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.
Reddit will survive. I hope it does- we (Lemmy) need it to.
Fact is, not every Reddit user is a good fit for Lemmy / is someone we want to bring over to Lemmy. Reddit has been intentionally courting a demographic that just wants quick content scrolling, like TikTok. I think that's a big part of why Reddit has gotten so much more hostile in the last few years- such people don't generally have open minds.
I want to migrate the people who are respectful, open-minded, who want a discussion and a debate. I don't want to migrate the people who just want to endlessly scroll through shiny videos and never produce an intelligent thought.
So I say let Reddit have those people- if Spez can monetize them, do it with my compliments. The site/company won't be nearly as valuable, but who cares.
In a way I wholly see your point. Who wouldn't want to surround themselves with more mature individuals with worldly perspectives whose first inclination at disagreement isn't "winning the argument" but rather the mutual pursuit of truth and a gentle "shifting" of views towards it in kind?
The only reason I'd disagree on this to some extent is it reproduces what is already a key problem with the internet / social media: Echo-chambers. Unfortunately for society to improve, we need to drag along the ignorant and inform them whatever way we can. The nice thing with Reddit is that you'd get a lot of overlap with "reasonable people," and those... Not so reasonable. I attribute this exposure to changing my views massively over the years (coming from a rural christian conservative background turned progressive non-religious). In my view somehow you need to court these folks so they can be exposed to a variety of outside opinions but also ensure they don't get... Unruly either.
Reddit has clearly decided that their strength is as a Generic Social Network, with a priority on content that will appeal to as many people as possible, and be as addicting as possible. I’m a broken record about this, but this is why you see so many negative communities and posts getting promoted by their algorithm.
Lemmy has the opportunity to be something even greater - a social network that is for the users, by the users, and of the users. No profit motive. No doomscrolling. No shitty videos. Just good discussions and funny memes.
They need to find a way to make an inherently unprofitable concept profitable
I'm sorry, not trying to argue but this is incorrect. It's not inherently unprofitable, it's chronically mismanaged. Reddit generated $485mm in revenue in 2021 and $670mm in 2022.
For a relatively feature-complete and mature website, development costs should be a small percentage of that (especially considering in hindsight that Reddit didn't really ship anything of value. Avatars. 🤮).
You don't have to be an MBA to see they're blowing all their money on too many middle managers and too much expensive real estate.
They pissed away their best chance to develop a new revenue stream when they fired Chooter and ruined AMA. At that moment, a competent board would've reigned in spending. Not halted, just acknowledge that future growth just got stunted.
Fair comment, thanks. I guess I read too many articles recently, detailing their declining valuation and that their value was artificially inflated somewhat by bandwagoning investors - - but that's not quite the same.
As you point out, it seems they're just grossly inefficient with what are pretty large existing revenue streams (ads, reddit premium).
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.
Yeah I'm with you. Core reddit has been a disaster for a long time. I happily left a long time ago and eventually came back as 3rd party apps allowed me to have s completely different experience on mobile and I could finally stop using desktop (though res always lively fondly in my heart).
I'm moving away from Reddit for a least a while too see how things begin to unfold. Will try Lemmy, too, and see if it grows enough to be worthwhile and have the momentary to build some sort of critical mass offer time. Seeing some major said move here (Boost, for me) will be awesome.
But I don't expect reddit to disappear. As was said, for a ton of people, the 3rd party so exodus is not impactful, if they're even aware of it.
I'd guess Reddit continues for a long time, but becomes even more diluted than it has since the tencent investments and the huge leave-facebook migration from a few years ago.
I'm not sure this is true. Social media is very temporary - even thought people feel a sense of permanence it is false. It's today's content people consume, today's users that matters. While there is a lot of interesting old content on reddit, the vast majority of people are there for the new.
So when a social media site goes into decline, it can be a rapid downward spiral. Digg has been mentioned here, but also MySpace was by far the biggest social media platform in its day - it imploded in less than a year or two when Facebook came alone. Tumblr was a big blogggin site until it started first forcing people to it's app, and then outright banned adult content - it imploded almost immediately and people moved on to Twitter and Reddit with that content.
Reddit mistake is they did not value what they had - users generating content, and users moderating themselves. Reddit is nothing more than a host, but they see the content as their property to monetise. Today is not the first step on their own decline, but it will certainly accelerate it.
I suspect the fediverse will be the long term solution. This first major wave of migration brings in the early adopters, including crucially people who are interested in coding and development which will benefit Kbin and Lemmy. Further waves of users will follow and find more mature established communities when they arrives. I expect the next big battle to be over adult content - advertisers are already nervous about it with it's use in protests, and the simplest solution is to ban it. Even if reddit reversed it's course on the API, I think the damage is done and the course is decline to irrelevance.
But Reddit biggest mistake around the API is not the API itself; you're right most users won't care. But it's big mistake is losing the users who care - they are the power users, the technically savvy users, the early adopters. Reddit big mistake is it has encouraged those people to leave and help develop it's competitor and alternative. That is why this has been so important and that is why I think reddit is probably not salvageable now.
Last time someone tried to compete with reddit it was single handed and closed - Vo.at. Now it's open source, collaborative and decentralised.
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.
I think there needs to be one or two really good communities that kick things off. Right now it seems like people are flooding in and randomly interacting.
I think if one or two fun communities get things rolling and we get a good app or two it has a solid chance.
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.
I think you are correct. In later years it became more and more tiktok reposts and the same post over several subs. I saw a Ghostgum video when he compared it to the escape from Tumblr
Yeah, I think the big thing here isn't really users it's creators - I've tried various interesting things on Reddit, created some tools and bots because it used to be a great platform for that but going forward there's no way I'll waste time making them there when I could make them here.
A lot of the most interesting new things will get made here, especially with how flexible it is for people customizing their own instance to create totally new experiences. Over time there will be increasing more reasons to have a Lemmy account which will result in more people casually participating and shifting over this way.
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.
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.
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).
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).
Sounds about right. There are longtime users I watch or know personally who contributed a lot of content by way of (1) giving / receiving gildings that go to Reddit for server up time, (2) submissions, and (3) moderation (reporting bad behavior). People like PoppinKream, who says they're just waiting for something to get better established before migrating. That won't be long considering these devs have renewed vigor at this opportunity.
It's long-post users like that who separate Reddit from the likes of Facebook or Tiktok. What attracted intelligent discussions in the right subs. Once they leave, it will be just trash content.
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.
Same here. Couldn't tell you how many posts I had or what my karma level was, but I browsed daily and actively participated in three or four small subs. I'll definitely miss those, but could give a rat's ass about the larger echo chambers. I'm hoping Lemmy will attract some of the subs and users I liked, without all of the schmucks endlessly reposting the same old shit.
Yay, first (hopefully of many) post I've made on Lemmy.
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.
That's the bigger part of why I left; There's probably 12-18mo of good content on the niche communities I liked, but 1) RIF and RES kept me away from the obnoxious format the site adopted, and 2) I know it's just going to keep getting worse. Better to rip the band-aide off 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.
It's been going that direction for a while. Even if we stated, the discourse quality in Reddit overall has been going down. Many of the "fun" subreddits have lost their point and have become shitty collections of short-videos.
For example take a look at r/HolUp. It used to be a very fun subreddit, with a very specific type of content, but now it's just shitty videos that have nothing that make you think "hold up a minute".
This is my beef with new Reddit too.
I didn't like the look, but I could have learned to live with that, the problem was it changed the fundamental way users were expected to interact with the site.
Old.reddit is a discussion site. Someone posts a topic, either text or link, and other members comment.
New Reddit wants you to scroll through linked content on the front or sub page (with interspersed ads) and commenting isn't the point. If you do want to click through to the comments, they're interupted with links to different posts. Fine if you're just there to waste time and browse memes, intensely irritating if you're after something specific.
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)
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.
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.
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
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 agree, Reddit will carry on, but this will change them. They will possibly fall from their dominant spot. Although the sheep are stubborn (I still don't understand how the people there could withstand that atrocious mobile app they're trying to inflict on all their users).
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 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.
The problem is that Reddit users are generally pretty savvy. They know how ad block works and they know not to click to dumb links. This is bad for investors.
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.
/r/all is the same 30 posts over and over. I agree the site will slowly degrade into a shell of it's former self. But there will be a reddit for spez to suck off until he gets his money
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.
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.
If they don't get the bot spam under control it might end up becoming a zombie site. Where less and less relevant content will be drowned out in spam.
There was a post on here, about a community already drowning in spam that the auto-mod couldn't stop. And for some reason they couldn't use the 3-party software they normally used to stop it. (That should still work, unless taken down as a protest to the api changes?)
It would be foolish to think that Reddit the business won’t survive this. Let’s be real, they are going to keep thriving. They’ll likely follow the pattern of facebook or twitter - it doesn’t matter if they are profitable or not, but they are going to stick around regardless.
Now, I think that there is a reasonable argument to be made that Reddit the experience is dying. Many of the large mods and content creators were users of third party apps, and a lot of those folks are going to start drifting away now that Reddit is basically telling them to eat dirt. Reddit is going to slowly shift towards lower effort content, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of posts start getting AI generated at some point
But, from this point they will slowly decline and get gradually worse every month until eventually no one interesting posts there. But they will continue to exist in some form for years.
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)
100% it'll survive, The amount of users who left wont make much difference and more people will flock there in time, considering now they have their only their app, more users will will happily pay monthly :/
I think Reddit has the possibility of going away but it’ll definitely be similar to what has happened with tumblr. It’ll survive but will never be what it once was. Sure the average user can still scroll but the “content creators”/more dedicated users will go elsewhere were.
While I've moved onto lemmy, I do hope it stays alive purely for the vast amount of info already on there. I'm sure as lemmy or other apps grow it'll be easier to find posts on things, but that will take time and till then reddit is probably the most accessible solution
It probably will just because it is still a very massive repository of data and at its core just a simple hobby forum site funded by ads--basically the second most ancient form of internet content next to a straight up fansite. I think that is what has made so many people so angry about this whole thing--the audacity of Reddit to act like * it* was providing the service (service being ad revenue) rather than its users providing it with avenues for money. Reddit needs to learn that it existed at our pleasure, and that without active users it offers literally nothing.
Just head over to Digg and take a look around. All redditors were on Digg before they messed up the interface and pissed people off. Then almost everyone left digg for Reddit (about 15 years ago I think).
Same thing will happen with Reddit - people will get pissed at the lack of apps to access reddit, the native app sucks and they are going to do away with old.reddit soon enough.
The damage has been done, people like me have discovered the fediverse (and squabbles.io ) - I get my social media fix here now. And for the time there aren't a ton of trolls and bots manipulating post to push them to the top of r/all
I personally think that they’ve reached critical mass, and will follow a similar pattern to Facebook. Human user growth will slow, and the quality of content will slowly drop off over time. People will slowly stop using Reddit, but it’ll still be around
As much as I would like to see the collapse of Reddit, I don’t think the average user cares. People on lemmy/kbin/etc. care, but that’s a small minority. From over here, it seemed like a lot of subs caved in and backed out of the blackout pretty quick
I could see them modifying how upvotes and total score actually work to make it seem like more people like user’s content. Average people seem to be okay with the slow drip of content interwoven between ads.
At this point tho, I think that I’ll try to not even think about Reddit. I realize it provided lots of entertainment over the past decade, but there are more meaningful things I could do in my own life. I also understand the value that marginalized groups have in these kinds of spaces (people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color) as they may not feel safe IRL, but do like seeking communities like themselves online
But yeah, I’ll move on, touch grass, and try to make a positive impact elsewhere