Formerly /u/Zalack on Reddit.
Unless I’m misreading the article, right now this seems to just be regrowth for a very specific medical condition where teeth didn’t come in in the first place?
The article mentions the possibility of stimulating growth in a latent third set of buds all adults have. But that doesn’t seem to be what this specific breakthrough is.
A big part of it is people are just angry and stressed in general because the system we live in is fundamentally broken (pretty much no matter where you are in the world, though I am speaking through an American lens since the majority of Reddit is American).
Everyone can feel the effects of an economy and government that just doesn’t work for them. We’re fundamentally divided on how to fix it. Minorites are directly under attack and that manages to leach into most conversations, either directly or sideways. It makes people incredibly defensive.
The fediverse has a higher barrier to entry and, statistically, tech-minded people skew liberal. We’re a self-selecting community that is just more likely to agree – for instance – that trans people are people.
Further, since these services are decentralizedv and self-hosted, we can literally make hate groups unwelcome/banned from our instances because there is no profit motivation for hand-wringing like there is with Reddit.
Voting out mods is a TERRIBLE idea. It means a very active minority can effectively control a large subreddit, and politically oriented / minority spaces are going to have constant campaigns trying to take them over.
Can you imagine what it’s going to be like moderating TwoX, lgbt, or egg_irl if this change goes through? What a nightmare.
But it can be removed as a possibility by circumstance, which is what this comic is getting at.