No Stupid Questions

I don't care about what happens to Reddit, but hopefully at least some of the content gets saved. It was already annoying when I was trying to find some answers to a tech support question and the subs that had answers were private.

Because of reddits size

Why? Because the whole reason reddit is even worth visiting is the posters.

Sure, the people in charge of the whole infrastructure that supports the act of posting and reading posts are making destructive "business decisions", but until now they've largely been basically a bunch of invisible, nameless, inconsequential people as long as the proverbial lights stayed on for my ten years on reddit. They were technically in charge of stuff, but any time there was drama around reddit employees themselves, I had to go to places like /r/outoftheloop or /r/ELI5 in order to figure out what in the actual heck the inexplicable hubub was all about.

To me, that means they're NOT what reddit is, they're just the people who make it possible.

The folks who do lights and sound at a stage play are necessary for the play to function at that particular theater, but if they were the only ones doing anything there, noone would show up and stick around.

Inertia is a horrible thing. It took a LONG time for most of the niche communities on reddit to get "established" enough to have semi-regular content. Inertia being what it is, it will likely take quite a while for the same to happen here and it won't be exactly the same thing. It may be better and worse in some ways, but it WILL be different and some of us were quite comfortable with what we had. So, yeah, hope, because losing something you like and care about, watching it get gutted, wrecked, hobbled, and ruined is not inspiring or fun.

That being said, I'm seeing very encouraging things happening here so far, so this might become my new home.

Because Reddit has been our online home for years. It's where our communities are, where are online friends are, it's become home. People have spent thousands of hours building communities there, as a labor of love.

Unfortunately I agree with you- the home is on fucking fire and unless a monsoon spontaneously erupts we should get the hell out before it burns to the ground.

Reddit will survive and thrive but that's not hope, it:s the opposite. The site is massive and sucks up all.yhe oxygen in the room, plus the majority of users don't care about API changes, they just want to scroll through some memes while having a crap.

I think a lot of the general reddit user base is still out of the loop on it or just doesn't care about the drama enough to make any kind of change.

Many users don't log in every day, and might just sign in to look up answers to specific questions or to read individual subs. Those folks are a lot less likely to have been following all the updates through last month and before since so much was announced across a variety of subs.

I just hope there's no power trippin edgelords - toxic sweaty mods here. And whoever is in charge(like a CEO) I hope is also a normal human being. All I ask from you is to work with the community not against it.

I don't think a lot of people who are in the know have any expectation of this turning around and going well, but I don't blame anyone for hoping it will. The existing communities that are uprooted from all this, not to mention the headaches of signing up for new platforms and all that entails, aren't exactly ideal. Avoiding them from being necessary would be fantastic... alas, that hope is indeed slim.

sunk cost fallacy and/or laziness

Sunk cost fallacy is my assumption, but take that with a grain of salt. I'm one of those low tech savvy old farts people talk about. I left because making it harder for moderators to do their jobs means communities that I love will be less safe and welcoming. Maybe the rest have to experience that discomfort for themselves before they too are driven away. Or they think they can ride this out and continue as before when things settle down.

For people who were more than just the causal browser/lurker, Reddit was an amazing place to not only obtain information about very specific things, but also to connect with other people. I have type 1 diabetes and the ability to connect with other type 1 diabetics to commiserate, share information, and seek help on Reddit was like nothing else anywhere else on the internet. I have a few other niche interests that also only had communities on Reddit.

Years ago, these things (health conditions, niche interests, etc) all had their own separate forums scattered throughout the internet. One forum might have a few dozen people, one might have a hundred or so. But Reddit quickly became the central place where we could connect. Whereas forums could maybe attract a few hundred people, subreddits could connect with THOUSANDS. There’s not yet been anything else like it.

Unfortunately, we made the BIG mistake of relying on a for-profit, centrally owned company to function as a town square. Same with Twitter. We found value in sharing information and connecting through these platforms, only to get screwed over by billionaire CEOs.

Hopefully we have learned our lesson. Hopefully something comparable will take Reddit’s place. It’s not going to happen over time. I never expected Mastodon to replace Twitter overnight. But slowly, very slowly, at least some people are seeing the downfall of corporate social media and will hopefully slowly switch over to federated alternatives. I don’t think it will happen quickly, nor will it happen for everything. But I do think it’s already happening. And it will happen faster if we get some good mobile apps.