There’s good content here, but there is so much eyerolling conservative whining too. Listing Reddits like T_D or TheFappening as examples of “unfairly removed” communities paints a very unflattering picture… And when he brought up THE FABRIC OF WESTERN SOCIETY I had to laugh because the alternative was to cringe out of my seat.

Still the story of Schwartz’ erasure is legitimate knowledge and how dirty he was done by both Reddit and the US government. I just don’t get how anyone can learn a story LIKE Schwartz’s and come out of it thinking the US government and “Western Society” are in any way a thing to be fought for, when it is those very systems that fucked him over when he dared put principles over ruthless capitalism.

@Edit: Also this creator has a video about how The Matrix is a call to action for MANHOOD, which lmao it was written by two closeted trans women, and is by their own admittance about the liberating power of femininity, you genius.

That was some very difficult content to absorb. I will, likely, take significant time to process all of this. I believe that it would be a good idea to bring some of this to the Beehaw council for further consideration and discussion.

the entire first minute is just unfounded petty insults

For real? Come on.

reddit does have major, systemic issues with major moderators, some which are touched upon very well, and some left unsaid such as known political think-tanks inserting moderators into national and political communities, but the video creator’s approach, especially a generalized grouping of ‘reddit moderators’ as a single conspiring group, is just a silly way to start. It encourages people to just dismiss it as ‘moderators are just bad people who are powertripping bullies and wannabe police officers’ instead of realizing that there is an important diversity in who moderators are, on any site, and that systematic issues cause the rise of the worst despite the majority. It’s important to realize this phenomenon isn’t distillable to just ‘reddit moderators’, it can and should be generalized to any sufficiently significant site, especially any with money or a wide influence involved.

As this documentary hints, reddit is and always was a for-profit company, bound by venture capital and shareholders to be the most popular it can be. Aaron’s and even Alexis’s ideals aren’t going to stop that. Reputational damage is bad for popularity. The site dies if popularity dies. They are FORCED to censor to survive, at least when any popular media makes a fuss and scares their shareholders.

And in a way, that’s where Lemmy has a chance to thrive where most (not all, most) reddit-like sites fail. Look at the ‘alt-tech’ platforms that made themselves home for banned reddit communities, then turned out to just be venture-capitalist censorship-happy (politically rather than language) places that died out in years. Lemmy on the other hand allows groups to thrive independently, even despite the views of the developers or any funding. The devs of lemmy.ml couldn’t shut down wolfballs or here even if they wanted to, or more importantly, if they took up funding from someone who wanted to. The software’s operating and funding model effectively eliminates the need to conform to popularity as it grows. Of course, that still leaves other issues like political and social control of mods over instances they volunteer for, but the removal of economic subservience is a major advantage.

If you folks have tangible suggestions how not to repeat the fate of Reddit, please let us know

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