this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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This is probably the most realistic prediction of reddit's downfall I've read.
There was an article on here earlier that compared reddit to Digg, which I think is way off-base. Digg never had the mainstream userbase that reddit has, and the cause of the current migration from reddit is in no way comparable to what Digg did.
Here @JustinHanagan instead predicts reddit "dying" in the way that Facebook has. Which is kind of a surreal statement, as Facebook is still the largest and most popular social media platform in the world. But almost everyone agrees that Facebook is stagnant or in decline. The coolest and most creative people have left for other platforms. We only stay on there to hear about sales from La Senza and life updates from our racist uncle so we don't have to talk to him in person.
And that's a very plausible future for reddit. Think about all the unusual communities and concepts that make reddit what it is. Love these or hate these, it's the place that brought us AMAs, reddit secret Santa, AmITheAsshole, MildlyInteresting, BestofRedditorUpdates, AskHistorians, WallStreetBets, and so on. All of these were invented by users/moderators, not by reddit.
It's easy to imagine a future where those communities all continue in some fashion and reddit keeps its hundreds of millions of users, but the creatives and visionaries move on. Which means reddit's chances of being home to the next /r/PhotoshopBattles or /r/TodayILearned are hugely reduced.
I may check Reddit once a week now, instead of 10x a day. I'm stepping back from modding a 20k subscriber sub, and posting here instead. I used to respond to questions there, and spend maybe an hour or three a day communicating, now I'll quickly check the updates and move on. I'm not leaving Reddit, but I'm "leaving Reddit".
People who choose not to understand any hint of subtlety will decry that it did not die all the while, just the same as happened to Digg, and Tumblr too (which lost 90% of its subscribers, but technically does still exist). But the reality is plain & obvious, in spite of their alternative facts to the contrary.
Genuinely not trying to sound snarky here, but you've described how it feels when I read comments on Reddit.
It's entirely different here. Imagine being offered the benefit of the doubt, rather than having literally every word picked apart even while ignoring the other 90% of the words that went along with it. SOOO many comments on Reddit are along the lines of "there are sentences after that one you know...", in response to snarky people who were invited by Huffman to share their snark, to increase engagement stats.
Don't get me wrong, there are places MUCH worse than Reddit. I could name a Discord server for instance, that often shares screenshots of my exact words in the most misleading way possible, somehow every time. Like in one instance they couldn't manage to share the entire sentence or it would have actually made sense, so they just lifted the middle few words that they wanted - if anyone bothered to read the words immediately before or after they would immediately see the truth... but they guessed correctly that no-one would bother. I'm not naive enough to think that this is an accident, every single time.
But the point of sharing things on Reddit isn't always "communication", and instead it seems to have shifted more towards emotional vomit, to share their feelings of depression, by attacking others. When you understand why they do it... it makes sense, although somehow that doesn't manage to make Reddit "fun" again:-(.
When I read comments on Reddit I often see a lot of frustrated and burned out people with short tempers who might not have someone IRL who will listen to them vent. Like you said it makes sense, but that doesn't make it any better.
What makes me optimistic about decentralized social media is that the communities are (hopefully) small and varied enough where mods and admins can keep an eye on everything much easier, and step in an say "Hey, you're not being nice right now" when someone isn't. It's one thing for communities to have rules, but you can't make enough rules to maintain a culture of amicability. We ultimately need humans for that.
In my Reddit sub (20k subscribers), we have like a bot or maybe just a collection of people who regularly (daily) brigade the sub, mass-downvoting every single comment entirely in a post regardless of content. I literally have screenshots of people calling for it to be done - but Reddit admins do nothing. Tbf it happens to a larger version of us (200k subscribers) as well, so it's just Reddit being Reddit: someone who is pissed off and sharing their toxicity with the entire world. At least it's just down-votes rather than shooting up a school or something:-(.
Whereas with down-votes being public here, something could be done about such scenarios, and mods could remove people for that behavior. Like Reddit admins, except being a member of the community that they moderate, they would actually care and act to do something.
THIS place is totally different than THAT one, in every way that matters.
Yes! Thank you. I tried to be careful with my wording and I'm glad it came through. Facebook is not "over", neither is Twitter or shopping malls. But they're not what they were and the reason they're not what they were (I feel) really comes down to corporate incentives. Something I found really interesting to learn these past weeks is that Twitter and Reddit are not profitable, which kinda implies that the business model may not really work on that scale. Maybe Steve Huffman isn't a greedy monster, it's possible he's between a rock and a hard place with profitability.
Which if that's the case, it kind of implies that open source/Fediverse-style social media might actually be the most sustainable kind, as weirdly structured as it is.
Truth is stranger than fiction - e.g. how people are now saying that despite how he was a mod of r/jailbait, he also was not at the same time; and yet still yes too. That complexity used to be handled in the golden era of news by people who genuinely cared at getting to the root of a story and telling the (whole) truth - before all the news outlets got bought up and those who continued to do that were fired, while those who pushed "engagement" (likes, shares, whatever) promoted over them, to make their already-billionaire bosses even moar monay.
Anyway, it's possible that he is both a greedy monster, and being heavily pushed by those above him - who in fact hired him b/c he shares their values, in order to do exactly that. You were peeling back the onion one layer - yes it's more the system than Huffman b/c if he weren't there then someone else much like him would have been - but it's also him at the same time, as in they pushed but he's the one deciding how to get it done, and doing those AMAs saying exactly what he said, that's his choice.
Yes, absolutely please do not interpret my comment as a defense of Steve Huffman haha, moreso a criticism of the structure of incentives he chooses operate within.
You can relax now, we aren't on Reddit - you are among friendly people here:-). Everything is going to be different now.
😂 Wow I'm really learning how up my guard has been all these years.
It has messed with us all... whether we realized it or not:-(.
We are entering a new era of the internet. I think much of these once big sites are just going to be flooded with malware. And website to me that prompts you to subscribe to read the rest, or forces you to see ads, is malware to me.
Remember on the old computers when you could barely do anything because of malware? So it became a useless piece of junk.
That's what is happening to these websites, they are becoming cluttered with junk, while the website is developed around keeping distracted minds attentive.
I think people are becoming aware of their mindless scrolling, and they are realizing the junk they are being fed.
Over here on these sites there is far more constructive conversation and far more interesting posts that I don't need to scroll past 10 different ads to get to.
As people get smart and identify garbage social media, we will develop a smarter more realized spaces to mingle.
Even for people using adblockers, yeah.