But anytime a small community would grow in popularity and hit somewhere threshold, it would be overrun by the greater reddit population The subreddit would quickly lose what made the community special and core users would migrate or just stop.
And volunteer moderation is bothe best idea ever and the worst. When it works it's awesome, but it feels as if it's only a matter of time.
So when the API changes hit last year, I saw it as Reddit handing me my hat. The old reddit was no more. I couldn't use it how I wanted to use it, at least not without paying. And given that my reddit usage was more habit than value, I made the decision to accept how things are.
I miss it. This PG post felt more like a eulogy than a promise, despite the closing. But I think I'm better without Reddit. At this point it seems to primarily be a content farm for AI agents, both producing and consuming. So maybe the dark-forest Internet is starting to arrive.