both companies notably ruined the internet in the 2010s by consolidating discourse then taking various steps to destroy the user experience and the feel of the communities for profit.
so, broadly, the web went from cozy, small hobby forums in the 90s and 00s, then with the 10s as a transitional period, the 20s being practically complete corporate control of online discourse.
it’s a bummer. but nothing lasts forever. where will we go next?
The experience from Brazil suggests that the viable ‘post-twitter’ is BlueSky. So one corporate-controlled platform that starts out okay and gets steadily worse is replaced by another, and the cycle continues.
I don’t think there is a viable ‘post-reddit’ unfortunately , because they built up their userbase at a time when people would actually want to use a link aggregator, before the experience of clicking any external links became fraught and exhausting. So now reddit has the userbase, and they have the means to host images and videos internally, and none of the bots or the lack of API or the general weirdness of the place is enough to get people to leave. Potential competitors assume that they should offer an alternative link aggregator, whereas really the only competitor is something that could magically offer a comparable userbase size.
Bluesky had the first wave of noticable spam accounts follow me this week. It’s going to be interesting to see how quickly they can quell that.