TL;DR To make messaging on Reddit faster and more reliable, we’re replacing Private Messages (PMs) with Reddit Chat and inbox notifications. This transition is necessary to maintain and improve Reddit’s messaging infrastructure. We aim to make these changes with minimal disruption while improving the user experience.
Timeline: Starting at the end of March, we'll roll out these changes in phases over the next three months to ensure everything goes smoothly
Some communities I'm interested in aren't on the fediverse, or I get more out of following it on both sites, or I like their custom CSS faaaaaar more than the Mbin design.
I wouldn't say a monopoly, but my counterpoint is pointing to how discord swallowed up all the BBS forums that reddit hadn't. So it's not like that's much better.
Small world, I'm also on the balatro/other games modding discord boat, and it is a rough ocean out here. The perennial argument is that users don't know how to use an old school forum, nobody wants to moderate it, nobody wants to pay for the infrastructure.
All those fall flat to me. Nobody even bothers to use discord's "forums" or pinned messages for their bug reports/troubleshooting, no they just post straight to general, "this doesnt work can someone help" with no details whatsoever. Not like it would be any better or worse on a forum. It's also not like BBS forums don't have moderation tools, it's not some lost art from an ancient civilization. As for paying for it... the whole discord server is propped up by nitro users. Like come on. Money can be exchanged for goods and services.