I suppose in the same way the dictionary does – the importance or worth of something.
When one has something they hold important, they won't want to give it up. If you expect others to continually give up something they deem important and not offer them anything in return (or only offer things they do not see as being as important), they are going to quickly grow disgruntled.
If the government took control of Reddit, it still needs people to operate. Not just developers, but people to build computers, people supplying power to run the servers, people providing connectivity, etc. along with other resources that people have. Generally, these people a high importance on their time and other resources. You need to offer something pretty compelling to get them to give it up – they will look for a fair trade.
That means other people need to give things up in return to make it a fair trade. Food is usually a pretty compelling offer. Most people will give up important things if you offer food[0] in exchange[1]. Is r/farming compelling enough to get farmers to give up their food for? Not likely.
Yes, a government can point a gun at their backs and tell them they must give up food to the workers at Reddit. And that might work for a while, but eventually they will become disgruntled as described before. "I'm slaving in the fields all day and all I get is a few minutes on r/farming before bed in return? That's not fair!" they will start to cry. This is when you'll start to see protests, conflict, and perhaps even a fall of government.
[0] Replace food/farmers with any other compelling good/service.
[1] In practice, you'll offer money. But remember money is just an IOU. Everyone will ultimately redeem a portion of the IOUs they collect for food.
> but obviously it would be harder to collect donations to run Reddit
Seems that way. Gold was effectively their attempt at that, but it doesn't appear to have amounted to much.
> I agree, that's really the crux of it and it's too bad.
Is it? Discussion forums are a commodity.
Reddit didn't do anything Usenet wasn't already doing 30 years earlier, other than providing a client with better UX. But arguably clients like Apollo provided even better UX than Reddit and, based on what came out of that drama, it appears Apollo was taking an even larger share of the net value than Reddit.
I suppose in the same way the dictionary does – the importance or worth of something.
When one has something they hold important, they won't want to give it up. If you expect others to continually give up something they deem important and not offer them anything in return (or only offer things they do not see as being as important), they are going to quickly grow disgruntled.
If the government took control of Reddit, it still needs people to operate. Not just developers, but people to build computers, people supplying power to run the servers, people providing connectivity, etc. along with other resources that people have. Generally, these people a high importance on their time and other resources. You need to offer something pretty compelling to get them to give it up – they will look for a fair trade.
That means other people need to give things up in return to make it a fair trade. Food is usually a pretty compelling offer. Most people will give up important things if you offer food[0] in exchange[1]. Is r/farming compelling enough to get farmers to give up their food for? Not likely.
Yes, a government can point a gun at their backs and tell them they must give up food to the workers at Reddit. And that might work for a while, but eventually they will become disgruntled as described before. "I'm slaving in the fields all day and all I get is a few minutes on r/farming before bed in return? That's not fair!" they will start to cry. This is when you'll start to see protests, conflict, and perhaps even a fall of government.
[0] Replace food/farmers with any other compelling good/service.
[1] In practice, you'll offer money. But remember money is just an IOU. Everyone will ultimately redeem a portion of the IOUs they collect for food.
> but obviously it would be harder to collect donations to run Reddit
Seems that way. Gold was effectively their attempt at that, but it doesn't appear to have amounted to much.
> I agree, that's really the crux of it and it's too bad.
Is it? Discussion forums are a commodity.
Reddit didn't do anything Usenet wasn't already doing 30 years earlier, other than providing a client with better UX. But arguably clients like Apollo provided even better UX than Reddit and, based on what came out of that drama, it appears Apollo was taking an even larger share of the net value than Reddit.