Weekly Dwell #4
On Monday, Reddit faced a blackout. This blackout was a protest against changes to Reddit's long-open and long-free API that provided access to the great wealth of information on the platform to 3rd party developers who in turn used it to build apps. This is not the first time in history that users and moderators have joined together to try to bring about change on social platforms, but it is one of the largest scale "blackouts" we've seen in recent histories comparatively by the number of those affected. Some of the subreddits who were down included r/videos and r/music, which include, at a minimum, hundreds of millions of people.
But while there are a lot of fascinating aspects of this blackout to dwell upon, I'd like to explore a bit about power and ownership. Ownership as a general concept is truly fascinating, both in just why we have such an interest in owning things, but also what the concept of ownership really means. We can own a physical thing, as well as a concept or an idea. We can also feel like we own a space -- not a physical place like a house, but the idea of a collaborative or a group that occupies a space in the world. This could be a knitting group, an anarchist group, or even a religious group -- we find these spaces that include the people, values, and beliefs that match our own, no matter how niche. We feel connected to them, to the point of an ownership within this manifested space, even without a physical meetup of any kind.
We've become so integrated into many online spaces, we see them as our communities, as our locations where we share information and build relationships. We're connected in these places, in a way that we might not be connected in other physical places; making these places sacred in a philosophical rather than religious way. This feeling of ownership happens in the offline world in much the same way - an empty lot has become a community garden, and, through this transformative process, a community hub for the neighborhood, even though no one in the neighborhood owns the lot. The people who are there day in and day out watering and weeding will feel ownership to the space that they've claimed as their own, even if there is always the possibility that the legal owner will someday want their piece of land to be properly privatized again. The legal owner of the empty-lot-turned-community-garden has the power to end all of the other people's ownerships in the blink of an eye, by stating they are now turning their empty lot into a home, or condos, or a grocery store. The space is reverted back to the single owners' and all other members are cut off entirely.
On the internet, this power can be seen in all "community" group spaces, from Reddit to Facebook to Instagram, where communities come in and set up shop, establish their root and home base, and start to feel at ease with how the rules and norms are for their communities. But then, there might come a point in which these community members are reminded that they don't actually own the lot they are inhabiting - the space they are in is still ultimately the product of a company that might decide to change how the product should function. Facebook might decide they'll only allow a maximum of 100 people per group; Instagram might agree they won't allow certain photographs to be sent to direct message groups of more than 20 people; and Reddit might decide they're changing their API to monetize their third party developers. While these might not ultimately feel like identical situations -- they are at their core. These companies are the owners, and while ultimately the consumer can attempt to protest or fight back in some capacity against the changes, they don't actually hold the pen.
So what do we do? Ultimately, I think protest is the right move -- fight back in the ways that we can, even if historically the results are mixed for empty lots and online communities. We in the majority are at the whim of those in the minority with power, and how their pocketbooks are affected. A benevolent landlord or moderator will handle the community they've been handed differently than one that has financial goals. In Reddit's case, we see CEOs continue to put their foot down, deciding their original word was immutable, and continue to make additional changes that then ungrounds the basis of the protest. So all we can do is push back, bring to light the inconsistencies, and aim to find new spaces where our ownership is more rigid.