Paragraphs, please?

I hope x-post (should we call it that here?) is allowed. for some reason the formatting got messed up

I AM a little on the fence, as many others are - I haven’t deleted my 10yr Reddit account, st least not yet. But I WILL stay off the platform for at least a month. I intend to be very limited in my interactions there, for the foreseeable future, and only visit for specific reasons, not to just browse. I intend to spend the time I WOULD have spent, in finding similar communities here instead.

Remember that fediverse platforms don’t have to kill off centralised social media networks, they just have to be a viable alternative. Users will come and go, I’ll probably be one of them. I’ll try my best to build solid foundations for communities I care about here. But yeah, as much as I’d like to cast it off entirely there’s no doubt in my mind that I will keep Reddit around for the foreseeable future at least because the objective reality is that all of my hobbies have well-established roots there with huge knowledge bases, and psychologically that’s going to be difficult to let go of. Will I be thinking much more carefully about what kind of future I want to help build for social media when choosing where to put my future content though? Absolutely. And in my mind, it’s not on a platform that has proven time and time again that it is more than willing to sell its users down the river.

I just need Apollo.

Good points! I've been online since the '80s, so this isn't my first rodeo - not by a long shot. And I really dislike venture capitalists, having spent 7 years working in one of the largest venture capital law firms in America.

I'm going to be clear-eyed about this. There are some things I want that the Fediverse can't supply, at least not yet. Things that require a user base of a certain size. I'll go back to Reddit for those things.

Dating, for example. I found a while back that Reddit was the best place for me to meet compatible women. The Fediverse can't match that at this point. I don't even know if there are dating communities here, much less for demisexuals. And the odds of finding compatible women in my particular neck of the woods? Infinitesimal!

Another interest is gaming. At some point I expect to be looking for gamers to join a campaign I'll be starting. Again, that requires a large user base - particularly since I would like to find at least some gamers in my general area. The Fediverse can't fulfill that need for me. I hope that someday it can.

But my trust in Reddit is irrevocably broken. I'm not comfortable there any more. So I will be maintaining a strong presence here. My hope is that the Fediverse will become popular enough to meet some of those needs. I think it could happen.

People talk about the relative technological complexity of the Fediverse as a barrier to widespread adoption, but I'm skeptical about that. I remember when I had to explain to people what the internet was, and they looked at me like I was from Mars. Now I'm sure all of those people use the internet all the time, everyday. The technological gap wasn't insurmountable for them after all. The same, I believe, is true for the Fediverse.

One more thing: I'm pissed. I contributed a lot to Reddit over the years. Yes, I did it to feel good, for the most part. I recommended books to a hell of a lot of people over there, and I know that at least some of them actually read some of the books I suggested. That gave me a good feeling. The owners of Reddit took that away. So, if I may be forgiven for the expression, fuck them! I won't be giving them any more of my time and effort than the absolute minimum. I'd rather spend that time here, trying to make this a more inviting place for people who don't realize that Reddit is just screwing them.

Also, there are other things I could be doing with my time as well. There's a whole world of books to read, for example. 😄