cross-posted from: feddit.org/post/37870004

reddit got bad because spez (the reddit admin) restricted API access to the platform for third-party apps, such that people would be forced to use the official app or web UI, both of which display advertisement and collect user data (e.g. scroll behavior).

the reason why this happened is because reddit is a for-profit company and tries to extract money out of the userbase, at the expense of the users.

another example of a bad decision that reddit made was to push a lot of ragebait (“Am I The Asshole?”) because company shareholders want to see “engagement numbers” go up, and if somebody writes an angry reply to a post, that’s “engagement”. but it makes you angry at the stupidity of the “Asshole”, so it makes your day worse. that is another example how reddit makes money at the expense of the users.

size (number of monthly active users) is not what made reddit bad. commercialization is.

we should probably get rid of the “don’t make lemmy grow, it will ruin the platform if we grow” idea.

You’re basically emphasizing my point. Reddit started as a subreddit meritocracy. Any and all subreddits could have content on the front page, so long as said content received sufficient upvotes. However, atheists are the most hated religious minority in the U.S., so their content had to be suppressed to cater to commercial interests. It’s viewpoint suppression to cater to the lucrative majority.

@djsundog AHA! Found it.

https://bsky.app/profile/mtsw.bsky.social/post/3n232fif2xc26

@jalefkowit yeah that’s bonkers

Pussycat, Mississippi (1976) https://youtu.be/iF0TdafrWvE

@atax1a oofies, I'm sorry

We know… we were there.

Media’s portrayal of modern Canadian veteran damaging and inaccurate: study https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/medias-portrayal-of-modern-canadian-veteran-damaging-and-inaccurate-study/

now we wait to see if Jensen Huang ends up taking a McAfee turn and going hog wild

I don’t disagree, but I think the heavy-handed moderation was often in service of “cleaning up” to make the website more commercially palatable. Like when they pulled r/atheism as a front-page reddit.

For me, the out of control engagement bots constantly commenting on my comments was the last straw that made me leave.

when reddit started heavily restricting r/all is around when it fell IMO

one sub i recently visited talking jobs/layoffs got meme-fied recently. because happen tor each the front page a couple times, it drawn into many trolls and bots.

Brute force moderation is what killed it IMHO. Same shit that as happening to .world

@senj The recent stories have mentioned him having somewhere between 30 and 60 direct reports, which does not bode well for a quick or easy succession

MISSISSIPPI!!

https://newrepublic.com/post/217540/democrats-win-mississippi-senate-seat-blue-wave-comes-everyone

This.

First

Avast! Hello! I said with a smile!

To claim my spot at the top of the pile

For my words were brief but my thoughts aligned

So that everyone knew I was always online

I don’t know, size made it pretty bad. Subreddits with hundreds of thousands or more users create environments where no one is trying to have a discussion. People are just vying for attention. That creates an environment where comments are either all jokes, or all snark. It’s really, really hard to have anything that resembles a human experience in a place like that. People stop recognizing each other as people, and just treat everyone as an audience.

That makes for a pretty bad experience.