Reddit delivered strong earnings, but the numbers beneath the surface tell a different story. Slowing logged-in user growth and AI-powered search could threaten the platform's long-term value.
Reddit used to be a lot like Lemmy, but it’s completely overrun by bots these days. Typically they’re trying to either sow division or simply drive engagement, which I suspect is to help train AI. /r/all is literally 50% posts like “help me understand this unbelievably simple joke” or “As a real human, how does [thing] make you feel?” Then the comments are packed with people telling you not to vote or to distrust your neighbors. It’s just been getting worse and worse for years. It’s sad.
I’ve heard a lot of cooing over the old days of reddit, but the old days of reddit also involved being a free speech absolutist enclave where r/Incel and r/creepshots festered for years. I think it got better in the middle, and that’s when I joined and had a lot of fun for a while… But then Ellen Pao got ejected on a wave of sexist abuse and, well, I guess my point is that it was always kinda rotten so it was inevitable for it to go downhill like this.
Yeah, fair. I suppose I’m glossing over a lot of the bullshit because I didn’t engage with that side of Reddit. I think some of these problems are just with society or the internet as a whole. There are some pretty bleak communities on Lemmy too, unfortunately. I think my problem is more that Reddit themselves have killed off what was good about the site while amplifying a lot of the worst (remaining) aspects in the pursuit of profit.
Agree. At this point it’s the the cons of every decision and none of the pros it used to have 😓 Like, you’re still gonna run into a shitton of sexism and racism because they’ll never get banned as long as they don’t say an actual slur… but also you can get auto-banned by AI for making a sarcastic joke. It’s gotten harder to hold onto a community and moderate it effectively, but there’s still a ton of mod squatters ruining what used to be decent communities. And so on.
For me, the toxicity is a big push off of reddit. It’s not like I never encounter obnoxiousness here, but it’s not nearly as bad.
Reddit used to be a lot like Lemmy, but it’s completely overrun by bots these days. Typically they’re trying to either sow division or simply drive engagement, which I suspect is to help train AI. /r/all is literally 50% posts like “help me understand this unbelievably simple joke” or “As a real human, how does [thing] make you feel?” Then the comments are packed with people telling you not to vote or to distrust your neighbors. It’s just been getting worse and worse for years. It’s sad.
I’ve heard a lot of cooing over the old days of reddit, but the old days of reddit also involved being a free speech absolutist enclave where r/Incel and r/creepshots festered for years. I think it got better in the middle, and that’s when I joined and had a lot of fun for a while… But then Ellen Pao got ejected on a wave of sexist abuse and, well, I guess my point is that it was always kinda rotten so it was inevitable for it to go downhill like this.
Yeah, fair. I suppose I’m glossing over a lot of the bullshit because I didn’t engage with that side of Reddit. I think some of these problems are just with society or the internet as a whole. There are some pretty bleak communities on Lemmy too, unfortunately. I think my problem is more that Reddit themselves have killed off what was good about the site while amplifying a lot of the worst (remaining) aspects in the pursuit of profit.
Agree. At this point it’s the the cons of every decision and none of the pros it used to have 😓 Like, you’re still gonna run into a shitton of sexism and racism because they’ll never get banned as long as they don’t say an actual slur… but also you can get auto-banned by AI for making a sarcastic joke. It’s gotten harder to hold onto a community and moderate it effectively, but there’s still a ton of mod squatters ruining what used to be decent communities. And so on.