cross-posted from: https://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.
Reddit started becoming shitty because people are shitty.
It started long before the API restrictions, long before the commercialisation.
No, it started failing when the influx of new users grew exponentially, but the systems to support it didn’t.
Subreddits were no longer communities, they became information and discussion hubs.
With the influx of people, further moderation was needed. But mod vetting isn’t that easy, and a lot of people who had absolutely no business moderating communities, let alone social hubs, got a whiff of power that drove them crazy.
And that leads to splinter communities, some abandoned, some forced to give up, and an overall mess to this all.
the subs i was involved would add mods via the ‘who is the least offensive and the most popular’ criteria… which let to awful mods, because those folks were ones who had no idea how to mod and basically were like ‘if someone doesn’t like it, it’s bad’. which basically led to them not moderating on rules or principles, but purely on their own personal preferences.
it’s amazing how many communities were so great, and then immediately some new mod would come up and start banning all the previous users and posts they didn’t personally like. oh, and if the mod was friends with a abusive user? they had free reign or would grant them mod. sometimes it was so bad and egregious users would revolt, or other mods would have to remove the new mod. one sub I was on had a well-known rapist who was never banned because they had done the mods personal IRL favors, basically to secure their hunting ground and anytime a new victim posted about how this person drugged them, the mods would immediately remove it and cover it up and deny it, and then when another use posted the police report(s) that person was banned… this rapist user would also regularly go on rants about how men are all rapists and rape is terrible and try to report others for ‘rapey’ comments… and the rapist in question was a poly woman, so you had the whole ‘women can’t rape anyone’ ‘she’s so progressive, she can’t rape people’ nonsense come up and that was the ‘line’ one of the mods defending this person would claim.
reddit worked when mods kept apart from the users and didn’t have personal relationships with the users. but people are shitty and can’t help themselves. for all the good stuff that came from those subreddits, they all had dark sides full of shitty awful people who were using the community to exploit and abuse other people IRL.
I think it was experimental negative social engineering that, over time, got worse. Then the advertising overlords started to break through.
I don’t believe it was the size either despite what many in the comments state. I believe it’s been several compounding factors. For me it’s karma and karma farming. People only do things for attention when they have reason to believe it will provide benefits for them. People do what they are allowed to do. When you go to an establishment where the cultures and rules are set people are unlikely to deviate. I couldn’t reasonably get upset at an establishment that requires certain attire, no loud voices, limited alcoholic beverages and believe I can and should do the opposite. If more subreddits operated like such then Reddit would be very different. Unfortunately, that doesn’t align with Reddits goals of content and users pretty much at any cost to make the money go up.
Enshittification started as soon as owners of popular sites realized they can’t keep everything free for long, they felt it was time to make money. And begin getting rid of content deemed hostile to advertisers and corporate sponsors.
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).
Reddit got bad long before they restricted API access. That’s what was the final drop for many people, but it wasn’t the beginning at all.
I agree that growing would be a benefit for Lemmy though. While I wouldn’t dismiss the dangers of a growing community entirely, we can just defederate from or block problematic parts in theory. So I wouldn’t say we’re in quite the same danger as centralized platforms.
Control is crucial. I think there should be a foundation to own the development but controlled by a board of moderators. Something like the concorde agreement is needed.
Even if size does become a problem (SufferringFromSuccess.meme), we can always defederate a smaller Lemmy/Piefed network and call it Fedi Classic.
Reddit was fine if you stuck to the right communities. This morning my browser session suddenly got blocked though, forcing me to download the app (which I won’t do).
I think it was pretty clear it was enshittified.
By now there’s also more in form of description and research, it’s not just a negative word.
they ovvereached with thier AI-moderation/filtering bans, so now theres even less content. AI isnt finding reddit useful to scrape anymore, because they are getting Ai content instead.
Reddit admins repeatedly asked mods how to make like for them better. And then repeatedly ignored almost every single answer they got, rolling out features nobody wanted and taking away things people used. It was the years and years and years of putting in hours and hours of time working against the enshittification that made me tired, and then it was the stupid fucking over-reaching AI moderation that caused me to leave after my accounts started being banned for no good reason with appeals failing.
It took far too long for them to drive me away, as I know it did for a lot of others.
For me reddit got bad because of grouphink and terrible moderation (you were not nice to some idiot? banned for life!). I never used any 3rd party apps (nor the official app for that matter, only the website with adblock).
So not unlike the groupthink you encounter on the Fediverse? Where it’s even more perverse due to defederation and due to the networks being much smaller
it’s entire like that.
people’s tolerance for differences has degraded to the point what was once previously considered a difference of opinion is now considered ‘hate speech’.
the viewpoints that many folks have normalized today also, would have been considered totally insane 10 or so years ago. people are far more radical, and far more intolerant, and many lemmy users are here precisely because of their radical views they use to abuse others.
my heyday on reddit in the 2010s I was a part of a lot of diverse communities that simple could not exist in 2026. the majority of folks would be banned for offending users and violating the political ‘truths’ so many people cling to here on lemmy. i also watched in real time as my communities were invaded by these values and the tonal shift in content and interactions went from easy and fun and diverse to very serious and homogeneous. the ‘fun police’ came and basally reported friendly interactions in the name of ‘justice’, because as outside observers they saw in-jokes as abusive and awful.
No, I don’t think it’s the same. On most issues I had interesting discussions, even when most of lemmy is clearly just parroting some silly arguments. I have downvotes disabled on my instance so I don’t care if 100 people disagree without being able to articulate their arguments. The few people that can are usually fun to argue with. You also don’t get spammed by negative comments like on Reddit (because there are not as many users). I never got banned just for disagreeing with the majority, unlike on Reddit.
The are some topics you can’t discuss on lemmy because people are too emotional about them but I don’t think it’s as bad as on reddit.
We know… we were there.
reddit is still great
what did you get ejected for?
I never got ejected and afaict I was never banned from any communities - I left voluntarily during the Rexodus, back in the before-times, prior to most AI moderation and posting.
When someone (Huffman) tells you who they are, it’s best to believe them the first time.
We know…
Just amused by the juxtaposition, obviously they weren’t contradicting you (or replying to you). lol.
I’m easily amused. :)
Hehe
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.
yes, assuming you are there for a discussion and not entertainment.
most folks are on reddit for entertainment, let’s not kid ourselves. very tiny sliver of the users were there for discussion.
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.
First
This.
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
What made reddit… reddit: The people running it, and a lot of the people using it.
