The thing is, they have operating costs. I’m sure it’s a boatload of money as well, given the size and scope of Reddit. Almost all startups run at a loss. And then continue to do so long past when they’re a “startup”. The money they “make” is from rounds of investors who believe they will find a way to make money in the future. Eventually investors get restless and demand that they find a way to monetize so they can recoup. Without those investors money, the site will come crashing as soon as they miss some critical payments for stuff that keep the site up. I’m absolutely sure that’s what we’re seeing. I think either way, its time has come.
Pinch the users to try to keep it alive for a little bit more. Don’t pinch the users and it dies in a grinding halt when they miss some key payments.
So realistically, what would a sustainable business model be for something like Reddit?
Something like lemmy or a fediverse platform is going to rely on donations and community support. In the case of mastodon, for example, it’s been shown to work well enough for sustainable operations. For those willing to work on something worthwhile for lower salary, it is potentially a great gig. In a commercial context though, it’s basically a subscription based business model.
If we’re to recover from this ad driven data tracking economy, subscriptions seem like a healthy thing for businesses to adopt.
Reddit may have already signed their deals with the devil. But generally, the point of the fediverse is to escape this corporate manipulation of our basic communications in the internet, and it’s still interesting to ask what profitable but sustainable operations can look like.
Possibly. I’m not sure how true it is that the fediverse necessarily leads to more efficient computing needs per user. I’d bet it’s the opposite.
But, as you perhaps allude to, there are other factors. For those who only want niche smaller communities, they can enjoy a more stripped down experience without needing speedy and beefy servers. Similarly, the platforms here are probably slimmer and not bloated with features that are trying to engage and monetise.
The major factor, IMO, is ownership. Admins literally own their servers. And should have a much closer and codependent relationship with the users in their servers, except in the case of large instances which become different beasts. Additionally, users have much more choice and mobility on the fediverse. All of which means admins/moderators and users have more at stake in their relationship. More ownership over their platform/instance. And therefore actually have a reason to donate and contribute and help out.
I’m familiar with Toki Pona, but like with conlang I only have a cursory interest in it. Not to dissuade the creation of community. I’m hoping by commenting on this, your post can find some more people who will be interested. Best of luck!
i kind of want reddit to die now. people talking to one another shouldn’t be monetized or debased through some spyware algorithm run by antisocial dickheads.
Yeah, definitely Stardew Valley with some mods. It’s pretty close to endless things you can do in that game. Thinking of Stardew Valley have me wondering about the state of the Haunted Chocolatier game.
Former redditor. What do I call myself now? Lemming? lol But I also noticed that I don’t see some Karma score equivalent, which is a great thing to leave behind. Those imaginary points were just useless at best, and used against people who were new at the worst.
That’s really difficult to do with a karma-like system. People posting in echo-chambers can post misinformation but receive many up votes.
Credibility is subjective. For example, people on one side of a political ideology will not think people on the opposite side are credible. So who can really determine an “attribute of credibility”?
We would have to agree on a standard first and that’s just not going to happen.
I welcome new and innovative DEs. I am tired of how some organizations handle things. I must however, acknowledge that with every additional major DE comes further fragmentation. COSMIC seems to really care and for that reason I am rooting for them. The negative effects, however, are always in the back of my mind.
I’ve had a few ghost encounters in my life but this one is the easiest to share. In Copehnagen I was couch-surfing on a 3rd floor flat. The roommates told me the building was haunted. At exactly 1:30 every night you could hear someone walking all the way up the 4 floors in the stairwell then all the way back down and the door would slam. I heard it every night that I was still awake. The steps had a distinct limp which was noticeable and also interesting how the door would slam. That door had a hydraulic on it- it couldn’t be slammed like that if you tried. The roommates cautioned me not to open the door to look as this would “upset him” and then they would find their things go missing. After ‘upsetting him’ in the past, they found their wallet in the VCR, the remote in the freezer- things like that. So I never peeked.
Then one night we had another couch surfer. Up at 1:30, he hear the limping step and asked about it. I said “That’s the ghost” and as I said the word ‘ghost’ our front door FLEW open and the footsteps stopped. It was so freaky.
I’d like to see a GitHub clone for the Fediverse that enabled the cross-instance forking of code. The recent goings-on with the FOSS Invidious make me worry about the future of all open-source software that tries to allow us some level of privacy. Putting it on a distributed network would be extremely beneficial to prevent megacorps from bullying such projects out of existence.
To add: thanks to everyone who’s already joined up and making this a lovely friendly corner of the internet. Whatever happens with Reddit ongoing, it’s great you’re here.
Ill miss RIF, im curious if RIF had a different algorithm or something cause from what im reading there was a lot of awful going on with reddit and I saw nearly none of it.
I mean, I didn’t see as much of the bad “Reddit” culture that people talk about either. But I had curated my feed to the point that I had little default subs left so perhaps I was “avoiding the crowds”, so to speak.
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