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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   22415 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

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Snap (Chat) stock rises on AI motivated layoff

Now, I am surprised that Snap even still exists, and would assume that financial pressures would have forced down layoffs anyway. The article says about 1000 people are affected, which implies they have over 6000 employees. Wild.

But regardless, whether AI is an accelerant (I can't see how it's not) or a convenient excuse, we are going to continue seeing tech downsizing and stock jumping, encouraging more of it.

Meanwhile 43% of US grads are underemployed.

I am not going to bank on any hard predictions, I am not a great forecaster. But it does seem like things have already unravelled much more than the PMC and neoliberal middle class want to admit.

We will continue to have more Mandamis and more Trumps gaining popularity as alternatives to the stuck middle that seems to be held hostage. As long as keeping housing market, medicare, and 401ks proppped up for the older middle class are the primary concern, we're building pressure to the system.

To me, it seems wild to look at this and not want to shut all eonomic immigration down hard, (H1-Bs, etc). Yet somehow, the economic disenfranchisement hasn't quite reached that fever pitch. I am surprised (again I'm not a good predictor) that such an economically disenfranchised college graduate population (if that 43% is accurate) haven't solidified into any kind of a political movement yet. I can still understand (while disagreeing with) wanting to keep cheap laborers here to work manual labor. But the writing appears to be on the wall about the white collar squeeze that's already here.

Left unaddressed, I'm sure we'll get more Mandami's and socialism, with a leftish solution that is more about socialist subsidizing while promising immigrants can have it too; but we are also seeing massive fraud being uncovered in California, and Mandami claiming NYC is worse than broke; if both those fall apart, it will certainly undermine 'welfare' + immigration based solutions; and it seems like we will also have to get realistic economic opportunity protectionism as a major political block as well. But what do I know

What is even snapchat's usecase? It has to be more than teens sexting eachother.

The teens I come in contact with mostly don’t use Facebook (except for messenger - this and Marketplace seems to be the primary use of Facebook for everyone under 60) and usually have Snapchat and Instagram as their preferred social media’s.

I am surprised (again I'm not a good predictor) that such an economically disenfranchised college graduate population (if that 43% is accurate) haven't solidified into any kind of a political movement yet.

They did. It's called being a Leftist. It has next to nothing to do with advancing their interests, but it's what everyone picked, and without economic security, it's too risky to pick anything else and wind up a pariah.

I've just recently read an article linked from Kyle Kingsbury's multi-part essay about LLMs that examines what a systemic crisis caused by an AI squeeze might look like.

In short, even though services will be getting cheaper, it's employment that has been generating demand since the invention of agriculture. Sure, companies might be able to fire 90% of programmers, lawyers, administrators and other white-collar workers, but these people aren't just paying for Netflix. They are paying their mortgages, and these mortgages have a baked-in assumption that college-educated people with white-collar jobs have stable careers that span decades. Except it's no longer the case. The same crunch happens to every company that used to cater to people with significant disposable incomes.

an article [...] that examines what a systemic crisis caused by an AI squeeze might look like.

That's not the Citrini Report, presumably?

Yeah, that was the name

Every time somebody makes an "AI related" move like this, I go look at their financials. Once again, I am unsurprised. From Variety:

For a full-year 2025, Snap reported a revenue of $5.931 million (up 11%) and a net loss of $460 million (compared with $698 million in the prior year).

Looking at filings, I don't think they've ever been profitable over the course of a full year unless you're talking positive EBITDA, which is something of a nonsense measurement.

I think my bigger question is: how the fuck is a company that was founded in 2011, and IPOed in 2017, employing over five thousand people while losing hundreds of millions of dollars per year, still in business?

It really seems like that's the deeper question here. Ever since ~2021, the economics of software companies have increasingly decoupled from the fundamentals that are supposed to describe a healthy business. I look at that and think "no wonder people are having trouble finding entry level jobs, some of the biggest sectors in our economy are very sick".

Am I missing something here?

I think my bigger question is: how the fuck is a company that was founded in 2011, and IPOed in 2017, employing over five thousand people while losing hundreds of millions of dollars per year, still in business?

It really seems like that's the deeper question here. Ever since ~2021, the economics of software companies have increasingly decoupled from the fundamentals that are supposed to describe a healthy business.

That's what a bubble looks like. It's not even the first one that industry has seen (partially) this century - remember the dot-com "boom"?

I own a ton of snap stock. Wish I owned more. I think they have developed a niche with 12-20 year olds. An activists just got involved probably why they doing layoffs. They got down to like a $7b EV with $6b in yearly revenue.

Sometimes in the past 4 years SAAS and platforms use to trade 100x revenue. Because they have a lot of operational leverage.

That being said from a value investor standpoint if their “platform” is stable and does revenue of $6b and can turn that into even $2b in income then what’s that worth? Even a 10 multiple gets you $20b or a 2-3x return. Far high multiples if the business still growing etc.

I am surprised (again I'm not a good predictor) that such an economically disenfranchised college graduate population (if that 43% is accurate) haven't solidified into any kind of a political movement yet.

Depending on how you see it, it already has, or can't. It's a group that, collectively, has wasted spent a substantial part of the prime of their life, maybe even substantial debt, for credentials of dubious value. They already overwhelmingly vote for parties (generally green & left-wing) that promise them exactly what they want (positions based on "merit, as measured by their credentials", and a fallback of welfare). What should they do, vote for right-wing parties that call their degrees fake & gay?

Also, from their PoV, the economic immigration overwhelmingly doesn't compete with them. After all, they are the ones with the impressive credentials. Only someone who didn't get those would feel threatened by immigrants. You're not one of those losers, are you?

They're not even wrong. Not getting a degree really is strongly correlated with being a loser. For this reason, employers do look at whether you have one. Especially public institutions outright require them. Underemployed also doesn't mean the job is terrible, just below what you might have hoped for.

Sure, what I'm saying is that this isn't itself a 'political constituency'- we aren't seeing protests, or advocacy groups that are explicitly around jobs for the young. There's no "Occupy Wallstreet", Tea party, or anything else. Rather, it's fractured and absorbed into the two other party's existing platforms - socialism on the left, and economic and immigration protectionism on the right.

On the left, this concern is subordinate to general immigration welfare, on the right it was kind of forefront, but has been backseated to the current... whatever.

To me, it seems wild to look at this and not want to shut all eonomic immigration down hard, (H1-Bs, etc).

Economics is often not intuitive, and this is not likely to actually help the situation.

There are basically two economic tracks that anyone can take. They can either offer services to the global market or the local market. The global market pays really well, but its also competitive as hell. The local market pay is dependent on how many rich global market people you have living nearby. Local market pay is often going to be heavily tied with local cost of living, but generally the local market pay outpaces the cost of living (or when it stops doing that people to leave).

An immigrant moving to your country can either work in the global market, in which case there is more money and resources flowing into your local area. Or they can work in the local market, in which case they are slightly lowering the cost of living for you. If they stay where they are they can still compete with you on the global market, its just that none of the money/resources is flowing to your area.

An immigrant moving to your country can either work in the global market, in which case there is more money and resources flowing into your local area. Or they can work in the local market, in which case they are slightly lowering the cost of living for you. If they stay where they are they can still compete with you on the global market, its just that none of the money/resources is flowing to your area.

This is a nice theory but in the software industry, it turned out it just isn't so. Indians in India simply cannot compete as well as Indians in the US, and even Indians in Canada are somewhat inferior. Not so inferior that you can't use them at all, but enough that an H-1B engineer is a direct substitute for a US-born engineer whereas an Indian engineer in Bangalore is not.

Could it be that the most motivated and skilled Indians are all leaving to first world countries, with the US being the most coveted destination? If we ban Indian immigration to the US, it would still be a poor policy choice if it makes Indians in Toronto, Sydney and London more competitive against us on the global market, even if it doesn't meaningfully change the competitiveness of Indians in Bangalore.

I have only weak evidence against that -- that Indians in Canada aren't direct substitutes for Indians in the US (even when they're the same people). Maybe the dirt really is magic.

If we stop the brain drain, global talent will eventually cluster elsewhere. Over time, the capital and infrastructure will follow the talent, and the US dirt will become just regular dirt again.

If we stop the brain drain, global talent will eventually cluster elsewhere.

This is an assertion without evidence; in fact, with quite a bit of circumstantial evidence against.

"If the US stop skilled immigration then the skilled immigrants will go elsewhere" is a less exciting claim than "the US has magical dirt"

Did all the talent going to Canada somehow make it catch up to America, or did the opposite happen?

More comments

To me, it seems wild to look at this and not want to shut all eonomic immigration down hard, (H1-Bs, etc).

Economics is often not intuitive, and this is not likely to actually help the situation.

It's pat to say this. But that isn't going to change the fact the CS grad working as a waiter can literally count the CS H1-Bs being brought in, and the CS foreign exchange students getting those jobs he isn't.

"No, no, no, this is all good for the economy" doesn't seem like it can hold if native americans can't get jobs.

But that isn't going to change the fact the CS grad working as a waiter can literally count the CS H1-Bs being brought in, and the CS foreign exchange students getting those jobs he isn't.

This just doesn't represent reality. The CS underemployment rate is way below average. There's also no trend in the overall underemployment rate, and it's a little better than it was when they started tracking in the late 80s.

This whole thing is a nothingburger.

This whole thing is a nothingburger.

hope so!

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