So was Slashdot, Digg, etc.

There will be other places.

Stop enabling centralization, and promote decentralised options =D

It only has that benefit because of investment, and that investment would have never come had it been a non-profit.

that's bullshit. It could be run similar to Wikipedia.

That's not what I'm saying. Their investors wouldn't tolerate that now, so the only way that reality could exist would be if they had never taken investment. Could a Reddit that never got into HN or never attracted investment, instead relying on grants and donations like Wikipedia, be what it is today? I'm not convinced.

Perhaps this could happen though, if they came up with a reasonable fund raiser to buy out that stake? $3B is all it takes :-)

https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/05/raiseit/

If this hypothesis where true couldn't you just build a niche Reddit clone that is run as a non-profit. People certainly would switch if it is so much better.

Reddit’s value is in the user base, not the software or style of the site.

Sure, but the argument was about what would be different if it was run or even started as a non-profit? Tencent, for example, could still become a "sponsor" and board member and try to influence everything.

This is the premise behind https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes

Sadly invite only for now.

But this still needs money for development and growth. I don't see how a non-profit, magically needs less money for that.