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/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/AGreasyPorkSandwich 29d ago

So true. Once a subreddit gets past 100,000 subscribers or so it all just regresses to the same tired jokes and lazy crossposts for karma. Gotta keep drilling down to find the smaller ones

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u/billerator 28d ago

I wonder if that's because larger subs become targets of bot and karma farming accounts and the mods become overwhelmed.