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I agree that we should be better off in a world where people paid for things with money and not their privacy. But paying with privacy happens even for paid-for products, e.g. "smart TVs" and phones, Windows, internet connections, driving your car in public, digital cable.

First they said no one had to pay, and they subjected us to ads... Then, they said, well, you'll have to pay, if you don't want to see our increasingly annoying ads... Then, they got our money. Then, they decided to subject us to ads, again...

Everyone says "users need to pay" but there's a second alternative that is, imo, much better: technical folk run servers for their friends and families.

This is how the fediverse works, and it's _vastly_ better than any subscription service (not least because it means that anyone, regardless of financial situation, can find a server to be a part of.)

There's a fedi version of Reddit (lemmy) but it seems to have been a bit of a half-cooked design, rather than something that could truly take over for Reddit anytime soon.

In short, it's time to return to SomethingAwful. Everything old is new again! Do you have stairs in your house!

I am protected.

My recollection of the great migration to reddit was because Digg was crashing. That's probably the only reason Reddit has stayed up as long as it has, it's back end eng has held up. I'm open to being schooled here.

No, what we need is someone who is just happy with a business that pays for itself and gives a healthy profit for the owner, not "omfg, shitloads of money". Reddit is - as far as I know - profitable. All employees are paid, all costs are paid, and the owners get their share. That's a stable arrangement. Greed is what's unbalancing it. And despite what some people think: Greed is not good. And Gordon Gecko was the villain.