Reddit will never do this. The very act of federation would mean hosting and maintaining a publicly accessible API, and they’ve already made it clear that not doing that is the hill they are willing to die on.

Then we’ll be able to see their communities and posts without having to give Reddit ad revenue, so they probably won’t do that unless they are really desperate. Even if they attempt something like federate their posts as links to their site, instance owners could just defederate with them, then we’re back to square one.

That would be funny as fuck to see.

Pros: The Fediverse would gain a significant amount of users and existing communities.

Cons: Those users would be redditors. While most I’ve seen are polite, some really love to hate others.

To be honest, if Reddit federated I would stay as far away from that shit as I could, because their only goal in doing so would be to allow their users to create relationships with federated users so that those relationships could later be walled off and monetized. Same reason I won’t have anything to do with Threads.

Outside of monetization, there is literally zero upside to Reddit federating anything.

But even if there were, they’ve already pissed me off. Other people can create content for them, and freely partake of bot-filled subs, and be subjected to arbitrary mod and admin comment removals and bans, and be given no real working accessibility tools, and have their ability to block harassing Redditors jacked around with constantly, and have their karma fucked with for crypto, and have anger triggers tossed at them to get them to engage more, and have legit helpful mods (like r/canning) deposed and scabs installed because the overlords can’t control them, and dread the day they kill off old.reddit because the official portals are hot steaming catshit, and have pseudo-religious political HeGetsUs jeebus ads rubbed in their eyes between other ads that just look like posts, and also let Spez tell them daily that he loves them forever and won’t cum in their mouth.

Not me. Reddit corporate can fuck themselves, and whatever plans they have, sideways with a rusty lawnmower blade. And for anyone who has a problem with this and thinks there’s anything even remotely redeemable about Reddit besides the good people who try to make something worthy out of the shit Reddit corporate ladles out, I don’t honestly give a fuck. Whatever you think is good about Reddit just means more for you (congratulations!) because I ain’t touching that rancid apeshit crypto-hyping cursed IPO corporate cesspool of sociopathy even from the relative safety of the fediverse.

Yeah, I’m a little bitter. But I don’t think it shows. :D