The #RedditMigration isn’t about any app being better than Reddit. It’s about a company that’s grown on the backs of volunteer labour now claiming ownership of that labour.
Reddit didn’t write those posts, draw those illustrations, make those videos. We did.
And Reddit sure as hell didn’t create those communities, nurture them, and moderate them. We did.
I agree with tech writers who say that the average person just “wants their memes”. But Reddit never made those memes. We did.
Content might be king. But who makes content? We do.
I have no doubt that the average person just wants content. But while we might be providing content for free, we’re not dancing monkeys. Who decides why content is made, how it’s made, and where it exists? We do.
The Fediverse doesn’t exist merely as an engine for content. It exists so that people can share what they love.
Why are people coming to the Fediverse specifically? Because we rightfully see ActivityPub as insurance for our content – which, again, is made by and for us.
Not Reddit. Not Big Social. Us.
If I’m giving my content away for free, then so long as it is federated, no one company can own it – putting up gates, demanding payment for my work. Instead, my work is out there, living on 24,000 nodes that presently exist.
Android Authority might dismiss this as “suffering the same fate” – what fate they perceive, I don’t know. But to me, the true “suffering” is when a company like Reddit claims ownership of my work, locking 3rd party developers out from API access.
For this reason, I’m locking Reddit out from my work.
Perhaps the author of this post, Dhruv Bhutani, doesn’t consider that he’s writing for a, well, blog. And that this blog exists on its own domain, with its own design, as its own property. He could have written this entire post on Reddit, but he didn’t.
Why? I suspect it’s because he believes his work has value, and Reddit simply doesn’t give him what he believes is his worth.
Same deal with me. I’m not looking to get paid for my work on Reddit. I do it for fun – always have. But if I’m doing something for fun, it’s still going to be on my terms.
Not all of us creatives are willing to be a cog in Big Social’s machine. That’s why I’m here on the Fediverse right now. I don’t give a damn whether the average person just wants memes. I create for me.
So yeah, Lemmy and Kbin suck. I can live with that – they will both improve. And I have no doubt that, with time, they might prove to be better than Reddit.
But this isn’t about how good Lemmy or Kbin are. Nor is this about the insatiable appetite for memes.
This is about my need to create on my terms – and I’m not alone here.
@FourOh@atomicpoet@fediversenews One possible theoretical underpinning of all of this, which I've used to make sense of many different ways that people come together or grow apart is described in Charles H. Vogl's book "The Art of Community."
@FourOh@atomicpoet@fediversenews I would submit that the RON, in the way you've described it, is not unlike a governance structure.
It lacks some important details, but I'm not sure where you were going with this.
For "communities" to exist beyond physical humans meeting up to do CrossFit (or whatever), you need some kind of a platform, and the more user-directed it is, the better.
The system's boundaries naturally represent the community's desired boundaries.
This weekend is episode 200 of #CultureWarRadio. I'd love to have a number of guests. Please jump on if you haven't yet, but you've appreciated or at least been intrigued by a few things I've said/shared here. Sunday at 9pm central till midnight. C'mon, you're probably waking up later than usual on Monday. https://talk.culturewar.radio
If no one minds me extending this metaphor... which comes to us from Rudyard Kipling, if memory serves:
Person A: 2+2=4
Person B: 2+2=5
Person C: 2+2=2.01^2
Person D: mean - two standard deviations
We can test these in reality. Some will be more accurate than others, and one will be most accurate, although limited by our numeric system and experience of reality.
they also didn't end slavery or let women vote. their criteria for men varied. my point is what they meant by equality, which I guess we agree about, although you disagree with them.
I guess we agree about the impossibility of total equality, but you keep pointing to nature as proof that any attempt at equality is wrong, if I understand you correctly. I don't understand this at all. are we supposed to live like chimps?
I do not object to fairness e.g. you do not let someone buy his way out of a trial simply because he is rich but I also think we need higher power, duty, and privilege for the smarter and better people. They run us better than elections.
Nature shows us how on a mathematical level equality does not last. The big point is that unless you can point to something existing in natural, it is conjectural and therefore unstable.
I was trapped in Leftism for years because it seemed like the only moral option and the conservatives I knew were religious fanatics who scared me to intestinal emptiness.
Oftentimes good intentions come into play.
Over time, however, it becomes clear that only results decide morality, not intentions or methods.
totally. your continual freakout about rising diversity is about hope. your spreading of stories about minorities doing bad shit is not about playing to people's fears. natural selection means different species do well at different times, then they fail and others do well. there's no plan or genius involved making decisions. you have no idea what humans living more "naturally" would lead to long-term. you're talking, not listening.
you don't want anything like humans naturally deciding how to live together better. you think you're a zoo keeper, smarter than most of us. you fear where we're going. these methods most people have a problem with, do you hope that someone will solve the problems you have with low IQs and diversity destroying us, without death or separation? you don't seem to have better ways to do anything, just worse ways you try to make sound smart.
I have done plenty of listening over the years, as you have seen.
The point of the stories I post is that diversity itself is not working in any form, which is why I include a wide range of ethnic groups and host nations.
Hope is that humanity can stop doing pathological shit like diversity, equality, socialism, rent control, and so on, and actually grow up for once.
I don't think you listen. you say the same shit over and over again, AFAIK never incorporating any criticism. you feign open mindedness imo. you ape intellectualism while doing propaganda.
please tell us more about your upbringing, your leftism, when that changed and if any experiences were influential. guess we won't get much of this, what I'd really like to know is post flip, what conservative ideas have you adjusted/reconsidered?
lots of people choose to mix with different ethnicities. some want to separate, some don't. some want to mix groups, you want to force separation.
your attempt to distance yourself from the bigots that follow you around would work a lot better if you argued with them more often. it feels less like you disagree with them than you're trying a different sales technique for a different audience.
Relatively few people choose mixing. It is a small group, and they tend to be doing it for the public image points, then have those relationships collapse later.
Many people are insane, also. What they want is death for the rest of us.
I oppose diversity because it does not work. I have argued a great deal in the past with the various angry people, but in general, that becomes very repetitive very fast.
People are so naturally opposed to mixing that you think we need to force separate them, not just end the propaganda you claim is causing it.
You oppose diversity cause you don't like it. It works fine. It has ever since we left the caves. You arbitrarily determine where to draw your ethnicity, cultural and IQ lines. You have repetitive arguments with angry people because they tire of you refusing to admit you're inconsistent.