Control and ownership by the community, not by a corporation or other business entity. Over the nearly 20 years I’ve been a regular on the Internet, I’ve seen too many platforms go from loved community spaces to abysmal ad-centered hellscapes because the powers-that-be decide their asset isn’t generating enough revenue to keep the shareholders, venture capitalists, or other greedy suits in control happy. Digg, Twitter, now Reddit are of course the top contenders in the race to the bottom, but so many other platforms have suffered a similar fate. You see the same shit with YouTube. You even see it with code hosts like GitHub and GitLab. It’s about time we stop using platforms run by people who are just seeking to profit off of owning a platform, because that model is literally doomed to fail, it’s just a matter of time.
Control and ownership by the community, not by a corporation or other business entity. Over the nearly 20 years I’ve been a regular on the Internet, I’ve seen too many platforms go from loved community spaces to abysmal ad-centered hellscapes because the powers-that-be decide their asset isn’t generating enough revenue to keep the shareholders, venture capitalists, or other greedy suits in control happy. Digg, Twitter, now Reddit are of course the top contenders in the race to the bottom, but so many other platforms have suffered a similar fate. You see the same shit with YouTube. You even see it with code hosts like GitHub and GitLab. It’s about time we stop using platforms run by people who are just seeking to profit off of owning a platform, because that model is literally doomed to fail, it’s just a matter of time.