Open source software may be a good model to look at. People contribute bc they want to, regardless of any monetary remuneration.

But it’s hard, and a for-profit corporation can often move forward more quickly to develop an objectively better project. Except even though they *could", they (usually) don’t, and really they have zero reason to, bc their goal is to make a profit, not a product. Reddit vs. Lemmy/Kbin/Mbin/etc. is one such example.

But it gets complicated bc of all the counterexamples, like at one time Google really was awesome, and free, so most of the open source projects did not push hard to replace it, bc it worked so well for so many. Similar to Lemmy I suppose - before the Rexit it had existed for many years, but it wasn’t until that shakeup that it was propelled forward extremely quickly by the influx of developers, e.g. who made the front end apps. Before that, the Reddit experience was fairly good even if not great, so not as many people bothered.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Love the recursion.:-)

I dunno, I want to believe in a future where both can scare a cop. :-)

TLDR: not worth reading the article, it’s just a long list of third party apps that are no longer free anymore, totally ignoring matters such as their usage stats and more importantly the content itself that is now flat-out missing from Reddit. Go to any old thread and you’ll see the “this content has been removed by” (whichever of the automated software to remove posts was used in that case) messages.

Honestly it reads like a shill to promote Reddit as in “hey, all that fuss was for nothing - you should totally come back now”. It got fairly obvious even at the start when it said that the protests lasts (edit: lasted) for “weeks” - not the more truthful “months”, not “permanent changes”, but the minimum amount they could halfway reasonably get away with stating.

I am biased, and this article is far more so, and less forgivably so bc mine is a personal opinion while this is touted as “news”.

I need more data. Send me higher resolution feet pics immediately, to this address: Donald.Trump at email.com. Please send me as many feet pics as you have!?

Tell me more about these “spells”, which occur in limited numbers, are capable of long-range attacks, deal explosive & powerful damage… and can only be performed by someone who has the proper equipment and spends time in advance preparing them for use? :-D