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Reddit is determined to “go commercial”. It’ll be successful at first because there’s a wealth of good data in Reddit. However, those who contribute rather than just consume will drift away. The content becomes stale (who wants recommendations for great Bluetooth headsets from 2015?).
Cory Doctorow wrote an excellent article on how TikTok, Facebook, Amazon and more have become worse, and why. It was written in January before Reddit’s API announcement, but it applies to Reddit every bit as much as the others. It’s worth a read: Tiktok’s enshittification
That article is fantastic, read it when it was first posted and just read it again now. His closing lines hit home:
“…policymakers should focus on freedom of exit – the right to leave a sinking platform while continuing to stay connected to the communities that you left behind, enjoying the media and apps you bought, and preserving the data you created…”
“The Netheads were right: technological self-determination is at odds with the natural imperatives of tech businesses. They make more money when they take away our freedom – our freedom to speak, to leave, to connect.”
That article was absolutely brutal. This is what happens when you put all of your eggs in one basket. Incidentally, many youtubers have been suffering from the phenomenon too. When a company grows big enough, this sort of thing seems to happen every time.
Holy enshittification batman. That’s an enlightening read. Thank you.
Also remember that reddit loves to choose what goes on front page, have the worst mods ever and shadow banning. Those things should not be tolerated. I don’t mind if reddit disappear, it is pretty toxic.
The worst mods can happen anywhere.
Reddit has been going downhill for ages. They stopped listening to the users, its customers, years ago. They started becoming more ‘Social’ as they put it. Adding chat features, and other useless features. All the time ignoring important things like stopping spam, decent moderation tools, blocking people, etc… I have been using Old.Reddit with Reddit Enhancement Suite for years to make the site usable. I will miss Reddit, but I have been missing it for quite some time.
As for people who put effort into apps, subreddits, etc… Yes, it’s a shame, but the internet evolves and moves on. Harsh but true. Hopefully, these people will see a future elsewhere. Because a good portion of those people are talented. Maybe one of them can produce apps for Kbin.social? Who knows what they will find to put their energy into, maybe one such person leaving Reddit will create a new social media site we all flock too?
I will be watching to see what happens. Yes I support those fighting to keep 3rd party access, specially as it means some with certain needs (Like the blind) will have no access at all to Reddit. I also think this shake-up is needed. I will be using the Fediverse.
@Warped @bitman09 right there with you.
I really started to notice it when they just ignored for months the hate subreddit theDonald, right before the 2016 election.
It was a year after they started banning subreddits for hate speech, but not this one. Not after the election was done and dealt with, after thousands of reports to admins, news articles, printscreens of hate speech, because money…I wrote this on another instance but will paste it here as adds to your first paragraph
and the original founders would have never allowed Reddit to get to this point.
Unfortunately, at least one of the original founders has allowed, quite possibly even driven this policy. Steve Huffman is still very much at the helm and what he has exposed of himself in interviews, he doesn’t sound like a very nice person (re: post apocalypse, he sees himself being on top and having slaves)
It’s great that subs and users are organising to fight this but maybe Reddit should be allowed to carry out this change and metaphorically shoot itself in the face? This is just the latest in a long horrifying series of policies that the admins have pushed through, actions they have failed to take, or when they finally did, it was long after the horse had bolted.
Remember the jailbait (and worse) subs that they allowed for so long (and were rumoured to have participated in) and when they finally did something after Anderson Cooper shone a light under that dark, seedy rock, they picked their sacrificial lamb and blamed it all on him? Remember the secret santa parallel site someone set up that Reddit then forcibly absorbed and let wilt? Remember how they dealt with Victoria who arranged all the celebrity IAMA’s? Remember how they brought in Ellen Pao (with her own set of issues) to deal with horrific amount of far right and misogynist subs that were actively calling for peoples and groups deaths, and then threw her under the bus once they got what they needed? Remember how they were banning people and deleting posts when it was revealed that 5 mod accounts were basically controlling the top 100 subs? Remember how they appointed to the admins a person who was found to be grooming teens and was supportive of their father who was convicted of serious sexual assault of a child?
The list is never-ending…
The sad fact of the matter is that centralised social medias one driving factor is money. They acquire that via data points collection from engagement. They dont care what kind of engagement as long as theres plenty of it and hateful content drives engagement.
There is no sense of community among the admins and execs of Reddit. It is entirely from the users.
The original founders allowed this to happen, if they didn’t drive this. Many similar times previously, and undoubtedly, many more times to come.
Maybe Reddit, just like every other centralised, corporate owned social media sites time is over?
I just dont believe its something worth fighting for, despite how commendable the actions of all those subs is.
I want to see Reddit fail tbh. It was great at one point, but it won’t be great again. It’s time for the platform to shoot itself in the foot to allow better platforms such as Lemmy to grow.
I’d say let that ship sink. We’ve got alternatives. Even if we miss the communities and knowledge etc.
Let them at this point. I’m all for moving to the open source alternative here
Nah let reddit decay into FB 2.0
The fact that they can kill third party apps is exactly why we need something else.
Let it burn I say
I see a lot of people saying let this happen. I acknowledge that reddit has also sort of lost their point but a lot of people have put countless hours into building stuff both on communities and as devs building apps like redreader and rif. I don’t want to see all of those people basically lose all their effort and work because a company decided to make money.
Thats a sunk cost fallacy though.
Reddit isnt going to get better and the admins/exec are just going to keep pushing policies like this because their primary motivation is to make money and they desperately want to hold a Reddit IPO.
The best options is for all those subs to export as much as they can to create a read only archive then head elsewhere where they control their own data.
Sure, as it’s evident from us interacting here I’ve been trying to move on the alternatives, though nothing has sprung upto replace niche subreddits that I used to browse.
Ultimately my point was not that what reddit was doing was right. It was that it is easy to take joy in a company that has let greed take over try to fail but in doing so don’t forget to have some empathy for countless volunteers who put in time and effort to build something worthwhile. It’s their stuff that’s being burnt too.
I actually want to see reddit kill 3rd party apps, this will provide a huge opportunity to Lemmy, and show how much power these Reddit Admins hold.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
—Shang Tsung
