4 ms·

Getting something valuable for free sounds weird in the physical world but it's not weird at all in the information world, where costs can diffuse so thinly tha

Getting something valuable for free sounds weird in the physical world but it's not weird at all in the information world, where costs can diffuse so thinly that many users never even see them. I see no reason why a non-profit reddit couldn't be free if they didn't try to host video or images (links and comments only). Server costs could absolutely be covered by donations (like "reddit gold") and intra-site advertising (sidebar subreddit ads). Just don't hire many people, don't take VC money, and lean on your community for moderation (which is perfectly morally acceptable for a non-profit entity). It's not freeloading, it's just a bunch of people dedicating so much time and attention to communicating with each other that the server costs are dwarfed by the value of the platform to its users.

incone123 3y ago
I know of one long-running message board site which is free of advertising and free for users. A number of users make regular donations and occasionally when funds are low they make an announcement and some other users make a one-off donation. I am very doubtful their model would scale to Reddit's size, and certain they don't have any wish to.
- rcoveson 3y ago
  I know it seems like it wouldn't scale merely because we haven't seen it happen, but I don't think it's economically impossible or even economically difficult. I don't think there's any reason to believe that your costs go up more quickly than your income from donations/ads. Instead, I think what happens is you just don't get many users in the first place because all their attention ends up acquired by people willing to operate non-sustainable businesses with the aim of extracting value in the future. If by some crazy fluke there weren't any highly motivated money-brains in the social media space, I'm absolutely certain a sustainable non-profit open source solution would exist in place of reddit and facebook, and it would eventually accumulate nearly as many users as those sites have. Maybe not as quickly, and maybe while throwing up donations banners at the same rate as Wikipedia, but it would happen. But you need to get impossibly lucky for the entrepreneurs to ignore "the space" when you have 100k users, and by 1 million users the scent of "alpha" has drawn so many of the biggest, meanest, smartest of the bunch that you need to be an absolute juggernaut of momentum and name recognition (like craigslist and Wikipedia) to have any hope of competeing.
  - incone123 3y ago
    The one I have in mind has been going for decades. I don't think they ever wanted to scale up. The place feels like an independent bar that the owner has no interest in turning into a chain, he just likes running that one bar.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Metafilter? Something Awful?
  - incone123 3y ago
    Neither of those.
zoogeny 3y ago
> I see no reason why a non-profit reddit couldn't be free "could be free" and "must be free" are such a moving of the goal posts that it is impossible to argue against. I mean, you didn't even go through "should be free" on your way.
- rcoveson 3y ago
  I wasn't really trying to move somebody else's goalpost, but here's an attempt to bridge the gap anyway, at least as far as "should be free" ("must be free" follows if you're sufficiently authoritarian/utilitarian, otherwise it doesn't /shrug): Network effects tend to pick extreme winners and losers. From most user's perspectives, there isn't much of a choice. I have an iPhone for a totally stupid reason: My family's chat is an iMessage group and they coordinate photo albums with Apple's shared albums thing. I use reddit for literally no reason at all except that other people use it. I assert that it would be better for me and most to use an equivalent networking facility maintained by a non-profit entity, and that if there were some kind of cross-site replication such that you really could choose which option to use, a very large number of people would pick the option that didn't present inline or otherwise invasive advertisements, and (indirectly) the option that had free API access, via something like Apollo (software that's simply built better than its competitor on its OS). So not only do I believe non-profit-reddit (hey, that's "NPR", complete with donation drives) could exist, I believe it would be better for its users and so it should exist. But I also believe it can't really exist as long as somebody is throwing a bunch of (indebted) money into winning the network effects war. So I believe that for-maximum-profit-reddit should not exist. But I admit the belief feels empty since I'm not authoritarian enough to take it all the way to "reddit must not exist". So I'm just sad instead.

incone123 3y ago

I know of one long-running message board site which is free of advertising and free for users. A number of users make regular donations and occasionally when funds are low they make an announcement and some other users make a one-off donation. I am very doubtful their model would scale to Reddit's size, and certain they don't have any wish to.

rcoveson 3y ago
I know it seems like it wouldn't scale merely because we haven't seen it happen, but I don't think it's economically impossible or even economically difficult. I don't think there's any reason to believe that your costs go up more quickly than your income from donations/ads. Instead, I think what happens is you just don't get many users in the first place because all their attention ends up acquired by people willing to operate non-sustainable businesses with the aim of extracting value in the future. If by some crazy fluke there weren't any highly motivated money-brains in the social media space, I'm absolutely certain a sustainable non-profit open source solution would exist in place of reddit and facebook, and it would eventually accumulate nearly as many users as those sites have. Maybe not as quickly, and maybe while throwing up donations banners at the same rate as Wikipedia, but it would happen. But you need to get impossibly lucky for the entrepreneurs to ignore "the space" when you have 100k users, and by 1 million users the scent of "alpha" has drawn so many of the biggest, meanest, smartest of the bunch that you need to be an absolute juggernaut of momentum and name recognition (like craigslist and Wikipedia) to have any hope of competeing.
- incone123 3y ago
  The one I have in mind has been going for decades. I don't think they ever wanted to scale up. The place feels like an independent bar that the owner has no interest in turning into a chain, he just likes running that one bar.
pessimizer 3y ago
Metafilter? Something Awful?
- incone123 3y ago
  Neither of those.

zoogeny 3y ago

> I see no reason why a non-profit reddit couldn't be free "could be free" and "must be free" are such a moving of the goal posts that it is impossible to argue against. I mean, you didn't even go through "should be free" on your way.

rcoveson 3y ago
I wasn't really trying to move somebody else's goalpost, but here's an attempt to bridge the gap anyway, at least as far as "should be free" ("must be free" follows if you're sufficiently authoritarian/utilitarian, otherwise it doesn't /shrug): Network effects tend to pick extreme winners and losers. From most user's perspectives, there isn't much of a choice. I have an iPhone for a totally stupid reason: My family's chat is an iMessage group and they coordinate photo albums with Apple's shared albums thing. I use reddit for literally no reason at all except that other people use it. I assert that it would be better for me and most to use an equivalent networking facility maintained by a non-profit entity, and that if there were some kind of cross-site replication such that you really could choose which option to use, a very large number of people would pick the option that didn't present inline or otherwise invasive advertisements, and (indirectly) the option that had free API access, via something like Apollo (software that's simply built better than its competitor on its OS). So not only do I believe non-profit-reddit (hey, that's "NPR", complete with donation drives) could exist, I believe it would be better for its users and so it should exist. But I also believe it can't really exist as long as somebody is throwing a bunch of (indebted) money into winning the network effects war. So I believe that for-maximum-profit-reddit should not exist. But I admit the belief feels empty since I'm not authoritarian enough to take it all the way to "reddit must not exist". So I'm just sad instead.