The colloquial use of “AI” is basically the Hollywood concept of a conscious computer. Nobody knows about AI as it’s used in computer science industry. Nor does it matter in regular discourse. In this sense it’s not AI. It’s a disservice to lead the on laypeople to believe it’s something it’s not.

I don’t rule it out. The prior era of “reddit alternatives” in the Voat era was quickly overrun too even though they were very small. The key to the internet has always been first mover advantage. If they have enough power to manipulate the top sites, it would take very little to hedge bets on budding platforms. They risk losing their advantage if a replacement platform establishes itself without them. That’s pretty much the whole history of modern tech. To actively seek and snuff out your competitors.

They’ve been increasing the ad load the whole time. The most I’ve seen so far is 5 ads. Streaming will return to broadcast TV convention sooner than people think probably. 15 minutes of ads per hour.

It’s in its afterlife phase right now. Much of the comment sections on any given subreddit are full of newbies using colloquialisms from other platforms. e.g. Users call subreddits “groups” which I think originates from Facebook. Or users trying to “bump” posts. There’s a lot of signs that the core userbases are gone.

Reddit was very monoculture in the beginning. The neckbeards upvoted each other because they generally agreed on the same opinions. That gets mistaken for adherence to reddiquette.

It became a rhetorical tool to prove whatever an individuals political or social adversaries are dummies because they don’t use reddit properly in current year unlike some glory day that never existed.

If they really did use reddit back in the day as they claim then all of the self referential satire about reddits pseudo-intellectualism must have gone over their head. It was like the second most popular type of content. Second only to the actual circle jerking.

Nothing happened. It was always like this. Geeks got unduly put on a pedestal. They got a reputation that was never earned. They’re not any different than your typical psychopath executive.

I grew up in a town where a lot of these types of guys have become multimillionaires since 2010s tech boom. One person manages some hundreds of millions of dollars AI investment portfolio. That was before the GPT explosion. I have no idea how big they are now but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s billions.

Growing up they were almost all psychopathic. Lying, cheating, backstabbing type of people. Nothing like the timid altruistic geek that pop culture proliferates. The more normal people did not go into tech. The actual timid types have had modest middle class careers in tech.