Reddit Was Fun

So... I have some harsh feelings about Reddit. It's bittersweet. A reflection of humanity with both good and bad and corruption of power and so forth. Like many I spent a lot of time on there. Learned a lot; challenged my views; and threw my voice out into the void for whatever it's worth. 10 years and a lot of server time given from gildings handed out and received. Oh well.

Whether Reddit persists is contingent namely on 2 things:

1) Will they revert some of the biggest grievances?

I find this to be highly unlikely. When Spez is quoting Elon Musk as doing good work at Twitter, you know that's a bad sign. Spez was not the genius behind Reddit — Aaron Swartz was. Spez just wants to cash out and leave Reddit behind. They need to find a way to make an inherently unprofitable concept profitable — and so of course the users suffer. It's little different to what happened to Digg, and what happened to Facebook when it navigated away from its original UI that was so elegant and simple. So I'm happy Reddit's devaluation is continuing.

2) Is there a substitute to seize on this moment?

When Digg collapsed under similar circumstances, Reddit was already there. Of course Lemmy is here; Tildes is in progress; and now Jimmy Wales the founder of Wikipedia is spinning up Truth Cafe (WT Social 2.0). All three have significant hurdles to overcome that don't quite match Reddit 1:1... So we'll see.

My estimation is that Reddit will "survive," but with diminished value, reputation, and significantly-lower average monthly users no differently than how Digg has "survived." My view is to not fix what isn't broke — and to disrupt applications like Push Shift / RiF / Apollo and so forth that are cornerstones to Reddit's success, along with a variety of other administrative choices — is shooting themselves in the foot. It's the end of Reddit for me even as a lurker since I can't use RiF anymore, and I'm excited for something new to take its place.

I'll leave a Medium article I wrote going into detail further for those interested, along with a terrible experience with both Admin and Moderator incompetency and inconsistency.

It will survive, it always does, but it will lose a chunk of users.

Reddit went corporate a long time ago, and the only reason I ever went there was because I had RIF on my phone. Now I don't, so I won't, and I'm sure there are many like me.

But if they survived all their other controversies there isn't any reason to think they won't survive this one too.

Sad to say... Most people don't care, they just consume.

Unlike the Reddit vs Digg situation, there's no mature product to mass migrate to. Digg collapsed because Reddit was an easy move over. There was already a polished alternative.

The Fediverse is great, and has a lot a of promise, but it's not fully developed and easy to move to. Us migrants are building it out now.

Reddit will lose it's soul. It's been showing signs for ages anyways. Spez wants to create a doom-scroll "social network" that caters towards the TikTok and Facebook crowd. That kind of cancer has been creeping in for a while anyways.

The core of Reddit was always the discussion. The niche communities where you had real enthusiasts. You could get your retro gaming PC diagnosed. Trade parts for your imported Honda Beat. Ask questions about utility locating. That's the heart and soul. And also the hardest thing to move.

Digg is just a newspaper now. Not a community aggregator. There's no soul. It became a domain. You can't Digg or bury. You can't even comment anymore. That's where they'd like to take Reddit. It doesn't require effort or mods. Just a like button.

As Lemmy picks up steam, more and more people will migrate over and leave Reddit in the dust. It'll take a while, but it's already starting to happen, and Reddit's already starting to suffer negative repercussions as we saw with ad partners leaving them.

Reddit will fizzle out very very slowly. A bunch content creators and mods that use 3rd party apps have left. What is left is the mass horde. It will survive on tiktoc and Twitter reposts for a long time. Like years... and eventually it will become stagnant and boring and the horde will find something new and disperse. It won't even be clear that this is what caused it or if it is the normal tide of the internet. To stay relevant you need to have progress that keeps people's attention. This move is a regression that will kill it in the long term.

Reddit will go the same way as Digg. The site will remain, but the lurkers will start to migrate once it becomes apparent that the 1% of us that create content have mostly left. Down the line in a few years, we'll all be laughing at the pissbaby formerly known as Steve Huffman and say "Anyone remember THAT clusterfuck? Oh man, he really thought he had it made, talk about fucking yourself over!"

RIF made Reddit bearable to surf on a phone, without it, there's just no point. RIP RIF, you were a fucking amazing app for the tiny investment it cost everyone!

Probably not, still too big to fail at this point, but hope CEO gets canned. Spez singlehandedly devaluated and depopulated Reddit while treating userbase as garbage. Fuck you Spez.

Reddit is dead, long live reddit? /s

People are right, Reddit will live on as a shell of its former self. In time, people will forget that this happened and the API change and loss of third party apps that didn't want to pay those high fees will also be forgotten by those on Reddit.

Obligatory: https://imgur.com/a/GrPwnrX

As much as I would like to boycott it completely, there are still too many big communities there, too much information you can't reasonably find anywhere else.

I've stopped posting and commenting to stop contributing to the problem, and obviously I won't be using it on mobile, but already before the API shutdown there were many users that were OK with using their official app.

Many mods gave up their protests when reddit applied pressure, instead of e.g. saying "you don't like NSFW tags without NSFW content? Ok, for compliance, every post needs to contain a picture of an asshole".

Reddit will probably either take over the remaining communities or let them die. It still has critical mass. It'll survive, at least for a while, until something better comes along to replace it. I hope Lemmy will be able to do it but I doubt it. Too many rough edges, too many issues around federation and defederation, no critical mass (yet).

It'll survive this because a lot of Reddit users don't directly use this party apps or the API and genuinely don't understand the problem.

What might kill it is if the quality of subs degrade because moderators can't manage them any more.

That's probably not a problem for really small subs (easy to ignore the noise, not particular attractive to spammers), but could cripple big ones.

But it won't be a quick death as everyone leaves in protest, because they won't.

Reddit will die off in stages. Slowly.

First the power users are leaving now. These are the mods and the major content creators (think Minecraft leaving)

Eventually they will piss people off again and the more common content creators will leave.

Then after reddit has worse and worse content, the users who just comment will leave.

After that there will be nothing worthwhile for the lurkers and they will leave too.

Reddit will then be a wasteland.

This will all take quite a while. Even Digg took time to die off.

I’m really excited about Lemmy and the fediverse in general. I’ve grown tired of small “for the people” web services turning corporate and fucking us all by jamming ads into our face or delivering a bunch of bullshit content they want us to consume.

I went to the internet at an early age in part because I could find content that wasn’t littered with advertisements and all the other bullshit on TV. The fediverse seems like it can be a space more like the original internet, separated from the few big players (Meta, Twitter, Google, and I suppose Reddit now).

They want that TikTok brain type of experience. Scroll scroll, "damnthatsinteresting," get mad about Elon Musk, ad, "aawww", astroturfed pumping of upcoming movie or celebrity associated with a project, ad. They'll get that, but it won't be the same.

I honestly doubt it'll crash, I honestly doubt if most of us will even stick with lemmy

Im an average user... long time lurker... Reddit killed baconreader app i was using. I'm out. Im missing it badly but i wont go back if they dont backtrack. I'll stay here hoping im not alone.

Yes, it will. But at what cost? Over time, the brain drain will likely become more pronounced as moderators jump ship and those who remain become a compliant group of lickspittles. As Reddit faces the consequences of its disastrous policies, it will become even more aggressive in securing revenue - and likely even more despotic. It can take years to build a reputation, and a few months to lose it. I suspect that their CEO has done an excellent job of accelerating this process.

I think reddit will eventually shrug it off. There's an enormous number of users who think their app is perfectly fine and claim to not even notice the ad spam. Whether they're blind or braindead is another question and I don't get it, but most people don't care.

The ones who do care are the ones who still know old.reddit and make the platform worthwhile with their expertise. As those people migrate elsewhere reddit will become even more mediocre and irrelevant.

Reddit will survive, just like Twitter and yahoo are still alive. But eventually nobody will even notice that it's still alive.

Yes, it will survive. I still use it and will continue to use it because for me, Lemmy is not a fully replacement for many of the niche communities I follow.

Reddit’s enshitification has been happening for a long time, and I don’t know if this is the end yet, but I think in a few years when Reddit has died, we will look back at this and say this was the nail in the coffin. I think this will push out the 0.1% of users who generate and moderate the good content, and if/when they go public things will get much much worse. The popular subs will continue to rot and lose the buyers money, so the Reddit admin will be forced to tighten the screws. They’ll force you to have an account to view Reddit, they’ll kill old.reddit, they’ll jam more ads in and kill the 3rd party API completely, even for accessibility apps. My gut says Reddit has like 2 years tops before we consider it “dead” (though will prolly still be up for years)

It will continue, just without the users that are most IT aware. The rest will stay and probably never noticed anything.

Same reason everyone except IT pros use Whatsapp. The masses are stupid, and go where the masses are. 🔄

They may not go full MySpace but I think the writing is on the wall. It may seem like it will have blown over in a few weeks but this is another step into the irrelevancy of Reddit. The VCs want their money back and Reddit has (I don't think) ever been profitable. Reddit has to find a way to extract as much cash out of itself as possible and they will keep finding "better" ways to do it until Reddit will be a shell of what it once was.

Imho there’s a few users who generate and curate a lot of content. It’s likely a good portion these terminal online people will leave Reddit, because they’re the ones using 3pa. For everyone else, scrolling quality will decrease, enhancing eternal September

No. It's not even a matter of principles. I literally can't access the site the way I want, so I won't use it. Lemmy is already growing enough and has enough content to keep me entertained. Long term it seems much healthier.

I was one of the first to leave digg too. Other people will catch on eventually and move over slowly. It's not like Twitter where the user base is non technical and the alternative is super technical. Lemmy is pretty accessible and a pretty easy replacement for reddit.

I think it depends what you mean by "survive" really.

Even if it persists with a large number of users. "Reddit" will still be dead IMO. I don't know what this new thing is but it is nothing like what Reddit used to be.

And the people who wanted... whatever the old Reddit was, just won't be there anymore (people like us I guess).

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what these qualities are but I think I speak for most of us when I say it feels like they've been getting eroded for a while now. I'm glad we might get the chance at a bit of a reset.

I hope enough people leave and Spez is replaced. I don't care if it survives or not as long as he's gone.

They’ll survive but I don’t think they will be the powerhouse it used to be. They’re a link/meme aggregator with forum functionality. Memmy for me has already filled the void. I’ll pop back into Reddit sometimes the same way I pop into Digg.

I hope and wish it dies but if we're being real, I think enough people dont care to switch to new platforms ):

I think that reddit is going to die a drawn out death due to this. They've spoiled any growth avenues and at this point are just going to dwindle away.

It's truly a mystery to me how the Reddit execs, investors, and board of directors think that these changes, and the way they've been rolled out, will be good for the long-term health and prosperity of the company. Even short term with an IPO on the horizon, none of this makes any sense. Maybe I just don't understand the nuances of company valuations, IPO's, executive pay, etc., but I don't see how this move makes anything better for anyone involved. I could at least understand them shitting on the mods, communities, and apps if it meant a better payday for the investors and execs (it would be selfish and lousy, but at least I could understand it). I don't understand the wisdom of this in the slightest.

Reddit is useless if all the people who post content, moderate and interact leave.

We will see but I'm done using it.

Yes, too many casual users on reddit that won't feel the changes.

I won't go into analysis on data I don't have, but if we take a look at the History of internet I would say it will survive, like Tumblr and Yahoo. Its user base might shrink to a point but it won't disappear any time soon.

Will I go back to Reddit? I'd rather die.

I think reddit survives but it will be at a diminished quality. I also will be pissed if it all blows over or the site even bounces back without anything to mend the relationship between the site and those it pushed away.

I can only speak to my personal experience and personally I feel the quality of the site had been going down all month. I realized at the end I only checked 2 subreddits a day and quickly got bored scrolling through r/all or the Frontpage significantly faster than I used to, and I'm someone who can definitely hyperfocus and scroll way too long. There will always be things to see on reddit and there will always be a community there, but after this month I'm genuinely not sure how the site can come together to make it what it once was. If I'm honest with myself, I know I'll end up clicking on links online to reviews or how-to's, but I don't think I'll feel good engaging with the site as I used to.

It will survive, most would just switch to the official app or was already using it.

The lurkers and users will stay. By reddits internal metrics it won't look like much has changed.

But the people who make the content, provide the discussion that other people read, build the communities that are more than just a topic-flavoured meme board etc. will either stop outright, or just use it less because of the frustration factor and so on, and will look elsewhere.

Eventually the lurkers and browsers are going to run out of the things that kept them around. Then they'll slowly start seeking out where the good content is, and we do the whole dance all over again.