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I think the answer in cases like that is there needs to be a public Reddit. We all benefit from it and we all want its operation to not be warped by profit-seek

I think the answer in cases like that is there needs to be a public Reddit. We all benefit from it and we all want its operation to not be warped by profit-seeking… so we all should just pitch in a dollar a year (?) of our taxes.

SkipperCat 3y ago
You could make the argument that some web sites are part of the "public good" and could get funding from government. Think of NEA grants of PBS/NPR funding (small amount of their budget but not chump-change). Of course, it would be a pretty hard sell, and how the country would choose which web sites to fund would be a shit-show, but still, its an interesting idea.
jjice 3y ago
Moderation would become a nightmare since a private business's right to remove certain content wouldn't apply and now what do you do when a mod or /r/buyitforlife takes down a post that doesn't support the type of coffee maker that like, or whatever a shady reddit mod does these days. I also would rather not post or log into any government run social media, that's seems like a big no from me. I really don't know what a fix would be but I would be interested to see how a government ran social media would look, even if I wouldn't use it.
smeej 3y ago
"The government should do it" is (almost?) never the answer. If people are willing to pitch in a buck a year, just charge them for it. Either you can find enough people to support it voluntarily or you can't. If you can, you don't need government, and if you can't, it's not enough of a benefit to force people to pay for it.
mdale 3y ago
There are large scale "public" or non-profit web communities like Wikipedia. They come with a different set of challenges around governance.
kredd 3y ago
Reddit makes a lot of decisions that tax-payer funded entity would never be able to do. It’s one of the unfortunate circumstances where publicly owned social aggregator would be severely lacking. I’m not even talking about Reddit’s one of the most annoying current problems - AI bots disguised as real people. Make it publicly owned, people will have more skin in the game to make it worse. Sorry for the bot rant, but anything other than hyper-local subreddits are completely useless for getting any opinions at this point. The same points repeated every day to advance one or the other point of view, making it a hell hole. I feel bad for people who take in those opinions at face value thinking these are all real people.
krapp 3y ago
So you want a Reddit that gives intelligence agencies and law enforcement full access, is censored by the FCC or some similar three letter agency, and is infested with propaganda and psyops? Where you'll be required to present your real name and ID to have an account and you can be arrested by the mods? If you want a "free" Reddit look at federated and distributed solutions. But "public" means "controlled by a government." No thank you. I prefer a Reddit where even a sitting President can be banned for breaking the rules.
slothtrop 3y ago
> We all benefit from it The users do. That represents a small fraction of "we".

SkipperCat 3y ago

You could make the argument that some web sites are part of the "public good" and could get funding from government. Think of NEA grants of PBS/NPR funding (small amount of their budget but not chump-change). Of course, it would be a pretty hard sell, and how the country would choose which web sites to fund would be a shit-show, but still, its an interesting idea.

jjice 3y ago

Moderation would become a nightmare since a private business's right to remove certain content wouldn't apply and now what do you do when a mod or /r/buyitforlife takes down a post that doesn't support the type of coffee maker that like, or whatever a shady reddit mod does these days. I also would rather not post or log into any government run social media, that's seems like a big no from me. I really don't know what a fix would be but I would be interested to see how a government ran social media would look, even if I wouldn't use it.

smeej 3y ago

"The government should do it" is (almost?) never the answer. If people are willing to pitch in a buck a year, just charge them for it. Either you can find enough people to support it voluntarily or you can't. If you can, you don't need government, and if you can't, it's not enough of a benefit to force people to pay for it.

mdale 3y ago

There are large scale "public" or non-profit web communities like Wikipedia. They come with a different set of challenges around governance.

kredd 3y ago

Reddit makes a lot of decisions that tax-payer funded entity would never be able to do. It’s one of the unfortunate circumstances where publicly owned social aggregator would be severely lacking. I’m not even talking about Reddit’s one of the most annoying current problems - AI bots disguised as real people. Make it publicly owned, people will have more skin in the game to make it worse. Sorry for the bot rant, but anything other than hyper-local subreddits are completely useless for getting any opinions at this point. The same points repeated every day to advance one or the other point of view, making it a hell hole. I feel bad for people who take in those opinions at face value thinking these are all real people.

krapp 3y ago

So you want a Reddit that gives intelligence agencies and law enforcement full access, is censored by the FCC or some similar three letter agency, and is infested with propaganda and psyops? Where you'll be required to present your real name and ID to have an account and you can be arrested by the mods? If you want a "free" Reddit look at federated and distributed solutions. But "public" means "controlled by a government." No thank you. I prefer a Reddit where even a sitting President can be banned for breaking the rules.

slothtrop 3y ago

> We all benefit from it The users do. That represents a small fraction of "we".