this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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The best thing about his deeply fuckheaded comments is that it's a perfect example of the sick way the ultra wealthy operate, presented in a way reddit users can absolutely understand.
The act of building early reddit was a group effort. I have no idea how much Spez contributed to the concept, but he did code it -- a task that realistically millions of people also would have been able to do.
But a platform without users is nothing. It was the users creating content that truly built reddit and the unpaid moderators who stopped it collapsing under the weight of spam and extremism.
While that was happening, spez shit the bed over and over again. He sold out too early. He openly advocated platforming extremists. He got called out for the bigotry he tolerated in his company. He alienated his most important users so he could sell their content to AI companies.
And now here we are. He makes an absurd amount of money, despite being shit at his job, despite being a clearly bad person and despite his accomplishments being ordinary. Meanwhile, the people he needs, who are critical to his business, are paid nothing.
This is the same setup as Amazon, Walmart, Uber and a million other businesses, distilled down to its very essence.
Similarly, in the midst of historic layoffs in the tech industry, no one blames the CEO for horrible management leading to the over hiring or bad management that led to this. O one blames Zuckerberg for renaming his company and betting an an absurdity that is already being scraped off of PR releases. All because some growth number goes up. It’s insanity.
Employee wages are often the largest expense for a business and they're always trying to have fewer employees, squeezed harder for more work and less pay.
It really undermines their whole "oh they're just unskilled labor and drones, they don't deserve a living wage" rhetoric. If Amazon didn't need warehouse workers and delivery drivers, they wouldn't have them. They could be working for $1 a day and they'd still be fired the instant that role was no longer needed.
They get away with it because they just need somebody doing the work and there's no shortage of desperate, exploited people. Unions and collective bargining definitely help but ultimately the government needs to advocate for workers and simply say things like "If you use slaves at any step in your supply chain, you and everyone you report to is going to jail and your assets will be stripped to cover the pay you owe them".
It's such a low fucking bar. Almost every law we have boils down to "don't be a piece of shit" but we don't make them for rich people or use them to cover foreign workers.