> The current events of Reddit and Stack Exchange amplifying a thought that communities and users' contributions should be decentralized. The current structure of online communication poses a major risk.
Does it? People have been free to communicate. They are still free to communicate via a different platform. There's no "risk" here. Those companies have investors who expect the companies to make money. Any different organization is going to sit there and expect to pull in enough to at least keep the lights on, but while people find it a worthwhile thing to donate to the Wikimedia foundation, I don't think you'll find that they'd do the same for Reddit 2.0.
> 1. There has to be a movement at both protocol and community-level to bring a Usenet like forum for general consumption. Different decetralized subgroups hosting and replicating the communities for others.
We HAVE Usenet. Maybe figure out why Usenet was abandoned by most people before replicating something that is broken and doesn't work for discussion.
> 2. The model needs to be rethought to ensure that the thoughts and knowledge of communities and users belong to them.
This is literally useless and so far down the list of concerns of users that it only makes sense to the exact kind of people that other people hate to encounter on forums.
> 3. These forums should encourage less anonymity and more persistent communication.
LOL.
> 4. Trustworthy individuals should run these forums, chosen by the community. Individual groups, academia, organizations running the communities but easily redistributed across to people who want it. This was usenet.
This is a lie. Unmoderated newsgroups absolutely thrived in the heyday of Usenet while the other groups withered on the vine because nobody wanted to deal with the steel-fisted asshattery that was Usenet moderation. Reddit moderation is light-years better than Usenet's ever was, and that's not even talking about the fact that Usenet was designed for an age when people connected to the internet 30 minutes a day and didn't have powerful, permanently connected computers in their pockets.
> Failure to address these issues allows mega companies to exploit data and control access against users' wishes.
Mega companies are going to exploit data and control access regardless of what else happens because there's value there.
> Taking action is crucial to prevent unfavorable outcomes and hold ourselves accountable.
Taking a step back and realizing that Usenet was an epic failure for discussion would be a good starting point.