Of course it's a fad. Services like this always appear in the midst of some specifically viral form of outrage, trying to exploit that opportunity while it's hot.

Well, I don't so much care whether it's a fad or not. SubscribeStar seems to be trying, and if they can keep MasterCard from harassing Payoneer into blocking them, then I'll keep trying to pay some people through them. At the end of the day, with their current traffic, they can sustain themselves. If they grow, they grow, if they stay the same, they are still fine.

I want to be able to send money to some people on a regular basis, whatever way they're accepting payments, I will do it. I've sent cheques to some people since I closed my Patreon account, that works okay too (but it's inconvenient to deposit cheques, so you have to send them once a quarter or year or so rather than once a month).

I doubt twitter is too worried about Gab

Mastodon could become a very powerful network though.

It is and so are other services being build on activitypub such as peertube and pixelpub.

Same with Reddit and Voat.

I think you and eli are both right. Neither Gab not Voat are likely to succeed, because of network effects.

The only way a new social network is likely to succeed is if it is part of a federation of social networks that communicate using protocols such as ActivityPub, making one big network where the whole exceeds the sum of thew parts.

Sure, but mostly because they’re full of exactly the sort of people I don’t want to interact with

That may well be true. But maybe some Gab people want to interact with some Voat people, and if the applications were interoperable they would be able to.

And I am sure dig was not worried about Reddit... and MySpace was not worried about Facebook, and AltaVista was not worried about Google....

The idea that Reddit, Twitter and Patreon can not be supplanted show an ignorance of history

They're not going to be supplanted by platforms that cater to marginal viewpoints. Gab and Voat, almost definitionally, cannot achieve mainstream success.

You make it sound like this activity happens in a vacuum, just people randomly getting ideas to create censorhip-free alternatives.

These alternatives come up because there are real problems with censorship on existing platforms (or let's say "perceived real by enough people"). If those problems will keep persisting and will get worse - then the alternatives will absolutely thrive. If Patreon and Visa and others will get some sense back - then alternatives will become a passing fad.

Not sure about others, but we are serious about that. 6 senior dev team, everyone left their job to make this dream true.