Former(-ish) active Reddit user here. Your comment hit home, because it pointed to “social technology”, capitalism, conversations and value of interactions.

Capitalism’s approach sees value in Reddit, Twitter, etc. as being advertising platforms and means of data collection. So anything from which they can’t make money is just there.

The real value is the interactions and conversations these platforms are fostering. The IMDb Message Boards were a really fun place to discuss movies, but the suits in the IMDb boardroom came to the conclusion that having the boards hurt the engagement with the site, providing “negative experience” to the users. Which was just good old corporate bull for “it is too expensive to keep them up”. So they axed the boards (did not even keep them as a read-only archive!), deleting all posts, deleting all that tremendous cultural value that accumulated over the decades the Message Boards were operating.

Sad. But these stories (and now Reddit’s story, sadly) are the wake up calls we need to advance in our “social technology”. All we need is to realize thatour conversations and interactions with other people is the value in itself. Right now, the capitalist approach to everything is deeply rooted in the minds. We need to change that, and clearly separate societal values from capitalist values on the internet. I don’t know if this “Fediverse” is the way to do that. But I’m happy to join. I’m happy to try.

And Void_Reader - I’m really glad you posted this. This is my first comment on Lemmy, and I’m happy to be reacting to your thoughts here.