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/r/theoryofreddit post asking why reddit seems dead
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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Here's a theory....
After the API implosion, so many active and posting users quit that the gap was filled with mainly bots.
Whether intentional or not, this gave the impression that Reddit was still active on paper.... The numbers said there was no significant change after the exedous.
When the Reddit admins figured out that a large portion of the site is now bots, they decided to chase the money before the site tanked completely.
This led to Reddit trying to cash in on the remaining users with more ads than ever, cash in on their advertisers, and cash in on the platforms (until recent) good image. Most people have at least heard of Reddit at this point, so going for an IPO now, when almost everyone knows that it exists, and only regular Reddit users are really aware of the enshittification happening. So they can demand a high price for the IPO, and collect a bunch of money before the enshittification is more well known, and the company tanks.
IDK, but that seems to be the way of things.
They've been chasing an IPO for years, it's not a quick process.
Facebook has been enshitifying for years and the stock has gone to the moon.
A lot of what enshitification is, is fucking the users to increase shareholder value.
Well, with a mostly anonymous platform like Reddit, there isn't the same user lock-in, so alternatives, like Lemmy can be shifted to more easily.
With Facebook, you're dealing with IRL friends and loved ones. Those connections lock you to Facebook. Since you're locked in, advertisers are locked to you through Facebook's ad systems, and they can enshittify the whole platform without losing much engagement.
I don't know of anyone who uses Reddit to stay in touch with friends. Sure, we're almost all on there in some way or another, but not for that reason.
So abandoning the sinking ship that is Reddit, can be easily done, unlike Facebook where you, and your friends, and their friends, and your family, and your families friends, and your families family, all pretty much have to unanimously agreed to leave Facebook for another platform all at once. That way everyone can stay in touch.
Organizing an exedous of that scale and magnitude is essentially impossible.
With Reddit, users can kind of trickle over individually or in groups as they see fit. Not tied to Reddit for their social interactions among their friends. Most creators, even those with subreddits, can easily post on different platforms and for the most part, they do. So users can enjoy their favorite creators away from the Reddit shitstorm, if they want. So there's a lot less user lock in on Reddit compared to other platforms, making enshittification a good reason for many to leave.
Bots can't keep the site running and popular. That's just not how this works. So, as people figure out that competing services (again, like Lemmy) exist and migrate away, Reddit will eventually tank and go under.
At least, that's what I'm seeing.
Depending on how that money is (mis)managed, the death spiral could take years or longer. If there's enough mismanagement, it may be much less. We'll see.
Unfortunately a lot of smaller subs havent fully transitioned yet, so I'm stuck on reddit for Rimworld content like I occasionally have to log in to Facebook to keep up communication with family. I think at this point though its literally just Rimworld for me. I dont play enough Terraria anymore for the Terraria reddits to keep me there, and tbh I havent looked into Kenshi, but that might be another occasional pull based on what I fine. Sorry for the ramble, I guess the tldr is that there are a FEW pulls reddit still has even though anonymity eliminates most of them
I don't mean to imply there's no user lock in, it's just significantly less than a platform like Facebook. For many it's not a problem to migrate to another site.
Obviously it's a thing each community will have to deal with, and honestly, that's fair. Bluntly, once the community creates a consensus on what the next platform of choice will be, there won't be much holding those users to Reddit.
Regardless, I'm just speculating. Who knows what will actually happen.
"When the Reddit admins figured out that a large portion of the site is now bots"
In foreign languages like in French, there was a trend, launched by the admins themselves. It was to replicate English communities by translating the posts. It was obvious that it was dumb automated translations since there were cultural references that could not be translated. I know it because I was the owner of such a community and it was sad. My small community had a spirit. After the bots, the community was bland.
Just fyi, bots use API calls. Thus, Reddit has ALWAYS known exactly what percentage of users and posts are bots, and which bots are Reddit's own.
And it's not the first time. You could almost say it's what Reddit is built on. When Reddit was first launched, the founders used alts to build numbers; now it's bots.
My own personal view is that they've used bots all along. More recently, they made up for drastically reduced numbers last summer with bots, and that's when the writing was really on the wall for Reddit because at some point it becomes a serious legal liability to continue to sell ad space and accept ad money based on numbers of users and posts that simply do not exist in reality.
So the IPO has to happen sooner rather than later, and RDDT will tank as soon as it goes public, which is why they're trying to sell the rubes as many shares as they can at a guaranteed pre-IPO price: that's free money for them, which they will take and go while Reddit implodes.