It very much still is

Digg, and the name still exists but the site is a wholly different beast then it was, no submitting or voting on posted articles.

I agree that Reddit will become irrelevant to internet power users. However, I disagree that it takes a massive fuckup to lose the critical mass of users.

A simple way to explain this is to imagine that everyone has an individual “I’m pissed and I leave” threshold; if a platform displeases a user more than that threshold, they leave.

For power users, this threshold is really low, so they ditch platforms like Reddit faster. However, that does not mean that the others aren’t getting displeased - they do; it might not be enough to convince them to leave, but it quickly piles up with other things displeasing them.

As such, even a large platform can lose that critical mass of users over time, even without a massive fuckup. It’s just about small things piling up.

Another thing to consider is that power users are more important to a platform than the rest of the userbase, because the power users interact with the platform more. And they’re typically the ones doing janny crap, or finding and sharing content, or that actually have anything meaningful to add instead of “lol lmao”. So once the power users leave, the platform becomes less desirable for the others too, and that’s recursive - as the power users leave, the almost-power users leave too, then the ones after them, so goes on. And there the critical mass goes down the drain.

I dunno… we could hit ecological collapse first.

I want to be clear here that this is dangerous messaging. While any individual vote likely has little effect on the outcome of an election, it’s people’s collective vote that does ultimately decide the outcome. And when the electorate is disengaged, disinterested, and apathetic, that is the environment in which fascism and authoritarianism thrives. Voting is not and should not be the end of a citizen’s political participation, but it is still vitally important. Voting should only be the foundation of citizen political participation. It’s also important to campaign, to discuss important political issues with others, and to protest and take direct action against the injustice of the political class. But if you don’t vote and spread the idea that voting is meaningless, your efforts will change nothing.

This line in particular comes a lot of young people, and it is an absolutely understandable and reasonable conclusion for them to come from seeing as they are the most politically neglected group, and politicians almost never pay more than lip service to the concerns of the young. Youth turnout in elections is historically rubbish, so why would any rational politician pay heed to the demands of a voting bloc that won’t influence the outcome of an election? Politicians who pander to youth voters will lose to politicians who pander to old voters simply because youth voters will stay home while old voters will show up at the polls and vote their guy into office.

It costs almost nothing to vote and to encourage others to vote as well. So do it. It is irresponsible to spread the idea that voting is meaningless without also attaching the context that if you don’t vote, you have no power at all.

Your vote does matter, but your just 1 out of 330 million people. Vote for your locality, and then for national elections for good measure. One day we WILL get a national popular vote unburdened by the electoral college, but we must stay the course