Imagine yourself as a normie. Someone who has never used Reddit, but has heard about it. You decide one day to create an account on there to try it out and see what the fuss is all about.
Right off the bat, you notice the shitty UI. It is laggy, cluttered, and annoying to use... but that's fine, it's popular for a reason, right? Anyway, you just had an avatar shoved down your throat and your ready to get started.
You go look through the subs and see what's going on. You see a few that you think are interesting and add them to your feed. Not even 10 seconds later, you get a message in your inbox:
"You've been automatically banned from r/vaginas because you subscribed to r/penises. We don't support misogyny here!"
You think to yourself "wow, that was weird". But whatever, you decide to move on.
After signing to a few subs, you start scrolling through your feed, and you see an interesting post on r/technology about a new phone that came out. You go into the comments hoping to see what the specs are and instead you see...
- People arguing about Republicans
- People comparing the phone company to Nazi Germany
- A few people downvoted into oblivion for no reason
- Incredibly shallow and unfunny humor
- Random mainstream pop culture references You close the post because you're not a masochist, and decide to move on.
You stumble upon an another interesting post, this time a discussion about a show that you like on the r/Netflix. You've seen a couple of episodes and decide to leave a comment with your opinions on it.
Huh, that's weird, you got a message in your box almost immediately. It's too fast to be a reply, so what could it be?
"Your post was automatically removed for not meeting the minimum karma threshold. No, we won't tell you what it is"
You think "okay, that's annoying, but I guess I'll just try a different sub".
You notice a fun sub where people share their shower thoughts, and some of the posts are funny. You decide to try it out yourself, because why not?
Uh oh, your inbox went off again. What now?
"Your post was removed because it is vaguely similar to this post from 2009."
Alright now, you're starting to get pissed off. But you're still giving this site the benefit of the doubt. You decide to give it one last chance.
You remembered that liked games, and so you go to the gaming sub to see what's going on. You see a post about GTA, and decide to read the comments when you notice some idiot with hundreds of upvotes saying that they should bring back Big Smoke from GTA III. You leave a little comment correcting them, and decide to leave it at that.
Shortly after, you decided to leave another comment... but you can't post the second comment for some reason. That's weird, your internet is fine. Did Reddit go down? You refresh the page, and there it is. The dreaded inbox notification.
"You've been permanently banned from r/gaming"
What? You didn't shit. So you try to ask the mods why they banned you... and you get this:
"You've been banned for rule Title 18 r/gaming Code § 81.4 C - bigotry"
Wtf? You didn't violate that rule. You ask what gives. The mods respond with this:
"You can't disagree with me on this sub, doing so is bigotry. No, I won't be lifting your ban. Don't ever contact us again. Go cry to your mommy loser"
Followed by
"You've been temporarily muted from this sub for 28 days, you won't be able to contact the moderators"
Apparently the idiot you tried to correct was a mod. Even so, this reaction is unwarranted. You think "wow, fuck that guy, what a douche", and decide to let it go... but you can't because not even an hour later, you get a new message in your inbox:
"You've been permanently banned from Reddit for harassment"
Bonus: You get a reply back from the idiot mod in the GTA post doubling down on Big Smoke being from GTA III. He wanted to get the last word
That's when you take a deep breath, close your laptop, calmly stand up, walk to the nearest window, and chuck your laptop out.
I mean this from the very bottom of my heart, fuck Reddit.
Decentralization isn't left wing or right wing, that's just a moronic analysis. Decentralization has a wide appeal but unless it gets simplified and standardized it will never become adopted by the mainstream. Places like Lemmy which are littered with gatekeepers like you doom this place to forever being a niche. If this place ever hopes of rivaling reddit, it needs to appeal to more than political extremists and tech nerds