SNOOcalypse - document, discuss, and promote the downfall of Reddit.

Sorry for the late reply, it's just that I'd rather take my time reading and answering accordingly.

Those people in Reddit might believe that crushing the protests was right, but I don't think that their beliefs matter in the long run - what matters is the subjective value that they get from browsing the platform, versus doing something else. It's kind of funny because, in their lack of insight and rationality, they behave in groups a lot more like perfectly rational and selfish agents than we (the ones who migrated) do.

Another point is that people should never have trusted Reddit to begin with.

Amen to that. Going from Digg to Reddit was running away from the fire and falling right into the frying pan. The Fediverse makes me a bit optimistic on that, though; it doesn't expect you to trust anyone - instead, it assumes that at least some people will fuck it up, and gives you relatively painless escape routes. (e.g. admin goes rogue? there's another instance right there!)

[off-topic] your mention of Time Machine reminded me two other books:

• Dougal Dixon's Man After Man - humans diverging due to genetic engineering, and ending on different parts of the food chain. It's like the Elois vs. Mordocks, on steroids.
• Aldous Huxley's Ape and Essence - if we're going to create analogies between the human race itself and its social media output, that's gotta be like this book. It's like we're discussing how to handle the social media equivalent of people with 3+ pairs of nipples, or 7+ toes per foot.

I recommend both, although there's a good chance that you've read the first one already (given that you like HG Wells).[/off-topic]

[the food analogy]

There are two things here that make me think that the analogy isn't that flawed, and actually valuable. Although... well, it's an analogy. Analogies always become mushy if we push them too far, I'm aware.

One of the things is that our food tastes are mostly the result of our brain, just like the digital content that we consume. Not just our stomach. Our food tastes depend mostly on social class and raising conditions, culture and region, our former experiences with one or another dish, so goes on. It's the reason for example that, if you ask "polenta or rice?" to someone, you'll get one answer in the Po' Valley and another in Japan. The major caveat is that you won't die if you avoid digital content altogether, so there's a lower pressure to fulfil this need than the one to eat. (Or as people say here, "a hungry cat eats even soap" - but a bored person might not eat "digital soap" for entertainment.)

The second thing is that this analogy yields some useful results. Alongside your comment on the screeching Reddit moron, it made me realise that we got two types of bad content, not one; and they should be handled separately. They are:

• poorly made content, time-sentitive content that lost relevance, gibberish, spam. The equivalent of stale bread, or burned food.
• memes, shallow content, things that don't generally contribute with your intellectual well-being and improvement, but crafted in a way that loads your senses for a small dopamine rush.

They might oppose the sandwich in comparison with the junk food; some people actively prefer junk food over good meals, and some consume both in different situations. But I don't think that they'd oppose a good sammich over one made with stale bread and a burned piece of is-this-even-steak.

I predict that the amount of "junk food" in Reddit won't meaningfully increase; it'll be a bit more evident, but only because the ones preparing "good sandwiches" aren't there any more. However the amount of "burned food" will increase by a lot, and that is the sort of bad content that'll eventually make people leave.

(Some morons there will screech at you for replying to a comment after twelve hours. TWELVE HOURS! I got this once. I simply answered "I'm not spending 24/7 in Reddit, unlike you basement dwellers I got a life.")

that just woke me up to what has been going on for YEARS over there, as it turned from “discussion forum” to “social media” site.)

Yup - the focus of the site has been slowly shifting from "Reddit is about the content" (forum) to "Reddit is about the people whom you connect to" (FB/Twitter style social media). It never completely flipped though; maybe because Reddit Inc. couldn't compete well with the big ones out there.