snarfback

I feel bad for this laughter…

I recall getting my first email address through school in 1993 or so.

I remember having minimal presence on the Internet until perhaps 1997 - when I worked in a highly technical environment and internet communities were still very nascent. People had to search out how to find meaningful communities online. If non-technical people had access to anything like internet communities, it was usually some angelfire cookie cutter site.

Then friendster, myspace, fark, somethingwful,diig, facebook, reddit and many others rapidly expanded the options. People without the knowledge or inclination got into spaces that started with nerds nerding out.

I see this recent split as something like a natural evolution of the people who would’ve originally been on fark when the user numbers were sub 50,000 and fb- was new, or who were skeptical of facebook because it was only for college kids, or who originally started reddit seeking the spaces they’ve always sought. Maybe non technical people will eventually take up these spaces - but those people have NEVER cared about the intracacies of their online privacy…or where their data is stored…or their cell phone data…or any of that. They cheered on The Patriot Act and they don’t care about net neutrality.

This is nothing particularly new.

Unlike the Great Library at Alexandria, the information contained in many reddit threads is actually available in other places and can be recreated - often by the same person if necessary and relevant.

I understand people not wanting to have that information deleted, but I think the analogy is a bit heavy. For many, it’s a balancing act where the fundamental disagreement with reddit’s cultural evolution outweighs the desire to participate in the knowledge repository.

I think many people were comfortable with their ideas belonging to the communities that spawned on reddit, and they viewed reddit’s ownership as a necessary technicality for the platform to exist. Once reddit clarified that they intended to act on that ownership, many people no longer wanted to participate.

I think they have that right.

More importantly, who owns our thoughts in this space?

I think this is partially resulting from the bias of people here, who more than likely care about the community involvement aspect of online forums/platforms. If the forum I used to live on 15 years ago was still well trafficked, I likely wouldn’t be exploring these spaces the same way.

The reality is that reddit today ISN’T what it was 10 years ago when it killed a lot of forums. It is now a platform, like facebook, that has mass appeal and is going to therefore operate to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Maybe a lot of “redditors” support the strikes, but I’d believe that a majority of people who use reddit don’t.

People want their feeds. They want their dopamine. They want their predictable comments and hot gossip. That’s what people are in larger groups. That’s who reddit is now designed to appeal to.

I think about this kbin/fedithing as a chance to reboot online conversation in an environment that is different than what reddit has become, but I don’t expect reddit to change in any way other than to continue to become boring and ad-data driven.