In my area the biggest factor is multiple families purchasing homes together. When you’re splitting the mortgage it’s a lot more affordable.

The overlap between “cares enough about image quality to not be okay with jpeg” and “doesn’t know to install a third party app” is probably too small for most manufacturers to care about.

It might be good to get the perspective of actual prisoners about this before you demand an end to prison jobs. I’ve seen several answers to “what’s life like in prison” that touch on this but this is the first one I found over on reddit. I bolded the relevant section. https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/59tp8q/this_is_slavery_us_inmates_strike_in_what/d9bkz7p/

I am a convicted felon and have spent time in various prisons in California, I don’t know how it is in other states maybe it’s different I don’t know. So as a disclaimer my perspective is ONLY on California prisons. I discharged parole in 2005 and was last released from prison in 2003 so it’s also been some time. It’s also important to note that at the time of my convictions when I agreed to a plea deal I had to literally sign away my civil rights and in California (not sure about everywhere) those are replaced with what is called the Title XV which are a set of rules and rights granted to prisoners, I don’t know how those came about I just know that it is what governs prisoners rights in California at least. So that’s a different set of rights and regulations you would probably want to be familiar with prior to arguing the merits of prison conditions.

It’s pretty common from my redditing experience to hear people decry the 13th amendment (which I believe is the one saying slavery is illegal with the exception of prisoners?) as though we are running a modern slave trade in prisons. In my experience that is simply not true. In California prisons while there is certainly incentive to work, you do not have to and are not forced to, although I don’t know anyone who would choose not to. However, the wages are not why people work for the most part. In California you have what is known as the good time/work time credit. For every 2 days of good behavior (no write ups) you receive an additional days credit of time served. So without working and with good behavior you will do essentially 2/3 of your sentence. Work time credits add an extra day to that so once you go through reception and are able to get a job in prison whatever it may be, you have the opportunity with good behavior and work to only serve half of your remaining sentence. This is the primary motivating factor for working in prison in California, everyone wants to get out. The second would be boredom, prison is incredibly boring, a lot of time spent with nothing to do, so anything to break up that monotony or get you out of your dorm/cell is a benefit. The paltry amount of money they give you for doing the work is tertiary to these first two incentives. In fact, I never received a paying job in prison, I chose (and most in my position did) education instead which counts as work as far as good time/work time credits go. Education is non-paying but you’ll be placed quicker and can start your “half-time” sooner, which to anyone other than a lifer is a greater benefit. You are fed and housed either way and the state has a minimum of what they have to provide even the most indigent inmates as far as toiletries and the like. In CA slavery doesn’t factor into the equation, boredom, time served credit, and maybe a little extra cash for the store once a month are the driving factors.

There is also often a big hubbub made of private prisons. Again from my experience in California I have to assume that the people complaining about these things have never spent time in any prison. I have been in state run and private run prisons in California and I’ll take the private one every time. In California they are called CCF’s or Community Correctional Facilities, and the living standards there are FAR superior to the state prisons. Better food, nicer beds, you wouldn’t believe the difference in quality of life an extra inch to a prison mattress or a decent pillow makes. In fact, if it were my choice based on my experiences and those of people I knew, I would rather every prison were like California private run prisons. However there is a limit to that, because you don’t want prison to be too comfortable for its inhabitants. You can talk about punishment vs rehabilitation and the merits of other societies views vs the US. But frankly, I stopped doing illegal things because I didn’t want to go back to prison, for me it’s that simple, though I know for other it’s not I can only speak for myself.

Trusting prisoners is a tricky thing. When you go to prison you hear a lot of stories, and you quickly learn that the vast majority are just that, stories. There is a lot of down time and sitting around with not a lot to do and people like to talk, it happens. Exaggerating is a very common plot device to inmate stories. Prison makes you feel small having almost no control over your life and anything you can do to make you feel better about yourself is a welcome relief, which includes telling stories which are often largely exaggerated to the benefit of the story teller. Secondly, inmates like to have something to complain about, it galvanizes them while at the same time gives them something to do, like I said boredom is a big deal. As well as, when you can spend your time feeling like a victim, that’s less time you spend feeling like the criminal. Everyone in prison has a hustle, and if they feel like there is something to gain from doing a particular thing, then they probably will. Which is why when you watch prison documentaries, at least the ones I’ve seen from inside California, I have to laugh at some of the most insane stories these people tell for the camera. Take that shit with a grain of salt because these people will ham it up for the camera, it’s human nature to want attention and to want people to sympathize with you rather than look down on you as a criminal, and a better more fantastic story gets more camera time, but I can’t really blame them, I just don’t sympathize with them.

The amount of people in prison primarily for weed is a tiny percentage of the overall population, so if you think legalizing recreational marijuana (which I am for, even though I don’t smoke it) is going to empty out the prisons and bankrupt private prisons you’d be in for a rude awakening because it’s just not going to happen, there will still be plenty of people in prison I assure you. Oh also it’s a common belief that felons can’t vote, which isn’t true, you just can’t be in prison or on parole for the conviction of a felony. I have discharged parole and will be voting in the coming weeks and my vote will be to legalize, it’s just weed so why no, hopefully it passes, but it’s not going to have the devastating effects on private prison populations that you may be hoping for. Marijuana based arrests might be more than all violent crimes combined, but based on the numbers I would say that primarily marijuana based imprisonments are certainly not more than other crimes, and I don’t specify violent crimes there because even if weed is legal, meth still won’t be and personally I don’t think it should be but you’re entitled to your own opinion on the matter.

Oh and before anyone asks I’ve never seen or even heard of a rape happening in a prison I was at. Plenty of trans/homosexual people though so sex certainly does happen but it’s generally consensual every time that I’ve known of it. Which I’m fine with two adults having consensual sex, just wish they would find somewhere other than the dorm to do it, hard to sleep when some dude is getting a sloppy bj three bunks down. They probably oughta give them condoms too since people with AIDS are in the general population now with no one knowing about it.

Anyway that’s my ten cents, take it or leave it.

Edit: my username is unrelated I never killed anyone. Also thanks but don’t give me gold, give some money to someone who could actually use it.

2nd Edit: I want to be very clear that the things I’ve said are ONLY based on my personal experiences and my opinion of those experiences, I don’t have a side or an agenda, I’m not trying to preach about what’s morally right or wrong I’m just giving what information I can give based on what I’ve personally been through I cannot say that it is a universal truth.

They recently laid off 90 employees out of 700 total. There’s absolutely no way they’re about to start paying the roughly 21,000 moderators that are active on a daily basis. The fact that they’re actively vilifying moderators as spoiled children wanting everything for free (gotta love that irony) really slams the door on any possibility of treating them with respect, let alone actual compensation for actually running the damn place.

That’s probably why YouTube has such a hair trigger on demonetizing, removing, and copyright striking videos.

Reddit’s paid workforce is (was) about 700 strong. They just laid off 90 people. There are about 21,000 moderators that are active on a daily basis; each of them moderating subs on topics they’re passionate about and are very familiar with. It’s gonna be fun to watch the results if every current mod quits and they actually have to provide paid moderation.

It was a combination of the absurd pricing for the third party apps and that the people most affected by this would be not only those with accessibility issues, but the mods who do damn near all the day-to-day operations of the site. Reddit relies on unpaid moderators to keep subs from turning into bot spamming grounds and the official app is more difficult to use for basic functions and doesn’t support many of them at all.

So they were essentially giving the finger to their unpaid workforce and then claiming that the complainers were mad about no longer getting everything for free. It’s a pretty hefty dose of hypocrisy.

Besides being too cheap, it’s honestly not even practical. There are about 21,000 active mods on any given day. Replacing even half of that number would increase their current staffing of ~700 by 15 fold which doesn’t seem likely given they just laid off 90 of them. That doesn’t even touch on the fact that those moderators would know nothing about the subs they’re now supposed to be taking care of.

Nah, you’re totally right, this is the beginning of the end. The blackout might not do anything short term but they’re certainly going to shed enough mods that quality will slip. Once that happens people will be looking for alternatives and Reddit will end up on the scrap heap of “used to be great” like so many that came before.

Well Steve, it’s not profitable for me to be a moderator for free either. Feel free to let me know how profitable you think you’ll be after hiring enough staff to replace all the mods that’ll be leaving.