Forget growth, lets enjoy what we have
There is a huge emphasis I see on just growing community size and creating an alternative to reddit.
Back in the day we used to hang out in irc chats with 5-10 active users or forums with few thousand users max. I made friends there I visted across countries. Years after Id log in and people would ask how you've been.
I had a reddit account for over 10 years and I dont think a single person would recognize my username. Its always felt like people aren't talking to you but trying to appeal to the whole audience for points. Reddit exploits our psychology for attention but nothing humane is gained there. The super massive "community" ends up as a void where 99% of posts go completely unseen and any discussions suffer heavily from mod mentalities.
If this a place where even just ten people call home but feel good doing so, that is more good than a million being miserable. Maybe the best alternative is not to be reddit altogether.
Besides, good things have a natural tendency to spread, we don't need to focus on it.
Oh one more example.
Tinder advertised a ton globally with the message of "Single, Not Sorry". Does Tinder know if being single is actually good for everyone? Is this a message you'd blatantly tell all your friends without knowing them? If there was a study saying this was harmful, would they care enough, cut back and tell people to use the app less/more considerably? No because like I said, if it interferes with profits, these kind of considerations will never be talked about.
Few other things. We released a feature where you pay $3 to see if someone responded to you, and the other user would know. Clearly you're fucking yourself over doing that but they don't care. We released a feature where you can see if someone is online, because it increases engagement.
You'd never see shit like this in any organization or community run by people.
You're goddamn right. I've been single until very recently for a real long while and I didn't enjoy it at all. Profit driven business and infinite growth is harming everything.
How the fuck can you paywall LIKES? Tinder seems not too different to gacha games and lootboxes. This is why I'm so blatant on actually moving to federated services. These do not need to be run by megacorps since costs can be distributed through instances.
Small services that aren't federated eventually become too expensive to run and that's why I dislike Tildes in favor of Kbin/Lemmy. What is the next step? You already know.
Me too, really hoping this stuff works out.