cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/37870004

reddit got bad because spez (the reddit admin) restricted API access to the platform for third-party apps, such that people would be forced to use the official app or web UI, both of which display advertisement and collect user data (e.g. scroll behavior).

the reason why this happened is because reddit is a for-profit company and tries to extract money out of the userbase, at the expense of the users.

another example of a bad decision that reddit made was to push a lot of ragebait (“Am I The Asshole?”) because company shareholders want to see “engagement numbers” go up, and if somebody writes an angry reply to a post, that’s “engagement”. but it makes you angry at the stupidity of the “Asshole”, so it makes your day worse. that is another example how reddit makes money at the expense of the users.

size (number of monthly active users) is not what made reddit bad. commercialization is.

we should probably get rid of the “don’t make lemmy grow, it will ruin the platform if we grow” idea.

  • CameronDev@programming.devEnglish
    33·
    3 days ago

    direction EVERYONE likes

    That’s the tough part of democracy, getting people to agree. And if the assholes outnumber everyone else, then you’re in trouble.

    IMO, if we want mods to be more aggressive, we need to empower them to be benevolent dictators. Otherwise its far too easy to fallback to doing nothing. Modding is already a thankless task, telling mods to toughen up and endure the hate doesnt help that.

    • Pratai@piefed.caEnglish
      51·
      3 days ago

      I’m telling mods to toughen up and kick the Russian psyop trolls the fuck out.

      • teslekova@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        Yeah, but if you think that anyone who legitimately disagrees with you is a bot, you are mistaken. We can have good conversations about our differences here if you want. Or you can just shout at us and call us tankies and bots, even though we actually agree on a lot of things.