Why is this subreddit now just askreddit for movies?
Some time in the last few months, r/movies has been entirely consumed by askreddit-style questions like "What's your favorite hidden gem??" or "What actor fell off the map??"
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What is now causing all these unique, seemingly-non-bot posters to suddenly start flooding this particular subreddit with their discussion posts, instead of going to askreddit? Did the whole reddit protest shit change the moderation rules? Has the subreddit been infiltrated by a secret Buzzfeed content farming cabal? I unsubscribed from r/askreddit because I got sick of this shit, but now it's back on r/movies!
What is going on??
I think the comments are most interesting though
Because the audience for reddit has dwindled since July. Reddits offial site and app push controversial posts over just well yovkted ones. Most controversial posts asks inane questions. Then there's bots reposting those questions for karma and then websites juicing social media for content to get crammed down your throat via SEO.
They should make a second internet just for people
This all started with the boycott.
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I’d assumed things would go back to “normal” after the boycott, but it looks like a lot of power users really did take their ball and go home. (I wonder what they’re doing with their time instead? Hopefully some new hobbies? Time with friends?) Maybe reddit will regret removing the 3rd party apps, after all? Maybe we’ll just accept a future where niche subs become little more than BuzzFeed polls, but we get paid if our poll does well, so users won’t care?
It's because Reddit is trying to drive engagement. I don't know if you noticed, but since the purge of third-party apps, the comment sections have been kind of meager, and things don't get as many upvotes as they used to. Heck, half the comments act like bots anyway. It seems like reddit has been distilled down to those most addicted to it and has taken a hard lean into all the most extreme views.
When Reddit killed third party apps, the quality fell off all over the place. It took me about a month to realize the timing and why r/all had so much AITA rage bait stories and celebrity gossip and stuff now. I think a lot of the quality posters and people who liked more high brow discussions just left Reddit.
Oh I agree completely (and thought about going off on a tangent about "critical mass" myself but decided against it). It's a rough path towards reaching that point, though, if we can't have enough discussions to draw those kinds of people in and keep them around in the first place. I agree, also, about the "signal-to-noise ratio" on reddit being too low in general nowadays - especially post-third-party apps controversy - although I think that's preferable to there simply not being enough quality content in the first place; good moderation (not that reddit has much of that nowadays...) can deal with the noise, whereas it can't make up for lack of substantial comments.
I'm not sure what the best way to address the barriers to entry to the fediverse might be, but I've thought that the various apps either hosting their own instances or partnering with other instances to funnel users towards them and streamline the signup process would probably be a good first step. I think having some barrier to entry is a good thing, though - so we don't tip too far past that equilibrium.