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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 bec

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.