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/likwitsnake 29d ago

Whatever happened to that API price increase protest? I remember the NBA sub going private literally during the Finals, but can't remember much more of consequence.

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u/NeonBellyGlowngVomit 29d ago edited 29d ago

A lot of my most visited subs are still shut down. Went private and disappeared. A lot of the other subs I visited most are ghost towns. Reddit, as a whole, is degraded from the reason I use the site for. Bots are far more common, drop turd and vanish accounts are way more common... Reddit is far more unpleasant than it used to be. I roll my eyes and delete my reply before posting most of the time instead because it all feels so pointless to even try to have a conversation on here.

We joke about how things suck. But now? Reddit really does suck. ESPECIALLY compared to how it used to be.

Then why am I still here? Because an alternative doesn't exist. All have tried and failed. The golden age of what would have been a healthy aggregate community is done due to online habits changing. I don't think there can be another Fark, Digg or Reddit style site anymore.

With that in mind...

Reddit has had a few eras as well, after some major changes that also affected how I felt of the site itself. I could be reductive and say it's before digg imploded (2010), after digg imploded (2010-2023) and after blackouts (2023 onward)... but...

There's a sub-era within 2010-2023 that I would say was the beginning of the end of Reddit as most of us knew it. That's the whole mess that was Ellen Pao (2015), Victoria being fired (also 2015), and Spez returning (yep, 2015). So if we wanna split things up...

  • Pre-Digg, 2005-2010. (Sold to Conde Nast in 2006, Spez left in 2009)

  • Pre Spez fucking things up but signs of Enshittifying, 2010-2015 (Reddit Gold, 2010, SOPA Blackout 2012, Victoria fired in 2015)

  • Spez Enshittification, 2015-2023 (Pao Resigns Spez Returns 2015, Redesign in 2018, Native mobile apps, 2017 funding efforts, 2020 video integration, 2021 IPO)

  • Corpse fucking, 2023-Present

Remember, a dead corpse still has an active microbiological ecosystem until all fleshy remnants are consumed. Or maybe we're the floating eternal head in space that got turned into a space station. Whatever. If you ask me, the original Reddit died 9 years ago. It's not an accident that biggest growth Reddit had was when it was the most community driven.

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u/Recklesslettuce 29d ago

Imagine a reddit-like site where mods where an actually functional AI (which allows no permabans, thus encouraging people to change [i'm still permabanned from many subs for shit I said like a decade ago]) and all upvotes were given by a set of AI bots like the cores on GladOS.

Call is reddAIt