[Gareth321]

Lemmy and Kbin are opensource, so there are no dev costs. That’s a big one. The other is hosting. Of course servers aren’t free, so each instance will need to figure out how they keep the lights on. Way back in the before times (2000), we used to host forums on our own computers, or pay for basic hosting. Maybe $50/m, though it’s much cheaper these days. This was fine because we went to these forums for topic-specific discussion and they were generally quite small compared to Reddit of today. Lemmy and ActivityPub in general is perfect for this because it connects these thousands of little servers. To me, this is marrying the best of what we had 20 years ago with the best of what we have today.

I should remind you that Reddit isn’t asking for $20 million annually from Apollo to merely cover their costs. They have a very healthy profit margin baked into that fee. So even if we were to pay for a competitor, it would cost a lot less than that. This, combined with the decentralised nature of Lemmy, means these costs can be nicely distributed over tens of thousands of people, using small donations here and there to keep the lights on. This isn’t the insurmountable problem you seem to believe it to be.

[lexandstuff]

I miss forums. But every forum I frequented in the early 2000s eventually shut down, and we lost the data forever. I don't see how federated servers will be any different.

At least with Reddit, there's an entity working towards building a sustainable solution to keep it running. That is, until some moderators decided to close the communities and hide our contributions.

Anyway, my point is: vote with your feet and leave Reddit if you want. But don't vandalise the site on your way out, ruining it for everyone else.

[Gareth321]

The data is at risk in both scenarios for different reasons. Yes, Lemmy instances can and will shutter. In time, I hope, there will be tools which keep data synchronised between instances for redundancy. Now consider the risks on Reddit. Reddit doesn't want a sustainable platform. They want a profitable platform. Those are very different goals.

1. Reddit has banned and deleted countless users, comments, and subreddits over the years. All of that data is gone forever. The decisions were arbitrary and opaque. The subreddit owners and users weren't even given notice so they could back up the subreddit data and migrate elsewhere.

2. Reddit has and will increasingly demand users access the remaining data using increasingly user hostile channels. The mobile site Reddit experience is all but ruined. They're currently trialing blocking it entirely. The standard desktop website is atrocious. They track everything, and aggressively monetise, meaning ads everywhere. If the data on the site is gated behind intrusive tracking practises, a hostile UX, a plethora of ads, and perhaps in the future even a subscription, do we really have access to that data?

3. Reddit has an incentive to promote advertiser friendly content, and hide other content. This means the main feed is full of content I don't care about. Their search is one of the worst in the industry, and it has been blocking undesirable content for years. The most effective way to find content on Reddit is Google, but Reddit is working hard to break that. About a year or so ago Google could no longer accurately record the submission date, meaning their date searching tools were rendered useless. Shortly after that, Google stopped caching Reddit content. We should expect that Reddit has been working hard to ensure no one can find the "bad" content, and only ever lands on the "good" content. If you can't ever find the relevant data, do we really have access to it?

I just don't see how you could argue that our data is safer with an evil corporation than an army of dedicated users. You claim that mods and/or users are vandalising the site on the way out. We're really just deleting the content we uploaded.

[lost_tourist]

I hate to tell you but some day reddit's data won't be available either. That's why you have groups like r/datahoarders and archive.org