I'm a little tired of these threads, but bless you for actually citing "active users" instead of the bullshit bot-infested "total users" metric.

I've read every scrap of documentation on their website, and still don't have a good sense what exactly their "values" are. In one sentence they sound more woke than Reddit, in the next sentence they sound like they're pushing back on overwrought codes of conduct.

Honestly, Beehaw just comes across as one quirky individual's vanity project, created out of spite after he got modded on another board, and it somehow stumbled into drawing a crowd.

Isn't that what votes are for? lol

Thanks.

It's the excessive individualism that marks our (i.e. USA) culture. This problem is getting worse over time because every single party involved sees it as someone else's problem, and is just optimizing for their own interests only.

The problem with tipping culture is that it works.

I read an article the other day about airlines moving toward cheaper air fares, but charging more and more fees for basic things that should be part of the air fare. That trend is accelerating because customers reward it, period.

People only look at the base price of things, and shop around the best base price. Mentally, humans are mostly awful at factoring in extras and comparing one place's apples to another place's oranges. The company with the lower base price wins, and shifting prices over toward fees and extras doesn't seem to hurt them as much as just including those costs in the base price does.

Same story with tipping. If a Moe's burrito costs $10 but you're asked to leave a $2 tip, while a Joe's burrito simply costs $12, then I'm pretty sure the average consumer is only going to look at that $10 vs. $12 comparison and favor Moe's. It's dumb. It's awful. We all say on social media and chat forums that we don't think that way. But most of us kinda sorta DO, unfortunately.

The result is that generous people end up accommodating the increased tip culture, while less generous people just stop tipping altogether. So instead of employer paying their workers fairly, and spreading the costs among their customers fairly... we get an awful system where the employers still make the same profit, but the workers and customers are negatively impacted. For the employees, the dignity of honest work erodes, as they shift toward being part worker and part panhandler. For the customers, generosity is punished and a selfish mindset is rewarded. It's an extremely toxic cultural trend, all around.

I don't know what the solutions are. I fear that there really IS no solution other than changes to law and regulation, but our culture is too fragmented and government too broken for that.

Tipping culture will take a hit, but of course the workers won't see any benefit from that.

I really hope that the sub imploded during the descent, and they've been dead all this time. Rather than the hull giving out after they sat on the ocean floor for days.

Hopefully never, honestly.

Reddit was at its best 10 years ago, when it was still kind of a small niche subculture. Not big enough for the media to mine for content, not big enough for corporations and celebrity PR people to bother manipulating. And yeah, I realize this isn't super inclusive, but needing to have a modicum of tech savvy to get in the door was a great filter on the culture and content.

It was... how do I put this... far more SILLY, but far less DUMB than today. As the community grew and became normie-dominant, every thread became so predictable. So bound by the exact same patterns and conventions, the mindlessly referencing old references to farm karma, etc.

• "Unpopular opinion, but <insert popular opinion>."
• "I'm going to get downvoted into oblivion for this, but <insert upvote bait>."
• "I hate sand, it's coarse and gets everywhere." ... "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!"... "Well then you are lost!"... <insert 10 more reply levels deep>

There was a lot of ugliness in the old Reddit. That comes from the hardcore libertarian "free speech" ethos that dominated the overall Internet back in the 2000's. I'm not too worried about that today, because the overall culture is just far less libertarian than it was 20 years ago. You DO need active moderation to avoid becoming 4chan, but I think an Internet community is more fun before the English majors show up and take over, and everything becomes performative hang-wringing about how how problematic everything is.

Also, I feel like if and when the normies get here, the "federated" aspect will fall away. Look, there's just NOT going to be hundreds or thousands of Lemmy instances that all have duplicated meme, movie, Star Trek, etc communities. The crowds are going to push toward consolidation, and a small number of instances are going to "win". Maybe just a single one. Right back where you started at that point.

So yeah, I think that the fediverse is far too small today, and needs a lot more activity in order to be self-sustaining. But I'm FINE with it reaching a self-sustaining critical mass, and then hanging out in "techie niche" territory indefinitely while Reddit keeps the casuals.

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