content? The mods.

The mods are volunteers that curate the content of Reddit. And Reddit did a shit job by getting into a pissing contest with their own best assets.

Fully agreed that the sports betting ads are out of control and need to be toned down / regulated.

But the REAL problem I have is with how - in just one year or so - gambling has invaded all sports broadcast. The intermission panels are talking about odds, live odds appear during the game, talking heads mentioning how much X dollars could would make if placed on team Y to win right now etc etc.

Even if you try to avoid the commercials, that content gets to you. And if you have a gambling problem, do you just accept that you can't watch sports at all without risk of being exposed to that?

We treat all other addictive properties with heavy regulation about exposure to the general public. Gambling should be no exception.

I’d think this this is par for the course for games that will release on consoles.

They start by showing what they’re working on based on how good they can make it, then as they develop further and tune for performance to help it run on consoles and lower spec PCs.

If there was a huge difference between final trailers and what consumers first booted up on their PCs then that would be wrong - but we can’t expect early trailers to always be a set in stone promise for the final product.

Preach.

I’m honestly still using Reddit but mostly just lurking now, and really prefer Lemmy / kbin due to how completely awful the official app is (using Apollo now just makes me sad).

So I love participating here and plan to do so more and more! Whereas with Reddit, I can see myself opening that up less and less.

We’ll likely always be smaller, but we can be big enough while being better - and that would be fine by me.

Not stiff enough, I’d say. And honestly, steel wool breaks into small pieces pretty easily too.

See I keep telling myself that I will put that hardware to good use, but never do. And that is why I end up with a hoard of 5+ year old hardware in the basement or closet…

This is why everything you hear from pop-evolution theories in sociology is likely bs.

“Women like shopping because they used to be gatherers” or other such garbage.

It’s all trying to simplify human behaviour based on half-baked knowledge of the past, and to pass it off as scientific insight. It’s not much different than the pseudoscience used to fuel racism 100 years ago.

Human behaviour is complex. And even though our societies are more complex now than 10000 years ago, it doesn’t mean people back then were simple.

That’s really cool!

Love the little bar graphs filling up

Yeah I’ve played that a TON but am nowhere near as good as a lot of people seem to be at it. So I guess a lot of time to git gud?

Insightful, evocative, well-written, and 100% pertinent to what is going on these days.

Thank you for sharing this.

Anyone reading my comment who just read a bit of this article or skimmed it - please do yourself a favour and devote 10mins to reading the full thing.

Totally. And I’m finding I even prefer the smaller comment sections- less noise of 1000 people saying variations on the same thing (like seriously…do people on Reddit not read other comments before posting?) and I feel like my comments are more likely to be read than just lost in the noise.

I love donating blood and do it as often as I can.

But with 2 kids in daycare it’s so often that my appointment comes and I’m some form of under the weather.

I’ve learned to just re-book in those cases, as if you say “no” to their questionnaire they don’t like you rebook for 3 months. So perhaps they should revisit their policy on that at least? No reason why having to take an Advil for a headache once should mean not donating for 3 months.

I also recall an author (can’t remember the name) saying that Tolkien in fantasy was like mt Fuji in pictures of Japan. So iconic that it’s either in everything, or not having it be part of the picture seems intentional.

My point is that there could be effort made to develop new IP, new stories - and that if the effort was to be made to put a great game behind those stories, then even better!

LOTR just takes the air out of other fantasy IP, and there is always the risk that they just phone in the game dev bc they think being LOTR will be enough to sell it.

So many....

Top I would have to say Witcher 3 OG game (though both DLC were amazing)

For a single boss....not for the 'wow' moments but more for the 'omg I finally did it!': one of the following from the Dark Souls series:

Black Dragon Kalameet (DS1)
Fume Knight (DS2)
Slave Knight Gael (DS3)

So I gave the official Reddit app a try again after all this time on Apollo just to confirm that it was still garbage (it is) and what pissed me off the most was all the “promoted” ads.

Facebook, instagram, twitter, Reddit- just filthy with ads meant to hide in your feeds and look like real content that you are interested in - but it’s completely duplicitous. Like the sponsored links in google masquerading as real sites, it’s just trying to trick you and gain your attention, and by doing so gain your money. It’s sick.

I don’t mind regular ads even - pitch me your product, sure. Just don’t try to sneak it into my life.

So my favourite thing about fediverse so far?

Haven’t seen a single ad. )

Yea! Thank you

Yes especially for taking off - gotta get that neck button undone asap after being choked under a tie all day!

@Mkengine

@Mynkla

Seconding this. I also started to simply directly reading articles on things I found interesting, rather than just reading reddit discussions on things.

I’d agree with this.

I feel like overall DS2 just has so many areas that while it has some amazing things (Fume knight one of the best bosses in any souls game IMO) it just has so much forgettable stuff too.

That and the fact that so many areas (and even bosses) are only made hard because they throw multiples at you, it makes it worse than the others in the series.

However…. I probably played more multiplayer in ds2 than in all others combined. Don’t know if it was due to balance, the overall slower mechanics of combat or whatever, but I enjoyed it.