/r/theoryofreddit post asking why reddit seems dead

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In 2021 I wrote a story "The Typo which saved humanity" on Reddit and it exploded to 3000 upvotes in less than a day. A couple of years later I wrote a story "Day of the Fat Man" which got 50 upvotes. Everybody I ask considered the second one the better one.
Then I reposted those stories on Youtube and Facebook and both got around the same upvotes, around 5k+ on each.
Yes, Reddit has become quite dead.
But to be honest, my stories on Lemmy got like 50 upvotes so... meh.
- 50 real people is still better than botted updoots.
  
  I don't think its just an issue of bots.
  After the '16 Trump bombing of the site, the admins got incredibly aggressive in their site-wide banning policy. You could get a site-wide ban for minor infractions, there was no appeals process, and they got fairly good at identifying and banning secondary accounts such that you really needed to want to be on the site in order to keep evading consistently.
  Then they rolled out the new reddit front end, which forces you to sign in if you want to see certain channels and posts while blowing up your email with engagement bait messages that... lure people into posting in a community where you can very easily get site-wide banned. At which point you've got a giant red "YOU'RE NOT WELCOME HERE" banner on your front page, even if all you do is lurk.
  Its just a nakedly hostile website. That's before you get into mod-politics and people harassing one another in PMs and the general obnoxious nature of their native advertising.
  
  sponsored posts, and having the algorithm move "super users" content to the front page is what killed Digg before Reddit, and it will be what kills Reddit.
  
  The massive “NO WELCOME HERE NO MORE” banner helped me sell my employer on not pursuing advertising with Reddit. No other social media site has such a banner, and allows users to consume the content of the site without ridiculous harassment.
- Lemmy isn't all about the upvotes though. It's not reddit.
- Everybody I ask considered the second one the better one.
  But which had the better title?
- Where are you posting these stories? I'd like to check them out.
  
  Found it! They have a page on Reddit that links to what seems like all their short stories.
  
  Thanks. I'll check them out.

324 comments