I worry about the sustainability, though. The current model of donations, volunteer mods, and so on is working as intended, and the experience is flourishing. I see this model standing up for at least a couple of years as-is, barring any major changes of any kind.

My question becomes: How do we plan for the future entry of corporate influence into all of this? Because it will happen. I've watched most social media platforms and systems come into being in my lifetime, and also watched most of their demises. Money, marketing, and ads always come for them in some form.

What's being done now to help prevent toxic corporate influence in the future? Can anything be done? The best part about defederated instances is a corporate influence could get ahold of one instance, but not all of them. Great in concept, but how do we plan for a future when corporate interest reaches these platforms and they throw enough money around to shake things up for the worse, as it always seems to?

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[–] SJ_Zero@lemmy.fbxl.net 10 points 1 year ago

Forget corporate influence, how about nation-states and political parties sticking their fingers into things?

I honestly think the outsized impact of the internet in the 2008 election was partially to blame for reddit becoming what it did. Suddenly people realized if you control the conversation there you can control the conversation elsewhere with an outsized impact.