OOTL... how did it get so bad?
Hey redfugees! I'm a little OOTL... I know reddit has been going downhill for a while, but how has it suddenly nosedived? What triggered it? It's bewildering, and they're losing countless users.
Well there was the shift a couple years ago with Reddit seeking to dramatically increase ad revenue, so they banned the use of third party clients to force users through their monetization racket.
Along with that, they clamped down on the API preventing search engines or other applications from indexing data unless they paid reddit for it, ontop of selling user data to AI companies regardless of what the community thinks of that practice. (afaik, there's no opt-out either)
And now, they've made a pretty big pivot in cracking down on free speach; banning users for so much as liking a comment that contains the word 'Luigi' (even if obviously video game related and nothing to do with politics).
I remember how downhill it went with the ad revenue it started to be more and more facebooky which can only be bad. Have they given any official statement on wtf is going on? And can you explain the API stuff I'm not savvy with it.
The whole API issue was really a changing point in how Reddit publicly treated its mods and power users.
Reddit was trying to pull power away from mods through passive decisions, but nothing had ever been done to outright harm the moderation experience until then. You could tell Spez didn't understand that the decision would have such a major impact on the user experience, but didn't seem to care.
After that, you could tell that the relationship of the admins to the users became a lot more contentious.
They started enforcing a new policy that will warn, or even perma ban you, for simply up voting content they deem as being against their rules. As well as removing anti-1% sentiments like "eat the rich" or even "Luigi;" even in the context of talking about the Nintendo character.
Luigi stomps on turtles, this promoting cruelty to animals. He also promotes drug use through the consumption of mushrooms with performance enhancing effects.
The only reason I can think of as to why Mario isn't also banned is because the rule was made by the older brother.
The users that aren't bots or nazis are leaving.
“Eat the rich” is specifically cited as a violent and violence encouraging statement, bannable.
Upvotes of such statements will also be given bans.
And like nobody wants to actually eat the rich, they'd probably taste terrible.
Consider that the rich would do anything rather than become a regular-ass person
In my case, I wanted to get away from US American closed source social media controlled by US companies which ultimately are controlled by Trump and his narrative. Am German. We’re mad as hell.
Elmo got mad at reddit in his tweets for unmoderated "inciting violence" in r/whitepeopletwitter
Spez
Ingot perma account banned for saying "we have to fight back" meaning... Well, obviously figuratively..
💲💲💲💲💲
Reddit stakeholders are afraid of Luigi Mangione
I don't understand why they aren't more afraid of losing all their users... Without any users there's nothing
Synthetic users and bots are juking the stats.
I honestly think that could be the motivation. There's a risk to THEM, and tbf, they may be motivated by their family as well.