A lot of questions on here are aimed at the reddit users experiences, but I’ve been wondering what the older users thought of his move. Are there any reddit cultures you are hoping do not come with the users? Are you confident or fearful of the growth coming from the reddit community? I’m curious how the reddit influx is changing these communities either for better or for worse.

  • comfy@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    A pro-capitalist can absolutely value OS and freedom of information! But there is inherent tension. For one part, private property is a fundamental cornerstone of capitalism, which (I assert necessarily) led to the invention of intellectual property, a direct inhibition to freedom of information. FoI is not within the best interests of any leading business under capitalism, they have an active interest in maintaining market dominance, and the most power to make that happen through harassment or legislation. So, as a result, we get laws like copyright and major government agencies enforcing it even for things like films and medicine. Piracy like LibGen happen in spite of the worldwide attempts of publishers to destroy it.

    Wolfballs admin was an example of a pro-FOSS (Lemmy-contributer!) capitalist who was able to provide benefit to with the project because they shared pro-FoI values. I’m not saying pro-capitalists can’t have a place here, or can’t add value, but a huge influx and culture shock is the quickest way for Lemmy sites to forget or misdiagnose the causes of reddit’s failure and the strengths of Lemmy, and try to turn it into an ad-infested crypto-integrated hellscape or otherwise put profit above users. Even basic things like using an advertising income model creates censorship (Manufacturing Consent has a good section explaining this in detail).

    Anti-capitalism is deeply rooted in lemmy.ml, and Lemmy, it’s even brought up in the software documentation. It’s not incidental or trivial, it is the cause for many effects. It’s a big part of why we didn’t do what other reddit alternatives did, and avoided their pitfalls. I don’t want to be a product here. So yes, it is sad to see that shift into conflict with the software and community’s founding values, and it’s not just because of some team sports, it’s because profit-seeking is what killed reddit and I don’t want it to kill us.

    • SQL_InjectMe@partizle.com
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      1 year ago

      Thank you for your detailed answer. That makes sense. I also don’t like when things are commercialized and would rather have something like lemmy instances be either a co-op or funded by donations.