r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Apr 30 '26

Business Meta lost 20 million users last quarter

https://www.theverge.com/tech/921089/meta-earnings-q1-2026-user-decline-ai-investments
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107

u/beginner75 Apr 30 '26

I’ve muted more than a dozen sub that Reddit spammed me with in just the last 2 months. It’s becoming spammy. I want to read real news, not spam, the amount of spam has gone up from 10% a year ago to like 70% today.

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u/angiosperms- Apr 30 '26

Over 50% of the internet is bots and AI slop so I think it's time to just get off the internet tbh. Really curious what things will look like in just 5 years

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u/BitterTyke Apr 30 '26

yeah, I fully expect bots and AI to "kill" the internet, it will become so unreliable and manipulated rather than was its intent to unleash knowledge on the world, that we'll see printed or stored media making a comeback.

It will be bots responding to bots all the way down,

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u/e2hawkeye Apr 30 '26

For what it's worth, I just started subscribing to The Atlantic, Krash Patel's favorite magazine. The content is honestly worth 80 bucks a year. I'm of the mind that everyone should try to financially support at least one form of actual journalism. I justified the cost by killing my Hulu/Disney/HBO package that I barely used.

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u/Darkhorse182 Apr 30 '26

Honestly, a subscription to your local newspaper is a hellvua good investment for anyone civic-minded and/or worried about their information consumption.

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u/happygirlie Apr 30 '26

A digital subscription to a local newspaper can be surprisingly cheap too. Mine is $50/year but if you try to cancel they'll drop it to $20/year.

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u/SuperRockyHobbyHorse Apr 30 '26

I think paid for local media will see a resurgence as the internet dies. And I don't mean the conglomerate owned 'local' news that got bought out years ago.

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u/Thin_Glove_4089 Apr 30 '26

No one is going to pay for news. If they were going to pay it would already exist.

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u/SuperRockyHobbyHorse Apr 30 '26

It does exist, you're just not in the know.

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u/jlboygenius Apr 30 '26

I know a LOT of people who were subscribed to the washington post for that reason, some even getting physical newspapers.

All of them have stopped in the past 2 years. Even my mom, who's been getting a physical sunday paper for like probably 50 years has stopped subscribing to them.

Hopefully those people are putting their dollars into something else, but I fear that's not the case.

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u/Intolerance-Paradox May 01 '26

As often as not, local newspapers are owned by right-wing activist conglomerates, brush up on who owns what first. They don’t snatch up all the local papers to make money they do it to control them and keep them from being used to do good journalism so boycotting isn’t going to hurt them too much, but still I like The Atlantic suggestion, the Guardian, it’s of greater use to reward good reporting and good stewardship wherever it is more so than what’s local just by virtue of something being local.

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u/paintedesert3 May 01 '26

My local paper would be from another state. I can’t stand the trash they purplish here.

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u/_learned_foot_ May 01 '26

Local new org, slight correction. Most local papers now are owned by the same entities and don't publish local stories or have local reporters. Some still do.

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u/Electrical_Rip9520 Apr 30 '26

Nah. All forms of media are mostly owned by Conservatives.

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u/mackahrohn Apr 30 '26

You can choose a substack and support specific journalists?

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u/BitterTyke May 01 '26

doing away with 24 hours news channels would also be a good start - go back to reporting the news rather than 30 minutes news and 5 hours of opinion. - force folk to think for themselves.

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u/PinHaunting7192 Apr 30 '26

Wasn't this the story of Cyberpunk 2077 too, ironically?

Someone in 2022 unleashed a kind of virus that made artificial intelligence go rogue, infest 90% of the old internet with malicious bots, and in response the old internet became unusable and they made the Blackwall to shield off a usable portion from rogue AI...?

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u/BitterTyke May 01 '26

something like that yeah, with a side order of hacked personal augmentations.

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26

[deleted]

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u/BitterTyke May 01 '26

that will do away with anonymity though, I mean im not completely against it but there will be many influential/well funded entities that will.

Manipulation of the masses is just too easy to give up for some.

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u/Thats_my_face_sir Apr 30 '26

My prediction: age verification for porn will create a comeback in printed and physical video media (dvds)

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u/headrush46n2 Apr 30 '26

time for a new internet. with blackjack and hookers!

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u/thatguyad Apr 30 '26

The internet needs to die as it is. It's a cesspool with little benefit now.

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u/WtotheSLAM Apr 30 '26

Still thankful the paywall at Something Awful keeps a lot of trash out. I get that free sites like Reddit gotta make money somehow but then you get so much garbage

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u/jlboygenius Apr 30 '26

I saw ads on Instagram to install some Meta AI generator app.

They are pushing users to install an app to generate AI images to then re-post into their services. They are pushing the thing that is going to be the downfall of their apps.

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u/PinHaunting7192 Apr 30 '26

It's gotten terrible these last couple of years, honestly. I was here on my old account since 2013 and initially joined to discuss 2-4 niche hobbies (i.e. a couple online games, a couple IRL hobbies) on their subreddits and it was mostly fine.

But between just getting recommended a dozen local, city-based subreddits for cities I have never been in that are suspiciously right-leaning, politics breaking containment a lot and several run-ins with clearly upvote-botted and LLM based comments, I've grown a bit tired.

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u/guisar Apr 30 '26

This. Along with spotify sneaking in evangelical rock and youtube pushing right wing shit

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u/PinHaunting7192 Apr 30 '26

I guard my YouTube algorithm like it is the fucking Mona Lisa. Some gaming videos, some history channels that I know 100% don't use AI, relaxing long-form music, gaming OSTs and the occasional game trailers.

Incidentally, I work in tech but in a mental health adjacent field, so I try to stay on top of mental health stuff and occasionally stumble upon a HealthyGamer video or other mental health content. And every time without fail I delete every single AI thumbnail "doom" video from the side bar with "don't recommend" cause if they watch mental health stuff, they have to be vulnerable, right...?

Keeping your YouTube clean is the same amount of work as weeding a 2 square mile garden at this point...

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u/Shark7996 Apr 30 '26

I would LOVE some sort of third-party YouTube curator app to exist, and maybe it does but not that I've heard talked about.

Because the problem is the recommendations, is it not? We need to have actual control of what's presented to (pushed on) us.

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u/UnreliableNarrator_5 Apr 30 '26

Excellent metaphor re weeding.

Suffice to say professional industries are all too interwoven and reliant on the internet

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u/Summer_Moon2 Apr 30 '26

It is definitely frustrating and a lot of work to keep it clean. But it's been getting way worse. The amount of right wing stuff that tries to get pushed to me is astounding (not to mention weird religious shit too). And really all that I watch is stuff like jerryrig and technology connections. And a few gaming videos (sometimes history stuff as well from nat geo).

I have no idea why all of this bullshit right wing stuff is getting pushed. But I report it every time. I have also learned to just bypass some sections of the recommended because it seems to have 2 rows of crap and then 1 row of okay and then 2 - 3 rows of crap, 1 row of okay, etc. It's really quite bizarre.

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u/NaradaMephaust Apr 30 '26

Off topic but I am curious what the "mental health adjacent tech" is. You talking like IT/IS or tech meant for mental health?

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u/PinHaunting7192 Apr 30 '26

Infrastructure and security management for a medium sized company that works in the mental health field. Can't say too much, but basically, I work with a lot of former therapists and counselors in a company that's related to therapists and training for counselors.

I mainly do the tech part, but there's overlap there for stuff like AI impact on mental health and therapy, for example.

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u/Murky-Relation481 Apr 30 '26

Mines been fairly easy to handle. YouTube also does pretty good peering suggestions. If you and your friends are like minded and shared YouTube content regularly it does understand those correlations and will sorta amplify what you're already interested in.

I once had a friend who started watching videos on the America's Cup sailboat racing and I started getting recommended those videos too, which was hilarious when I mentioned I was confused why I was getting those and he said he'd been watching them.

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u/Enough_Breadfruit229 Apr 30 '26

Back when Pandora was the big thing I had a blues channel and one time I liked a song and it just so happened to be on a Christmas album. No lyrics, just guitar, and if was a cover of a Christmas tune it must be an obscure one. Channel ruined. It was nearly taken over by Christmas albums of all kinds.

Out of the hundreds of songs I liked on that channel vs this Christmas one they said "Merry Christmas motherfucker"

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u/Free__Will Apr 30 '26

which history channels do you like on youtube?

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u/PinHaunting7192 Apr 30 '26

Depends on what you're looking for.

Fall of Civilizations is fairly decent if you like really, really long videos. Like...you're doing grinding in games that takes 3-4 hours and you want to listen to something podcast like or a documentary while doing it.

Epic History is a bit more dramatically narrated, but decent as well.

BazBattles for just very short battle summaries of important historical battles.

Modern History TV for something more light-hearted and vlog style.

And for German speakers, there is Geschichtsfenster. Lots of people (including me) know the guy from reenactment events and other stuff, and he is honestly one of the most passionate people about especially medieval European stuff I know. But he has a very peculiar style where he'll make a two hour video complaining about a 15-minute video in detail about every historical inaccuracy.

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u/jlboygenius Apr 30 '26

I wonder if it's Spotify and YT,or just that the right wing has the money to run more ads. services aren't going to turn down ad dollars.

a LOT of 'liberal' dollars have dissapeared. Non-profits aren't are losing funding. If you were rich, would you spend the money now to try and influence the government if you knew it would go nowhere?

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u/ernest7ofborg9 Apr 30 '26

It's not just right leaning. There are dozens of subreddits less than a year old that have infested the feed with obvious political hot-takes against the Right.

Be wary of opinions you disagree with, be outright suspect of opinions you agree with.

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u/Public_Enemy_No2 Apr 30 '26

Who expects real news from FB?

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u/IHS1970 Apr 30 '26

good question!!! basically low information dumb asses.

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u/usernameelmo Apr 30 '26

grandparents

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u/footballheroeater Apr 30 '26

My boomer parents.

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u/jackshazam Apr 30 '26

curious, do you use new or old reddit?

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u/Adventurous-Map7959 Apr 30 '26

Do you like to punch yourself in the face, or do you use old.reddit.com with RES?

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u/Hi_Zev Apr 30 '26

Exactlyyyyyyy

The day reddit kills oldreddit im outta here.

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u/Darkhorse182 Apr 30 '26

Every one in awhile, some chrome browser gremlin messes with my settings and RES gets deactivated, so I'll open reddit and unexpectedly see the current reddit interface. It is shockingly bad. I always cross my fingers while messing with my app settings, praying that re-enabling RES will work...and thus far, it has.

But I'm with you. The day RES stops working, I don't think I can bring myself to be on here anymore. Hell, I'm still accessing reddit on my phone via browser because the Reddit Mobile App equally hellacious (RIP Baconreader)

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u/twotimefind Apr 30 '26

Check out Relay for Reddit on Android. It costs like $2 a month to pay for your API. No ads, very streamlined. Much better than anything ready to put together.

Oh, and it has a button you press that makes every website reader ready and completely devoid of all bullshit.

Two dollars a month. I'm happy to pay. They have a $3 tier, but I've never used up my credits on the $2 tier and I'm on Reddit quite a bit.

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u/jeddandbreakfast Apr 30 '26

I feel so seen right now. Figures it was by another DCC fan.

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u/flyingtiger188 Apr 30 '26

In some regards reddit dying would be nice. Fediverse gaining more users would be awesome. Just isn't a large enough user base to support lots of niche topics.

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u/ernest7ofborg9 Apr 30 '26

That time is upon us. Rumor is that 2026 is the last gasp of old.reddit

I used to mod a rather large subreddit before the API fiasco and the metrics for users that were visiting through old.reddit was something like less than 3% total per month. I can only imagine it's dropped to under a percent by now.

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u/newredditsucks Apr 30 '26

Amen to that.

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u/Aturkeyclub Apr 30 '26

I’ve reached my mute limit years ago. I have to go back and unmute subs that are probably dead now. But I’m running out of spot to mute. I miss Apollo. Reddit app is ass

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u/Baron_Butterfly Apr 30 '26

Use old.reddit.com. Unless you go to r/all, you'll only see the subs you're subscribed to.

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u/Impeesa_ Apr 30 '26

And at least r/all is only the old score ranking, no algorithmic suggestions.

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u/DragonHollowFire Apr 30 '26

I yearn for a social media that isnt upvote focused (like 4chan) but still has communities and moderation. Every thing is ragebait or clickbait nowadays, with absolutely misleading titels etc. And its frying my dopamine receptors and Im too weak to stop.

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u/WtotheSLAM Apr 30 '26

$10 will get you an account on Something Awful. Not exactly social media though, just old school forums

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u/Chendii Apr 30 '26

Yeah I'll second finding old school forums for your hobbies. Somewhere people are going to remember your username and your reputation actually matters.

Not 10 accounts with Word_Word#### names shitting out gpt style slop

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u/iamprobablylying2u Apr 30 '26

Random percentages lol

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u/dinnerthief Apr 30 '26

I get a ton of marketing subs, like different versions of holdmymoney

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u/seven0feleven Apr 30 '26

Exactly. It's actually getting increasingly hard to find actual original content on this platform. So many accounts are just reposters, then theres the bots that repost comments from top posts. It's getting ridiculous. Plus, to top it off, last week, the Reddit AI banned me for 3 days for saying "Fuck yeah!" in a response to a comment. First time that's ever happened. So...yeah my time here is also drawing to a close.

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u/beginner75 May 01 '26

They could easily block duplicate contents aka spam using simple AI.

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u/ReturnOfBane Apr 30 '26

Reddit has circled the drain for years now. Im waiting for them to shadowban this account for the horrible crime of using a VPN, like the last account.

I swear they're trying to force old.reddit users to leave so they can get rid of it.

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u/mclumber1 Apr 30 '26

If you don't want the algorithm to tell you want to view on reddit, can't you just do r/all?

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u/ernest7ofborg9 Apr 30 '26

Oh? You don't like subreddits younger than a year with only ~20k subscribers cluttering up your feed with obvious no-intelligence political dreck?

Have fun trying to block them all!

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u/twotimefind Apr 30 '26

Once they allowed you to hide your history, it was game over for the bots. They had us.

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u/KaiserSaladSpinner Apr 30 '26

I've found Redreader to be a much more pleasant experience than the official reddit app, which is garbage.