Their "don't show posts like this" button does nothing, I believe.
If I click into a subreddit out of interest, decide it isn't for me and mute the subreddit: Reddit thinks I like the muted subreddit and suggests similar. In the last 6 months, after turning on recommendations out of interest:
- I have muted ~100 sports subreddits (I do not like watching sport, reddit! Please hear me, please take this information for free!)
- I have muted ~30 soccer subreddits.
- I have muted ~30 Aussie rules subreddits.
- I have muted ~20 pop subreddits, ~10 death metal subreddits.
- I have muted ~30 celebrity-person subreddits.
- I have muted ~30 "let's laugh at this unfortunate person" subreddits.
- I have muted ~10 outwardly racist subreddits.
- I have muted ~10 "let's be so frugal as to not enjoy life / here's some online work for <$5/hr" subreddits.
But still, next week reddit will try to get me to sub to r/astonvilla or something.
If I accidentally click on something though, I won't hear the end of it.
I have no faith in reddit ever being turned around. The data may be worth something. But the codebase is a liability in every sense of the word, not an asset. Neither new nor old.reddit are salvageable at this point. Perhaps they have some valuable internal tools. I wouldn't bet money on it.
I'm sure their engineers are talented, but their bosses have blindfolded, handcuffed and toxified them. I have seen nothing of value given by them to the community. I have seen nothing but leaching, dark patterns, bugs, memory problems, jittering, unethical business models and poor Personnel choices.
Maybe I've missed something and I have a very unfair lens here.
The IP is worth nothing. The data will not be used for anything good. Deleting comments etc. will, of course, just be a boolean/flag column rather than true row deletion.
Am I unfair or mistaken? And am I incorrect in saying 'The IPO will do nothing of good for consumers or the industry'?.