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SamXavia @kbin.social
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What if Reddit joined the Fediverse?

So I have thoughts about what if platforms that we seemly are trying to move away from such as Reddit decided to Fedirate and join the Fediverse.

Do you think it would be beneficial or practical in the long run?

How do you think people would change their thoughts of the Fediverse if platforms like Reddit did do this sort of thing?

What would you do if Reddit did join the Fediverse?

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42 comments

  • It would be deliciously ironic, since way back at the dawn of Reddit they had originally planned to have a "federated" model that let other people run their own interconnected Reddit servers. They open-sourced their code in preparation. But then they realized they could make all the money for themselves and ditched that plan.

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  • I think ultimately, this would be the best move for the users, and would open them up to a lot more content all across the board. But Reddit does not care about its users, so it won't happen.

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    • @Chozo Thank you, yeah I was thinking that it would help push the Fediverse well making the users that want to stick to Reddit the ability to do so, or even more away well still having access to the previously preferred boards.

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    • Permanently Deleted

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  • As others have said already, they won't do that anyway ... but in the hypothetical, unlikely scenario that they announced that they do, indeed, want to join the Fediverse, I would be super sceptical about their incentive. Do they want to somehow take over the various platforms one after another to monetize that content? To they want to screw up the Fediverse deliberately so the "redditfugees" that came here don't have a reddit alternative anymore - to eliminate competition? I wouldn't trust them to join for a "good" reason. Not after all the lies, slander and obvious, blatant bullshit Spez has pulled off.

    He had multiple chances to stop the dumpster fire from burning, but instead fetched the gasoline. I'm all for giving people a "second" chance, but not a third, and definitely not an eighth or so chance. That time is over.

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    • @justlookingfordragon Yeah I hope they just fail and people decide to move across, not sure if it would be easier if they just collapse or if they keep messing up to the point people just look for alternatives like Kbin and Lemmy.

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  • Beneficial yes, practical no.

    Beneficial because Reddit captured a ton of niche communities that used to exist on forums/usenet/etc, and there's a lot of actual unique, useful content buried under all the noise. Ideally that content would be able to filter back into places that aren't tied to some startup that never figured out how to be profitable.

    Impractical because I imagine quite a few servers would have to defederate because they simply wouldn't be able to manage mirroring the constant stream of stuff coming out of Reddit. It's a bit early to tell how long any of the general interest reddit-a-likes can sustain on donations or whatever, and turning on that firehose would transform some hobbyist servers into money pits fast.

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    • @gradecurve Yeah I would say the Fediverse as a whole needs to be slowly moving bringing people in otherwise a wave for millions of people if Reddit or any other big tech social media did fall it could break the Fediverse so fast.

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  • That would be great, all the content, none of the ads (unless you're actually on Reddit).

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  • It would be amazing, but they would never do it.

    Doing that means they "lost"

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    • @platysalty Yeah, really do hope that it gets to a point they have to question about it, as it would mean the Fediverse is doing that well we took down a centralized platform.

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  • They would not want that lack of control. And like Threads I think most instances would preemptively defederate from them.

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    • @Lexam That's fair enough, I was just meer asking if they did want to, how would you feel about it but if you think that people would prefer to block them from the other parts of the Fediverse that's a fair opinion.

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  • It's a great idea, but I don't feel like it's realistic to how tech companies generate value to angel investors. Unfortunately, the ActivityPub team is a bit aggressive towards larger companies adopting it, and investors are not often keen on working with bodies they don't control.

    It would be so cool to see what the Fedi could do with sheer volume.

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    • @msprout Yeah I wasn't really asking for the logistics of it, I understand that it is most likely impossible at least with Reddit and other big tech like them. From what I've read Tumblr is interested themself moving across to the Fediverse, I just wanted to know what people think would happen if they had the green light from the ActivityPub team to move into the Fediverse and what sort of lasting effects that could have for the future of the Fediverse.

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      • Ahh okay, I'm sorry for misinterpreting.

        Honestly, I think it would cause the same style of dustup as Meta joining. Lots of preemptive defederation, and a lot of struggle over how to integrate communities who are federating.

        Me personally, I would love that. To me, the single best value prop for the Fedi is that you can basically choose your own adventure and form a lens of browsing ActivityPub for the kinds of content you're interested in only.

        So being able to, say, subscribe to /r/simpsonsshitposting on my Mastodon account would be killer. In fact it would be amazing to just interface with Reddit's image content like I would Mastodon, instead of thread by thread.

        So I guess TLDR is, I would predict that the Fedi will continue to be reactionary in nature, but it would overall be a very positive thing for the Fedi (as long as ActivityPub is not captured by corporate interests the way that XMPP was).

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      • It's hard to get excited now days when a company makes a move that sounds amazing on paper. Especially when looking at chromium which being open sourced is great, but then with Google having so much influence over it and chromium browsers having such huge market share it makes you wonder if that was always the initial intended goal they had from the get go even if it took decades.

        Being open source doesn't make something not susceptible to suddenly finding itself held captive by corporate decisions if a majority of development and compatability is now hugely dependent on it. It would be hard to not wonder what their actual angle is.

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  • I don't see any monetary reason why they would, but even if they did it wouldn't be before at least a semester: being compatible with the fediverse is a huge architectural change. Look at Tumblr: they announced their intent to join the fediverse last November and we haven't seen anything from them yet.

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    • @BlackEco Yeah it would be really good to see Tumblr and any other platform that people generally like using to move over to the Fediverse at some stage.

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  • (I'm assuming we're talking about this as a hypothetical talking point!)

    I don't think it would be beneficial particularly no because this place is developing its own sort of culture and way of working and Reddit is over there doing its thing.

    If Reddit came and federated, I think most places would defederate from Reddit on principle at this point anyway, as they've clearly shown that they wouldn't be making that move out of an interest in the philosophy behind the 'fediverse' (we've got to think of a better name btw - Febb? Febby? Febbster? Feddy? Freddy?)

    But assuming they were let in and were integrated, the increase in trolls, toxic comments, inane communities, would be too much for Febby to cope with and I'd end up leaving, probably asking with everyone else currently here. Reddit is there for people who want it, Febbster is here for people who want it and if people want both they know where to find both.

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    • I'm seeing the same sort of groupthink, toxic users, and so forth here on the Fediverse as on Reddit. We're not "better", people are people. We're just smaller and newer.

      If you like a smaller community then should Reddit join the Fediverse you could move to an instance that isn't federated with it. Problem solved.

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    • @HipPriest Trolls and Toxic comments will most likely come in the future with Fedi sadly as you said, we are still small and as we grow it will push people to show their true colors or feel safe behind a screen.

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  • It is like asking why rich people don't leave their luxury apartments for living side by side with a community. Answer is money. They will never leave the power of ads and the profit that they can make by subscription and addons.

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    • @banana_meccanica I'm not asking if they will or not, I think we all know that they will most likely not. I was more asking what you think would happen if they did.

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      • They will lose everything and they will probably find themself in hard times with sponsors and banks who demain to pay the bill. So first a bankrupt will be happen, crazy moments that can lead even on suicide of some managers of the company. If they survive this and come there as fediverse will be actually a surprise reborn, like a phoenix come back from ashes, but still marked by the bankrupts, legal problem and maybe blood.

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  • No thanks.

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  • There have been talks about tumblr joining the fediverse which seems like a similar scenario!

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    • Flickr as well.

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      • @melroy TBH never used Flickr but know the name, It would be good to see what role Flickr could play in the Fediverse

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      • Haven’t heard about that one. In what capacity does it plan to join? Something Instagram-like, similar to pixelfed?

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  • meta v2

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