this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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I've had the impression for a long time that Reddit could stand to lose a large part of its users in order to be more profitiable. The nerds getting into long winded "ackchually" "debates" are making the site worse for the meme scrollers and they are also not the type to click on ads. They're not trying to attract more users, they want to maximise revenue from the existing pool. I don't think it's a coincidence Reddit has been slowly moving away from "discussion board" and towards image and short video (like the other three big platforms) because that's where the money's at.
My prediction is that shortly after the IPO we'll see .old go away, and a further sterilizing of subreddits ability to forge unique identities. The only question I have is how do they expect to attract sufficient moderators, buuuut they haven't had trouble after the API debacle so maybe there are more people willing to provide free labor than I assume!
I mean YouTube comment sections were known for years to be an unmoderated nightmare of just people saying the absolute dumbest shit.
YouTube was and still is the most popular video site.
I think reddit has just stopped caring about the real content of the comments since, like you said, they've pretty much pivoted to images and video. Expect the comments section to be further eroded as well, in the name of needing less moderation. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see Reddit do an "AI" push where the "AI" is mostly just replacing moderators with what amounts to a more advanced automod.