I wonder if it works like IRC. The “plague” this entire time has been servers. As soon as the idea only works because somebody, somewhere, is maintaining a server, cloud or hardware, then you’re kinda sunk. The server is the bottleneck. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a AAA game launch only for the servers to be inadequate. It happens again and again and again, so I assume the business considerations push them toward having just enough server and maybe a little less, never extra, which costs money and cuts margins.

Somewhere there are a bunch of servers howling away in a room that are actually Discord, and Discord spends money to make them howl, so there’s never as much server as you want, which is why things start bogging down with too many people in the chat room at once.

Most importantly to a corporation, if you have to interact with their servers in order to do anything, then they can own the platform by owning the servers. So there’s always going to be a server, even if it’s not strictly needed. The same consideration goes through the head of the streamer who always wants to launch a Discord because it’s “free” but they can sell it to you and then have top level control of an entire community as an asset that can be sold to others. There’s always a server. There will be a server if the actual application doesn’t really need it.

The reason IRC works fine with 1500 people in a chat is because IRC uses the user’s machine for any sort of computation power it needs, and then everything else it is doing is just sending data across wires. There is no central server farm. I haven’t used IRC in a really, really long time, but if it hasn’t changed, then it also doesn’t support lots of picture posting, which helps. Most of the memory usage on my machine at idle is just too many Discord channels all needing to use my local RAM memory to store the umpteen thousand photos everyone has uploaded, all the memes and etc. The IRC I remember was text, and text uses so little data that it can be treated like zero data.

Lots of pictures are probably non-negotiable in the modern era. Heck, they’re pretty important for serious work tasks, like putting up a shot of the broken gadget, so the engineering team can get an eyeball on the failure, that means pictures are in, text-only isn’t viable. I don’t know if modern IRC supports this or not, it probably does if people are still using it at all.

But IRC is a piece of open-source software that you install on your machine, free to the user. It’s not a web app, it doesn’t live in a browser. The data of you interacting with others is being sent out to them and also back to you, where it shows up in your IRC client and the chat room. If 1500 people are using it, then 1500 people have each added some of their machine power to making it all work, so it scales, it always has as much hardware as it needs. Again, there’s no server in the middle to run out of capacity, so that problem is just bypassed.

Everything used to work like this, circa the late 1990s and early 2010s. Everyone was assumed to be on a PC of their own, and the only problem was how to connect them together to do stuff, like have deranged fan wars about shows. BBSs were already kind of old hat, and there’s that damn server again, every BBS has one. All the most clever apps of the 90s, even the web, managed to jump through hoops to avoid the necessity of a central server to get things done because then somebody has to pay for it, run it, maintain it and own it. We just want the wires, the lovely, lovely cables dragged across the sea at somebody else’s unthinkable expense. If you can eliminate the server somehow, then you win. And they did. Things like IRC and ICQ blew the hell up from using that model.

We really need to dig that entire concept back up and brush the dust off of it. I wonder if that’s what Matrix is.

Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go prune some pointless Discord channels. Oh, by the by, fucking nobody uses Slack, or knows what it is. Dudes on the internet all think it’s normal because tech offices seem to use it a lot, the rest of the world has never used Slack. Up until right now I was assuming that Discord and Slack are the same thing, owned by the same company, and Slack is just the “business casual” version of Discord. This doesn’t seem to be true, but that’s how unfamiliar I am with Slack, while being chronically online. There are probably more people around who still remember ICQ than have ever used Slack in their lives.

I love the Church of the Subgenius reference built into Slack’s name. From what I can tell, nobody who uses that thing actually gets any slack, it actively removes slack from your life and makes boss surveillance really, really easy for the boss, but you must always act as though Big Brother can hear, or you’re fucked. Good work Bob, nice joke. Anyway, I shut up now.

Sharks have flooded Shark Infested Waters with shark asshole stink but this time the asshole stink is AI generated and Taylor Swift has a billion dollars for lawyers.

Oh so sorry we misplaced your paperwork very badly for you Mr Navalny, I cannot say that we have a death certificate for you but I’m sure we could find one if necessary.

I’m thinking the mobile users are in the worst spot for this. For desktop all this random spam goes into its own tab that I never look at.

Alas, the spam in my “real” google inbox is all my fault. Shouldn’t have gave substack my email address.

I had something to say but I’m still scribbling down the genius recipe from granny. Bless us Americans the only idea we ever have is how do I make the food more fattening everyone always seems to love that.

Just like, Fried Thanskgiving. Served with whiskey, just not for the kids.

Uh oh how was I to know that Thor High Heels was a minority opinion he said ironically

Mighty GabeN is getting pretty deep into his wizard years, I best prepare myself for his passing.

Weird thumbnail vs headline. She looks like I just asked her if she wants to hit this joint and she does, which doesn’t go at the top of a story about atrocity.

Oh lets all land on the fuckin moon at once

Transport Fever 2, because I can ride da choo choos

It’s super chill and relaxing, you just have to ignore the rest of your empire falling into ruin

Fuck sake.

The move by Fitch makes sense.

No, it does not help that the US has a very high level of national debt, but here comes somebody to scold me about how debt is different when you’re the government and yadda yadda, so never mind that angle.

No, this is a direct reaction to yet another game of fucking chicken with the debt ceiling. The finance world moves both fast and slow, second by second but also quarter by quarter; for every day trade where microseconds count, there is another action where it takes, oh, 3 months for the relevant body to react to what just happened. This is one of those actions. They’ve spent the last couple of months running their numbers, and now here we are. They have delivered their verdict for the current fiscal quarter, after much deliberation.

It does not make any sense at all to go around talking about US Fed bonds as if they are “zero risk”, or even “effectively zero risk”, if every 8 years there will come a game of chicken slash pissing contest where the hostages are everyone who has been foolish enough to buy US Federal debt under the expectation that the interest rate will be paid on time. If somebody in the US government does not blink in this game of chicken, then fuck you, the US will default on its “zero risk” debt.

And so here is Fitch quite reasonably questioning that status quo, that US debt is “zero risk”.

Keep in mind that the entire damn globe is holding US Treasury Bonds, the debt in question. Just as importantly, the biggest holder of US debt is US citizens. You, somehow. That’s where the yields on a CD come from, and your money market account. US Bonds.

Typically, 10 year US Treasury Bonds provide the highest guaranteed interest rate -ignoring recent rate inversions because COVID black swan shitshow- because obviously if you are going to lock up your money for a decade, you would expect the best return at maturity.

But this debt ceiling BS happens every 8 years. This means that every truly serious investor who holds a 10-year T-Bill, from Wall Street funds to the Chinese government, is heavily exposed to the threat of complete default on this debt thanks to that entire debt ceiling thing, to say absolutely nothing about the solvency of the US government, in general.

That’s not fucking zero risk. And Fitch is tired of pretending that it is.

Fuck sake, they aren’t even trying to have a debate upon whether the US can sustain its frankly obscene debt level. No, it’s just that AAA rating means “zero effective risk, barring nuclear war or alien invasion or some unforeseeable shit” and all that clownfuckery with the debt ceiling is NOT “zero risk”, nor is it unforeseeable.

Is that zero risk? When the person who owes you money can watch the due date tick down from 5 years out and wait until the last fucking minute of the last damn day to decide they’re going to pass the law that will allow them to pay you? No, the fuck it ain’t.

Did they appear to care about the creditors? The bondholders who they owed interest to? No, that whole song and dance was about, I don’t know, probably abortion. The Republicans have been using the debt ceiling as a hostage for a decade or more, so if you’re the French government, for example, and hold a bunch of US Treasury bills, you can’t call that shit zero risk with a straight face, come on. It doesn’t even matter if the US can pay the debt, the question is, will they?

I need you to understand that literally everyone in the world is investing in US Federal debt, it’s not just you, US person. It’s kind of frightening how US Federal debt is the cinder blocks that many other nations are building their economic foundation on. That’s what being the reserve currency is about.

Fitch knows that, and they know it back to front, so when they issue a rating, the weight of it is upon them. Can we call it zero risk? Like zero, zero??

If you have any money in your brokerage money market account, or a CD, anywhere, you’re in this boat, wondering if US Bonds are zero risk. The whole world is in this boat, wondering if US Treasury Bonds, especially the 10-year ones, are really zero risk guaranteed money on maturity. Like, really really, tho? Maybe there’s a smidge of risk? Even the 30 year bonds??? 30 fuckin years on the bond, my dude, zero risk on that?

We’ve all been on American social media, they all talk like they’re going to have another Civil War; probably not, but still. Zero risk on the 30-year US Treasury Bond? That’s a long time. Shit can go nuclear. Zero risk?

Could you look your best fucking friend in the face and say, “oh, yeah, buy a US 30 year Treasury Bond, there is absolutely no risk of any sort on that, you will get your interest even if Florida slips under the sea, taking Disney World with it.” Could you? No.

So pretend that there you are, some team of analysts at Fitch, knowing all of this, knowing more than I do because it’s your job, and looking at each other like, “Can we call this zero risk? Because that’s what AAA means. We all know that. So can we?” And nobody wants to, because it isn’t, and we’re all tired of pretending like it is.

And Fitch looks at the obvious, it downgrades US Treasury debt from AAA - perfect, the best possible - to AA+ - still near perfect, but room for improvement.

Fitch is right. Fitch is right to shoot up the warning flare. We’re lucky that China’s situation is still a bit of a mess, and the United States Federal Reserve needed the wakeup call, not that they want it. We’re lucky that buying a bond from the Chinese Federal Government doesn’t quite make sense, because if the state owns all things, then what is a bond? It doesn’t matter what the answer is, it only matters that we have to discuss it. We all know what a US Treasury Bond is, that’s beyond debate. That certainty elevates it.

It’s not like Fitch are acting up to get attention, fuck that. Every other respectable bond rating house should have done this first. It’s not fair that Fitch has to be the odd ones to call the obvious. Fitch is right. The US needs to get its shit together.

It has been many, many moons

Reddit has been dying for a while.

Subreddits like AskScience, that it was famous for, are now shells of what they were because the real scientists who put serious time into that subreddit decided they were done wasting that time. This situation is at least a year old, it predates the protest.

You can see this same dynamic across the site. Places that were once vibrant are slowing down, the flood of posts becoming a trickle. Bots are making most of the posts on big subs. Smaller subs that used to hop with human posts are where you can see the truth. It’s not normal for a sub with 500k subscribers to see 10 posts in a week. You see that more often, now.

The truth is that Reddit was always small potatoes. It feels like a big deal when you’re there, but it’s not. The real user numbers are on TikTok, and Instagram, who each have up to a billion users depending on where you get a number. Reddit is barely there, as social media rankings go. There are people with more views on a YouTube video than Reddit has users. Reddit is an also-ran social media site. It’s really not a competitor. It’s just easy to steal from, because text.

Reddit has long had a bad reputation as a shitty, toxic place. Habitual Redditors don’t know this, not really, you have to talk to outsiders. People aren’t that interested in coming to Reddit, they just want answers to their Google searches. It’s not a recipe for growth.

Now the true power users, who provide those answers, are moving away from both Reddit and Google, speaking of a company who best watch its step. A lot of people are starting to talk about Google search the way they talked about Reddit search, which never did get good.

Reddit doesn’t have that far to fall, is what I’m saying. There isn’t a mass exodus, though. You’re seeing a late spasm from a steady tide that has been going out for years. 10 years is a looooong fuckin time for a social platform to be around, they start to rot after the first or second year. Reddit has been rotten for some time.

I see a lot of people, here, and elsewhere, trying to act dismissive about the protests, or about how important the moderators were, but the site’s entire business model depended on hundreds, even thousands of people doing a ton of real labor for absolutely free. If they’ve decided to take an “everyone’s replaceable” attitude and treat volunteers like employees, they’ll pay. It’ll be their IPO sagging down to a couple dollars as they limp to bankruptcy, or purchase, but they’ll pay. I swear I’ll have to buy a couple shares as a collectible.

I’m putting it down as yet another well-earned reminder that you have no business building anything that matters to you on a platform that other people own, it is worth the five minutes a day that it takes to post on it, and no more.

Do not make a job of it, ever, unless that job pays you and pays you so well that people think that you’re really a stripper and your job title is just a cover story. “Social Media Manager”, gotta be code for OF, bro.

That’s how much money you should be making doing labor for a multimillion-dollar corporation. It was fuckin Conde Nast for a hot minute. If the boss can just take your mod and your community away, then you only ever worked there, for free. You were never building a community, you were building their property, for free. You have to stop doing that, and you have to stop presenting it as a virtuous act, unless some fundamental things change.

If you’re going to put a lot of work in for your own reasons, then you owe it to yourself to do it under your own control, or not at all.

I see an opportunity on the Fediverse to start from the old model of internetting and jump off to something new that just looks old, where it makes sense to put that work in, but for now it is what it is.

Reddit still lives, like Theoden cobwebbed in his throne, but nobody will come and banish Wormtongue. It’s still gonna take years for that old man to die.

Fuckin Yahoo isn’t anywhere close to dead. Neither is Digg. Well, maybe Digg.

The thing we North Americans are always a bit too arrogant about is if Reddit somehow gets big in India, or Brazil, then they don’t need us, and we’ll never know because we don’t speak the language. So it’s gonna take time for Reddit to fuck that up, they got options.

But don’t be too dismissive about the idea of “mass exodus”. Digg lost most of its userbase, literally overnight, and it was because of shitty ads. If the only app you can use now is the app that sucks and serves lots of shitty ads in your face, that will do it. People aren’t that habitual. It is very, very easy to leave a social site.

I quit TikTok over one shitty post that was my last straw, you just delete the app and forget about it. Yet TikTok is social media heroin. Reddit is a bunch of dudes yelling about shit that isn’t worth yelling about. It is much easier to quit. The phone app era means once you delete, it’s gone, and it helps to break the cycle. It can and probably will happen, 90% of the remaining users will drop it like it’s covered in bedbugs, they just have to stick huge unskippable ads in everyone’s face, and they’re fucked.

I just don’t think that is going to make the splash you’d expect.

But no, no mass exodus, not yet. I’d keep the popcorn bowl close by if I were you, though. I will not put it past them to turn an IPO into a fail state.

No, I do mean sites like Reddit. The advanced users are making everything act like a dating site when they need it to, because things like tinder don’t work for everyone, so it’s double crazy that they’re making Reddit work for that.

What I was truly referring to is Discord, and all those little communities in there, lots of people making their connections, not just sex, but international friend networking. Snapchat, group chats, all that, they’re busy doing the same, there. Meanwhile, I live as a ghost, interacting with dozens of people a day online, thousands over the years, with nothing much to show for it.

Even out in the real world I’m the kinda guy who can work some place for two years and leave with no new numbers in my phone. It does keep me out of the drama, but I don’t feel I’m striking a balance, either.

So yeah, I wish I knew.

My dude I do not even know. I have managed to be around some people who aren’t like me and gathered the strong impression that people were using social media like it was social, and not anti-social, which I am fluent in. So now I am on a brand-new policy, in the dark and stumbling around. All I can tell you is that the other people are using this thing to meet each other and exchange phone numbers eventually like actual friends. Which makes fuckin sense. If you reply back to other people like you are texting, it changes the nature of the thing. We must both be at peace with letting the thread drop, tho.

I must remind you that the normy world has been using social media to find other people to have sex with for a while, basically pull up the app, swipe swipe swipe until you find a friend for the night and put the phone away, instead of letting the demon consume the next 4 hours somehow. There’s a whole nother paradigm. It seems more entertaining.

But yeah, I think you just treat threads like chats, be cool, and see what happens eventually.

You just avoid that Reddit thing where you come in with your 1500 word truth dunk, that ain’t it.

I had a blanket “Cool guys don’t look back at explosions” policy to posting on pretty much every other site. I decided to turn over a new leaf on the Fediverse, and try not to post anything I don’t actually want a reply to. It does tend to gentle you down a bit. Also, I noticed other people were at least giving themselves a chance to form friendships that way, so yeah, new deal.

The thing that really sucks about social media is how many people are just using you as a vent pillow to scream into. It’s amazing that so many people are using so many websites that pretty much amount to somebody else’s emotional punching bag.

I think the thing that’s really stopping me from using that is that every time I get curious and go poking around to see what the fuss is, I run into some sort of paywall situation, or maybe it’s just a long queue that you need to join to get access, something like that. All I know is that you can’t just casually fire it up and take it for a spin.

Either I’m finding the wrong thing, or the people who already swear by it paid some fee or got an early access code ages ago. It also doesn’t know when it’s lying, and already got a lawyer in trouble for trying to let ChatGPT do his job, apparently it slapped together a brief, an argument before the court, that referenced a bunch of case law that didn’t actually exist.

No matter what, it’s not so casually accessible as people make it out to be, I don’t know what’s up with that.