This article is on Medium, which has a paywall. I’m a member, but not logged in. I was able to read it so it may depend on how many times you’ve read Medium articles.
One point he made that I found interesting was:
So, in light of all of this, should Reddit even exist? Is there really a point to a web forum in 2023? Aren’t we past all that?
He thinks we are. I never thought about it before. Maybe in the case of some Reddit subreddits and other forums, but I don’t think so in general. I’ve got a lot great information from forums.
Forums are very useful for fostering discussion of gaining information. Especially in sectors like tech. As for other types of discussion, well…it can get toxic.
I think kbin has an opportunity to address the toxicity. The anonymous nature of Reddit really lends itself to faceless road rage culture where people feel safe behind their keyboard. If kbin can really push itself as a Mastodon + Reddit platform where everyone has social connections, then maybe it takes away some of that anonymous feeling.
I’m here for anonymity and it was one of the first things I loved about reddit.
I too am here for anonymity. I signed up with lemmy because it didn’t even require an email address so I didn’t need to go through the process of generating a throw away like kbin does. I like that I could just have discussions with users without knowing anything about them and it only being a topic of interest that brought about the conversation. Then departing from the conversation not remembering who the user was aside from the nice discussion.
It all depends how you use it, I guess. As a long-time Redditor I’m basically not paying any attention to the usernames in these threads, I’m just responding to whatever contents any given comment has, just like on Reddit. There’s nothing that forces me to click on your profile and read it and see what sorts of other things you’ve written, or even remember your name. For some this may breed “toxicity” but I rather like it myself - the contents are the important thing here, not the people. Maybe if I was tooting over in the microblogging stuff that would be different but I just don’t see myself engaging in that.
I actually worry somewhat that my own profile and username might be a bit too memorable. I would not want someone to upvote or downvote something I wrote based on who I am rather than what I said.