(I’m assuming we’re talking about this as a hypothetical talking point!)

I don’t think it would be beneficial particularly no because this place is developing its own sort of culture and way of working and Reddit is over there doing its thing.

If Reddit came and federated, I think most places would defederate from Reddit on principle at this point anyway, as they’ve clearly shown that they wouldn’t be making that move out of an interest in the philosophy behind the ‘fediverse’ (we’ve got to think of a better name btw - Febb? Febby? Febbster? Feddy? Freddy?)

But assuming they were let in and were integrated, the increase in trolls, toxic comments, inane communities, would be too much for Febby to cope with and I’d end up leaving, probably asking with everyone else currently here. Reddit is there for people who want it, Febbster is here for people who want it and if people want both they know where to find both.

I think ultimately, this would be the best move for the users, and would open them up to a lot more content all across the board. But Reddit does not care about its users, so it won’t happen.

Beneficial yes, practical no.

Beneficial because Reddit captured a ton of niche communities that used to exist on forums/usenet/etc, and there’s a lot of actual unique, useful content buried under all the noise. Ideally that content would be able to filter back into places that aren’t tied to some startup that never figured out how to be profitable.

Impractical because I imagine quite a few servers would have to defederate because they simply wouldn’t be able to manage mirroring the constant stream of stuff coming out of Reddit. It’s a bit early to tell how long any of the general interest reddit-a-likes can sustain on donations or whatever, and turning on that firehose would transform some hobbyist servers into money pits fast.