Fair, but that's not their business model. They don't create any content. Their model is to trick naive (but obsessive) people into filling their wikis with information, then when they realize how enshittified the site is, using their SEO advantage to crush any later attempts by those same people to build a real community wiki.
> If you want visitors then you have to...
They'd say "Or, we can just have really good SEO and get those visitors without earning them!"
Self-dealing is a bad look no matter how you try to spin it. Being fussy about what is and isn't "encyclopedic" (arguably a self-defining idea anyway though) is fine, until it benefits you to rule a certain way, then people are going to speculate.
Also, nobody knows how much money Jimmy Wales took home from selling Fandom to TPG/IMC.
The problem was in the early days when people were still mocking the idea of a crowd-sourced encyclopedia, journalists would snark about how (for example) the article on Captain Kirk was longer than some historical figure. So you can see how fictional content was seen as "embarrassing"
So when Stack Overflow operates Stack Overflow, for programming questions, and Super User, for usage questions, and directs a computer usage question to Super User, that's corruption?
I'm really enjoying a plugin (Indie Wiki Buddy) for replacing fandom links in search results with those of the corresponding independent wikis, and if you don't have an alternative, it converts any other fandom links to BreezeWiki which is like a 'reader view' of Fandom.
In theory I can imagine somebody feeling bad for 'poor fandom' getting scraped (and I do feel bad for some websites that have parties like Google take their content and regurgitate it without sending traffic) but nope, F*k Fandom because they cynically exploit the open CC licenses that this content was created with to guarantee themselves the right to compete with the original creators forever even when the creators want to leave.
Trying to be as least cynical as possible, imagine if you were a party with 3 or more people, and you really wanted a nice pic like that to commemorate the night, but never got to take one all together because someone left early, and you were in the bathroom when they announced their departure.
Yes, it's a major first-world problem to not get a photo, but to the right person, it could mean a lot to them to "fix" the photo they took with A and B to add C to their 'rightful place.'
Is spending time with your friends not enough in 2026? Do we must provide photographic evidence of all the fun you have been having or it did not happen?
K, but they're paying for that energy though. And the land and the building costs, etc. I really don't want to live in a country where the government just arbitrarily says "Oh, sorry we have 'enough' datacenters / Subway sandwich shops / golf courses / storage facilities so you aren't allowed to build one" -- even if it becomes a populist belief that they should.
The fact is, at this point there is so much demand for DC capacity that the prices are super high, and thus it's worth building them. Many people believe that it's a bubble or whatever. If they're right, well then a lot of people building DCs right now will lose their shirts. If they're wrong and the demand is sustained, DCs are exactly what we need to be building.
>where the government just arbitrarily says "Oh, sorry we have 'enough' datacenters / Subway sandwich shops / golf courses / storage facilities so you aren't allowed to build one" -- even if it becomes a populist belief that they should.
It's not really arbitrary though, is it? It's decided by duly-elected representatives who answer to the citizens of the municipality. A government "of the people", etc.
I feel like what you're arguing against is precisely why we have local governments in the first place.
Well, you could definitely do policies like that in a plain democracy or republic without any guaranteed rights of the citizens. In our particular constitutional systems, and many others, the founding documents say that the government can't do certain things, even if they pass a law saying they can. (Of course, the Constitution can be amended to remove rights, but there is an intentionally high bar to meet in order to do that.)
Congress could pass a law tomorrow, or California could pass a ballot measure with a 100% Yes vote, saying (for instance) that some random company now belongs to the government, or to Gavin Newsom personally, or to me, but the courts would still be obligated to strike it down since that grossly violates the Seventh Amendment. Ideas like this are commonly referred to as being checks against "mob rule" - the system recognizes that 'what the people want' isn't necessarily supreme when it runs up against other people's recognized rights.
> imagine being someone being blackmailed by photos created by ChatGPT Images
If anything, the fact that I know for a fact that I can, in 45 seconds, generate an image of any arbitrary person holding Solo cups at a party arm in arm with Vladimir Putin (to crib an idea from one of the demos) should make everyone less and less susceptible to blackmail in general - in fact, even if the source material is real! There was a time 40 years ago when a photograph's existence was considered proof of a fact - the existence of Photoshop-like tools made that into a weak proof, and the existence of genAI has made "a photograph" into a format that is known to be as malleable as a .txt file.
Whether we like that or not, no one will stop bad actors from attempting to abuse this technology, so democratizing its use does help people to understand how they work and make potential victims much less credulous.
Agree. I'm also remembering the previous grocery store merger in the western US, where the regulators meddled and, while they did approve the merger, they forced a large number of stores to be sold off, but they were sold to a tiny, inexperienced operation who proceeded to go bankrupt within a year, so rather than an area having two "Albertson's" or whatever, all those areas then had one Albertson's and one vacant store. Anybody with sense could have seen that coming and if they didn't want to lose their convenient grocery store altogether, they might have been arguing to simply allow the full merger.
Why not just block that merger? Well, the "non-greed" case for mergers is often that while it may result in a dominant position in a narrowly-defined market ('supermarkets'), they are sometimes needed to preserve the existence of that category as an alternative to another giant that has expanded into a new market, in that case mainly Walmart and to some extent, Amazon, both of which can afford to subsidize something like Ritz Crackers with the profits from selling tires, lawn furniture, or AWS.
You could also consider the Sprint/T-Mobile merger in those terms: Both were circling the drain and really only competing for the most price-sensitive customers, as everyone knew both had inferior service to the other 2 networks. Either or both could have ultimately been liquidated, to the absolute glee of Verizon and AT&T. While it hurts emotionally to think of there being fewer players in that important and specific market of real MNOs, it's true that the MVNOs do seem to be thriving today and, for people who can do even basic research, you can get way better deals (in terms of value and price) on cell phone service today than you could 10 years ago thanks to them, even with fewer 'real' carriers.
Note: None of this is directly relevant to Paramount, which I don't think existentially needs the merger - from either side.
> The "non-greed" case for mergers is often that while it may result in a dominant position in a narrowly-defined market ('supermarkets'), they are sometimes needed to preserve the existence of that category as an alternative to another giant that has expanded into a new market, in that case mainly Walmart and to some extent, Amazon, both of which can afford to subsidize something like Ritz Crackers with the profits from selling tires, lawn furniture, or AWS.
Ah, but then is the argument that we should allow a merger among smaller players because it prevents a narrowly-defined market from being entirely consumed by larger, broader businesses; or should we argue that the larger, broader businesses that can exert influence over large swaths of the market prevent the existence of a competitive marketplace?
I'm going to be humble that I don't have a perfect "fix" that I'm confident would be a net positive. If anything, the most suspicious business practice being done anywhere in the US currently is the AWS cash cow subsidizing everything else Amazon does, to the ruin of dozens of other markets. I just don't know how I'd even word legislation that would rein that in, in a way that wouldn't be overly subjective (and thus subject to the whims of ultimately, the Supreme Court), not trivially bypassable by structuring ownership creatively, and also not having terrible overregulatory impacts. Like, should "Bob's Corner Store & Cigarettes" be able to sell milk for just $2 a gallon to try to bring people in to buy cigarettes, whose profits more than pay for that loss? Probably? And he should also be able to use the profits from his successful cigarette operation to run a money-losing arcade next door, if he wants.
But at what point does it become distorting the market? I deeply hate regulations which punish behavior "only for sufficiently succesful" players, and I've seen how the existing "special competition rules for monopolists" lead to endless debates of "but I'm not a monopoly!" and it seems really clear that all of the trillion-dollar-market-cap companies are too powerful (they own too many politicians) to ever let themselves be classified as such, no matter what.
Wouldn’t a “simple” fix for the AWS thing just be to force amazon to split aws out into its own company? Google (alphabet) and Facebook (meta) should probably get split up too.
It's your position that remote work is an unvarnished success though? No notes? Personally, I feel that remote-only in 2026 is mainly a cost-savings scheme, and probably functions to make the ground much more fertile for replacing knowledge workers (us) with AI agents.
In a physical space, humans have built-in advantages over bots. Operating exclusively or primarily over IP levels the playing field, nullifying our advantages of expressive nonverbal communication, and makes 100% of our output accessible to agents.
And it minimizes our contact with each other. I know you can DM people on Slack to gossip about the boss, but do you? Figuring everything is logged, you'd have to create and nurture alternative private channels like texting, and doing that at scale carries at least some implication of subterfuge that limits participation, in a way that chatting around a table at the sandwich shop just doesn't.
All of us really do appreciate the savings on gas money and (in theory) the time savings, though I bet most people have given over some of that time savings to work tasks. I'm not saying it doesn't have benefits. But I don't think the companies still embracing remote work are doing it out of philanthropy, and I don't think it's necessarily good for us workers.
You might have a bit of an argument here, but I think there are two major problems.
First, bullshitting in meatspace isn't much of an advantage. To the extent that it is, there is always video calling. What matters for agent training is going to be the output from said bullshitting. You're not really maintaining any moat by going to the office.
And then on the other side, going to the office pretty much sucks. Unless you live close to the office, you're probably looking at least an hour on either side of your day commutting. Using that saved time to work extra at home is an obvious tactical error that I hope people aren't making. I sure as hell don't.
> Unless you live close to the office, you're probably looking at least an hour on either side of your day commutting
That's a choice though. I just lived where I worked. I can see the argument when you're talking about low-paid work, but if you are a software engineer, you can probably afford to not spend an hour commuting.
> going to the office pretty much sucks.
This is a highly personal thing though. For me, having children home in the afternoon drastically dampens my productivity, and the benefits from being there extend to greater awareness of what other people are working on, and decreased perceived barrier to collaboration. When you see another developer in the kitchen just sipping coffee or waiting for an elevator, you don't feel like you're interrupting to ask him how he got past a certain issue, or in telling him about a new tool that you just tried. You can post those thoughts in a public channel! But the person who "needs" to see it might not see it, and sending a DM is kind of a demand such that many people won't do it unless absolutely necessary.
Text is for many people just not superior to communicating in person. Slack is a simulacrum of in-person communication, not the platonic ideal.
While you can lower your commute by living closer to work, you should understand that what you’re doing is taking a drastic pay cut for the pleasure of in-office work.
In-office work might be worth it, maybe. Is it worth 20,000 dollars a year of your money? Probably not.
At that point, it’s probably still cheaper to rent a wework or something.
What general area did you live and work in? Was it actually Silicon Valley or a tech hub?
With remote work, you don’t have to work at home. Many simply work at a co-working space or similar environment that isn’t the actual office.
The colocated collaboration you’re talking about is also highly variable. It’s possible to be on a team where you’re working on projects that actually primarily involve others from other teams not in the same physical offices, or even the same company. So you’re describing benefits that are also highly personal, not a universal good. Software is an industry that would seem to have outgrown in-person communication.
Worked in San Francisco. Lived a 20-minute walk away from work, in a 1-bedroom apartment. My mortgage + HOA cost about 16% of my gross pay. This is in the mid-2010s.
I have done coworking, most recently for about 2 years of full-time at WeWork. Coworking is, depending on how busy the venue, just a quieter version of the home office, or, like working in a shared workspace at a very large university that you just transferred into: There are dozens of people around, but you don't know any of them, and they're all busy doing their own thing. You have no non-recreational business even talking to anyone. You can make a point of trying to chat people up around lunchtime, but you're starting from scratch, and also, as a 'stranger' subject to people wondering if you're talking to them with a motive to either sell them something or flirt with them. This is no substitute for social contact, except for the most extraverted who truly LOVE talking to new people.
> It’s possible to be on a team where you’re working on projects that actually primarily involve others from other teams not in the same physical offices,
I did this when working in person, a decade ago. Yes, we had zooms often. But also we travelled and met those people periodically. I learned important things from observing them using the software that I wouldn't have otherwise. I would not have scheduled zoom meetings for each of them to share their screen while they worked in the software. That would have felt burdensome. Today, most companies won't approve any travel for engineers, product managers, etc. Maybe for sales guys to take people to steak dinners. But they assume that for us, Zoom is an equal substitute.
> Software is an industry that would seem to have outgrown in-person communication
This is an idea that makes no sense at all to me. Look, I totally respect that some people really dislike all or most of these things: in-person talking, small talk, reading (or being aware of your own) body language and tone, wearing pants and shoes all day, being away from family, commuting... Maybe fully remote work is totally best for you! I'm just saying that it's not best for everyone, it's not an automatic 'most efficient choice,' it's not automatically best for morale, it's not best for all families. And to top it off, while businesses pushing RTO seem like the ones being cynical, it shouldn't be hard to see that the other businesses that are refusing to have a physical office today have their own cynical reasons that aren't for the workers' benefit.
> Worked in San Francisco. Lived a 20-minute walk away from work, in a 1-bedroom apartment. My mortgage + HOA cost about 16% of my gross pay. This is in the mid-2010s.
Sounds reasonable for someone earlier in their career. More difficult later on, especially with an expanded household.
> I'm just saying that it's not best for everyone, it's not an automatic 'most efficient choice,' it's not automatically best for morale, it's not best for all families.
> it shouldn't be hard to see that the other businesses that are refusing to have a physical office today have their own cynical reasons that aren't for the workers' benefit.
Perhaps, but given that the pendulum has shifted towards RTO and away from remote work, the latter seems like a much rarer practice, less worth critiquing.
The core problem is whether in-office, remote, or hybrid (personally, I would be most in favor of a hybrid compromise, but at a less frequent in-office cadence than current industry standards), management is setting mandates rather than giving teams, let alone individuals, the flexibility to figure out what's best for their workflow.
And more often than not, it's companies that have physical offices that are mandating use of them, rather than remote work, for obvious reasons. And it's most likely true that most companies have physical offices rather than have eliminated them.
I have to clock in and clock out. I can't clock in when I am commuting. I don't give over time savings to work tasks, Why would I. The time was my own time.
I think this is fair. If you ask a staff engineer to delete the duplicate files from a directory, he will likely do it faster and more efficiently than a level 2 engineer.
But perhaps this is the kind of thing that the best 'ai guys' out there solve with something as surprisingly simple as an instruction to "Always try a simple solution first and optimize only if you find clear proof of a problem." I feel like prompts like that seem too simple to work, but some of the time they shockingly do.
> If you want visitors then you have to...
They'd say "Or, we can just have really good SEO and get those visitors without earning them!"
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