While I hope Lemmy/Kbin takes off (heck, I’d love early internet forums to come back in style) and kicks off a second internet renaissance, the imminent collapse of Reddit legit is giving me anxiety. Hope y’all don’t mind if I vent a bit.

Firstly, there are a lot of “niche” communities on Reddit, mostly dedicated to individual games and the like. The kind of thing where fanart, announcements and discussions happen. In the short term, I don’t see them surviving the collapse. And if they do, they’ll probably move to a not-great platform like Discord or whatever Facebook comes out with.

Secondly, with SEO optimized AI generated garbage topping search results, Reddit has become an important reference when looking for reviews and opinions on things. As well as that, it has become somewhat of an archive of internet culture in a way. With subreddits moving to black out permanently and a push for users shredding their own data, there’s a very real chance that all of this content will be lost forever.