Stand by for some sage scifi: community lessons in a post-Reddit universe. It’s been eight months since the Reddit blackout. We didn’t know what to expect last June, but we did know that Reddit jumped the shark of Internet relevance. They shut down third party apps, introduced API pricing, and crushed the biggest protest in their history. Since then, the topic of the Blackout has gone a bit dark – you can’t seem to find any top-level articles analyzing the blackout past 6/30/23 – and the media cycle has moved onto other topics.
But what happened to science fiction? Did the scifi community grow or change as a result of the Reddit blackout? I took a quick look over at Social-Rise (/r/scifi and /r/sciencefiction) and the results are startling – see for yourself:
Reddit Science Fiction Communities are Dying
Let’s talk about what the dots mean. In each of the three screenshots – the dots indicate daily post/comment activity on each subreddit. Higher dots mean higher activity, lower dots indicate lower activity. I couldn’t screenshot the entire table but you can see what the X and Y axis’ mean when you visit the URLs (/r/scifi and /r/sciencefiction).
Anyway, here’s the deal. Notice how the activity takes a huge dip beginning in July and stays there? Community engagement didn’t return after the Blackout ended. It’s not just /r/scifi or /r/sciencefiction. Check out the comment activity on /r/news – from a high of 1800 comments/day down to <100/day. People stopped participating in Reddit and they never came back.
Yikes. As noted in my previous post, the ‘move to monetize APIs [created] major cracks in its foundations of digital altruism and human-centered behavior.’ Redditors everywhere notice the difference. “The quality of posts on some subs has really dipped,” 1JL noted. “Like posts that have nothing to do with the subreddit. Every sub now feels like generic /r/funny or /r/videos. I swear the majority of stuff is posted by bots and probably commented on by bots.” Kalos9990 agreed: “This website is starting to become flooded with bots, and otherwise mods and auto mods banning and banning users for reasons they absolutely cannot predict, ultimately culminating in a very frustrating user experience.”
Why Reddit’s Scifi Communities Died
People loved Reddit. Reddit was about them, about what they cared about. Boardroom and investor shenanigans torpedoed the values that Reddit was built upon. Alexis Ohanian called it last year: “99% of it is just showing up and doing the work of being a community leader, which means (mostly) listening, starting productive conversations, role-modeling the behavior you wanna see in your spaces. Online community-building is more like IRL community-building than people realize. Thing is — most people don’t wanna do the work. And it’s a lot of work.”
It’s not hard to kill a community. Online communities fail so often that they have a breakdown over at Meetwaves on how/why online communities fail (Hey Reddit, check out ‘Chapter 6: Too Focused on the Company & Brand’). Communities succeed when you give people 1. a REASON TO JOIN and 2. a REASON TO STAY. What a concept. Nobody’s going to join a brand community if the only thing to do is walk around going ‘I like brand!,’ and ‘here’s new brand stuff to buy!’ There has to be a driving reason for people to visit – something they can do there that they can’t do anywhere else.
Why Communities Exist
You don’t have to think too hard about it. Community Internet spaces, like IRL community spaces, exist because of public-spirited, civic-minded individuals. Actual people – full stop. Those people, care about the communities they are in and no AI or DevOps automation tool can take their place. Make the place, people will show up, and they’ll figure out what to do with the space. Keep it available, safe, and fun. Reddit tried and failed to be that place. Sad, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about.
Online community spaces – public places for people to talk about stuff – are vital, especially in a post-COVID era. Oh sure, they exist for the standard buzzword reasons: “an online community or internet community is a group of people with a shared interest or purpose who use the internet to communicate with each other.” True, but that’s missing the point. It’s not just about ‘shared interests’ or purposes.’ Communities are places where you don’t to pay to exist.
Huh, wha? Pay to exist? Yeah, that’s a big point. Humans need and seek out ‘third places,’ where people go to converse with others and connect with their community. “Parks and public libraries are some of the best places to gather with friends and strangers in the United States for no cost at all.” If your ‘third place’ is getting stronger and stronger ‘buy something or leave’ vibes – a la Reddit – you’ll find someplace else to go.
Why /M/Scifi exists
TL;DR – All this is why I started /m/scifi over at Kbin.social. Communities thrive when people do the work of building a community. R/scifi and /r/sciencefiction were driven by a number of different unpaid mods with a variety of interests and agendas. None of them seemed to be interested in ‘listening, starting productive conversations, or role-modeling the behavior.’ Maybe your experience was different, but I always felt intimidated – a kid at Kamp Krusty where the bullies were camp counselors. There had to be a better way, but not as long as Reddit was around.
The Fediverse is a new kind of social internet – ‘a rare chance to unbundle the internet, to pull apart an existing system and rebuild it, piece by piece, in vastly better ways.’ We had an opportunity to rebuild our scifi community, base it on the best people-centric, non-monetized practices of other social communities. Do it for free. Do it because you care. Give freely – let others do the same. That’s it.
Democratizing your ‘third place’ forces it to play nice. I can’t monetize /m/scifi – I don’t really want to. I mean, think about how weird previous online community founders became (e.g – Richard ‘Lowtax’ Kyanka) and ultimately self-destructed. Hanging in the background as I do, I can engage as much (or as little) as I want while other community members do the same.
It’s been working – Scifi communities, in a post-Reddit universe, have been thriving. We started /m/scifi last June and now we’re up to 6700 members. I’m proud of that. Tiny little community, but we’ve got scifi fans (and authors!) lining up to talk to each other. That’s something to be proud of.
Everybody Needs Someplace to Go
What I’ve learned (so far) in this experience is that – institutions can be threatened, communities can self-destruct. Where Reddit has set itself up for failure, my feeling is that the Fediverse will succeed. Nobody has the keys to the car, anymore – everyone can go or stay or move over (it’d take two seconds to set up /n/scifi, for example) if the community isn’t working for them. When/if running /m/scifi starts taking too much time and energy, I’ll bring in other mods – people who have already earned their stripes as community participants.
For now, the doors are open and the lights are on. Welcome home, weirdos.
