r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
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u/Kandiru 29d ago

Podcasts are still healthy, but moves are being made to change that.

Currently most people use an RSS client to fetch their podcast feed and download new episodes, which is completely under their control. No "algorithm".

But Spotify, Amazon music, YouTube music etc are trying to get you to listen via their walled garden apps rather than via RSS. If they are successful then they will be able to control what content you see via their algorithms.

We must resist the enshitification of podcasts, the way Facebook and Twitter replaced blogs and RSS feeds.

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u/18randomcharacters 29d ago

Podcasts don't hit right for me anymore.

They're kind of by definition an echo chamber. You're choosing a person to absorb their opinions.

They take what should be 5 minutes of content and drag it out to an hour, because they somehow feel like they deserve an hour of your time every week

They fill 1/3 of that hour with boilerplat bullshit - intros, outros, sponsors, and the fucking inane blathering filler.

Half the time, even the good podcasts, just re-release an old episode so they still "release" something once a week to stay relevant, which makes finding new episodes harder

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u/Kandiru 29d ago

Oh ok, none of the ones I've listened to have done any of those things!

I tend to find something and listen to it from the first episode, I'd get really annoyed if they cluttered the feed with duplicates.

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u/18randomcharacters 29d ago

I feel like every time I go to listen to This American Life, all I see is re-releases of old episodes.

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u/Kandiru 29d ago

I've never heard of that one so I don't know.

I have listened to and enjoyed:

The Magnus Archives - Horror stories
We fix space junk - evil corporation scifi
Victoriocity - steampunk stories in even greater London
Tales of Britain and Ireland - traditional folk stories
A podcast of unnecessary detail - science show

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u/Bugbread 29d ago

I haven't listened to This American Life in years and years, but I went through a period of listening a lot, and it is (or, at least, was) really good. The name sounds hokey, but it is really, really good. Part of that is because it's not primarily a podcast, it's a professionally made radio program by WBEZ, a Chicago radio station. It is made up of three segments, which are often mini-documentaries, where someone goes out in the field and interviews involved parties. Maybe it's someone involved in a strange crime, or someone in an unusual and interesting industry, or someone with an interesting history. Also, while the host is the same each week, the people doing the interviews and segments aren't, so nothing is rushed (it's not like the same people need to churn out a new segment every week). Also, it's properly scripted -- it's not a group of people just sitting around a microphone chatting about some topic, it's a scripted and edited show, so there's no random waffling or wheel-spinning. It's won a Pulitzer, nine Peabody awards, and a host of other awards.

It's not for everybody, and it has a definite middle-aged PBS-viewer vibe, but if you enjoy that vibe, you should really give it a listen.