That’s a great piece of text - thanks for sharing.

Here’s my prediction: I think that the Reddit→Lemmyverse* move will be proportionally way, way stronger than the Twitter→Mastodonverse* one. Spez is trying to pull out a Musk, without taking into account the fact that Reddit and Twitter work differently. One can bend a bit to Musk, with a few cracks here and there; the other will simply snap out.

Some reasons why I’m saying this are addressed through the text:

• Twitter never relied on voluntary moderation
• Twitter, unlike Reddit, has anchor users that keep other users there
• Twitter, unlike Reddit, didn’t thrive off small communities

Plus a few additional ones, from my own:

• Network effect is stronger in Twitter than in Reddit, due to the “clean” categorisation of the content. It’s easier to migrate your subreddit than it is to migrate the amorphous mass of people that you’ve been following in Twitter. And it’s easier to migrate the content itself, as Reddit content is a bit less time-sensitive than the Twitter one.
• The content in Twitter is created mostly by the “upper cultural class”, that was kind of unaffected by Musk. In Reddit however it’s created by the “middle cultural class”, who got far more pissed at Spez.
• Platform size. It’s foolish to pretend that Reddit and Reddit Inc. are as relevant as Twitter and Twitter Inc. They’re weaker, thus easier to replace.

*I’m using those -verse words for the collectives of instances behaving in one or another way, to tell them apart from the flagship instances (lemmy.ml and mastodon.social respectively).

Transitioning online discussions away from for-profit shopping malls into spaces designed for constructive conversation is a good thing not just for humanity’s ability to cooperatively solve problems, but for the oft-disregarded mental health of the individuals who’s content contributions power the platforms.

Very well stated. What a great article! People should bookmark it and share it with people that ask, “Why should I join this’Fediverse’?”