this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2023
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This is the third time Ive written this out because Jerboa keeps crashing so Im using the web interface instead!
Hopefully, I'll remember the salient points I made and maybe be even more succinct!
Unfortunately, at least one of the original founders has allowed, quite possibly even driven this policy. Steve Huffman is still very much at the helm and what he has exposed of himself in interviews, he doesn't sound like a very nice person (re: post apocalypse, he sees himself being on top and having slaves)
It's great that subs and users are organising to fight this but maybe Reddit should be allowed to carry out this change and metaphorically shoot itself in the face? This is just the latest in a long horrifying series of policies that the admins have pushed through, actions they have failed to take, or when they finally did, it was long after the horse had bolted.
Remember the jailbait (and worse) subs that they allowed for so long (and were rumoured to have participated in) and when they finally did something after Anderson Cooper shone a light under that dark, seedy rock, they picked their sacrificial lamb and blamed it all on him? Remember the secret santa parallel site someone set up that Reddit then forcibly absorbed and let wilt? Remember how they dealt with Victoria who arranged all the celebrity IAMA's? Remember how they brought in Ellen Pao (with her own set of issues) to deal with horrific amount of far right and misogynist subs that were actively calling for peoples and groups deaths, and then threw her under the bus once they got what they needed? Remember how they were banning people and deleting posts when it was revealed that 5 mod accounts were basically controlling the top 100 subs? Remember how they appointed to the admins a person who was found to be grooming teens and was supportive of their father who was convicted of serious sexual assault of a child?
The list is never-ending....
The sad fact of the matter is that centralised social medias one driving factor is money. They acquire that via data points collection from engagement. They dont care what kind of engagement as long as theres plenty of it and hateful content drives engagement.
There is no sense of community among the admins and execs of Reddit. It is entirely from the users.
The original founders allowed this to happen, if they didn't drive this. Many similar times previously, and undoubtedly, many more times to come.
Maybe Reddit, just like every other centralised, corporate owned social media sites time is over?
I just dont believe its something worth fighting for, despite how commendable the actions of all those subs is.
That’s what I want too. It’s time to take more control over platforms we use (and platforms that make money off of us existing). I’m happy most blackout posts either mention lemmy as an alternative directly, or it’s in the top 5 comments.
I've people who remember the web in the late 90s / early 2000s, repeatedly comment that they miss finding weird, leftfield and wacky blogs and sites and that the last decade has been corporates vacuuming up anything that was interesting, subsuming it into their ecosphere to then let it wither and die because they didn't understand it, just that it was gaining popularity.
If you look at the front page of Reddit now, its just recycled memes, content cross posted from the same corporate own sites such as Twitter and TikTok and endless reposts by bot accounts that are karma farming so they can be used for astro turfing.
There are niche communities and they are the ones suffering from this API policy but its time they all bailed and found better homes.
Absolutely. The "old web" was perhaps a bit on the (visually) ugly side, but we were free. Not much corporate going on, but much exploring the seemingly infinite possibilities together, as free users. Sure, there were some small online shops for hobbyists and special interest stuff, but they always were - in my experience - firmly connected to if not operated and driven by that community. It is hard to describe - it simply was great. The final frontier, so it seemed. Connect to freaks like yourself all over the world, or explore new exiting topics, music, cultures. Learn a ton of stuff for free. Really connect.
But then capitalism crept in - I cannot even draw a clear line when that all happened (Can someone here help me out here?) and as we all know now they built their monopolies and now the web is made up of those "five corporate websites showing screenshots of the other four" or how that famous quote went. I really think and hope the fediverse is a opportunity to rebuild a better, user-centered web.
That being said, is there a kind of implementation of the fediverse for / with projects like peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol (e.g. IPFS) and/or the onion web? (or perhaps that's material for another discussion/thread, eh?)