A standoff between the site and some of its most devoted users exposes an existential dilemma.

  • IntlLawGnome@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    42
    ·
    1 year ago

    The money quote IMO is at the end:

    Reddit, like any commercial platform, is only a community until its owners need it to be something else.

    That’s a good reason to be mindful of what we’re building here on Kbin, Lemmy, and other federated networks. We’re not just trying to build a Reddit methadone, to help us down from our high after quitting cold-turkey. We are, I hope, aiming to build (or rebuild) a community – one not dependent on the monetizing whims of a private owner.

    The author is right: Spez lost site of the community aspect. Here’s an opportunity to show them that the idea still means something to a lot of us.

    • Hellsadvocate@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      If for some reason kbin becomes bad, you just move to another instance (that defederated kbin) and you still get the prior cached posts and comments, just new stuff won’t be shitty. I guess you’d have to leave your kbin profile behind.

      • minimar@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        Considering there’s no global karma, your account isn’t much more than your subscription list, and down the line migrating that should get easy!

    • flatbield@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      One thing that the Reddit guy says that is true, it takes money to run sites. People joining the Fediverse need to realize this and should consider contributing money to their instance if they can.

      • interolivary@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        That’s honestly one thing that I think will be a problem for many Fediverse services and instances. People nowadays are extremely loath to pay for any sort of online content or service. That’s why ads proliferated; nobody wants to pay for eg. news, video streaming or a social network site, and the people producing the content and services need to eat too.

        Many have been so conditioned into getting everything for free that they get outright angry when someone suggests that maybe news and social networks are so shit nowadays is exactly because they have to bait people into clicking on stuff so they’ll see more ads, and that maybe they should be paying for the content they consume instead of assuming they’re entitled to it by virtue of being online