Alas, a new competitor will replace it soon. Virtually no one has brand loyalty to Reddit and their audience is becoming narrower and narrower.
If anything, Reddit is getting bigger. In my circle nobody knew what it was five years ago. Now it has effectively become mainstream, and is being (positively) quoted on TV, etc.
This is actually the second time it happens. Ten years ago people also claimed that "Reddit is dying". It wasn't, it was just changing its core audience of technical users to a broader one. And now it is doing it again.
Unfortunately for them, the rest of the world is coming online and has a different view of things. We’re starting to see this with India and the EU. Best case scenario for Reddit is a link aggregator for a very narrow group, unless they turn off the hyper-partisan path and return to their roots.
Reddit moderation is especially going to clash with many Europeans view on immigration from Islamic countries.
Views from other Europeans.
We're not an homogenic bunch as you think.
https://www.thelocal.se/20200118/swedish-pm-calls-for-dramat...
My point is that any "Europeans view on immigration from Islamic countries" will clash with the views from other europeans.
Europeans are not single-minded about those issues. Views are probably way more varied than the US. Even an European-ran Reddit would ran into the same issues.
Instead, I’d say we’re at the very beginning of a massive global backlash against American values propagated by technology. Expect it to continually ramp up as media-creation technology spreads. China is just the beginning.
Do go on.
I mean seriously this "Diggs past will come for you"-line is being repeated for years but it's not happening.
Meanwhile "alternatives" come up and and become irrelevant or nests of hate.
I'm sure Reddit will die someday, but people have been saying this for at least 10 years or more. When non-technical users started using it, when violentacrez et al were banned, with every layout change big or small, staff changes...
People said the same thing about Facebook when it opened to non-edu users or when it launched the timeline. Or when Apple is antagonistic towards developers.
Reddit, Facebook, Apple and other companies are able to do well by antagonizing niche users because niche users can be replaced by regular folk. And sometimes it's almost necessary to antagonize those early users, since they can be a barrier to growth.
Reddit wants to dissociate themselves from 4chan, t_d, Boston Bomber and all this stuff. And they're doing it via cat pictures and the sort.
Reddit is not going away just because you dislike it.
And I don’t care about Reddit one way or the other, it kind of stinks but it’ll ultimately be replaced by something else that also stinks.
The cautionary tail for Reddit is that what keeps people locked into a social network is community. And if they replace community with cat pictures, the whole thing will fall apart.
[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
I see none for reddit atm.
"The Donald" was censored, then banned, for speech less heinous, in lesser amounts, and with lower, or often negative, voting scores, than is currently allowed on the site now (by those with approved political beliefs, of course).
Those with non-approved beliefs find themselves silenced and censored by moderators and admins, while those who instigated their silencing are left unmolested.
Subreddits with thousands (or in the case of "The Donald", HUNDREDS of thousands) of members are banned for the actions of a very, very few. In some such cases, those few were outside instigators (Reddit calls them "brigaders") from subreddits with opposing views; purposefully posting inflammatory material under sockpuppet accounts. The "brigaders" then report the naughty speech to the admins.
Doesn't take many such reports to have all those thousands of voices silenced. Of course this tends to go one way. Although "brigading" is ostensibly against Reddit rules, subreddits with approved views are allowed to do it openly, although some do in private.
And lest we forget, the CEO of Reddit HIMSELF has hacked into user accounts of those with unapproved views, and posted inflammatory things posing AS them (an act which Redditors were assured was not possible). Supposedly he's only done it a few times, but how are Redditors to know for sure?
When all these activities on the part of Reddit's leadership go one way, and are directed specifically against one political persuasion, it becomes very clear that Reddit IS a nest of hate, and that's the way they like it. It is also clear that they censor not to stop "hate" but to cease the discussion and meme production of conservatives, to which they partially attribute Trump's 2016 victory.
To this end, they've recently gone so far as to announce that they will censure users for merely VOTING on unapproved topics. Sure, they say those unapproved topics are "hate", but when the people defining "hate" are so slimy as to hack into and pose as their own users to sow discord, or to tacitly approve one way "brigades", one need not wonder their actual purposes.
Like so many of their brethren in the media who took it personally when Hillary lost, they are taking drastic action to be sure that such free speech activities not continue if there is any possibility of a repeat of 2016.
It’s now one of the most vibrant discussion forums on the internet. It’s been growing faster than it can manage, but that’s been the case for years. Hostage to a brittle moderation model that doesn’t scale, certain discussions can’t be safely or productively had at its scale.
It’s a practical reality...in support of further growth. For every open internet advocate that abandons it in disgust, another dozen grandmas and teens register and download the app.
Whatever the case, I do hope you’re right and a competitor finds a way to do this better.