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We desperately need news aggregators and social media services like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, that are NOT run by for profit enterprises. There are a lot of te

We desperately need news aggregators and social media services like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, that are NOT run by for profit enterprises. There are a lot of terrific open source platforms out there and saddened that none of them have gained much traction.

yawnxyz 5y ago
At least, not venture-scale businesses. I can see some community and membership-driven Hacker News clones for niches being possibly sustainable (isn't that kind of what Reddit started out as, anyway?), but can't see any VCs wanting to back that. That's not bad though — They'd probably be something more like Gumroad — independent and run by a small team, and fairly profitable, but hard to grow and IPO. How come services like Digg and Slashdot weren't able to make sustainable revenue off of membership fees?
edrxty 5y ago
Agreed, I really wish Lemmy and similar would get more love. There are so many awesome federated projects. Maybe ot but it seems like the federated services are doing a really good job of keeping the crazies away. Nobody will link with hate groups so they can't recruit from the wider user base. Meanwhile Facebook and Reddit just leave hate groups alone and allow them to game algorithmic feeds for rage-engagement such that they have no trouble pulling vulnerable people from the wider community and radicalizing them.
Y_Y 5y ago
And how do you stop them being bought? I'd actually love to see companies, especially ones in winner-take-all/network-effect types of tech start out with some sort of unbreakable guarantee of being cool forever. All young platform providers wants to appear open and free and interoperable and trustworthy, but incentives will have their way with them once the valuation gets high enough. Is there a legal or moral vehicle that could prevent this? Has anyone tried it? Would the invisible hand get pissed and remove the magic that makes growth happen?
- chrononaut 5y ago
  > Is there a legal or moral vehicle that could prevent this? Wouldn't a 501(c)(3) [in the US] work for this case? (Or are there a lot of shady ways that companies work around being able to acquire one?)
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Yes. You’d also require a user generated content license similar to CC0 (waive all rights Creative Commons license) along with open sourcing the code to run the platform. If Reddit was Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap. This ensures there is no IP to capture, nor can you hold the audience hostage.

yawnxyz 5y ago

At least, not venture-scale businesses. I can see some community and membership-driven Hacker News clones for niches being possibly sustainable (isn't that kind of what Reddit started out as, anyway?), but can't see any VCs wanting to back that. That's not bad though — They'd probably be something more like Gumroad — independent and run by a small team, and fairly profitable, but hard to grow and IPO. How come services like Digg and Slashdot weren't able to make sustainable revenue off of membership fees?

edrxty 5y ago

Agreed, I really wish Lemmy and similar would get more love. There are so many awesome federated projects. Maybe ot but it seems like the federated services are doing a really good job of keeping the crazies away. Nobody will link with hate groups so they can't recruit from the wider user base. Meanwhile Facebook and Reddit just leave hate groups alone and allow them to game algorithmic feeds for rage-engagement such that they have no trouble pulling vulnerable people from the wider community and radicalizing them.

Y_Y 5y ago

And how do you stop them being bought? I'd actually love to see companies, especially ones in winner-take-all/network-effect types of tech start out with some sort of unbreakable guarantee of being cool forever. All young platform providers wants to appear open and free and interoperable and trustworthy, but incentives will have their way with them once the valuation gets high enough. Is there a legal or moral vehicle that could prevent this? Has anyone tried it? Would the invisible hand get pissed and remove the magic that makes growth happen?

chrononaut 5y ago
> Is there a legal or moral vehicle that could prevent this? Wouldn't a 501(c)(3) [in the US] work for this case? (Or are there a lot of shady ways that companies work around being able to acquire one?)
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Yes. You’d also require a user generated content license similar to CC0 (waive all rights Creative Commons license) along with open sourcing the code to run the platform. If Reddit was Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap. This ensures there is no IP to capture, nor can you hold the audience hostage.