I'm genuinely curious to see what Reddit looks like in the coming years. I left after the boycott and have no plans to reactivate my account I started in 2010, but I still know plenty of people...
I'm genuinely curious to see what Reddit looks like in the coming years. I left after the boycott and have no plans to reactivate my account I started in 2010, but I still know plenty of people who use it and their reports about the changes are interesting. Most of what we have discussed is how the front page looks different now, less thought provoking and more meme-y and how the tone of many subs have changed from being more progressive and anti-establishment to center/right with more athority praise than I'm accustomed to seeing on Reddit. I recently skimmed the daily WorldNews thread on Israel and Gaza, curious to see what was being talked about, and the predominant thread in the comments was "Good for Israel for being tough, they should have always controlled the migration in and out of all ways to/from Gaza" and a general indifference to civilian suffering, even a downplaying of it.
All of this could be purely subjective, I'm willing to admit, but I'm not going out of my way to tell friends what I think about it and they come to me with thoughts on "How different Reddit feels now." I was never one of those people who believed Reddit would be even a little phased by my and others exit, so I'm not shocked they're doing fine, I'm just a bit sad that it doesn't exist like it used to.
I still browse reddit a bit, mainly sticking to BestofRedditorUpdates or searching for updates in general. The only other thing I do is check r/all for any big headlines or news. Based on my brief...
I still browse reddit a bit, mainly sticking to BestofRedditorUpdates or searching for updates in general. The only other thing I do is check r/all for any big headlines or news. Based on my brief skimming of comments, I've noticed a general anti-Israel sentiment on most subs, but I'm pretty surface-level and don't engage too often.
It definitely seems more meme-y than before though. One notable change is the number of bots. They've always been around, but they're really everywhere now. It's normal to open any post on all and see comments saying either the poster is a bot, or calling out specific comments as copied from another comment on either that post or an older one. Yesterday one of the posts to reach the front page of all was a post to r/OneOrangeBraincell titled "Puddy has a message for the mods" with a photo of a cat and sign saying "this sub has a bot problem". Based on the comments, moderators of multiple subs are having trouble dealing with the heavy influx of bots since even karma requirements don't do much anymore.
I honestly wonder how much users actually care about bots, as long as they don’t know they’re talking to bots sometimes. I feel like at least 80% of real, human users on Reddit could be replaced...
I honestly wonder how much users actually care about bots, as long as they don’t know they’re talking to bots sometimes. I feel like at least 80% of real, human users on Reddit could be replaced by an LLM and no one could notice because they post in such predictable and banal ways.
I know what you mean. I haven’t visited Reddit much since the boycott, only when a search brings me there, but back when I was an active user the comment threads consisting entirely of puns or...
I know what you mean. I haven’t visited Reddit much since the boycott, only when a search brings me there, but back when I was an active user the comment threads consisting entirely of puns or quotes from TV shows were so mechanical that it really would have made no difference if they were posted by bots, and a lot of the other content was extremely predictable as well.
Yeah, I agree. Reddit comments for the last 7 years or so have been low effort enough that you could even get away with bitting very simple "I agree" level comments and use that to leverage karma....
Yeah, I agree. Reddit comments for the last 7 years or so have been low effort enough that you could even get away with bitting very simple "I agree" level comments and use that to leverage karma. That's nearly impossible to distinguish from the humans.
Now with all these sophisticated LLM's, some slight tweaks can make them sound like top contributing redditors. The best ones are probably never truly called out as a bot, and that's the scariest part.
Even in the original GPT and GPT-2 days, the bots in /r/SubredditSimulator and /r/SubredditSimulatorGPT2 had more coherent conversations than the human redditors.
I honestly wonder a bit too. I don't mind the reposts TOO much, since often it will be photos, facts or memes I haven't seen. However, some of the reposts involve past news events and can incite...
I honestly wonder a bit too. I don't mind the reposts TOO much, since often it will be photos, facts or memes I haven't seen. However, some of the reposts involve past news events and can incite new anger/frustration over years-old events that have already resolved by omitting dates. When it comes to sensitive topics like politics, I can see that being used to sway people's stances if they only see the image/screenshot and don't look for further context.
Besides that, it's also just annoying to see a pic saying "this just happened to me" and find out no, it was a bot reposting a highly rated pic. So if you want context on the aftermath or details on how it happened, you won't get any on the new post.
This is a generational thing. Go anywhere on the Internet you can find people under thirty, most likely 15-20 and it's a full-on spam of "ALL EYES ON RAFAH" on unrelated posts.
I've noticed a general anti-Israel sentiment on most subs
This is a generational thing. Go anywhere on the Internet you can find people under thirty, most likely 15-20 and it's a full-on spam of "ALL EYES ON RAFAH" on unrelated posts.
/r/anime_titties was created in response to /r/worldpolitics being incredibly poorly moderated. The joke being something like "/r/worldpolitics is nothing but anime titties, so we'll make...
r/worldpolitics became effectively unmoderated. Redditors testing limits flooded it with cartoon tits. A group of people started a counter sub for world politics and named it r/anime_titties.
r/worldpolitics became effectively unmoderated. Redditors testing limits flooded it with cartoon tits. A group of people started a counter sub for world politics and named it r/anime_titties.
/r/worldnews is far more conservative than the rest of the site writ large. Most of the subs that hit /r/All are still very left-leaning. More than that though, the quality of the site has...
/r/worldnews is far more conservative than the rest of the site writ large. Most of the subs that hit /r/All are still very left-leaning.
More than that though, the quality of the site has noticeably tanked in the past few months. Obviously everyone thinks the site has been going down hill since <insert event>. Whether it's the API change, COVID, 2016 election, Pao, /r/jailbait ban, Digg migtation, or whatever, it's practically a meme that the site "isn't what it used to be".
Even then, something is different now. It's not a shift in the political leanings or site culture, but something more existentially troublesome: bots. It's becoming uncanny and really feels like the dead internet. Bots and karma farming have always been around, but it feels like it's tipped over a critical mass threshold. It's become routine to click a Hot post in /r/All only to find it's been removed by the mods for being a bot post. Posts will get thousands of upvotes and you go to the comments to find the top comment with hundreds of votes and then a scattering of comments beyond that with vote counts in the single digits. It's bots upvoting bot comments and very little interaction outside of that.
Hell, even /r/OneOrangeBraincell (a sub about cats) just had one of their top posts of the past month simply being a complaint about the number of bot accounts.
Even a few months before the API got closed off, bots were all over the place. The most common I saw was the type that’d copy a comment word for word from another comment in the same thread or...
Even a few months before the API got closed off, bots were all over the place. The most common I saw was the type that’d copy a comment word for word from another comment in the same thread or some other thread on the same subject, and like in your example, would be upvoted some several tens of times more than the comment that got copied.
I do tread carefully when throwing around the "It isn't what it used to be," because I know how it was thrown around Reddit and I truly believe I could just be bias. It's nice to think that I was...
I do tread carefully when throwing around the "It isn't what it used to be," because I know how it was thrown around Reddit and I truly believe I could just be bias. It's nice to think that I was on the right side of opposing the API changes and, by relation, the purification of the platform to become corporate facing. It's not like there's not still things on Reddit that corporate figures wouldn't scoff at, but the API change was such a huge leap into the enshitification of all things to make money. But it does seem different and I have to admit, that kind of bums me out, because I really loved the years I spent on Reddit, early on. It was such a cool place, IS a cool place, but the growth and eventual attempt to make it a profit machine sucks.
My country's little subreddit has changed markedly in the past year or two. Just a complete takeover, it doesn't read like it used to at all. Some posts get hundreds or even thousands of comments...
My country's little subreddit has changed markedly in the past year or two. Just a complete takeover, it doesn't read like it used to at all.
Some posts get hundreds or even thousands of comments from accounts < 6 months in age, most a lot younger. I know it's certain keywords being hit by bots. Most of it is political, wouldn't be surprised if various state sponsored efforts given the topics that get this type of attention.
Moderation is also a lot lazier on the whole site, rules that used to exist are just ignored in every subreddit I visit. It's a crappy experience and the mods clearly agree, you can sense the lack of motivation.
I still check Greentext and 4Chan, EpicSeven, TheSilphRoad and TheSilphArena, PoliticalCompassMemes, and occasionally some others. The main thing I've noticed is the engagement dropoff on NoSleep...
I still check Greentext and 4Chan, EpicSeven, TheSilphRoad and TheSilphArena, PoliticalCompassMemes, and occasionally some others. The main thing I've noticed is the engagement dropoff on NoSleep and WritingPrompts, and that leaves me disheartened as they used to be where I'd go for a daily dose of fiction. I think there's been a similar decline in the others I mentioned (minus EpicSeven, that one's always been kinda small), but it's especially palpable on the writing subreddits.
It makes perfect sense to me that writing subreddits in particular have suffered, for two reasons: Reddit’s text editing experience has never been great and has only gotten worse, which was...
It makes perfect sense to me that writing subreddits in particular have suffered, for two reasons:
Reddit’s text editing experience has never been great and has only gotten worse, which was previously being patched up by third party clients
Subreddits that are less friendly to casual engagement (e.g. not as likely to show up on front page or popular) and more geared toward active posting in general had higher populations of third-party client users for the numerous quality of life features those had
They all shifted to TIFU, relationships, and various job/job rant subreddits. There's no particular distinction between truth and fiction on reddit these days, so you may as well target the...
The main thing I've noticed is the engagement dropoff on NoSleep and WritingPrompts, and that leaves me disheartened as they used to be where I'd go for a daily dose of fiction.
They all shifted to TIFU, relationships, and various job/job rant subreddits. There's no particular distinction between truth and fiction on reddit these days, so you may as well target the biggest communities and increase your engagement by having people argue of the validity of your story.
EpicSeven, that one's always been kinda small
Yeah, mobile game discussions all more or less shifted to discords these days, and that was happening even pre-pandemic. Not a huge fan, but the format does fit for the way those games pace themselves.
EpicSeven is relatively big, but no other (original) mobile game these days outside of Hoyoverse's portfolio will ever get that level of traction on reddit again. Maybe some Cygames title if they ever decide to localize again.
I'm of the oppinion that Reddit will eventually become X. Right now it kind of feels like it's like Twitter used to be, except with deeper threads and more bells and whistles. Actual conversations...
I'm of the oppinion that Reddit will eventually become X. Right now it kind of feels like it's like Twitter used to be, except with deeper threads and more bells and whistles. Actual conversations that aren't debates or arguments are incredibly rare. Someone else mentioned that they have improved things by giving people a choice of things to subscribe to rather than a default list, and that reminds me quite a lot of how Twitter (and most other popular SNS) is only good if you follow the "right" accounts.
Games subs are more or less on the same (downward) trajectory. Definitely a lot less sympathy for the workers in industry than say, pre-pandemic. But that selfishness always existed in some form....
Games subs are more or less on the same (downward) trajectory. Definitely a lot less sympathy for the workers in industry than say, pre-pandemic. But that selfishness always existed in some form. The usually increase in aggression and strawmanning of the rest of Reddit exists.
To be honest, I'm more disappointed by a lack of a proper alternative after all this time. Hacker news did a great job replacing most of the technical space, but the lack of a proper modern gaming forum is depressing, to say the least. Specific games tend to be relegated to a discord that may or may not be active, most other general forums still pale in activity compared even to the ancient Ganefaqs (now owned by Fandom, so its on its own timer).
Industry news/game dev communities are still strong on XTwitter, which I was never really into and am especially less than interested in attempting to participate in these days. I thought maybe Bluesky would at least have a fighting chance (even if I still hate the Twitter format), but with that bizarre founder's statement I lost a lot of confidence.
It's all a bit of a mess and it doesn't seem like there's even much demand to go back to long for discussion in games outside of whatever was grandfathered.
Reddit continuing to hum along. Since they're public now, they have to release some numbers they normally don't, which may be of interest, like rev/user
Reddit continuing to hum along. Since they're public now, they have to release some numbers they normally don't, which may be of interest, like rev/user
The company reported 82.7 million daily active users for its first quarter, up from the 76.6 million expected by StreetAccount. Average revenue per user worldwide rose 8% to $2.94 from $2.72 a year ago.
Everyone and their dog was predicting this IPO would crash and burn, with lots of people publicly stating they planned to short it. What went wrong here?
Everyone and their dog was predicting this IPO would crash and burn, with lots of people publicly stating they planned to short it.
Reddit has been growing exponentially for years, and it's changed. Meanwhile, choosing your defaults lets you filter out the garbage and effectively blind yourself to the changes, which...
What went wrong here?
Reddit has been growing exponentially for years, and it's changed. Meanwhile, choosing your defaults lets you filter out the garbage and effectively blind yourself to the changes, which structurally leads people to assume their echochamber is bigger than it really is.
I think if the average reddit user was the same type of person as the average redditor from 2011, then the IPO would've been a fatal blow. Maybe. But reddit's changes have been going on for long enough that anyone who really cared enough to leave has already left (e.g. when reddit stopped being open source), and most newcomers don't care in the first place.
Apparently when Reddit first launched, /r/programming was a default sub, and one of the most popular subs. Nowadays it's relatively niche (which is why it's no longer a default).
Reddit is just normal people, and normal people put up with all sorts of bullshit from Facebook etc without leaving on sheer principle, so that's what happened when reddit IPO'd.
To the point that /r/programming was made private by one of the non-admin mods, with the top mod being one of the admins since that early day, and it took them months to notice that an admin-owned...
Apparently when Reddit first launched, /r/programming was a default sub, and one of the most popular subs. Nowadays it's relatively niche (which is why it's no longer a default).
To the point that /r/programming was made private by one of the non-admin mods, with the top mod being one of the admins since that early day, and it took them months to notice that an admin-owned sub was on the blackout list, even after most other subreddits had relented.
The old adage is that whatever Reddit thinks will happen, bet on the opposite. You should never do a serious bet or investment on something when you have a lot of personal emotional investment in...
The old adage is that whatever Reddit thinks will happen, bet on the opposite.
You should never do a serious bet or investment on something when you have a lot of personal emotional investment in it. One way or another, your eyes will be too clouded to accurately predict anything. Redditors are too invested in Reddit to seriously think about Reddit as a business, even if they don't think they are.
Yea, there's been plenty of companies who had a strong first year after an IPO only to tumble later. If you bought into the IPO, now might be a good time to sell. I believe they only had a 30 day...
Yea, there's been plenty of companies who had a strong first year after an IPO only to tumble later. If you bought into the IPO, now might be a good time to sell. I believe they only had a 30 day lockup
They were either bluffing, outright lying (they never even bought stock), or simply outnumbered by genuine investors. I don't have long term hopes for RDDT, but I'm not entirely unsurprised that...
lots of people publicly stating they planned to short it.
They were either bluffing, outright lying (they never even bought stock), or simply outnumbered by genuine investors. I don't have long term hopes for RDDT, but I'm not entirely unsurprised that it IPO'd well. That's basically what companies these days excel at.
What went wrong here?
Reddit these days is largely visited by passive users, so even if somehow the blackout had all but the mods of the top 20 subs left, it'd be hard to truly impact a stock on a noticeable level.
But of course, the discourse between mods and users were already mixed during the blackout. Many remaining commenter, i.e active users, were opposed to blacking out and dismissed it as a temper tantrum. And if that's the thought of active users complaining about reddit, there was no hope the passive user base would bother.
Long term, the core issues remain, even if we only look objectively. Reddit struggles to be profitable, and it's big strategies either increase the incentive to game the system with bots, or simply decrease the quality of the site's original premise of grassroots "organic" marketing.
I don't know when/if Reddit will truly "die" (i mean, Digg is still technically around, as a wolf in sheep's clothing). But I would not be surprised if by the end of the decade Reddit starts to be the new Quora in terms of its quality. It'll only be more resilient becsuse most of Reddit as is did not rely on being a knowledge base; that was merely a convinent side effect of the community format.
I think it's like what happens to chocolate. The bars are getting smaller and lower quality. Only the old buyers notice this, the new generation are already born with the lower quality and it's...
I think it's like what happens to chocolate. The bars are getting smaller and lower quality. Only the old buyers notice this, the new generation are already born with the lower quality and it's default for them.
I'm genuinely curious to see what Reddit looks like in the coming years. I left after the boycott and have no plans to reactivate my account I started in 2010, but I still know plenty of people who use it and their reports about the changes are interesting. Most of what we have discussed is how the front page looks different now, less thought provoking and more meme-y and how the tone of many subs have changed from being more progressive and anti-establishment to center/right with more athority praise than I'm accustomed to seeing on Reddit. I recently skimmed the daily WorldNews thread on Israel and Gaza, curious to see what was being talked about, and the predominant thread in the comments was "Good for Israel for being tough, they should have always controlled the migration in and out of all ways to/from Gaza" and a general indifference to civilian suffering, even a downplaying of it.
All of this could be purely subjective, I'm willing to admit, but I'm not going out of my way to tell friends what I think about it and they come to me with thoughts on "How different Reddit feels now." I was never one of those people who believed Reddit would be even a little phased by my and others exit, so I'm not shocked they're doing fine, I'm just a bit sad that it doesn't exist like it used to.
I still browse reddit a bit, mainly sticking to BestofRedditorUpdates or searching for updates in general. The only other thing I do is check r/all for any big headlines or news. Based on my brief skimming of comments, I've noticed a general anti-Israel sentiment on most subs, but I'm pretty surface-level and don't engage too often.
It definitely seems more meme-y than before though. One notable change is the number of bots. They've always been around, but they're really everywhere now. It's normal to open any post on all and see comments saying either the poster is a bot, or calling out specific comments as copied from another comment on either that post or an older one. Yesterday one of the posts to reach the front page of all was a post to r/OneOrangeBraincell titled "Puddy has a message for the mods" with a photo of a cat and sign saying "this sub has a bot problem". Based on the comments, moderators of multiple subs are having trouble dealing with the heavy influx of bots since even karma requirements don't do much anymore.
I honestly wonder how much users actually care about bots, as long as they don’t know they’re talking to bots sometimes. I feel like at least 80% of real, human users on Reddit could be replaced by an LLM and no one could notice because they post in such predictable and banal ways.
I know what you mean. I haven’t visited Reddit much since the boycott, only when a search brings me there, but back when I was an active user the comment threads consisting entirely of puns or quotes from TV shows were so mechanical that it really would have made no difference if they were posted by bots, and a lot of the other content was extremely predictable as well.
Yeah, I agree. Reddit comments for the last 7 years or so have been low effort enough that you could even get away with bitting very simple "I agree" level comments and use that to leverage karma. That's nearly impossible to distinguish from the humans.
Now with all these sophisticated LLM's, some slight tweaks can make them sound like top contributing redditors. The best ones are probably never truly called out as a bot, and that's the scariest part.
You don’t need a current-gen LLM. Even GPT-2 was good enough to be better than the meatbags.
Even in the original GPT and GPT-2 days, the bots in /r/SubredditSimulator and /r/SubredditSimulatorGPT2 had more coherent conversations than the human redditors.
If I’m remembering correctly, one (maybe both?) of those were made by Deimos, the creator of Tildes…
I honestly wonder a bit too. I don't mind the reposts TOO much, since often it will be photos, facts or memes I haven't seen. However, some of the reposts involve past news events and can incite new anger/frustration over years-old events that have already resolved by omitting dates. When it comes to sensitive topics like politics, I can see that being used to sway people's stances if they only see the image/screenshot and don't look for further context.
Besides that, it's also just annoying to see a pic saying "this just happened to me" and find out no, it was a bot reposting a highly rated pic. So if you want context on the aftermath or details on how it happened, you won't get any on the new post.
This is a generational thing. Go anywhere on the Internet you can find people under thirty, most likely 15-20 and it's a full-on spam of "ALL EYES ON RAFAH" on unrelated posts.
r/worldnews is very pro Israel. r/anime_titties which replaced the world politics subreddit has more diverse discussions
How the F did anime_titties became politics? Or was it vice versa? Or was it like this from the beginning?
/r/anime_titties was created in response to /r/worldpolitics being incredibly poorly moderated. The joke being something like "/r/worldpolitics is nothing but anime titties, so we'll make /r/anime_titties and make it be about world politics".
Same thing as /r/trees and /r/marijuanaEnthusiasts.
r/worldpolitics became effectively unmoderated. Redditors testing limits flooded it with cartoon tits. A group of people started a counter sub for world politics and named it r/anime_titties.
The ongoing meme is that expressing any sympathy towards Palestine will get you banned from /r/worldnews
/r/worldnews is far more conservative than the rest of the site writ large. Most of the subs that hit /r/All are still very left-leaning.
More than that though, the quality of the site has noticeably tanked in the past few months. Obviously everyone thinks the site has been going down hill since <insert event>. Whether it's the API change, COVID, 2016 election, Pao, /r/jailbait ban, Digg migtation, or whatever, it's practically a meme that the site "isn't what it used to be".
Even then, something is different now. It's not a shift in the political leanings or site culture, but something more existentially troublesome: bots. It's becoming uncanny and really feels like the dead internet. Bots and karma farming have always been around, but it feels like it's tipped over a critical mass threshold. It's become routine to click a Hot post in /r/All only to find it's been removed by the mods for being a bot post. Posts will get thousands of upvotes and you go to the comments to find the top comment with hundreds of votes and then a scattering of comments beyond that with vote counts in the single digits. It's bots upvoting bot comments and very little interaction outside of that.
Hell, even /r/OneOrangeBraincell (a sub about cats) just had one of their top posts of the past month simply being a complaint about the number of bot accounts.
Even a few months before the API got closed off, bots were all over the place. The most common I saw was the type that’d copy a comment word for word from another comment in the same thread or some other thread on the same subject, and like in your example, would be upvoted some several tens of times more than the comment that got copied.
I do tread carefully when throwing around the "It isn't what it used to be," because I know how it was thrown around Reddit and I truly believe I could just be bias. It's nice to think that I was on the right side of opposing the API changes and, by relation, the purification of the platform to become corporate facing. It's not like there's not still things on Reddit that corporate figures wouldn't scoff at, but the API change was such a huge leap into the enshitification of all things to make money. But it does seem different and I have to admit, that kind of bums me out, because I really loved the years I spent on Reddit, early on. It was such a cool place, IS a cool place, but the growth and eventual attempt to make it a profit machine sucks.
My country's little subreddit has changed markedly in the past year or two. Just a complete takeover, it doesn't read like it used to at all.
Some posts get hundreds or even thousands of comments from accounts < 6 months in age, most a lot younger. I know it's certain keywords being hit by bots. Most of it is political, wouldn't be surprised if various state sponsored efforts given the topics that get this type of attention.
Moderation is also a lot lazier on the whole site, rules that used to exist are just ignored in every subreddit I visit. It's a crappy experience and the mods clearly agree, you can sense the lack of motivation.
I still check Greentext and 4Chan, EpicSeven, TheSilphRoad and TheSilphArena, PoliticalCompassMemes, and occasionally some others. The main thing I've noticed is the engagement dropoff on NoSleep and WritingPrompts, and that leaves me disheartened as they used to be where I'd go for a daily dose of fiction. I think there's been a similar decline in the others I mentioned (minus EpicSeven, that one's always been kinda small), but it's especially palpable on the writing subreddits.
It makes perfect sense to me that writing subreddits in particular have suffered, for two reasons:
They all shifted to TIFU, relationships, and various job/job rant subreddits. There's no particular distinction between truth and fiction on reddit these days, so you may as well target the biggest communities and increase your engagement by having people argue of the validity of your story.
Yeah, mobile game discussions all more or less shifted to discords these days, and that was happening even pre-pandemic. Not a huge fan, but the format does fit for the way those games pace themselves.
EpicSeven is relatively big, but no other (original) mobile game these days outside of Hoyoverse's portfolio will ever get that level of traction on reddit again. Maybe some Cygames title if they ever decide to localize again.
I'm of the oppinion that Reddit will eventually become X. Right now it kind of feels like it's like Twitter used to be, except with deeper threads and more bells and whistles. Actual conversations that aren't debates or arguments are incredibly rare. Someone else mentioned that they have improved things by giving people a choice of things to subscribe to rather than a default list, and that reminds me quite a lot of how Twitter (and most other popular SNS) is only good if you follow the "right" accounts.
Games subs are more or less on the same (downward) trajectory. Definitely a lot less sympathy for the workers in industry than say, pre-pandemic. But that selfishness always existed in some form. The usually increase in aggression and strawmanning of the rest of Reddit exists.
To be honest, I'm more disappointed by a lack of a proper alternative after all this time. Hacker news did a great job replacing most of the technical space, but the lack of a proper modern gaming forum is depressing, to say the least. Specific games tend to be relegated to a discord that may or may not be active, most other general forums still pale in activity compared even to the ancient Ganefaqs (now owned by Fandom, so its on its own timer).
Industry news/game dev communities are still strong on XTwitter, which I was never really into and am especially less than interested in attempting to participate in these days. I thought maybe Bluesky would at least have a fighting chance (even if I still hate the Twitter format), but with that bizarre founder's statement I lost a lot of confidence.
It's all a bit of a mess and it doesn't seem like there's even much demand to go back to long for discussion in games outside of whatever was grandfathered.
Reddit continuing to hum along. Since they're public now, they have to release some numbers they normally don't, which may be of interest, like rev/user
Everyone and their dog was predicting this IPO would crash and burn, with lots of people publicly stating they planned to short it.
What went wrong here?
Reddit has been growing exponentially for years, and it's changed. Meanwhile, choosing your defaults lets you filter out the garbage and effectively blind yourself to the changes, which structurally leads people to assume their echochamber is bigger than it really is.
I think if the average reddit user was the same type of person as the average redditor from 2011, then the IPO would've been a fatal blow. Maybe. But reddit's changes have been going on for long enough that anyone who really cared enough to leave has already left (e.g. when reddit stopped being open source), and most newcomers don't care in the first place.
Apparently when Reddit first launched, /r/programming was a default sub, and one of the most popular subs. Nowadays it's relatively niche (which is why it's no longer a default).
Reddit is just normal people, and normal people put up with all sorts of bullshit from Facebook etc without leaving on sheer principle, so that's what happened when reddit IPO'd.
To the point that /r/programming was made private by one of the non-admin mods, with the top mod being one of the admins since that early day, and it took them months to notice that an admin-owned sub was on the blackout list, even after most other subreddits had relented.
Well, the bigger reason is that default subs haven't been a thing for years.
The old adage is that whatever Reddit thinks will happen, bet on the opposite.
You should never do a serious bet or investment on something when you have a lot of personal emotional investment in it. One way or another, your eyes will be too clouded to accurately predict anything. Redditors are too invested in Reddit to seriously think about Reddit as a business, even if they don't think they are.
It's early days yet. Only time will tell whether the IPO was the right decision.
Yea, there's been plenty of companies who had a strong first year after an IPO only to tumble later. If you bought into the IPO, now might be a good time to sell. I believe they only had a 30 day lockup
They were either bluffing, outright lying (they never even bought stock), or simply outnumbered by genuine investors. I don't have long term hopes for RDDT, but I'm not entirely unsurprised that it IPO'd well. That's basically what companies these days excel at.
Reddit these days is largely visited by passive users, so even if somehow the blackout had all but the mods of the top 20 subs left, it'd be hard to truly impact a stock on a noticeable level.
But of course, the discourse between mods and users were already mixed during the blackout. Many remaining commenter, i.e active users, were opposed to blacking out and dismissed it as a temper tantrum. And if that's the thought of active users complaining about reddit, there was no hope the passive user base would bother.
Long term, the core issues remain, even if we only look objectively. Reddit struggles to be profitable, and it's big strategies either increase the incentive to game the system with bots, or simply decrease the quality of the site's original premise of grassroots "organic" marketing.
I don't know when/if Reddit will truly "die" (i mean, Digg is still technically around, as a wolf in sheep's clothing). But I would not be surprised if by the end of the decade Reddit starts to be the new Quora in terms of its quality. It'll only be more resilient becsuse most of Reddit as is did not rely on being a knowledge base; that was merely a convinent side effect of the community format.
I think it's like what happens to chocolate. The bars are getting smaller and lower quality. Only the old buyers notice this, the new generation are already born with the lower quality and it's default for them.