Reddit is a Dying Mall

I haven't quite figured out how I feel about Substack, but the design is definitely appealing.

A popup that tells me to enter my email but won't let me just enter dave@mailinator.com and continue reading is effectively a paywall.

What the fuck? Why?

Just curious, is there actually a rule that was violated or is that just a convenient excuse?

Seems really weird to give mods the power to make a sub private or marked as NSFW and then complain when said mods use those features.

Enshittify

Did bing really say that? I love this word.

It's not a long article and the topic is interesting enough to spend the 10 minutes it takes to read it IMO

Difference is there's something aesthetically appealing about dying malls

Relevant animation (Subterranean Losers).

Eh, dumpster fires can be aesthetically appealing too.

I may check Reddit once a week now, instead of 10x a day. I'm stepping back from modding a 20k subscriber sub, and posting here instead. I used to respond to questions there, and spend maybe an hour or three a day communicating, now I'll quickly check the updates and move on. I'm not leaving Reddit, but I'm "leaving Reddit".

People who choose not to understand any hint of subtlety will decry that it did not die all the while, just the same as happened to Digg, and Tumblr too (which lost 90% of its subscribers, but technically does still exist). But the reality is plain & obvious, in spite of their alternative facts to the contrary.

Yes! Thank you. I tried to be careful with my wording and I'm glad it came through. Facebook is not "over", neither is Twitter or shopping malls. But they're not what they were and the reason they're not what they were (I feel) really comes down to corporate incentives. Something I found really interesting to learn these past weeks is that Twitter and Reddit are not profitable, which kinda implies that the business model may not really work on that scale. Maybe Steve Huffman isn't a greedy monster, it's possible he's between a rock and a hard place with profitability.

Which if that's the case, it kind of implies that open source/Fediverse-style social media might actually be the most sustainable kind, as weirdly structured as it is.

We are entering a new era of the internet. I think much of these once big sites are just going to be flooded with malware. And website to me that prompts you to subscribe to read the rest, or forces you to see ads, is malware to me.

Remember on the old computers when you could barely do anything because of malware? So it became a useless piece of junk.

That's what is happening to these websites, they are becoming cluttered with junk, while the website is developed around keeping distracted minds attentive.

I think people are becoming aware of their mindless scrolling, and they are realizing the junk they are being fed.

Over here on these sites there is far more constructive conversation and far more interesting posts that I don't need to scroll past 10 different ads to get to.

As people get smart and identify garbage social media, we will develop a smarter more realized spaces to mingle.

I don't think they will lose a lot of users on 1st of July. But some moderators will leave, others will continue with shitty tools that make their job hard. Overall, there will be more spam and more rule-breaking comments. Whether it will be bad enough to make people leave the site at some point, I don't know.

If lol? I think it is obvious that they will already - at least for anything tech or dev related for sure and that will be enough to sustain it because obviously those same people have other interests as well, and will attract gamers and the rest. It may take time for the Vinn diagrams to all align with each other but the rest will come eventually.

How reddit itself formed.. tech the tech centric audience from Digg and slowly everyone came along with them - even if they didn't like the transition initially. Reddit has literally committed suicide whether spez realizes it or not. I think obviously people like Mark Zuckerberg and the guy ahead of twitter - pre-elon saw it coming, why bluesky exists and why Facebook wants to join as well before they become irrelevant.

Spez is a fool who can't see past his own nose and just wants to cash out by IPO'ing - but the thing is he's both too late and mishandled the IPO already. He will get the absolute smallest pay day of all the platforms that have gone public in any way imho. I am sure he'll make out fine still, but it will be a small pittance that it could have been had he shown an ounce of respect for the reddit community.

facebook is too.

but anyone with half a brain has left or minimalized their interaction with the site. it's a dinosaur of a site compared to where it was in the 2000s.

reddit will be the same in a few years. another dinosaur lumbering around, but doing nothing worthwhile for moving the internet forward or being a space for active and engaged users.

That's more or less my take on it, the average Redditor just doesn't give a shit about any of this, they just wanna get their daily/hourly dose of Reddit and that's it. All of the outrage on the bigger subreddits was fine and all, but the people in the smaller, more niche and local subreddits just don't care all that much, the vast majority of them will keep using the site.

Which is just as well because the average Redditor is an insufferable mouthbreather.

I think there will be a considerable movement away from Reddit. It might not be very huge in numbers but it will be a lot if the users who are most engaged and contribute a lot of content and time as moderators. These are the people who help create a quality experience for the casual users that seem to be all that counts these days. Losing them will make for a worse experience overall and this hurt the site and ultimately the bottom line.

Maybe Reddit dies; maybe it lives on in some new form. I don't care now that I've found a better alternative. Let the bots, trolls, and low/no-effort knuckle-draggers have it. Maybe it'll act as a moron-sink and keep them away from polite company.

Thank you! Your comment really made me smile (I am the author btw).

Immersing myself in the liminal space

Because rents at malls started to go up, and urban sprawl meant people lived further further away from the malls, making them less convenient to get to.

So, fewer people are showing up, choosing not to travel as far, or to shop online instead, while rents grow. This pushes retailers out, and robs the malls themselves of the resources or motivation to pay for maintenance.

We saw over the pandemic that commercial landlords were unwilling to give clients breaks on rent, and so a lot of businesses closed. Around here, at least, many of those locations are still vacant, because the demand for rent now doesn't account for the lack of it later.

So, you know, fundamentally the same thing happening at Reddit.

The question is about the short run on sites like this, which will lead to medium run problems over on Reddit.

We have already seen many mods and power users leave Reddit for federated alternatives. They're bringing their content with them. That in itself does not upset Reddit, because the initial number of users is relatively low.

But losing the content effects Reddit because it becomes less interesting to browse. As you realize that the site is just going to be worse than it was last week, you lose motivation to log in. That happens on a content level, but it's also going to happen on an advertising level. One of the goals of cutting off the API is to get rid of third-party clients, many of which didn't show advertising. The Reddit admins have said they want to make more money which means they're going to introduce more and more advertisements. And it's just anecdotal, but the increase in ads over on Instagram in the past 2 years means I don't look at it much anymore because it's just a waste of my time. That's where Reddit's going very soon.

Of course users are willing to deal with some advertisement if the high quality content is available and especially if the high quality content isn't available anywhere else. Unfortunately for Reddit, and fortunately for all of us, that's not true anymore.

Did you read the article