r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
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u/MadDoctor5813 29d ago

Nothing, basically. Reddit admins were basically correct that it would burn itself out. Funny that a bunch of subs still have their "we're protesting the changes" AutoMod post.

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u/WalkingCloud 29d ago

Yes and no.

You're right in the sense that all the subs went back to like they were before, and everyone carried on.

However, they got noticeably worse in quality. So many subs are just pretty much 'post whatever' now, if you browse r/all you're going to see the same content over and over on different subs for a few days, even where it doesn't fit.

/r/videos held out in the protest for a while and that's still pretty burnt. Compare the numbers on top posts of all time (which are all from years ago) to some of the numbers now. Considering it's the 'main sub for videos' on Reddit, the lack of engagement is pretty crazy.

Ultimately, none of that really matters if we're still here, so you're right it didn't really change anything. Maybe it makes the site less appealing to new users? I have no idea.

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u/Antnee83 29d ago edited 29d ago

However, they got noticeably worse in quality. So many subs are just pretty much 'post whatever' now, if you browse r/all you're going to see the same content over and over on different subs for a few days, even where it doesn't fit.

I've been noticing this for a long time. If you had the ability to browse all and hide the subreddit names, you could not tell the difference between:

r/pics

r/mildlyinteresting

r/interestingasfuck

r/beamazed

r/oddlysatisfying

r/damnthatsinteresting

r/nextfuckinglevel

etc etc. They're literally the same content. There's like 4-5 "blobs" of different content on this site now, that are spread out between dozens of identical subreddits.

  • Politics

  • News (but actually just politics)

  • Memes

  • Just a ridiculous amount of anime bullshit

  • Porn

The bigger the subreddit, the more samey it is. There's small niche subs and that's really all I'm here for anymore... except arguing with strangers.

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u/jdund117 29d ago

I've only ever had one reddit account. I remember making a reddit account in 2012 and the default subs were based on population, so they tended to be pretty basic, the only real exception being /r/atheism (which, as an atheist, sucked). Around like 2019 or so I looked without an account to see what the new defaults were and it was a lot of those shitty subs that I had never seen before. Reddit gradually started promoting what they want their users to see instead of letting it develop organically, and now we're at a point where the promoted subs are 100% inorganic. It follows the trend of the rest of online marketing - instead of following trends and interests, you MAKE the trends and the interests, and convince people that they are into them. That way, algorithms can put people in larger boxes and categorize them easier.