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.
I wasn’t on Reddit for long until I left for the Fediverse, but I didn’t get the feeling I had to hide who I was on it, because you had a bit of everyone on it. So it would be kind of balanced…
Here, people are really leaning on one side. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have really nice and helpful people on the Fediverse, but I feel like I have to censor myself more even if what I’m saying is nothing crazy.
Of course, I’m allowed to say what I want as long as it follows rules, but sometimes I don’t because I don’t want to have any hostility directed at me.
All of this to say, that a few things were better on Reddit even if most of them weren’t.