Worse, we're throwing piles of money at them.

In defensive terms, no, not really. They had to build it like this because these aren't really walls per se, it's just brick lining on the outside of an earthen mound, and mounds are, well, mound-shaped. https://gomadnomad.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Bukharas-Ark-Palace.jpg

The free work Reddit moderators do has been valued at $3.4 million annually

That seems an extremely conservative estimate to me. The linked article says:

The team recorded the work done to keep 126 subreddits moderated for an average of 142 days, and analysed automated logs generated whenever the 900 human moderators took an action.

In total, more than 800,000 actions were recorded. Some actions contained full timestamps of when work began and ended; others only contained a single timestamp – for removing a post, say – and so the time taken was estimated at what the researchers believe is a lower bound.

The median amount of time any individual spent working daily is 10 seconds, but the top 10 per cent of moderators spent between 3 and 40 minutes working for Reddit. Two in every three actions were taken by the top 10 per cent of moderators.

There's a major problem with this methodology, which is the assumption that a moderator is not working unless they're taking an action. But that's not the case, is it? Sitting around keeping an eye on things and not doing anything because no action is currently required is still work! Just like a security guard. You pay them for all of the 8 hours they spend watching your stuff every day, not just for the thirty seconds a month spent actually apprehending thieves.

According to this Reddit post, there were over 70K moderators on Reddit six years ago. Even if they were only paid the US minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and each of them on average only spent fifteen minutes a day keeping an eye on things, it would still cost Reddit almost fifty million dollars annually. And that's based on a number that's six years old, which is certain to have grown a lot since then.

So yeah, Reddit is benefiting from free labor a lot.

Right? How the hell is a company that has never managed to turn a profit worth more than $0?

Reddit would implode instantly with only 2K moderators. According to this Reddit post, six years ago there were almost 75K moderators working in subreddits with more than 500 subscribers (i.e. this number only includes moderators who actually have to do some work because their subs are decently active). That number is certain to have grown since then.

it’s considered common knowledge that you can’t

I've never heard that before. What I have heard several times is that text is not static, so if you read something, look away, and then read it again, it'll say something different. That I can corroborate, along with the idea that this is how you realize you're in a dream and induce lucid dreaming.

I have a sinking feeling he might have made a mistake.

It's _/‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾\_ shaped. It's not freestanding walls, the whole thing is an earthen mound with a flat top and its sides lined with bricks.

Talking is not going to get them to leave Ukraine.

History repeats itself. The fediverse is going to go downhill too once it gets big enough for corporations to notice it. Enjoy it while it lasts.

No. https://i.imgur.com/wKgLVxA.png

They did. This is only the oldest, innermost fortification in the city. AFAIK additional layers of walls were build around it later.

Replaying old games that I have fond memories of. We're in an incredible renaissance of classic games getting source ports or updates that bring them up to modern standards, and I'm loving it. Daggerfall, Blade of Darkness, Jagged Alliance 2, Morrowind, Jedi Knight, Caesar 3... I'm sure I'm forgetting some many. They let me forget the present and pretend that I'm back in simpler, happier times, at least for a little while.

As does Steam and Epic and every other digital store ever created.

I get that, but who would want to buy a company that's never been profitable? It smacks of a scam. "Hey, bro! Buy my company! It never managed to make any money for me, but it'll be highly profitable for you!" Sounds like the company founder is looking to pull a fast one and laugh all the way to the bank while their investor is left holding the bag.

The only way I can see this working is if the idea is to build a large user base by offering a good user experience, i.e. not monetizing the platform very much, just enough so that it barely pays for its own operating costs. Then you sell that user base to someone else for the express purpose of shoving tons of ads down everyone's throat. In that case it's still a fast one, only in this scenario the users are the victims. But even then I'm skeptical. If that's the plan, why sell the company instead of enshittifying your platform yourself?

Welcome to capitalism. The technical term for benefiting from something that someone else paid for is cost externalization.

The fact that Reddit has never managed to turn a profit despite receiving an annual subsidy of (at the very least) tens of millions of dollars in the form of free labor really says something about the competence of its leadership, doesn't it.

Grand Heft Auto: An exciting simulator of the daily routine of a weighbridge operator.

Reaction emojis that you have to pay Reddit money for.

If the vast majority of the universe is inhospitable, doesn’t that make it more miraculous and unexplainable that earth is?

No, because the Earth being habitable doesn't violate any laws of physics. It's just rare.

I haven't done any actual math in this respect, but I suspect this meme is still missing quite a lot of 9s after the decimal point.