There is something I don’t understand with people who rant about Reddit: if you hate it so much, why do you stay there?

I had a Reddit account myself. I wasted it and moved on. I certainly don’t torture myself with it anymore: the communities here on Lemmy are smaller but they’re a lot nicer to be a part of, so it’s a no-brainer.

I don’t know if it has any legal value, but here’s what I’ve been doing with online services that really matter (not Reddit, I don’t give a shit about Reddit, but things like my bank):

I read the TOS - which, in the case of actual serious online services, tends to be shorter - and I make a note of anything I don’t like in it. Then I click agree, then I send an email to info@, support@, legal@, webmaster@ and whatever other vaguely relevant email I can find in the TOS’ issuer’s domain telling them this:

"I clicked okay because I needed to do XYZ and there was no button to discuss your terms or disagree. But I disagree with the following points. Here are my counter-conditions:

[…]

If you disagree with my conditions, please send me or my lawyer - who is copied on this email - your counter-proposal within 1 (one) week. If you do not sent me or my lawyer an email within 1 (one) week, I shall consider my conditions accepted, legally binding and superseding the relevant sections of your original TOS."

And I copy my lawyer.

I’ve never gotten any reply, because no actual human reads those email addresses. If anything comes up, I’ll pull the counter-email I sent them with my conditions, which they agreed to by not answering. I’ve never had to use them, but I really wish I’ll get the opportunity to test them in court some day, just for shits and giggles.

And yes, I have enough disposable to pay a lawyer to do this kind of shit. I’m a spiteful man when it comes to tech companies, and I’m quite ready to bankrupt myself to fuck them in the ass.

I used to like cocaine, but I hated the addiction and I hated what it did to my nose.

But here’s the thing: you can’t have cocaine without the side effects. So I chose to stop cocaine. It’s less fun in the short term, but getting your life back together and enjoying the simple pleasures in life more than make up for it in the long run.

You need to choose Reddit with the side effects, or no Reddit and work on making Lemmy fun. You can’t have the Reddit hit without the side effects.

But if you put in the effort of trying to make Lemmy fun, it’ll be more rewarding, and it will help rebuild worthwhile communities away from Reddit for the benefit of everybody.

Up to you.

I know you jest, but pirates - real ones - were among the most honest people there was with one another. They were honest mainly because if they weren’t, they quickly walked the plank.

Also, pirates shared the loot a lot more equally than modern capitalists share the wealth today, and they set up one of the first form of mutualised social security system in the world. You can read more about it in this article.

In short: I would trust Reddit pirates a lot more than I’ll ever trust Reddit itself.

This boggles the mind on two levels:

• Who the hell pays for Reddit upmods?
• If the point is to convince other Redditors to pay for something scammy, who the hell parts with any amount of money on the basis of something posted on Reddit?

Everybody knows you shouldn’t talk about periods, silly.