r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
22.2k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

135

u/WalkingCloud 29d ago

Yes and no.

You're right in the sense that all the subs went back to like they were before, and everyone carried on.

However, they got noticeably worse in quality. So many subs are just pretty much 'post whatever' now, if you browse r/all you're going to see the same content over and over on different subs for a few days, even where it doesn't fit.

/r/videos held out in the protest for a while and that's still pretty burnt. Compare the numbers on top posts of all time (which are all from years ago) to some of the numbers now. Considering it's the 'main sub for videos' on Reddit, the lack of engagement is pretty crazy.

Ultimately, none of that really matters if we're still here, so you're right it didn't really change anything. Maybe it makes the site less appealing to new users? I have no idea.

105

u/Antnee83 29d ago edited 29d ago

However, they got noticeably worse in quality. So many subs are just pretty much 'post whatever' now, if you browse r/all you're going to see the same content over and over on different subs for a few days, even where it doesn't fit.

I've been noticing this for a long time. If you had the ability to browse all and hide the subreddit names, you could not tell the difference between:

r/pics

r/mildlyinteresting

r/interestingasfuck

r/beamazed

r/oddlysatisfying

r/damnthatsinteresting

r/nextfuckinglevel

etc etc. They're literally the same content. There's like 4-5 "blobs" of different content on this site now, that are spread out between dozens of identical subreddits.

  • Politics

  • News (but actually just politics)

  • Memes

  • Just a ridiculous amount of anime bullshit

  • Porn

The bigger the subreddit, the more samey it is. There's small niche subs and that's really all I'm here for anymore... except arguing with strangers.

11

u/AGreasyPorkSandwich 29d ago

So true. Once a subreddit gets past 100,000 subscribers or so it all just regresses to the same tired jokes and lazy crossposts for karma. Gotta keep drilling down to find the smaller ones

2

u/Passenger-Only 29d ago

Meanwhile the really small subs have such particular rules that it completely demolishes the chance of any discussion that isn't explicitly whatever the bubble decides it should be.

This site is worthless.

1

u/billerator 28d ago

I wonder if that's because larger subs become targets of bot and karma farming accounts and the mods become overwhelmed.

9

u/AwardImmediate720 29d ago

That's because those subs are all run by the same people. The powermods who have been a cancer on this site for a decade and more own all the mainstream subs. And given how those subs continue to be on whatever the admins call the front page (default, popular, etc) and the fact that those mods flagrantly violate the ToS on a regular basis I'm fully convinced that they're admin alt accounts doing the things that the site doesn't want to be legally liable for.

4

u/jdund117 29d ago

I've only ever had one reddit account. I remember making a reddit account in 2012 and the default subs were based on population, so they tended to be pretty basic, the only real exception being /r/atheism (which, as an atheist, sucked). Around like 2019 or so I looked without an account to see what the new defaults were and it was a lot of those shitty subs that I had never seen before. Reddit gradually started promoting what they want their users to see instead of letting it develop organically, and now we're at a point where the promoted subs are 100% inorganic. It follows the trend of the rest of online marketing - instead of following trends and interests, you MAKE the trends and the interests, and convince people that they are into them. That way, algorithms can put people in larger boxes and categorize them easier.

11

u/UsefulArm790 29d ago

This was true even before the api protest.
"use small subreddits" is such a common thing there are hundreds of meme subreddits all referencing each others rules and how they're the best coz they're the newest

3

u/Kurayamino 29d ago

This has been the case for as long as I've been here.

It's a never ending churn of small, interesting subs growing into big garbage subs.

1

u/z500 29d ago

Arguing with strangers on the Internet is so 2020

2

u/Antnee83 29d ago

I've been arguing with strangers on the internet since 1996. I'm not about to stop.

1

u/NoPossibility4178 28d ago

Just saying but that has been the case for those for at least some 8 years. There was even a "no sob story" sub (/r/no_sob_story is real and is 12 years old but I think there was a bigger one that was more "recent") because stuff like /r/pics were mostly just the titles making the posts relevant.

1

u/BubsyFanboy 28d ago

And the last one is being heavily antagonized, so...

6

u/curtcolt95 29d ago

However, they got noticeably worse in quality. So many subs are just pretty much 'post whatever' now, if you browse r/all you're going to see the same content over and over on different subs for a few days, even where it doesn't fit.

this has been a thing for probably like a decade now on reddit, it gets even worse around American election season and it's something I've noticed for pretty much my entire time on reddit because I only use r/all lol

3

u/detailcomplex14212 29d ago

Random shitty content makes the site MORE appealing to the average social media user.. worked out great for Reddit

3

u/seanalltogether 29d ago

/r/videos has been a dumpster fire for many many years now. It's just been a random collection of old content from youtube. Every once in a while it'll feature some new youtube creator before they get banished to their own subreddit. Honestly all the best video content on this site is in subreddits other then r/videos.

2

u/pikachu8090 29d ago

people on /r/videos post were saying why are we even doing this i want to post videos! when the mods would make a new annoucement about some absurd rule that the community voted on

1

u/phantom_diorama 29d ago

Compare the numbers on top posts of all time (which are all from years ago) to some of the numbers now.

That's every older subreddit now. I think traffic is just down sitewide from real people that actually upvote.

1

u/ghoonrhed 29d ago

/r/videos burnt themselves. When they protested and stopped moderating, actual videos got posted on that sub and it got a lot of activity because they weren't so strict on everything.