Why it’ll only get worse from here.
Wow, this is one of the least shitty news sites on mobile I’ve seen in years. No autoplay videos taking up 90% of my screen as I scroll? Only a single popup asking me to sign in? No paywall? No car ads every other paragraph? I never knew articles could be so clean.
I haven’t quite figured out how I feel about Substack, but the design is definitely appealing.
I do my writing there and I am still on the fence, haha, it’s probably going to be “enshittified” one day, but it certainly isn’t yet.
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.
People who choose not to understand any hint of subtlety
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.
Difference is there’s something aesthetically appealing about dying malls. Reddit looks more like a dumpster fire at the moment.
Difference is there’s something aesthetically appealing about dying malls
Eh, dumpster fires can be aesthetically appealing too.
Interesting piece. Definitely worth a reading the whole thing, but here is Bing AI’s summary:
Reddit’s decline: The author argues that Reddit is becoming less relevant and more generic as it tries to squeeze its users and moderators for profit. He compares Reddit to a dying mall that is losing its cultural middle class to decentralized platforms.
Enshittification: The author explains the concept of enshittification, which is how platforms attract and then exploit their users and businesses. He gives examples of how Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and Google have followed this pattern.
Moderators’ resistance: The author describes how Reddit’s volunteer moderators are obstructing and sabotaging Reddit’s attempts to enshittify the platform. He says that moderators are the ones who create and curate the content that attracts users, and that Reddit is losing their trust and cooperation.
Fediverse’s rise: The author predicts that Reddit’s users and moderators will eventually migrate to the Fediverse, which is a network of independent and interoperable social media sites. He says that the Fediverse offers more freedom, authenticity, and sanity for online discussions.
Enshittify
Did bing really say that? I love this word.
Comes from this Cory Doctorow article.
Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
I call this enshittification…
It’s not a long article and the topic is interesting enough to spend the 10 minutes it takes to read it IMO
That was beautifully written. A delightful read.
Thank you! Your comment really made me smile (I am the author btw).
oh wow well I truly meant it! Had no idea you’d be here. You’ve got a wonderful way with words and I look forward to reading more of your work!
I didn’t until just now- someone linked me to this post and I made an account just to reply to you!
Ok you are so wholesome. You’re officially too sweet! Welcome to the fediverse! Happy to have you here!
So Reddit will have a bunch of closed stores but an open and fully functioning Bath & Body Works store?
Sounds like it’s time to fire up some vaporwave and savor the a e s t h e t i c
Immersing myself in the liminal space
Right now reddit reminds me of twitter. All the worst people are there and they’re promoting their backwards ass way of thinking. Fuck that noise.
I understand the sentiment, but malls are cool, they are great place to hang out with plenty of things to do. And people don’t need to worry about weather conditions, don’t need to drive (assuming you can go to the mall via transportation).
I don’t know why North America decided strip mall with oversized parking (most strip malls literally have more space for cars than for people, which is kind of ridiculous IMO) is better than traditional mall.
Because rents at malls started to go up, and urban sprawl meant people lived further further away from the malls, making them less convenient to get to.
So, fewer people are showing up, choosing not to travel as far, or to shop online instead, while rents grow. This pushes retailers out, and robs the malls themselves of the resources or motivation to pay for maintenance.
We saw over the pandemic that commercial landlords were unwilling to give clients breaks on rent, and so a lot of businesses closed. Around here, at least, many of those locations are still vacant, because the demand for rent now doesn’t account for the lack of it later.
So, you know, fundamentally the same thing happening at Reddit.
All the big tech platforms have followed this pattern: Facebook, Amazon, TikTok, eBay, Google. They used to be good, then they got less good, now they’re awful for everyone but also the only game in town.
I’d call Google pretty darn good. I mean, it gets hit with spammers, but I don’t think that it’s especially bad at dealing with them – any large search engine will be the target of the SEO crowd.
Amazon’s not perfect – I’d really rather than it not incessantly keep trying to get me to sign up for an Amazon Prime subscription, but I’m generally not all that unhappy with it. It isn’t always the best retailer, but I haven’t generally had a bad time using Amazon.
I haven’t used eBay enough to have much of an opinion, and I’ve actively avoided Facebook and TikTok since they came out (though sometimes TikTok videos spill over elsewhere, and I do think that the fact that everything gets set to music seems to be really annoying).
Nah, Reddit is fine. Traffic is back to normal levels.
The question is about the short run on sites like this, which will lead to medium run problems over on Reddit.
We have already seen many mods and power users leave Reddit for federated alternatives. They’re bringing their content with them. That in itself does not upset Reddit, because the initial number of users is relatively low.
But losing the content effects Reddit because it becomes less interesting to browse. As you realize that the site is just going to be worse than it was last week, you lose motivation to log in. That happens on a content level, but it’s also going to happen on an advertising level. One of the goals of cutting off the API is to get rid of third-party clients, many of which didn’t show advertising. The Reddit admins have said they want to make more money which means they’re going to introduce more and more advertisements. And it’s just anecdotal, but the increase in ads over on Instagram in the past 2 years means I don’t look at it much anymore because it’s just a waste of my time. That’s where Reddit’s going very soon.
Of course users are willing to deal with some advertisement if the high quality content is available and especially if the high quality content isn’t available anywhere else. Unfortunately for Reddit, and fortunately for all of us, that’s not true anymore.
Give it a year, then we’ll see about the mall.
