I think it’s more just because we’re early adopters and the first wave of refugees.
We’re building something here - and right now, for some it’s a new home, for some of us this is something big - a place that resists monetization. This isn’t just the fresh new version of social media, built by cool people who have the best intentions and a vision (I think most of them did, at least initially)
Admins go bad, already some of the instances I’m on have people starting to look at not just paying for servers, but making a profit. And if they can live off the donations - fine, more power to them.
But when someone comes knocking with a bag of money, what are they going to do? They can sell us out, but they can’t go far before we leave… What do we miss out on? The content will either follow or we’re missing out on content elsewhere.
And we can mitigate it further - too many talented people care too much to let this idea die. We’re going to face difficult times, but it’s a new ephemeral Internet built on top of the one stolen from us - it doesn’t start or end with a reddit clone.
And I think that’s why we care - because this time is different. It can’t go bad the way everything else does. It relies on no one, and it’s built from all of us
This place is ours. No kings, no masters, no capitol, no capital