but it's the key reason why we need publicly controlled infrastructure to do what reddit does now. There's no such thing as a free lunch! Even if we were to so

but it's the key reason why we need publicly controlled infrastructure to do what reddit does now. There's no such thing as a free lunch! Even if we were to somehow (miraculously) get the public to pay for a free utility-scale Reddit-like site, there would still be huge problems. For one, making it public causes it to be thrust into the political spotlight. Conventional utilities (electricity, running water) are just about as boring and uncontroversial as anything you can imagine, yet there are still political fights over them. I cannot even imagine how ugly the political fights over something like Reddit would be. People would be out in the streets protesting over the kind of content that goes on there. They would demand an extreme level of moderation which would alienate all but the most anodyne users. It just wouldn't do to have the government pay for a free-speech zone like that.