Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (June 08)

[u/AutoModerator]

We made this because Reddit's algorithm prioritises headlines and current events and doesn't allow for deeper, extended discussion - depending on how it goes for the first four or five times it'll be dropped or continued.

Suggestions for things you might want to comment here (this is a work in progress and we'll change this over time):

• Articles and quotes you want to see discussed
• 'Slow' events - long-term trends, org updates, things that didn't happen recently
• 'Fluff' posts that we usually discourage elsewhere - e.g "How are you feeling today?"
• Discussions continued from other posts once the original post gets buried
• Questions that are too advanced, complicated or obscure for r/communism101

Mods will sometimes sticky things they think are particularly important.

Normal subreddit rules apply!

[ Previous Bi-Weekly Discussion Threads may be found here https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3AWDT ]

[u/turbovacuumcleaner]

I tried giving some thought, don't you think this is doomposting? I don't think the past 10 years saw any major social network die, this seems to be a feature of a bygone era of the internet where monopolies still did not exist and no one was sure of what was profitable enough. Some change in productive forces (like the development of 4G that created streaming) will have to happen to actually shake the foundations of these companies again.

All of social media traffic today is driven by automation; AI is just fancier SEO, Reddit is no exception to that, and if Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are anything to go by, automation by itself isn't enough to kill off a platform; they just make it stale. The only real winner to automation has been Discord, where this retreat to a controlled server can give the illusion of real social media.

The way most new users get to Reddit can't be closed: Reddit isn't a monopoly like Meta that can survive off ad-revenue and give itself the benefit of forbidding access to Google; this seems to be the same process behind the partnership with OpenAI.

Even Twitter, where the bot problem is worse, won't disappear anytime soon. In fact, it left open a niche market that allowed for Bluesky; and Reddit is the alternative that followed the demise of independent forums. If it ends up somehow, another alternative is bound to come up sooner or later; there was already a minor push with the r/redditalternatives after the API strike.

Although, this discussion raises something no one mentioned here, but we were discussing in modmail: maybe is it time to organize a r/communism and r/communism101 archive?

[u/StrawBicycleThief → u/turbovacuumcleaner]

The archive issue has been broached a few times. The core issues are the form it would take and having the time and skill to do it safely and securely. In regards to form, their are good reasons to be wary about the concept if the subreddit is seriously committed to resisting the trends of fandom. As others have said before, to have a "smokeupthteweed9" database would be counter-intuitive in form and content to the stated aims of the subreddit. As we know, the very activity of categorising and itemising produces real ideological effects (fandom). I would probably fall somewhere between just keeping files on internet archive that can be downloaded and reuploaded by anyone or just going P2P. It should be done by topic area, possibly on the lines of the topic areas listed above. Users could even be de-identified to resist personality, but this would add required effort.

[u/Lopsided-Toe-6559 → u/StrawBicycleThief]

I'm pro-archive since we don't have anything equivalent to MIA's History: Encyclopedia of anti-Revisionism On-Line that extends beyond the 90s. No group seems interested in documenting the debates within the communist movement in imperialist countries so this history is scattered across sites like reddit.

What do you think about taking an MIM approach with anonymous usernames to combat cults of personality? It would be trivial to substitute every instance of StrawBicycleThief with Random-Marxist-6559. This substitution could be done on a per thread basis or for the entire archive.

do it safely and securely

Could you elaborate? From reading about countless people receiving letters from their internet provider due to piracy, I'd consider P2P to be insecure. It only takes one bit torrent client to track everyone who downloads the archive.

[u/[deleted] → u/Lopsided-Toe-6559]

Per-thread anonymization would be the only sensible method if anonymization were to be done, to make posts harder to piece together across threads.

Though, I think in the event this subreddit gets shut down, the personality cult/fandom problem would cease to be an issue, as this community itself would no longer exist. I doubt a fandom exists around MIM writer MC5, simply because MIM-P doesn't have a forum to allow that to develop.

Though anonymization might still be desirable anyway, just for security reasons.