Weekly Scroll: Too much news

Reddit soars, Trump streams, Google is a monopoly and Deermaxxing

There’s frankly far too much happening on the internet right now. It’s a jumbo-jumbo-sized update. There’s so much in this weekend’s post that I’m doing something unusual.

There’s a full sized post in here, then after the full sized post we’re putting a paywall with what is essentially a second full post. Join up if you haven’t already!

Reddit as Golden Goose

I’ve mentioned that I’m bullish on Reddit here before. I bought into their IPO as a Reddit power user¹. I’ve talked about how they have the most valuable dataset for AI anywhere on the internet. And perhaps I’ve been underrating the basic case for Reddit - they’re still just a very good site operationally.

Users seem to agree - Reddit is up a staggering 51% in daily active users year over year, which includes a 39% increase in page views. Those are massive growth numbers for a site that’s already in the top ten most visited sites on the internet. Reddit’s revenue also grew 54% year over year, thanks to both ad revenue growth and AI data licensing deals like the one they struck with Google. Across almost all dimensions, Reddit seems to be killing it.

That’s what makes the following such a weird piece of news: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman indicated to investors that Reddit was experimenting internally with ‘paid subreddits’. It’s unclear exactly what that means. But if it’s the obvious sounding thing - special subreddits you have to pay to access - then I’m skeptical. I have a hard time imagining that being a thing people want? Why would anyone join a paid subreddit when free subreddits exist? Is this supposed to replace private Discord communities?

You’re already doing great, Huffman. You have practically the only good site left for conversation at a global scale.² Don’t kill the golden goose!

Trump on Adin Ross

Adin Ross is an edgelord frat bro streamer. He’s right-leaning in a Barstool Sports kind of way, in that he doesn’t actually understand politics (or much of anything) but woke liberals sure make him mad. The best way to understand Adin Ross’s political acumen is that he’s a diehard Trump supporter who listed ‘Biden banned abortion’ as one of his top reasons for supporting Trump. He once tried to look up what ‘fascist’ meant, and in a clip that must be seen to be believed, gave up trying to understand because he couldn’t correctly read or pronounce ‘authoritarian’ or ‘ultranationalist’.³

He’s best known for calling people homophobic slurs, platforming white nationalists, accidentally getting his bff Andrew Tate arrested when he bragged about knowing him, as well as repeatedly getting scammed by famous rappers. Just an outstanding individual. Anyways, Donald Trump joined Adin Ross for a livestream on Kick and more than half a million people tuned in.

I want you to know that I watched the entire stream. I expect some paid subs out of this because the whole thing caused an incredible amount of psychic damage. Some takeaways:

• The actual stream is very poorly produced. The audio sucks, Trump’s mic keeps going in and out. Camera angle is stupid. Terrible production values. And Adin Ross really is a tremendous dumbass, somehow he’s noticeably stupider than Trump and it makes Trump look good in comparison.

• Honestly? The livestream is very, very boring. Ross is a terrible interviewer and basically just tosses random phrases or ideas at Trump, who then rambles at length about whatever enters his head. Very low energy. SAD.

• At one point Adin asks Trump about rapper Young Thug’s legal case, and Trump (who clearly has no fucking idea what he’s talking about) mumbles something about ‘have to make sure he’s treated fairly’ and relates it to his own legal cases. High comedy.

• The livestream ends with Adin gifting Trump a CyberTruck with a paint job depicting the famous photo of Trump post-assassination attempt. An utterly bizarre scene that concludes with Ross attempting to get Trump to do a TikTok dance.

My final takeaway - If you’re a liberal, progressive, or Democrat you’ve probably been having a good couple of weeks. You feel like the tide is turning your direction, Kamala has re-energized the Democratic Party. But don’t forget Trump drives high turnout among his fans. The right still has a lot of energy as well. Half a million people tuned in for this. There’s a well-developed set of right wing media institutions still rolling along, and specifically a lot of younger personalities who are still trying to energize young conservatives.

I promise you won’t guess where this video goes

@official.homesweethomeThis was a night I’ll never forget!! #engagement #proposal #couplegoals #boyfriend

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Google Monopoly

A federal judge this week ruled that Google violated antitrust law in paying for status as the iPhone’s default search engine.

I have complicated feelings about this case. I’m typically pretty skeptical of antitrust efforts against tech companies because many of those efforts are quite stupid. But this case is an interesting one. It’s not in question that Google has a dominant monopoly in search. It’s also not in question that Google earned that monopoly fairly by being much better than any other search engine.

The question is whether or not Google has abused their monopoly status - specifically if their contracts with Apple and Mozilla to be the default search engine on iPhones and Firefox are anticompetitive abuses of their power. Let’s do a little pro/con for the case against Google.

Pro-Antitrust: Searches from web browsers like Firefox or from the iPhone are huge sources of web search traffic. It is obviously anticompetitive for the biggest player to just buy default status and lock out other search engines. Technically users can switch if they want to, but we all know that defaults are sticky and most people won’t bother.

Con: This wasn’t a backroom deal or some sort of secret arrangement. Both Google and Microsoft’s Bing (the only two search engines large enough to matter) had an opportunity to bid for Apple’s default. Both did submit bids, and Apple decided Google’s offer was better. They competed fairly and Google won.

Pro: Of course Google’s offer was better. They’re bigger and can be better without even trying! In search there are benefits to scale - Google has better results than Bing at least partially because it is bigger than Bing and has access to more and better data. It can monetize better than Bing for the same reason. Microsoft reportedly offered Apple 100% of search revenue as a way to get the deal, but Apple turned them down because Google’s offer of around a third of search revenue was more money! Google is so much better at monetizing their search results that a third of Google is better than all of Microsoft ad sales. Unless something changes, there’s no way for Bing to ever compete.

Con: Is that such a bad thing? Maybe search is what economists call a ‘natural monopoly’. If there are massive returns to scale then maybe the search industry will always be dominated by a monopolistic player. And let’s be real - even if you switched a bunch of people to Bing, many/most of them would immediately switch back. One of the most popular search queries in Bing for as long as Bing has existed is ‘Google’.

Pro: Competition can breed innovation. Consider the case of Apple Maps. A few years back, Google Maps was the best online mapping service by such a wide margin it was hard to imagine anyone ever competing with them (especially once they’d purchased Waze). Nevertheless, Apple decided to compete with Apple Maps. And while it took many years, Apple Maps is now arguably superior and has features that Google Maps doesn’t. Competition is good in the long run - unchallenged monopolists are far more likely to sit back and not innovate.

Con: What do you think is really going to happen, though? The remedies here are likely either ‘Google can no longer pay Apple or Mozilla to be the default search engine’ or ‘You must offer a choice screen where users choose which search engine they want’. This would potentially devastate Mozilla and kill the Firefox browser - the vast majority of Mozilla’s funding comes from their Google deal. And one scenario that could come to pass is that Google is barred from paying Apple to be the default, Apple implements a choice screen, and 90% of users choose Google anyways. So Google gets 90% of what they already had without having to pay, and actually saves money. Doesn’t seem like the ideal outcome if you’re mad at Google.

In the end I do lean towards the Pro side of this decision, but there are interesting complications to the case that keep it from being a clear-cut thing.

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Kicking in the paywall now - there’s much more to read on Elon suing advertisers, MrBeast’s very very bad week, and the link and post roundup.

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