[danudey]

Let's be clear though: this is exactly what happened.

Digg was the place to go, and then they fucked it up and everyone migrated to Reddit. Now Reddit is fucking it up, and even if everyone migrates somewhere else, that new somewhere else is going to fuck it up too once they get to the point of "we need to be profitable at all costs".

What we actually need is some way to convince users to pay for the services they use so that they don't start mining us for ad clicks as soon as they think they can get away with it, because as long as users are going to insist on everything being free companies are going to need to do shit like this to us at every opportunity.

[diablerouge]

Everyone says "users need to pay" but there's a second alternative that is, imo, much better: technical folk run servers for their friends and families.

This is how the fediverse works, and it's _vastly_ better than any subscription service (not least because it means that anyone, regardless of financial situation, can find a server to be a part of.)

There's a fedi version of Reddit (lemmy) but it seems to have been a bit of a half-cooked design, rather than something that could truly take over for Reddit anytime soon.

[becquerel]

In short, it's time to return to SomethingAwful. Everything old is new again! Do you have stairs in your house!

[radnor]

I am protected.

[smolder]

I agree that we should be better off in a world where people paid for things with money and not their privacy. But paying with privacy happens even for paid-for products, e.g. "smart TVs" and phones, Windows, internet connections, driving your car in public, digital cable.

First they said no one had to pay, and they subjected us to ads... Then, they said, well, you'll have to pay, if you don't want to see our increasingly annoying ads... Then, they got our money. Then, they decided to subject us to ads, again...

[sgift]

No, what we need is someone who is just happy with a business that pays for itself and gives a healthy profit for the owner, not "omfg, shitloads of money". Reddit is - as far as I know - profitable. All employees are paid, all costs are paid, and the owners get their share. That's a stable arrangement. Greed is what's unbalancing it. And despite what some people think: Greed is not good. And Gordon Gecko was the villain.

[lubesGordi]

My recollection of the great migration to reddit was because Digg was crashing. That's probably the only reason Reddit has stayed up as long as it has, it's back end eng has held up. I'm open to being schooled here.

[Dah00n]

>What we actually need is some way to convince users to pay for the services they use

Yes and that will most likely work great the same day that communism will. If users pay X the corporation wants X + Y. It is an age-old problem from way before the internet. Can you name one company that is okay with a healthy profit that doesn't get better over time? For example if they take costs and have X profit, will anyone still say X is fine with 100 times more users? After all it should become cheaper per user and theres zero reason the profit should go up. In my opinion the only way that will happen is with governments doing this - and not a government like in the US but more like Norway.