If a mod is powertripping, then why would you want to be a part of the community?
Because the size of a community matters, and they’re not fungible. Back on reddit, my city’s subreddit was run by power-tripping mods. Sure, I could try to create an alternative – and somebody actually did – but it had multiple orders of magnitudes fewer users than the original sub and almost nobody would actually see what you posted there, so what’s the fucking point?
The entire reason I wanted to comment in the original sub was to try to politically persuade and influence people in my city. Censoring me from that sub was extremely effective even if alternatives theoretically existed.
But your city has other communities on other platforms and local social meetups. You don’t have to use Reddit.
Well, I don’t use Reddit anymore – it has joined the list of oligarch-owned shit that I’m boycotting (along with Facebook and Twitter). And yes, I do participate in local politics IRL.
But that still doesn’t invalidate what I wrote. The fact is that these platforms have too much fucking power as de-facto replacements for the public forum, and whether you refuse to use them or you get kicked out from them, it marginalizes you in a very real way that affects the real world. That’s a problem even if the possibility exists to go commune with other rejects on a platform the majority don’t give a shit about.
Not to mention, if I had a nickel for every real-world event hosted by a real-world local government, community, or activist organization that I missed because it was only advertised on Facebook, I’d have a big pile of nickels.
