Android Authority doesn’t get it.
Compared to #Reddit, #Lemmy sucks. And so does #Kbin. We all know that.
The #RedditMigration isn’t about any app being better than Reddit. It’s about a company that’s grown on the backs of volunteer labour now claiming ownership of that labour.
Reddit didn’t write those posts, draw those illustrations, make those videos. We did.
And Reddit sure as hell didn’t create those communities, nurture them, and moderate them. We did.
I agree with tech writers who say that the average person just “wants their memes”. But Reddit never made those memes. We did.
Content might be king. But who makes content? We do.
I have no doubt that the average person just wants content. But while we might be providing content for free, we’re not dancing monkeys. Who decides why content is made, how it’s made, and where it exists? We do.
The Fediverse doesn’t exist merely as an engine for content. It exists so that people can share what they love.
Why are people coming to the Fediverse specifically? Because we rightfully see ActivityPub as insurance for our content – which, again, is made by and for us.
Not Reddit. Not Big Social. Us.
If I’m giving my content away for free, then so long as it is federated, no one company can own it – putting up gates, demanding payment for my work. Instead, my work is out there, living on 24,000 nodes that presently exist.
Android Authority might dismiss this as “suffering the same fate” – what fate they perceive, I don’t know. But to me, the true “suffering” is when a company like Reddit claims ownership of my work, locking 3rd party developers out from API access.
For this reason, I’m locking Reddit out from my work.
Perhaps the author of this post, Dhruv Bhutani, doesn’t consider that he’s writing for a, well, blog. And that this blog exists on its own domain, with its own design, as its own property. He could have written this entire post on Reddit, but he didn’t.
Why? I suspect it’s because he believes his work has value, and Reddit simply doesn’t give him what he believes is his worth.
Same deal with me. I’m not looking to get paid for my work on Reddit. I do it for fun – always have. But if I’m doing something for fun, it’s still going to be on my terms.
Not all of us creatives are willing to be a cog in Big Social’s machine. That’s why I’m here on the Fediverse right now. I don’t give a damn whether the average person just wants memes. I create for me.
So yeah, Lemmy and Kbin suck. I can live with that – they will both improve. And I have no doubt that, with time, they might prove to be better than Reddit.
But this isn’t about how good Lemmy or Kbin are. Nor is this about the insatiable appetite for memes.
This is about my need to create on my terms – and I’m not alone here.
Decentralization is the killer feature here.
https://www.androidauthority.com/reddit-alternatives-lemmy-3335429/
@fediversenews
