Huh. If it's running on a new engine, do you think John Romero could remaster Daikatana on the new engine?

RIP. He was a great comedian, and a valuable lesson to us who grew up watching. I hope wherever his spirit ends up, he can be at peace.

The amount of Excel/spreadsheets I use in my hobbies and "leisure" time is massive. Otherwise, it's mostly about having surrendered to the presence of online ads.

Honestly? A little bit, yeah. More automated tools with greater function will help as long as we can moderate their use.

My real concern is more related to the fact that this will probably lead to a massive crackdown on sources and shadow libraries that have been used as training data for AIs. If this goes through, I see a lot of ML/AI/bots being forced into an audit, and whenever "potentially infringing" content is found, they won't just remove it, there will be an aggressive push against the shadow library hosting it.

Given that I'm more willing to be a Net Nomad than I am to pay, Reddit 2.0 would have to be self-funding and profitable early on without my direct contribution. I think the best way to do it would be to have per-IP monthly access limits, raised incrementally by tracked linkout clicks from the platform (with a higher rate given for actual conversion actions). That way, you keep operating costs low and ensure that you're profit-focused from day 1. Yes, it's an affiliate ad platform from the start, but it allows for organic content generation from users. Oh, and of course advertisers would be charged to create organic ads in relevant communities. Obviously, with a priority being profit and cost, any software would have to be NIH FOSS, with only a few custom scripts ever created by the devs - this cuts down on costs and dev time. If anyone complains about licensing, ban them. If they try taking you to court, you have ad rev, they don't. You win with a better lawyer and sympathetic judge.

Basically, I would want Reddit as it is today. Or Facebook as it is. The advertising I can block easily is their way of keeping my costs at a rate I'm willing to accept - $0.00/lifetime. I think forcing ad engagement will make some people run to the Fediverse and host their own instance, or join and "donate to" (pay to use) an instance they don't host, but for others, it will help them to build healthier relationships with social media, using it less and thus rationing out their time better, or they'll spend time engaged with ad content and providing real value to the platform, rather than imagined "value" by creating organic content that will need to be stored and indexed on the server.

I've heard it's going to be connected with ActivityPub. I look forward to it, if people I know who are mostly Meta users move over.

Depends on the community. Many of the subreddits I've been in are going strong - or have gotten better since the blackout.

Okay. Time to start using Matrix and IRC then.

I agree with your premise, but not all of the details. I believe that if you don't want to be on Reddit as it is, simply don't be on Reddit. Depart gracefully, don't burn bridges, don't troll or spam. It doesn't help anyone - your mental health included.

In many ways, I do believe that taking the high road is best when there's an issue like this. I don't mind being on Reddit, or kbin, or Lemmy, or Mastodon. The only social I'm never on is Twitter. I don't see a need to be there; so I'm not. For my own part, I didn't mind the 2-day blackout - I mind the spam, the NSFW from unexpected sources, etc. If the answer is that I need to stand up and start taking part in moderating communities to ensure that the content I want to see is what's there, I'll decide then whether I want to do so or not. I'm annoyed by the possibility of the app I prefer (RedReader) standing on shaky ground from now on with an "accessibility" label hung on it. I'm not a fan of ads, at the best of times, I block most advertising domains, and usually turn off ECMAScript on sites (or at least I'm picky about what is allowed to run). I'd prefer to turn it off altogether, but that's not an option at the moment with the way the web is going.

As I've said before, I do not believe there's a single active mod of a large community who doesn't know whether or not they want to lead a community on Reddit right now. If they want to lead a community, but not on Reddit, there's the various fediverse options, JCInk, Freeforums, NeoCities, or whatever - those people could even file an RFD and have it put up on Usenet. If they want to lead a community on Reddit, that means abiding by the rules, policies, and behaviors which have been set down. I have no problem with, say, r/piracy moving to their own Lemmy, and I'm honestly in favor of the wide adoption of alternate social media (though I worry what onerous monetization will be forced upon us when the costs get too high and each server can only afford customers, not paying users - we know ads won't work, because of so many of us using adblockers).

If you want to be part of a community specifically on Reddit now, then be a part of that community on Reddit. If you want to be part of a community, but you're ambivalent about Reddit, rejoin or rebuild it elsewhere. Don't make things worse for the people who make a different decision. That just makes them become reactionary and defensive, and likely they'll end up opposing you, and whatever it is you stand for (which in this cause could actively hurt fediverse participation).

My perspective on this is split. On one hand, "get back to work", when they're not paying anyone for that work, is upsetting. On the other, I'm sure that all the mods know whether or not they want to lead a community on Reddit or not. No one should be allowed to force them to run those communities; but leading troll campaigns isn't going to make anything better. By all means, leave Reddit if that's what you want. Don't pretend to stay just to ruin it for other folks.

That's trolling, led by the mods. I gleefully await the ban wave.

Aaron would be so disappointed.