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.

If you pay there’s an option for chatgpt4 that can use Bing to search. There’s also various plugins that can let it interact with all sorts of additional data sources. Not that you should use it like a search engine exactly, but it can be useful for search if you configure it correctly and understand that it doesn’t “know” anything.

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.

I run Pop on my laptop and have been really happy with it. I’m not really a Linux person and it’s been totally straight forward for me, it seems very user friendly.

I used Power Delete Suite to overwrite my comments and posts via API, it includes an option to export everything from your account to a CSV before it takes any destructive actions, and it’s super easy to use.

Have you updated recently? A jerboa update came out earlier today and it seems to run better now for me.

All of the most popular lemmy instances have been having issues while they deal with the massive user growth. I expect it will get better over time as things get figured out and lemmy devs make improvements. I don’t know what’s wrong with lemmy.ml specifically but it will probably be back online soon, I think one of the main lemmy devs runs it so it’s not like they are going to abandon it now that lemmy is taking off.

Just kicked it off on my account, it’s currently rewriting every Reddit comment I ever made. Feels good.

There’s also millions of people pissed off at Reddit now so I would expect some percentage of them will actively fuck with whatever the new normal is on Reddit. Being a mod isn’t going to get easier.

Until recently I think lemmygrad was the most active instance and it’s full of communists, including obnoxious tankies who scared off new users and contributed the reputation.

That’s about where I am. Spez making up a blackmail/extortion accusation against the Apollo dev is just so completely damning. I have no faith left in anything the Reddit admins say at this point, and it’s hard to imagine what they can do to change that.