I see a lot of comments from bootlickers on how the protests are dumb and stupid and dont work and engagement metrics are still holding but the quality of posts and comments has noticeably depreciated imo. So much so that whenever I visit the site Im actually shocked at how bad it is.
I think Reddit quality has been declining for some time.
There are two factors at work I believe. One, once something goes mainstream, you get a much broader set of the population on the platform, and much like real life, the idiots seem to be louder. More importantly though, updates to the platform deprioritized serious conversation in favor of mindless scrolling. Look at the new website, or at the official app. They are not conducive to in-depth conversation. They keep trying to distract you with posts from other communities that you don’t even subscribe to, the goal is obviously to get you to keep clicking clicking clicking rather than spending a bunch of time on one page composing a well thought out reply.
And that shows. Really high quality in-depth conversations on issues of importance used to be far more common for me on Reddit. Today they are much less frequent, fewer people seem interested in real discussion or debate. And there’s much more of the attitude of ‘you disagree with me there for you’re wrong fuck you’.
I think the recent protest and beginning of migration are going to make that even more prevalent. I think many of the smarter people who enjoy in-depth discussion and post quality comments are going to migrate to Lemmy or Kbin leaving Reddit full of idiots. I think that will actually be good for Reddit as a company, at least in the short-term, because idiots don’t use ad blockers and they install the official app without thinking. It is of course killing their golden goose, but their actions suggest they have decided they prefer to do without that goose’s continued services.
The quality of discussion here reminds me of when I joined Reddit like 12-13 years ago. The massive user base and tendency toward hivemind/dogpile responses, canned inside jokes, and repetitive content definitely made the experience stale and uninteresting the last few years. If you use the new website design and/or the first party app, you can see how the content delivery has become the same as every other social media, a nonstop torrent of visual candy you can flip through, with the comments becoming an afterthought. The only thing that kept me coming back to Reddit were the comment sections, and I feel a rebirth of that draw occurring in this open-source social universe.
Yes exactly! I’ve always be in Reddit for the comments sections. 12-13 years ago, back when forums and IRC were what there was (aka, DISCUSSION based communities where low effort posts didn’t blow up, and platforms were run by hobbyists and webmasters catering to communities rather than social media corps desperate for clicks). It was a better time to be online IMHO. I think part of it was that joining web communities was slightly unapproachable, which meant you had to be at least a little smart to realize that you wanted to join that community and figure out how to join it. But I think the format of the sites had a bigger effect in selecting the quality of content that got popular.
As you say, nonstop torrent of visual candy you can scroll through and click click click getting another ad impression or 12 each time.
As long as the people there now are able to cash out, they don’t care about a sustainable future. They’ll squeeze until out dies and then move on.
Honestly I think that’s probably part of it. Spez and Kn0thing cashed out when they sold Reddit to Conde Nast for like 10 million. Now of course it’s worth billions. So I think Spez really wants his due, and is only interested in a payday.
Before this controversy, the account /u/spez was last active like 10 months ago. That speaks volumes- if you supposedly love the community but won’t interact with them on a direct level for almost a year, that suggests maybe you don’t actually love the community.
And when you come out of your hidey hole, you do an AMA, answer like 6 questions with non-answers (after starting late) and then return to your hidey hole.
Or I guess with his prepper ways, its more of a bunker