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> If that wasn't so immensely difficult and expensive, everyone would be doing it.

While not a message board, the Wikimedia Foundation does well financially, hosts lots of content, receives massive traffic, and has an open API.

> So the really difficult part, the one where the value ultimately comes from, does seem to lie in hosting and running such a community, and in attracting users.

Federated authentication and open protocols are a thing. Imagine the internet of old with countless message boards, but under a single sign on.

As far as content moderation, folks talk a lot about AI and the spam it will bring, however, there is also the opportunity for AI moderation.

> Federated authentication and open protocols are a thing.

In theory, yes. In practice, they are a niche endeavor used by a bunch of hackers and computer science nerds.

Lemmy is constantly mentioned in these discussions as an open source, federated Reddit alternative, yet the largest Lemmy instance has 1500 monthly active users. That's... nothing. There are tens of thousands of individual subreddits bigger than that. The "Fediverse" isn't going anywhere.

The beauty of open protocols is they don't preclude for-profit enterprise hosting large instances on their own server farm. This is already the case with email: I can host my own email server or signup with a small (or large) or free (or commercial) email provider and still communicate with everyone, regardless of their provider.

It's generally not in the interest of commercial providers to use open protocols. They do it for email because due to its history, there is a very long tail of small mailservers that they need to federate with to be useful, but the big email providers are all working to phase out the "open" parts, with anti-spam measures making it almost impossible to self-host, and privileged delivery mechanisms like push notifications that require closed APIs to use.

The Internet is not moving towards open communication protocols, it's moving away from them.

> with anti-spam measures making it almost impossible to self-host, and privileged delivery mechanisms like push notifications that require closed APIs to use.

There are anti-spam measures that don't require locking down protocols. Ideally, a user's feed would only consist of message boards they subscribe to. Similarly, message boards could limit posting to subscribed users, approved users, paying users, or those users with a "certificate" proving their human - the latter would be akin to certificate authorities we have today who assign certificates to websites.

> It's generally not in the interest of commercial providers to use open protocols.

Not to derail, but that's the capitalist's contradiction: a capitalist points to competition as a theoretical advantage of capitalism, but then in practice does everything to eliminate it.

> There are anti-spam measures that don't require locking down protocols.

Of course. Locking down protocols is never required. It's being done because it benefits the largest service providers by restricting their users' ability to move elsewhere. You're acting as if the status quo is an unfortunate situation that can be resolved by giving service providers the necessary technologies to interoperate. The exact opposite is the case. Service providers are actively undermining open protocols (EEE). They are very much aware that federation is possible, and they do not want it.

> It's being done because it benefits the largest service providers by restricting their users' ability to move elsewhere.

I agree which is why it will take a 501(c)(3) non-profit to drive the change.

What's going on though that a $5 / month server can't handle 1500 users posting a few bytes of text. I realize we're talking millions of bytes that have to be processed, but computers are fast. Are the protocols inefficient? Is the code just really inefficient? What's going on?

I wonder how many are willing tonpay that $5 per month. The community as a whole is worth disproportionally less if it becomes 90% smaller.

I mean, why can't a single $5 instance handle 1500 users? 1500 users might generate a few megabytes of text, that's next to nothing.

It can't scale without spinning up new (heavy) instance. Its database is hosted in the same <<thing>> as the web server ( https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/install_docker... ). Note that it's a single container that exposes port 80 and 443 - the database is hosted inside of that container.

That makes scaling the main instance impractical without redesigning how its built, deployed, secured, and connects to its backend database.

Note also that adding other sites increases this load without adding users as polling for content constantly is likely more expensive than having a user connect directly (and use it for a limited time).

Why does it need to scale? Does my laptop need to scale when I open a 100 megabyte file? No, it just does it in a few milliseconds then goes back idle. What I mean is, 1500 users sounds like a load you handle with a Raspberry Pi in a forgotten corner. I just don't understand what is happening to overload even the weakest of cloud instances?

>> In practice, they are a niche endeavor used by a bunch of hackers and computer science nerds.

I don't know anything about federation, but what you said basically describes the Internet when it started, so I don't see how you can imagine it is not going anywhere based on that. Most tech starts as a "niche endeavor of a bunch of hackers and computer science nerds" (I'm also thinking of Apple starting at a computer club).

Federation and open protocols aren't new ideas, and the vast majority of people have collectively decided that there is no value for them in those ideas. This isn't pioneering stuff that everyone would jump onto if only it was known/available to them. It is available, and has been for a long time, and the people are not biting. I see no reason to assume that this is going to change.

> Wikimedia Foundation does well financially

The ever present nags to donate would beg to differ

> There isn't, and there has never been, a large (hundreds of millions of active users) online community that wasn't run by a for-profit entity.

Usenet.

Usenet has/had hundreds of millions of active users?!?

That's certainly news to me.

I can’t find anyone who says how many users, but 110-120 thousand newsgroups.

With a tenth active users and ten times the spammers!

Which is just absolutely full of spam now, plus you need to pay for access (largely).

How about "email"?

Do people forget it's a common protocol that isn't monopolized by anyone and is the widest prevalent even today, perhaps because of it?

I don't think many people consider "email" to be a community in any meaningful way. The same way people don't consider physical mail, the telephone network or the internet as a whole a community.

Is a company that exists for a decade without turning a profit really a for-profit entity? It looks more like a robin hood scheme to distribute investor money to developers.

> According to CEO Steve Huffman, who hosted an Ask Me Anything (AMA) this afternoon, the company has never been profitable.

Why would anyone invest in this IPO they are trying so hard to make happen? I can’t think of anything left for them to do after this length of time to become profitable. The only things left are the things they are doing that alienate the user base. It seems Reddit is Uber and WeWork with a different hat on.

> I used to believe that too, but reality has convinced me of the opposite. There isn't, and there has never been, a large (hundreds of millions of active users) online community that wasn't run by a for-profit entity. So the really difficult part, the one where the value ultimately comes from, does seem to lie in hosting and running such a community, and in attracting users. If that wasn't so immensely difficult and expensive, everyone would be doing it.

Your logic is: there has never been a not-for-profit large online community, therefore the value comes from the specific for-profit company that currently exists.

That is unconvincing because it is overly specific in who it is attributing value to. Is Facebook responsible for most of the value of its community? No, because if Facebook didn't exist, Myspace would still exist and do the same thing that Facebook is doing. Therefore, Facebook (and Myspace) are both not creating the value, because if they didn't exist, someone else would exist that does the same thing. The main reason there's one behemoth is because of network effects, which makes it nearly impossible for competition to start, which gives the illusion that that behemoth is doing something unique and exceptionally skilful. But they are not. One valid interpretation is that they're free-riding off the community that they've captured.

> Your logic is: there has never been a not-for-profit large online community, therefore the value comes from the specific for-profit company that currently exists.

No, my logic is: there has never been a not-for-profit large online community, therefore the value comes from infrastructure, network effects, and brand recognition – and not from "the community" as commonly claimed. Once the infrastructure is in place (which requires immense upfront investment) and enough money is spent on promotion, the userbase will cross the critical threshold required for growth, and content will be generated as a result.

Just think about it: If it's really "the users" that bring all the value to the table, then why can't those users manage to organize into a community that's not run by greedy profiteers? Because the "running" is where the real difficulty, and thus the real source of value, is.

> infrastructure, network effects, and brand recognition

That's reasonable, but then you leap from there into giving credit to Reddit per se, instead of a Reddit-like company that would exist in Reddit's place if Reddit didn't exist. That's where we disagree. In Reddit's absence, another company would rise to do the same thing, therefore Reddit is providing little to no unique value to the world. The delta of the world with and without Reddit is close to zero. Hence no value.

> If it's really "the users" that bring all the value to the table, then why can't those users manage to organize into a community that's not run by greedy profiteers? Because the "running" is where the real difficulty, and thus the real source of value, is.

This is a conflation of necessary and sufficient conditions. Infrastructure, by itself, is a necessary but not sufficient condition. So are users. Either of these things in isolation have no value because neither of them are sufficient conditions.

> The delta of the world with and without Reddit is close to zero. Hence no value.

The same is true for the users. There are 8 billion people on the planet, two thirds of which use the Internet. There's no shortage of users able to form online communities. By the above logic, those communities have no value since they are replenishable from a near-limitless supply of new users.

No, because Reddit has captured all users that want to use a Reddit-like service. If Reddit's users all died, Reddit and all potential substitute Reddit-like services would die. But if Reddit itself dies, a Reddit-like clone would most likely arise, because Reddit itself isn't providing unique value to the world.

I’m not sure how you can say Reddit deserves none of the credit for creating Reddit. It has to be at least as valuable (from a revenue perspective) to create the site as it costs to design and run one of the most trafficked site in the world otherwise no company would just magically appear in its place.

You almost act as if some people stumbled upon great software/infrastructure and improperly started charging people to use it. This isn’t some mountain spring some company claimed and is now charging the tribes down stream for access.

The communities on Reddit aren’t the valuable part. I don’t visit 99% of the subreddits. The valuable thing is I can go on one site, find a subreddit for everything I’m interested in, participate with the same account and have no learning curve/same UI/UX as the other communities I’m a part of. You can try to argue that those communities being there is what’s valuable to me, but without Reddit they all wouldn’t be on the same site.

Your argument reads as some poor adaption of the labor theory of value. Right now Reddit isn’t profitable, as long as these economics hold, no one is going to fill in for Reddit if it were to close. And all the mods and users can’t change that.

> without Reddit they all wouldn’t be on the same site.

Without a Reddit-like company, they wouldn't all be on the same site. That's the key distinction. If a clone won't arise if Reddit shuts down, then yes, you are correct, Reddit is adding a lot of value. As is, given they have a monopoly on this vertical of social media due to network effects, whether or not a clone would arise is a hypothesis that we can't test, but my money would be on a clone arising in their absence.

"Reddit is providing little to no unique value to the world. The delta of the world with and without Reddit is close to zero. Hence no value."

That's not the definition of "value" that everyone uses.

Suppose there was a bread company called Breddit that baked loaves of bread and sold them. It's very easy to argue that if Breddit didn't exist, someone else would bake and sell bread. No duh. But that doesn't mean a company that makes bread doesn't have value.

There's pretty much no company in the world that offers unique value...

It's not analogous. The bread company is lowering the price by providing competition. That's value that I get from their existence, that I wouldn't get if they disappeared. But I do agree with the proposition that companies in perfectly competitive markets without a differentiated product, aren't adding that much value.

It also ignores the capitalistic system it lives in. Commercial projects prosper because everything is designed to make that happen.

" There isn't, and there has never been, a large (hundreds of millions of active users) online community that wasn't run by a for-profit entity."

What?

Sure there have been. Somethingawful? 4chan? Wikipedia? Usenet? etc

They each commanded a significant portion of the attention of the community on the internet at the time.

If you don't limit it to hundreds of millions, i belong to mid-sized successful communities (woodworking, electrical, DIY, etc) that are maybe 100k-1 million users, doing fine, have been doing fine for decades, and don't have for-profit entities behind them.

In fact, almost all meaningful communities i have belonged to online were not run by for-profit entities. Some later got taken over by for-profit entities, but then failed ;)

"does seem to lie in hosting and running such a community, and in attracting users. If that wasn't so immensely difficult and expensive, everyone would be doing it."

This is not at all related to the for-profit piece. The difficulty is in becoming popular, which seems to be, maybe mostly luck? Because unlike what you say, everyone is doing it. Is there any evidence at all that the for-profit was a pre-req to being popular?

In a world where reddit was not for-profit from the start, i don't think it would have changed anything.

It was a place that most Digg users were willing to go to. That was dumb luck. If Digg had not been so stupid, Reddit would not be popular, for-profit or not.

The thing is, the site itself while not easy to build or maintain is ultimately a commodity.

Reddit replaced Digg. Some other startup will replace Reddit.

It’s the users and the content they produce that’s irreplaceable.

Maybe sites like this will only be able to function in the long run if there is some profit sharing involved. Every user gets X ads in their feed every month, and for every 5X posts or 50X comments one ad disappears.

Is it reddit by itself that does the "attracting users" part or is it the community activity, aka the users?

No not seriously. The big instances restricted account creation so people use lower trafficked instances

4chan