As another ancient old thing - I was on Fidonet and Citanet, and I used to bangpath my way to anon.penet.fi - I agree in general, but I'm not sure I agree with you about the unusually caustic nature of Reddit. It reminds me very much of parts of the old Alt hierarchy; a fetid swamp of scum and villainy.

EDIT: Update begins here, I somehow posted too early, and now the servers are cranky.

Up to a certain point, that sort of chaos can be invigorating. And for a time it was. I've seen Reddit become exponentially more toxic over the last year, and it's far less likely to find something interesting floating on top of the scum.

The most toxic thing about reddit is that it's hardly chaotic at all. Everyone has gotten sorted into their own epistemic bubbles, which are defended to the last ditch.

But I do love a bit of chaos. I like a place where people mingle and a discussion may turn in very unpredictable directions. That has it's upsides and downsides; for one thing, it's metastable at best. Usenet really was never the same after it was discovered by the spammers. But before then, there had been trolls. Even then, it was a game to certain sorts to find an innocent community and disrupt it "for the lulz." That phrase might even date back to Alt.flame.

But that's only one source of friction. There's the spammer/monetize/exploiter mindset, the ones who see no good thing without thinking "wow, wouldn't it be great if we could strip-mine that?"

And then there's the control-freaks. There are several subcategories of control-freak and some are not particularly toxic. Keeping the packets running on time is pretty important. But it can become hilariously unproductive very quickly. I think the Scientology flap was one of the best examples of that - when Scientology tried to sue the Internet. I see the most problematic ones as Social Conservatives with religious motivations. Some focus on disruption - some on exploitation.

But they have learned, and Reddit is definitely a big fat juicy target. There was a huge influx of that sort from Digg - /r/conservative seems much like the old Digg Patriots. Reddit is simply too large and too fast moving for them to wreck the place - or perhaps they have learned from an obvious mistake; you can't control the message if the means of control are simply eliminated. Pao was possibly the single worst possible choice to bring Reddit into line - but that assumes the people who chose her understood what was even possible. I'm going to assume she was hired on her merits as a control freak and power-junkie. Without judgement - that's just not going to work.

Having said that, I'm not sure it would be possible to salvage both community AND have a revenue stream to monetize. That's because - well, I think there is very little understanding of people in general and toxic behaviors in particular. Certainly if management is itself toxic, they won't welcome inquiry, much less change strategy. AOL, Facebook, Yahoo Groups... All of these have or had thriving communities that they managed to kill off. And I think this may be that people qualified to manage a company are the last people who should be consulted on the quality of conversation and human interactions.

The simple sadists who bring us the dregs of reddit and the howling lunatics that fuel the activist right object to reasonable discussion, for very different reasons, I would imagine.

So if the /b/tards don't get you, the concern trolls will. And if you become the focus of media attention - if you become fashionable - the signal-to-noise ratio becomes untenable. After a few decades of seeing places come and go, due to various combinations of toxic communities, ham-fisted community management and inept attempts to monetize, it's likely reddit's turn.

Or perhaps it will be lucky and become the next livejournal - a quiet, unfashionable backwater, covered in moss and memories, but still worth a visit from time to time.

So here's to hubski. May it never become popular. If asked what a good place to move on to would be by someone you don't know - suggest voat to the howling twits and snapzu to those who are simply too nice to ever permit an actual discussion to occur.