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"With any luck twitter/reddit/facebook/et al. will disappear in favour of their "corresponding wikipedias" --- which is the model, I think, all the "platform cr

"With any luck twitter/reddit/facebook/et al. will disappear in favour of their "corresponding wikipedias" --- which is the model, I think, all the "platform creators" thought they were participating in." This is a fantasy. All the money (and thus features and users) has been flowing in to ever more consolidated, corporate-controlled platforms for decades. There's no serious alternative, as all the decentralized platforms lack the network effects of the big players. If anything, the future is going to be ever more centralized and consolidated. The old, wild and free internet is gone for good.

scheeseman486 3y ago
Meanwhile there is a corpse pile of proprietary social media companies, a bunch of dead platforms walking like tumblr, myspace, twitter. Meta is hemorrhaging cash, Discord's efforts to expand outside of the social media space failed. But IRC persists. I still visit and post in a few web forums. Email is still a thing. The modern internet is a mess but open platforms aren't gone, if anything what's become more apparent is that centralized and consolidated platforms inevitably collapse on themselves.
- pmoriarty 3y ago
  "Meanwhile there is a corpse pile of proprietary social media companies, a bunch of dead platforms walking like tumblr, myspace, twitter. Meta is hemorrhaging cash, Discord's efforts to expand outside of the social media space failed." For every dozen social media sites that die there's one behemoth to take their place. Meta squandered billions in the dead-in-the-water metaverse. Discord is constantly growing and gaining new users. This is far from a corporate apocalypse, and where are the serious alternatives? The vast majority of ordinary people are certainly not using them.
  - scheeseman486 3y ago
    "For every dozen social media sites that die there's one behemoth to take their place." Like Myspace did to Geocities. Like Facebook did to Myspace. Like TikTok did to Facebook. It's been a churn of platforms scaling too large, becoming too expensive to run, subsequently attempting to monetize users in a way that causes a flee that collapses the platform, with everyone running to the new hot thing thats burning through investor cash to promote unchecked growth. Sunrise sunset.
    - pmoriarty 3y ago
      I don't see monetization efforts as what drives users away, but rather seeing a new, trendy alternative and the old sites seeming antiquated by comparison. "It's where all the cool kids are" draws people in. The extreme outrage amongst mainstream users over Reddit trying to earn a buck here is an anomaly. In Reddit's case there is no trendy alternative to migrate over to, so all the users taking their ball and angrily stomping off will be back.
      - scheeseman486 3y ago
        Meta are doing that dumb metaverse shit because they see their VR/AR ambitions as allowing them to build their own stable storefront monopoly. Discord also tried to get in on the storefront game, but bailed and are now in ??? mode, spamming users with begging notices for them to subscribe to their premium shit. Note the trend: established social media companies want to get the fuck out of social media. If all that makes a social media network attractive is that it's new, that doesn't make for a very healthy ecosystem. As for Reddit, I guess we'll see what happens. It's just a really big internet forum, the alternatives may not be trendy but neither is Reddit at this point. As you say, Discord is growing, maybe it's time for them to hold the bag and proceed to panic.
        pmoriarty 3y ago
        If you have a captive audience you can advertise to them. That's what all of this is about, and many companies have made billions with this strategy. Whether the advertising is done by Geocities or MySpace or Facebook doesn't make any difference to the consumer, who's still the product these companies sell to their real customers: the advertisers. Discord can make plenty of money selling ads too, and I would not be at all surprised to see ads in every Discord channel in the future, especially as (unlike Reddit) it doesn't have any third-party clients through which users can circumvent any ads Discord may want to show.
        scheeseman486 3y ago
        "Discord can make money selling ads too, and I would not be at all surprised to see ads in every Discord channel in the future, especially as (unlike Reddit) it doesn't have any third-party clients through which users can circumvent any ads Discord may want to show." This sounds really uncool, like something that would make a trendy new social media platform flush with investment attractive! That it's all about ads is the recurring problem.
foodjinn 3y ago
Reddit was already consolidated prior to this, the moderators in question and the subs that are shut down are run by the same handful of moderators that run the entire site. Something like 20 people are the top mods of 80+% of the subreddits. It's naive to believe they are just volunteers either given how many of them are active for 20+ hours a day, and how moderation on some of the big subs are done in such a way that is effectively consensus making. Almost certainly some, if not most of the biggest power moderators on the site are run by multiple people, potentially other corporations or government agencies. The old/wild internet is dead and buried, and it was before this blackout too. The API changes certainly aren't good, but let's not kid ourselves that Reddit's main moderators organizing the blackout are anything like volunteer mods of old.

scheeseman486 3y ago

Meanwhile there is a corpse pile of proprietary social media companies, a bunch of dead platforms walking like tumblr, myspace, twitter. Meta is hemorrhaging cash, Discord's efforts to expand outside of the social media space failed. But IRC persists. I still visit and post in a few web forums. Email is still a thing. The modern internet is a mess but open platforms aren't gone, if anything what's become more apparent is that centralized and consolidated platforms inevitably collapse on themselves.

pmoriarty 3y ago
"Meanwhile there is a corpse pile of proprietary social media companies, a bunch of dead platforms walking like tumblr, myspace, twitter. Meta is hemorrhaging cash, Discord's efforts to expand outside of the social media space failed." For every dozen social media sites that die there's one behemoth to take their place. Meta squandered billions in the dead-in-the-water metaverse. Discord is constantly growing and gaining new users. This is far from a corporate apocalypse, and where are the serious alternatives? The vast majority of ordinary people are certainly not using them.
- scheeseman486 3y ago
  "For every dozen social media sites that die there's one behemoth to take their place." Like Myspace did to Geocities. Like Facebook did to Myspace. Like TikTok did to Facebook. It's been a churn of platforms scaling too large, becoming too expensive to run, subsequently attempting to monetize users in a way that causes a flee that collapses the platform, with everyone running to the new hot thing thats burning through investor cash to promote unchecked growth. Sunrise sunset.
  - pmoriarty 3y ago
    I don't see monetization efforts as what drives users away, but rather seeing a new, trendy alternative and the old sites seeming antiquated by comparison. "It's where all the cool kids are" draws people in. The extreme outrage amongst mainstream users over Reddit trying to earn a buck here is an anomaly. In Reddit's case there is no trendy alternative to migrate over to, so all the users taking their ball and angrily stomping off will be back.
    - scheeseman486 3y ago
      Meta are doing that dumb metaverse shit because they see their VR/AR ambitions as allowing them to build their own stable storefront monopoly. Discord also tried to get in on the storefront game, but bailed and are now in ??? mode, spamming users with begging notices for them to subscribe to their premium shit. Note the trend: established social media companies want to get the fuck out of social media. If all that makes a social media network attractive is that it's new, that doesn't make for a very healthy ecosystem. As for Reddit, I guess we'll see what happens. It's just a really big internet forum, the alternatives may not be trendy but neither is Reddit at this point. As you say, Discord is growing, maybe it's time for them to hold the bag and proceed to panic.
      - pmoriarty 3y ago
        If you have a captive audience you can advertise to them. That's what all of this is about, and many companies have made billions with this strategy. Whether the advertising is done by Geocities or MySpace or Facebook doesn't make any difference to the consumer, who's still the product these companies sell to their real customers: the advertisers. Discord can make plenty of money selling ads too, and I would not be at all surprised to see ads in every Discord channel in the future, especially as (unlike Reddit) it doesn't have any third-party clients through which users can circumvent any ads Discord may want to show.
        scheeseman486 3y ago
        "Discord can make money selling ads too, and I would not be at all surprised to see ads in every Discord channel in the future, especially as (unlike Reddit) it doesn't have any third-party clients through which users can circumvent any ads Discord may want to show." This sounds really uncool, like something that would make a trendy new social media platform flush with investment attractive! That it's all about ads is the recurring problem.

foodjinn 3y ago

Reddit was already consolidated prior to this, the moderators in question and the subs that are shut down are run by the same handful of moderators that run the entire site. Something like 20 people are the top mods of 80+% of the subreddits. It's naive to believe they are just volunteers either given how many of them are active for 20+ hours a day, and how moderation on some of the big subs are done in such a way that is effectively consensus making. Almost certainly some, if not most of the biggest power moderators on the site are run by multiple people, potentially other corporations or government agencies. The old/wild internet is dead and buried, and it was before this blackout too. The API changes certainly aren't good, but let's not kid ourselves that Reddit's main moderators organizing the blackout are anything like volunteer mods of old.