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Comment by AceJohnny2 | Hacker News Reader

Don't count on it.

I'm afraid Steve Huffman made the correct calculation that Reddit's network effect is large enough that the wound it'll sustain with the API lockout won't be enough to imperil the platform.

On the scale of other platform enshittification (Digg in particular), this one isn't directly user-hostile enough, and the aren't any good enough alternatives.

Enshittification is basically inevitable for (venture)capitalist-funded online platforms. My biggest disappointment is that Reddit went that venture-capitalist (or adjacent, whatever) route, I thought/hoped their "Reddit Gold" approach was good enough to be sustainable.

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The strongest theory I've seen for this killing reddit is that moderation quality goes down enough that being on the site is no longer fun. Even if Reddit replaces all the moderators who quit (which, yes, won't be hard), Reddit itself doesn't provide tools with the same power as what mods were using, to say nothing of the new mods' lack of experience and questionable motives and judgment (if you're smart and have good motives, you at least think really hard before going into a position left empty by mass resignation).

But yes, long term it's on We The People to fund our own communities.

>moderation quality goes down enough that being on the site is no longer fun.

I'd say that Reddit (and really the internet as a whole) hit that years ago. Another user said this on a different thread, but Reddit has this deep depression inside it that isn't really noticeable until you leave. Like, you don't ever really see happy people on there anymore, just people with varying levels of misery. I don't think that's really unwanted by Spez and Co, either. If there's something that the internet has taught me, it's that it's easier to retain audiences by keeping them miserable and afraid than it is by keeping them happy.

> but Reddit has this deep depression inside it that isn't really noticeable until you leave. Like, you don't ever really see happy people on there anymore, just people with varying levels of misery

Well put, I've also noticed this. Be it games, movies or sports. Whenever I enjoy something, I just know that the moment I go on Reddit (or Twitter), there will be a shitstorm complaining and crying about mundane details. And without fails those threads gain thousands of upvotes, while the positive threads die with 12 upvotes in new. Outrage seems to be the best way to drive engagement and clicks.

As everything with Reddit, this depends which subs you hang out in. This doesn't match my experience.

Not sure if this is something that scales with the current number of users, but the moderation quality appeared to be better before some of these powerful tools.

For example, things like automatically banning based on activity in other subs is not necessary a power that improves the site.

I suspect many of the more disappointing echo chamber effects (that steer something like a local subreddit into a political one) are due to over-moderation.

People (for obvious reasons) like to compare Digg to whats going on at Reddit. It seems a lot closer to Facebook

Facebook has always lead the fight to monetize users to the max. If its sudden API changes or shutdowns, or suing 3rd party app developers. Yet they still generate Billions and people are fine using them, instagram, or Whatsapp, even though they fully understand the enshitification the timeline has gone through throughout the years, and how aggressively they monetize their user base

I also see Reddit as extremely similar to Facebook groups, which can also have millions of users, and are moderated for free by volunteers

Unlike Reddit, most of Meta's apps are commonly used on mobile. Furthermore, all the apps you listed actually bring long term value in the form of real life social and business relationships. Emotionally and economically Reddit has not nearly as much of an impact.

I think it's a mistake to confuse the health of Meta, the company, with Facebook, the platform. I think as a company they made the right decision in the acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp because they captured some of the platforms that were stealing their important demographics. I think if they hadn't made these acquisitions and were still just Facebook.com, we'd be looking at Facebook the company not as a FAANG giant but as a Yahoo or IBM or similar.

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