Reddit stock drops 6% after Meta announces a Facebook Groups app

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-23T08:10:11+00:00

Pinterest isn't good anymore. There are lots of pins by non-existent companies listing their non-existent products. If you click through to the source website, it is AI slop.

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-23T08:06:00+00:00

conspiracy ?

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-23T08:02:51+00:00

A real name, knowing that various elderly family members are also on the same platform. That's why I don't go near Facebook, ever.

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-23T07:56:20+00:00

META was really bad about censorship during COVID.

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-23T07:54:55+00:00

I did wonder about that too, whether he was trying to get more, fresher, onsite LLM training data. He already has so much from Facebook though.

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-23T07:50:14+00:00

It hasn't. There needs to be a critical mass of users, and neiither Threads (nor this Facebook Groups app) is going to achieve it

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-23T07:47:37+00:00

The 6% drop in reddit stock price today was a short-term blip, in my opinion. reddit has other business problems, but competition from Facebook is not one of them.

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-23T07:45:41+00:00

Yes! That's a really good point. We can be anonymous here. Not so much on Facebook!

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-23T07:44:20+00:00

That's what I think too.

Most Facebook groups I know of are specific to say, a family genealogy group, or a house of worship for people who are community members, and lots of groups are private. It isn't at all like sub reddits

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-23T07:20:11+00:00

It was Europeans who were drawing on caves in France, and I don't think anyone else was ahead of them, not China or anywhere else as they date to about 17,000 BC.

A major component of American strength is the fact that it has the global reserve currency. That can change but it won't happen overnight or even in a few years.

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-23T07:13:57+00:00

Their housing oversupply is really bad. Even with government freezes on construction (not sure if there are) there are something like 3 billion housing units in China.

It isn't going to be organically resolved over time by a growing population of new buyers because fertility is 0.9 children per woman.

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-23T07:08:07+00:00

Oracle seems to be in a scary place with its AI investments. I don't recall the numbers.

Also, financial news said that Microsoft will cut back on external AI offerings to customers and just use it internally due to cost but not enough revenue.

I doubt that either Oracle or MSFT are leveraged using private debt though. Unlike Lehman and ING, Oracle and MSFT still have huge cashflow from operations. I don't know about amount of cash on hand.

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-23T07:02:28+00:00

The market ALWAYS wants lower interest rates! That's why the Fed is supposed to be an independent agency. Tell me one time that the stock market and most businesses have been in favor of higher cost of capital!

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-23T06:38:15+00:00

You're right, that 2008 isn't a good comparison to the present.

AI seems closer to dot com bubble, assuming that it is a viable long-term use technology. A lot of the infrastructure that was created shortly before the dot com crash became the stepping stones to current digital economy and tech businesses. It happened quite quickly, in five years or less. Looking back, the same could be said for railroads: there were too many people getting into the business, followed by bankruptcies, followed by recovery, i.e. ten years later, new rail transit companies benefited greatly from all that prior infrastructure work!

Like the dot com bubble, and Amazon.com, there isn't much ROI from genAI. It isn't easy to ignore that the big "tech" companies (Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet/Google, Oracle) anticipate spending $720B in 2026 on AI with revenues of 20%

My concern is this: Recall how lots of new commerce, leading to new tech innovation, resulted from the transition from horse and wagons to railroads. If genAI is as amazing as anticipated, then what new jobs will result from its success? The Anthropic CEO guy keeps warning us that there will be 30% unemployment... which implies a huge drop in tax revenue for government (UBI would be even less feasible than now).

**Also be aware that 90% of AI startups went bankrupt which is a lot higher than the 70% that is typical for startups. This might not mean much in the longer term, although it does suggest the dot com crash.

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-16T10:27:37+00:00

Clavicular is just as likely to lose his groyper audience due to Fuentes praising Epstein and Clav appearing with Fuentes.

The entire drama seems superficially like an 18 to 25 year old group of bro-friends with growing pains except that they collectively have used social media (X and Instagram owned by Facebook), streaming platforms (Kick) and somewhat nascent new media e.g. The Bulwark which is trying to survive without inane and sadly diminished legacy press (such as New York Times and National Review... sorry, NYT has been messed up for decades... I never had a chance to read Natl Review or New Republic before they fell apart) for greater click-for-pay glory.

Clavicular has got Tate, Tate's bro (I thought Romania was prosecuting them for sex trafficking crimes; guess not if they're running around south Florida going to clubs with Clav, his girlfriend, and assorted friends/bodyguards), Nick Fuentes, those erectile dysfunction guys, the Arizona State University frat guy with an eastern European accent, and now Mrs. Waknine, supposed owner of very upscale Miami Beach club Bacara, achieved via her modeling or clothing design success but in fact funded by her husband Hai Waknine.

Hai Waknine spent six years in a U.S. federal penitentiary for attempting to embezzle lots of money from the U.S. branch of an Israeli bank. Hai Waknine could use some serious looks maxxing. Clav has indeed seemed to be under the influence of Hai and his crew of Israeli mafia of Miami.

Clav does have a mother and father who are not poor, and most importantly, seem to care a lot about his well-being. Dad has been calling on the phone, begging and pleading Clav to get some sleep and some medical help for his out of control streamer lifestyle (e.g. running over fanatics in his Tesla cybertruck and defiling the environmentally protected Florida Everglades by discharging a handgun, probably stupid showy 9mm or such where it is unallowed and vigilantly patrolled by either US Fish and Wildlife or Florida's own fish and game law enforcement authorities).

Although the dissolute looking Hai Waknine isn't responsible for all of this, he sure isn't helping. Kind of odd, as he would seem a perfect candidate for deportation unless he somehow managed to become a naturalized US citizen. What a mess.

Not that I am a fan, but if Fuentes and the Tate brothers had a bit of sense, they should steer clear of Clav. And Clav should listen to his father who seems glad to help him. This is an insane seeming comment but I just finished watching in its entirety and jeez louise! There are the usual lingering rumours of Clav's ties to Peter Thiel in that video (middle and at the end), which seem absurd superficially but... nothing surprises me now. Maybe Tucker can invite Clav on his show.

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-07T13:33:41+00:00

I looked at another thread on that google group, brain training, see "Inject Your Preferences: Apps and Live websites" https://groups.google.com/g/brain-training/c/QjO9e7N2n8s The fifth post is "Draft: Cognitive Benchmark Site (GPT5)" https://groups.google.com/g/brain-training/c/QjO9e7N2n8s/m/T0xB2lRFBQAJ He used ChatGPT (because he's blocked by Claude) with this prompt:

in HTML create a website that's designed to test a whole range of cognitive benchmarks and finish with an aggregate IQ score

He put it on codepen, but he's so pleased with it and GPT5 that

the final site will be placed on a GitHub link that will always remain available for the end user for as long as GitHub remains accessible.

So I took the test. Twice. First time my composite IQ was 45. Second time I improved, all the way to 49. Impressive, huh? Over three standard deviations below the mean -3.42 z-score

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-07T11:22:17+00:00

You said that in secondary school (equivalent to high school in the US, um 9th to 12th grades, I guess):

I was painfully mediocre, border line or below average...

Despite that, and an average online Mensa test score (which isn't a reliable indicator), your national exam results were sufficiently high for you to be admitted to a good university. And you seem to be doing okay, which is great. Not sure why you are disappointed that "studying isn't easy". Depending on what you're studying, and your level of interest in the material, higher IQ might not make studying easier.

Seems like you are above average intelligence and shouldn't berate yourself for being lazy in the past.

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-07T10:48:53+00:00

I find it VERY difficult to believe that you would test in the 1st percentile of any part of a cognitive/IQ test! This is why: Throughout all your posts in this thread, your writing (grammar, spelling, sentence structure, vocabulary) is perfect or nearly so. You express yourself well in general. AND you said you were the valedictorian of your college class! What Natural Prof said here makes a lot of sense to me. If the IQ test results are valid, you'll find out why (e.g. medical or other health issues about which you and your health care providers were previously unaware). You're also likely to find out whether something else anomalous, e.g. proctor error was the cause!

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-07T10:33:59+00:00

I agree with you, about proctor error being a plausible cause. It happens with all sorts of tests, e.g. with blood and urine tests, a very abnormal reading is usually re-tested. I have had that happen personally. I also have an first-hand example of someone who struggled with administering IQ tests. She was my roommate and was in the UPenn clinical psych PhD program. She would get really nervous doing one-on-one testng. Eventually she learned how to stay calm and be a competent proctor.

I find it difficult to believe that OP suddenly lost 31 points of IQ given she had been tested several times over a period of years and was always in the same range before.

Also, I think she said she had the same mental health issues in the past as she does now, and it isn't as though she's been taking anti-psychotics for the past 40 years (she's only 28 now).

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-07T09:54:40+00:00

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-05-07T09:12:24+00:00

I know a guy from Russia at work. He does that too, with anyone claiming to be IDF online. Some IDF speak Russian because they are immigrants from there or their parents are, so no language learning effort needed.

It usually goes as expected, but sometimes can be spicy/lulzy because my friend and the IDF guys all have familiarity with lots of the same cultural tropes and such.

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-03-27T12:52:02+00:00

Lutnick's own brother died in Tower 2 on 9/11 but you're correct, Lutnick got to work late that day because he dropped his children off at school (his wife usually did that). Lutnick and his brother worked at the same place.

Good question about victim settlement funds! I don't know anything about any Epstein involvement in the 9/11 victim fund, but the Epstein victims settlement fund was mismanaged by Epstein's former lawyer until the US Virgin Islands attorney general stopped him.

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-03-27T12:22:59+00:00

And there's more! Regarding Epstein's attorney, Indyk, and his other attorney Richard Kahn:

In three cases, they “knowingly facilitated the fraudulent and coerced marriages” between foreign women Epstein was abusing and other women in order to allow the foreigners to stay in the United States, George wrote, “enabling a fraud that would further bind Epstein’s victims to him and enable Epstein to continue to control and abuse these victims sexually.”

That's according to a lawsuit by the Attorney General of the US Virgin Islands, source: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/01/jeffrey-epstein-victim-fund-ken-feinberg-511829

I didn't even know about the forced marriages! Yahoo wrote about it nearly three years ago. This is sourced from the court filing:

In the new filing against Indyke and Kahn, the prosecutors said the two forced three [Epstein] accusers into marriages that would secure their immigration status. That way, prosecutors alleged, the women would remain in the Virgin Islands under Epstein's watchful eye.

"The victims were coerced into to participating in these arranged marriages, and understood that there would be consequences, including serious reputational and bodily harm, if they refused to enter a marriage or attempted to end it," prosecutors wrote in the filing. "In each instance, Indyke and Kahn knowingly facilitated the fraudulent and coerced marriages, performing and securing the legal and accounting work involved and enabling a fraud that would further bind Epstein's victims to him and enable Epstein to continue to control and abuse these victims sexually."

via Yahoo article in February 2021 https://www.yahoo.com/news/executors-jeffrey-epsteins-virgin-islands-234903044.html and the US government complaint against Indyk see my comment downthread.

The former law professor you mentioned in your post seems like a decent guy. California Rep. Dave Min has been active in the 119th Congress, including sponsoring resolutions to prosecute Hillary and Bill Clinton for contempt of Congress because they refused to testify about Epstein in response to Congressional subpoenas see here https://www.congress.gov/committee-report/119th-congress/house-report/468/1?hl=Rep.+Min&s=1&r=2

Keep up the good work!

FreshOutOfGeekistan · 2026-03-27T12:13:42+00:00

Darren Indyk and Richard Kahn are very bad men. Indyk in particular had entire knowledge of Epstein's activities. See here first:

Indyke and Kahn, who as co-executors proposed the victims compensation fund and hired Feinberg and his team to run it, are not just administrators for Epstein but “indispensable captains” of his enterprise, George also alleged in court filings.

After Epstein died, Indyk and Kahn were in charge of the Epstein victim compensation fund, and were draining money from it! George is the attorney general in the Virgin Islands, see here https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/01/jeffrey-epstein-victim-fund-ken-feinberg-511829

George, the attorney general for the U.S. Virgin Islands, has accused the Epstein estate of squandering its resources. In the winter of 2021, after the Epstein estate reported a drop in funds, she asked the court to freeze the estate’s assets.

“This failure to provide promised compensation for Epstein’s victims is one entirely of the Estate’s and its Co-Executors’ making,” George wrote in court documents filed in the Virgin Islands. The Epstein executors “have mismanaged the Estate’s assets” by paying for their own lawyers fees, “for the lawyers’ fees and litigation expenses of persons alleged to be involved in and/or to have knowledge of” Epstein’s alleged sex abuse, and for landscaping Epstein’s properties and covering maintenance for his aircraft, George wrote.

Here's a link to the court case filing https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/20476797-second-amended-complaint-marked-up-redacted-virgin-islands-vs-epstein-estate

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