Reddit is easily the best model for social media, if only the software was better. The key is prioritizing community over individuals. Subreddit admins have a ton of freedom, so long as a very small bit of their energy goes toward a few basic universal rules. This gives them a real sense of ownership.

Healthy social media must support and defend pseudonymity, because it’s the only way to juggle the fact that everything on the internet can be recorded by at least one other party. And the only way to defend pseudonymity is to treat every user the same. Twitter’s “approved” users violates this and Facebook violates it in many different ways, but Reddit just prioritizes communities over individuals. This is the root of the solution.

When people treat Reddit like it has some broad character or quality, I have to disagree. Those people just haven’t found a subreddit that they love, probably because they haven’t tried to. And I don’t think that needs to he changed or automated. If a Reddit-like site was the only social media, all these people would be motivated to create or build their own communities.