From the article: *Moving to the Fediverse
This tension between these communities and their host have, again, fueled more interest in the Fediverse as a decentralized refuge. A social network built on an open protocol can afford some host-agnosticism, and allow communities to persist even if individual hosts fail or start to abuse their power. Unfortunately, discussions of Reddit-like fediverse services Lemmy and Kbin on Reddit were colored by paranoia after the company banned users and subreddits related to these projects (reportedly due to “spam”). While these accounts and subreddits have been reinstated, the potential for censorship around such projects has made a Reddit exodus feel more urgently necessary, as we saw last fall when Twitter cracked down on discussions of its Fediverse-alternative, Mastodon.*
Sadly, Reddit has likely won the short-term battle. But hopefully, this Blackout raises awareness of the need for alternatives. Whether it be Lemmy/Kbin, some up-and-coming site like Squabbles or Tildes, or something not yet created, the seeds of migration off Reddit have been planted. If Reddit has such apathy for its communities pre-IPO, just imagine how bad it will be post-IPO when they are dealing with Wallstreet directly.
Reddit is only going to get worst over the next year. I came across this article a couple days ago while searching for early news coverage of the (then planned) blackout:
The article reads like an ad, but what I got out of it was Reddit is going to have more tracking and intrusive advertising. Not a good experience.
Hey there! I’m a human, not an ad. Hello fellow human! I see you’re interested in [contextual keyword targeting]. I think you might be {emotion4} to learn about this related thing, [ad for jesus]!
This’ll be reddit by the end of the year.
@DocMcStuffin fwiw, this is NOT news, why is it in the NEWS feed on the fediverse?
Not news? IMHO, it’s obviously news. Enough people noticed that Google’s search results were popping the bed that it got picked up by Reuters, NPR, CNN, etc.
That said, the News mods could’ve merged all these stories into one sticky thread. A lot of other mods did that.
Yeah a lot of naysayers had me convinced a short protest would do nothing, but you’re right… This is about awareness. I’ve noticed particularly in the last year a downgrade in quality content on reddit and im sure others are noticing. Lemmy might not be ready yet, but it can be with some building inertia and useability improvements.
If they think people will left reddit in droves and reddit will shutdown during the blackout, yeah they are wrong. The blackout is about awareness, and during this short 48 hours, we already discovered swathes upon swathes of reddit alternatives, some are bigger than other, some are livelier than other, all within their communities yet federating each other, far from whateverthefuck spez is doing. And for that, the blackout is successful.
Lemmy or Kbin might be small, but hey, at least we can quite certain that we are human contributors, not bots.
Just to be the devil’s advocate here. What if Reddit joined the fediverse, what’s stopping them from opening their doors to the increasing fediverse users and use their ads-machine on fediverse?
any fediverse instance can block them
How would that part work?
Also, if they did join the fediverse, that would significantly reduce user lock-in to their site - which is why they won’t.
Don’t underestimate the power of corporate greed.
Interesting questions… well they would have to pick a protocol(s) and implement them. They would have to comply with the mechanics and the licenses.
For example here is the ActivityPub rec. Given how non interested reddit seems to be in developing… anything… that is not directly $$$-oriented it’s hard to imagine them doing all this. But if they for some reason decided to make a take over of the fediverse and put their back into it? It would be a totally different reddit and I can’t imagine it.