Reddit is Digging its own grave. Eternal September awaits all the old school forums that still remain. But perhaps that decentralization will be a good thing in the end.
I think the network effects of Reddit are a lot easier to undo than that of Twitter. There is little core functionality that didn’t exist in forum software from the Naughties.
Honestly it's probably better for the web if it reverts back to the model of smaller independent forums. HN is a good example of a healthy small/medium sized community.
I would say the 'social media era' of the history of the web has concluded in failure. When you consolidate everyone onto a singular platform, it creates a weird unhealthy community dynamic, and the business incentives do not align at all with users.
do you happen to know of general programming/computer science forums (not counting hacker news)? That's really my only interest, I enjoy TV and movies but like discussing those in person nowadays.
HN doesn't lend itself to community building well, it's more like a meetup spot IME. Also it may be my eyes but I hardly notice people's names on here compared to something like reddit.
I don’t like the idea of giving Reddit mods even more power, at all. I’d much rather see users empowered to share Usenet style kill-lists and whatnot. But I have a bad feeling that my desired Goldilocks zone between 2023 Reddit’s overmoderation and 2023 Twitter’s hyper-radicalization engine is very narrow. Social media moderation might be an intractable problem at scale.
I don’t know what the solution is, but I’m really rooting for Reddit to crash and burn. I miss the old internet…
It’ll be interesting to see how Blue Sky shakes out, if and when it opens up to the public.
I think the network effects of Reddit are a lot easier to undo than that of Twitter. There is little core functionality that didn’t exist in forum software from the Naughties.