This is going to be a short and sweet little history of Reddit. Reddit was founded in 2005.
Take a look at what Reddit looked like in 2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20061206235353/http://reddit.com/
Note that it didn’t have subreddits back then because the user base was too small.
Look at Reddit in 2008 (December 31): https://web.archive.org/web/20081231080128/http://www.reddit.com/reddits/
Politics had just 72,314 subscribers. Technology had 85,678 subscribers, and the “Nicher” Food subreddit had only 4,438 subscribers.
Lemmy/Kbin follows the same path. Initially, generalist communities like Politics and Technology will have the most momentum and gain subscribers, just like Reddit did back then. As the user base grows, “niche” communities will be able to sustain themselves.
Let’s not think about the Reddit of today, let’s think about Reddit of old. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
So far on Lemmy, whenever I see someone comment this, it’s because they’re mad Reddit got “toxic towards my free speech to stupid ass MAGA nonsense”. Is that what you mean by Reddit being “toxified”?
I think there’s a lot of people who desire free speech outside of MAGA people.
But I even believe they should have free speech too. Free speech is the most important element of our society imo.
The problem is some people only believe in free speech for their ideas. They want to censor the other side.
I believe in free speech but disruptions should be prevented.
Reddit took a weird approach to Covid which caused a lot of misinformation to proliferate without any discussion.
People were banned if they questioned the efficacy of masks. Leading experts in the field were saying they were not effective. Yet, Reddit was trying to determine what the “truth” was.
I believe it should be discussed. Now we it resorts to just name calling or cliche such as follow the science. It needs to be put down.
Passing ideas and debate are good for society.