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Except there's nothing stopping you from creating your own subreddit. There's no limit to them. In Urbit and Feudal systems, there's an idea of there being 1.

• creddit 6y ago
  There are fixed number of subreddits as the names are limited in length. So their revenue model is selling their product instead of selling ads and that's the bad part? Also, they're open source right so you can just run your own: https://github.com/urbit/urbit https://github.com/urbit/urbit Super evil stuff here.
  • ashtonkem 6y ago
    As long as it’s voluntary, I wouldn’t call it evil. I also have no idea why you’d want to participate in such a system, but you do you. The idea that limited string length makes reddit a feudal system is not a believable argument. I’d let that one go.
    • creddit 6y ago
      > As long as it’s voluntary, I wouldn’t call it evil. I also have no idea why you’d want to participate in such a system, but you do you. Agreed 100%. The product, as best as I grok it, is totally garbage. But, that wasn't what was being said. What was being said was "Urbit is Nazi trash" and "Ubrit is feudal in nature and therefore bad". This kind of totalitarian thought policing is what is bad. The nature of Reddit is very much so Feudal in all the same senses as Urbit except that Urbit is much more explicitly limited in the number of polities that can be created. Subreddits are inherently feudal in the exact same way in that some set of lords (moderators) have control over what happens in their domain (subreddit). Who can become a lord (redditors with X amount of Karma) is limited and so are subreddits, thought the limit is so large it's not really a practical limit. The principals are the same, still, so arguing against Urbit for being bad because of this nature is mostly if not entirely wrong. The reality is these arguments are more about moralizing than the actuality of what is presented.
      • ashtonkem 6y ago
        You’re mixing your metaphors. Are lords people with karma, or are they moderators? Those are not the same groups, at all, with moderators typically having lower karma than top posters. Secondly Reddit has no real hierarchy that’s built in. It’s true that there are a limited amount of resources, but being early gives you no particular right the creation of any new resources, nor does it obligate any new joiner to participate in any particular subreddit. New subreddits created by new redditors regularly surpass old subreddits, undermining the concept of there being a heirarchy. Compare that to Urbit, where there is an explicit heirarchy. You’re either a galaxy, a star, or a planet. Each level is responsible for distributing the addresses below it, and has some level of control over them too, and if I’m reading this correctly has the right to collect taxes as well. This is explicitly Feudal, and in fact the original code names for these were “lords”, “dukes”, and “earls”. Finally, Yarvin considers himself an absolute monarchist, and thinks that American democracy should be scratched and replaced with a totalitarian government. It’s not surprising that he’d build a system filled with references to his preferred political structure.
        • creddit 6y ago
          I'm not mixing metaphors. There is a limit to who can create a subreddit which is based on the amount of karma (it was claimed there was no limit on who can become a lord). The "lords" are the moderators of subreddits. This hierarchy is clearly built in. Above the moderators, of course, are the Reddit admins who have totalitarian power over all. I'm not arguing that Urbit isn't feudal. I'm saying that a feudal structure to an online service that someone voluntarily chooses to be a part of is not inherently bad in any way. Additionally, there are tons of existing feudal services we use regularly that no one is upset about. The only reason anyone is upset about Urbit's structure is that it came from a racist.
          • ashtonkem 6y ago
            Honestly, I care more about arguing about your metaphor than Urbit. I think Urbit is a weird little side project that’ll probably come to nothing, so I don’t really care. Now being pedantic on the internet is something I really care about. If creating a subreddit makes reddit feudal, than everything is feudalism and the word literally means nothing. The hallmark of feudalism is not the presence of total control over limited resources, that’s common in a huge number of systems. What makes a system feudal is the binding of people into an immutable tree of hierarchical relationships, with peasants bound to lesser lords, lesser lords bound to greater lords, and so on up to the king. Reddit is more akin to modern American property law; property owners have (more or less) total control over their property and who to rent it out to. But with huge amounts of unused land available, anyone not happy with their current home is free to go buy cheap land and do the hard work to build their own house if they want to.