Spez isn’t tanking Reddit for leftist speech alone. That’s not the whole picture.
Reddit is A) Trying to go IPO and B) Investment chickens are coming home to roost. The main reason Spez is tanking is for monetary gain and a better-looking public offering. Yeah, discourse is there but also not stifled like on Twitter, I think it’s EXTREMELY reductionist to paint all of Spez’s actions as being against leftist speech when there’s a dozen other factors that have been documented
Honestly, it’s not really all that shocking. People LOVE social media, that’s just the way it is. Plus, having a social is practically required in this day and age for any business, big or small to advertise and get the word out. Sure, Facebook/Meta is shady and untrustworthy, but we are far beyond the point of trusting companies anymore. People are willing to be part of the social universe in any way in order to stay informed and relevant. I mean, how many terrible things has Facebook done with user data? Yet, the layman/woman will still use the platform since it’s just so popular. I don’t use Facebook at all, but if I want to sell something quickly, where am I going? Facebook Marketplace.
Finally, there’s Elon. People were happy with twitter and Elon just had to blow it up in order to feed his ego. That turned off advertisers and influencers (the people making the engaging content) and therefore, anybody following that content subsequently moved on to the next thing. It’s insane but in making such a mess of things, Elon pretty much convinced people that threads was the better alternative.
Social Media isn’t just another part of the internet anymore, it effectively is the internet. Even forum and link-aggregation sites are leaning more into the practices of social media since it is all-encompassing in the modern world. I don’t blame those 100 million people for switching to threads, what else was gonna happen?
It’s not only the break in routine but also the direction of the site. All your examples are productivity products while the fediverse is, in essence, social media. The thing with social media is that branding REALLY matters. There have been attempts to copy Instagram or Snapchat or Reddit but they have all failed to gain massive communities due to not being part of a known brand.
“I posted my pics on the gram”
“What’s your snap?” etc…
Kbin, Lemmy, these are just instances of something called the Fediverse, try getting a layperson to understand that.
Social media generally has a rule known as the 90:9:1 rule. 90% of people are lurkers just doomscrolling or passing time, 9% are interacting with content and leaving comments and/or posting, and the final 1% is making the engaging content that sites like Reddit and YouTube are known for.
Right now, FOSS software is often populated by only 10% of that ratio, the power-users and people that interact every so often. Those lurkers, the 90%, migrating them will be hard if not impossible. Remember, they lurk, they will stay where the most engaging content is, and that is still currently Reddit.
Amen dude, over $500 billion after inflation paid for nationwide fiber, and telecom companies just pocketed that shit. We should’ve been at 500mb down, 250 up since 2015.