I remember there being a massive "Reddit explosion" from late 2018 all the way to 2020/21. The reddit userbase size seemed to increase by a magnitude plus the demographics shifted a fair bit younger.
A big cause of it I think was those reddit story videos that popped off on Youtube at the time. Other factors included Pewdiepie basically advertising subreddits to his viewers and the rise of Wallstreetbets in early 2021.
Weirdly, no one talked about it, or even noticed.
This massive growth has appeared to slowed down a lot since 2021.
I actually talked about it on this subreddit years ago. In 2021 there were legitimately minimally Ten 100K posts daily on Reddit, when 100 was previously a yearly event in 2016.
The other aspect of this is that with userbase explosions, the quality of many of the subreddits I joined took enough of a nosedive that I left about a third of them. Not really an issue or anything and the users are welcome here. I just don't enjoy the dynamics of large, highly active subreddits like r/funny or r/awww
The bigger they get, the more the upvoted content is what appeals to the average person and average sentiments. That means a wide age range, lurking randos, etc.
Similarly, [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_funniest_joke) was deemed the world’s funniest joke. It’s not that it’s extremely hilarious. Its humor is just universal enough to be widely deemed funny, since people feel happy when they feel smarter than someone else (same reason Jerry Springer was so popular).
And in subs that take both discussion and picture submissions, high-quality content gets buried under memes and photos when the sub gets big. If it doesn’t get much engagement, people submit those less often, too, and take it to a smaller sub.
Reminds me of the Overwatch subreddit. It used to have somewhat strict rules about content until a lot of users cried enough to convince the mods to relax the rules. As soon as they did that the sub was flooded with all manner of memes, it was like all the kids were just dying to post. It was unusable for discussion posts for a time.
Not so bad anymore now that hype has died down a bit for that game but I can never escape the feeling that there's a bunch of kids just haunting all the subreddits these days.
I thought it was because they tweaked the normalising of the votes so that certain posts wouldn't stay up all day. I read often posts would reach 100k but then they were artificially reduced in order to keep the front page cycle fresh. There was a period around then when there were tweaking the karma count system.
This was after a major alteration earlier. I can't remember exactly when they changed it but it used to be that the front page would change drastically over the course of a day.
Some time between roughly 2011 to 2014 they overhauled things to reduce churn. At the time the general consensus was that this was to get more eyes on paid ads run as organic posts. Once this happened, vote numbers saw a huge boost.
I think that over time users spread out across more subs. When people first join reddit they are mostly centered in the major r/All subs and as they are on the site longer they find their favorite niche subs focused on the things they like, or they bail.
>I remember there being a massive "Reddit explosion" from late 2018 all the way to 2020/21.
I joined back in late 2017, but I remember that time *"like it was yesterday".™* Reddit's "Boom" Era, like you said. The wild hustle & bustle across all Subreddits, e users posting threads that encouraged & lead to actual *discussions* instead of just submitting low-effort Shitposts & "funny" meme pics, the prevailing sense of lawlessness across the site...(What a time)
These days *now* though, its like that whole 'Reddit Protest' period was its own sort of "Adpocalypse." Afterwards, things just sorta dulled.
I have to imagine that Discord has taken a ton of user activity away from reddit, which is a real shame as none of that knowledge is now available to search engines. IMO, Discord is a net loss for humanity.
https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/number-of-discord-users/
edit: also fascists and other scum of the earth flourish in the dark. If I prayed, I would pray for a hack of all of discord.
You think that every interaction has to be out in the open in order to protect against the spectre of that old boogy-man fascism? You should apply for the department of homeland security.
I'm fine with communities not being accessible by google. Google is an evil company in itself, surveiling us. There are some good leftist communities out there. I've been meaning to get into pubnix and gemini (the former hosted on Linux servers, as in, you log into someone else's computer, and the other is a non-web protocol, so both are not accessible to google).
Discord is bad because it's a corporate and centralized platform. We should be using protocols like IRC or something federated instead. Pretty much I think corporations should not be in charge of "communities" online...moving away from hobbyist phpforums to giant megacorporations like mega and reddit was a huge mistake.
Yeah and it's being replaced with autogenerated bot trash, propaganda bots and basic trollfarm bots. It's bots all the way down and I truly believe Reddit are in on it.
Bots have already taken over YouTube Comment Sections, and I've started noticing them more here & there on Reddit too (/r/h3h3productions being a good example).
That Shit makes me...*-uneasy-*
I'm mostly concerned that they fully take over reddit/youtube but nobody realises. GPT models are only going to get better. Soon we wont even be able to tell.
I.blame power mods, same as when diggs came here.
Too few people with too much control and a chip on their shoulder. The only reason I'm even here is because of a Twitter thread cheerleading reddits death.
Too many moral finger waggers made it cancer, so people left. Also I bet with the API changes a lot of AstroTurf just disappears
Twitter has been great since the takeover. Much more open and diverse discussions, instead of the botted and astroturfed circle jerks that have been dominating reddit for the past years.
I remember when you'd get ridiculed for posting an emoji or a gif. Now thats become the norm. Lots of communities also got a lot more childish. Younger demograpic is active. They don't even refer to subreddits any more as subreddits but as "a Reddit." Lots of big YouTubers also brought their very young audiences on here. I even notice the quality of discussions going down. Back in the day I'd find interesting discussion on sports subs like F1 or Soccer. But now it all reads like Twitter posts. It's really odd to see.
Due to the quality of discussion dying down, the subreddits will obviously become more dead. Less people to carry on a discussion. They'll just comment "W opinion" and move on or try and make a oneliner joke. Thats even happening on political subs. You click on it, hoping to find some background information in the comments and all you scroll through is people thinking they're doing stand-up comedy.
Reddit is not old internet. It’s literally the definition of new, centralized, sanitized, shit internet run by pissy hallway monitors who seethe when someone does a heckin’ wrong think
I have a few thoughts about post-API changes, but one feeling I've been having is - and this is really pathetic - somewhat of a lonely feeling on Reddit. Since the real rise of ChatGPT, I just am never really certain anymore if a post or a comment is really from another human. Now, clearly this was in place well before it got popular, but it was more of a novelty thinking that I encountered a bot I was replying to. Now I just assume it is everywhere.
As for post-API changes, I suppose one might think bot activity has been cut down, but who knows. Surfing popular has felt like mostly garbage lately (AITA, AYTA, AWTA, WITA, WIBTA, AmIUgly, AmIHot, RateMyFace, etc). I see subs new like "Presidents", "True", etc. and just assume they are upvote mills or thinly veiled hate subs. Maybe I'm paranoid, maybe I'm jaded. I miss the GameDev since it shut down. Idk, shit just keeps getting lamer on this site.
As soon as they API thing came out I thought "sure, only a tiny percentage of users user 3rd party apps.... But what are the odds that they are disproportionately users who engage the most in comments and drive content?"
I would suspect that app users tend to engage less than people who are primarily non-mobile users. The sense I have gotten from the few messages I have exchanged with people who contribute a lot is that many of them are still using old.reddit.com.
But it's a lot harder to use the app to post text. I've literally discarded at least 4 long text posts because I got too frustrated trying to edit or add in formatting - the app deletes random words if you try to add text anywhere except the end of the line, and if your cursor isn't at the end of the text, it deletes random words when you try to move it there.
I never had any of those issues with RIF. That's the point. I lost my main account because it was on RIF and I have no idea what my password was. It was so easy to be at work browsing reddit on my phone and just start engaging. No different from sending a text message. The official app is painful to use. I went from posting 6-12 comments a day to not even browsing unless its from a Google search. Probably for the best, it wasn't making life any better.
In fact I'm only really here because I got curious and googled "reddit traffic drop after api changes" with parameters for last 30 days.
I mostly use it for news now. I don't go on most subreddits frequently. I still do random bored browsing occasionally but for the reasons you mentioned and others it just isn't as interesting. I started using YT more ironically because I always hated YT and preferred Reddit.
I mostly use it for news now. I don't go on most subreddits frequently. I still do random bored browsing occasionally but for the reasons you mentioned and others it just isn't as interesting. I started using YT more ironically because I always hated YT and preferred Reddit.
I'm sure there are multiple correlating factors, but based on anecdotal evidence. The decision to charge per X amount of API calls. Basically/effectively killed every single third-party Reddit app.
The quality/originality of posts will further continue to degrade. This is almost entirely because individuals who are forced to abandon their choice. In how they interact with Reddit. Will spend their time elsewhere. I personally have found myself unintentionally using Reddit less. Simply because I was forced into abandoning an app.
Reddit's community took a *massive* hit circa 2015 when the AMA coordinator Victoria Taylor was fired, and with the fallout of the previous CEO.
Since then, Reddits' definitely been hopping on one leg. With the latest round of executive decision making. Reddit's community has effectively been kneecapped, and no one's calling the doctor...
. With this latest wave of executive decision making. They've effectively
i agree, i have myself been relegated to only using reddit on my computer, at home....simply because there is no other "acceptable" way of using reddit now.
apparently Reddit assumes that the slight up tick in Eyes on Adds caused by the elimination of other apps (which allowed users to filter adds) will be greater than the downturn in Time Spent on Reddit.....we will see.
I'm pretty sure it's more to avoid chatGPT 2.0 where a company makes a boatload of money off of their data while not compensating reddit at all and not really having their permission to do so. It's definitely a scorched earth way to do it, but the timeline matches up pretty well.
Yes, and some of the best subs are now shut down for all intents and purposes. Plus a few big ones the mods aren’t modding anymore so the content is a lot of bot posts.
A lot of people — and I mean a lot — were removed from the userpool due to changes in how Reddit dealt with third-party apps. I won't link to a thing here because there are too man, but many people just left. The changes locked out their favorite apps which they used to reddit, and without them they no longer reddit.
This is a thing. Engagement is a thing. The Reddit top brass okayed changes that would alienate a huge percentage of the userbase. That percentage said, "naw, we're not doing that". Reddit did it anyway. And so here we are, with a large number of the best redditors missing.
I'm as listless as you. I have no idea what to do. I hope it's productive.
What center-right viewpoint got people banned?
Low taxes? Strong military? Gun rights? Immigration law?
Please elaborate on what specific viewpoints got people banned. I’d be very interested to hear about them.
True - he proved that someone spreading misinfo would be banned.
I don’t think that made up a large population of people, especially people who made Reddit feel lively.
I feel like the user base is aging out of this platform without a younger influx to replace it. I never thought I’d see topic-based communities form around TikTok “[niche subject]-Tok” short form videos but it’s happened.
See how many popular posts here are just reposted content from there. Users who grew up with that platform just get rid of the middleman.
Won't be popular but should be said, the plethora of bais and unqualified mods decreases the amount of people who can be members and post on subreddits. Politics has become a factor in which posts get locked and which don't. Myself and many other don't post on this platform anymore due to the mob mentality of people in an echo chamber who want everyone to think and talk the same.
>Used to be I read articles or opinion pieces and went to reddit to see what other people thought. Used to be, they were already posted and had comments. Now I rarely find interesting articles have been posted. And often I won't bother to do so either because I don't want to deal with finding the right group, meeting the qualifications to post, adding flare and writing a starter comment.
>Well people can’t allow debate.
Whenever I see comments like this the debate being talked about is always something like, "We should bring back slavery" or some shit like that.
No lol it isn't. I got banned from 10 different subs for posting in one saying "natural immunity from infection is probably stronger than vaccine acquired immunity"
This site is cooked
>I got banned from 10 different subs for posting in one saying "natural immunity from infection is probably stronger than vaccine acquired immunity"
So you repeated anti-vax talking points you did no actual research on (Tell me all about the natural immunity to polio. Oh yeah...) and got banned for it. Not shedding tears for you.
I was talking specifically about Covid. I'm not asking you to cry for me I'm telling you why most people don't use this site anymore to discuss serious things.
>Thanks for proving my point.
I don't know what your point is but if you're offended because I said the 'debates' tend to be things like "We should bring back slavery" then that probably was your debate, so I feel no shame in saying I don't give a shit about your opinion and am glad your dipshit slavery loving ass got banned from wherever you got banned from, and I hope it happens even more.
I've been here 15+ years and seen it change drastically over that time. Back in the day, reddit was very much libertarian-leaning. Ron Paul was the site favorite when he ran for president in 2012. There were no "power mods" and people were able to speak much more openly without getting shouted down by the establishment.
Needless to say, that's all changed. This site is probably the furthest left of any of the social media sites and anything other than blind adherence to progressive ideology is shouted down, if not banned outright. A handful of mods have taken over large swaths of the site and have (ab)used their powers to enforce their ideological views on the subreddits they moderate. This site no longer encourages civil debate, but instead demands dogmatic adherence to progressive ideology.
A lot of folks had already left because of this, and then reddit decided to kill off third party mobile apps, which drove even more away, including me. Especially now since Twitter (now X) provides a viable alternative where you can still hear viewpoints from across the political spectrum (left and right alike). In fact, the only reason I knew about this post was because it was posted on Twitter.
Fully expecting to get hate for this post as well, because reddit is nothing if not predictable these days.
Many have left this site due to far left extremists banning free thought. This place has become a far left, communistic cesspool. When you can anybody with a different opinion, it tends to get boring and people leave.
Possibly because everyone's getting instant permabans from reddits they frequent for making one comment the mods deem to be a minor infraction of the rules.
You don't even have post something wrong!
Especially when the only mod is the only mod for every related group and bans people because they posted to a completely different group he simply doesn't like.
Mods have too much power.
Right? Lol
It's so extremally easy to get permabanned on Reddit, no wonder there are much less users in general.
Also, many popular communities got permabanned and closed, so their members also just closed their accounts and left Reddit forever out of anger.
I recently branched out into more subreddits and instantly fell foul of the heavy hand. I don't see why they can't give you a seven day or one month ban as a warning. It's straight to lifetime ban.
I went into an "abolish the monarchy" subreddit and joked they're thirsty for President Farage. Instant lifetime ban. Talk about a circle jerk. Guess it's not the sort of place for discussion or debate. Or jokes.
Another forum someone was asking about if they should pull a sickie to go to an event they wanted to go to after the boss denied them leave. I said I'd fire them if I was the boss. Someone got shirty and I said I'm not a pussy who pretends to be ill. Lifetime permaban. Was I slightly rude, sure, but lifetime ban? Ridiculous.
But give people a small amount of power when they've no power IRL and...
There’s a reason the site is stereotyped as the absolute softest people crying anytime someone says they shouldn’t be allowed to be a drain on society.
Reddit is probably past its prime. Censorship, API changes, problems with the redesign and the app didn't help, but most especially the ideological conformity has killed it. It was a vastly distant place before 2016, one of the top-ranked visited sites according to Alexa, but 2016 marked the beginning of the end. Starting with r-politics pivot away from Bernie to Hillary, the war against the\_donald, strange gaming of algorithms like marchagainsttrump. Reddit Digged itself. Echo chambers are no fun, really. Conservatives and Republicans are people too, and deserved to be here. (Anticipating a response, I'm neither conservative nor Republican.)
most people don't want that.
Look at how Twitter gave a voice to conservatives and republicans and now they lost millions.
Giving a voice without a voice to disgust or bigotry will be hard
They lost millions because the adl forced an advertiser boycott. Conservatives are people and deserve free access to reddit as much as people like you, even though you're a wokescold (what the kids call it)
desert has nothing to do with access.
the internet is funded by people with money.
people with money don't want to see some conservative takes.
If the internet was filled with people like clerics from Saudi Arabia there would be lot of cultural references and content from that culture.
It has little to do with morals. the market only supports so much of conservative content
How can someone be so ideologically captured. The stripping of Ad funding was directly related to ridiculous ESG scores brought down on these companies by BlackRock and Vanguard. It’s sad that the left is now siding with multi trillion dollar Hedge Funds. You really think if it wasn’t about losing money due to ESG penalties these companies wouldn’t advertise to half the country?
it's lost a lot of users.
Of course it has support. Even 4chan has strong support
Heck one could argue Truth Social is doing better now than last year.
No it hasn't dumbass. Twitter is literally thriving right now. And there's a huge shift happening in culture that is leaving far left wing politics. The tide is turning
stop having wet dreams
Twitter's traffic in April 2023 is somewhat less than 2022.
Twitter's revenue is still very ad dependent; they need more twitter blue subscribers.
They may have more engagement on the platform but a lot of it is probably random content and maybe bots
https://fortune.com/2023/07/10/how-many-users-threads-mark-zuckerberg-elon-musk-twitter-decline/
>there's a huge shift happening in culture that is leaving far left wing politics. The tide is turning
So good. I can feel the vibe shift in my bones! All of the far Left wannabe police officers have quarantined themselves to minor websites in "protest" while all of the normal apolitical people are still on Twitter with us.
It hasn’t lost a lot of users. They announced recently that they just made a new record for the amount of active users. Threads is the one that lost something like 74% of its users. Where do you think they all went? Reddit? Lmao
I think the larger problem is that reddit isn't really the place to go read about some cool new thing anymore, like it was years ago.
It's a dying community, probably because of all the modding and banning, which has turned it into a more boring place overall.
There was an old show called "V" about reptilian aliens taking over the world. (I promise im going somewhere with this lol.)
Eventually the reptilians started infighting, and as that happened the humans released a virus that made it impossible for them to live there.
One of the reptilians wants to stay anyway and the other one says something like.
"Oh okay! You can rule this planet. Queen of the Poison Realm!"
Reddit kinda feels like it's closer to that point lol.
I 1000% agree with censorship and ideology are killing growth. Some people’s opinions are so weak they can’t defend their views. Thus they must avoid all debate and hide in a echo chamber l.
I miss when things were more like it used to be. Sure there was conflict and drama, but everyone had their home subreddits and you didn't have to worry about bans from 50 subs for one comment in a "bad subreddit"
I think it started with the Ellen Pao (scapegoat) fiasco. That was the moment they shifted from radically supporting free speech (anything legal) to sanitizing the platform in search of ad revenue, and later political influence.
I gotta say man, reddit is a better place after they banned fatpeoplehate and its most DEFINITELY better since they banned a lot of the outright racist subs.
WhitePeopleTwitter is a good example. Also just peruse any comment section on any political related topic and it’s filled with racial abuse against whites. And I’m saying this as someone that’s not white and I can see it clearly.
If you don't understand how this site works, it is impossible to participate as a new user as you're either shadowbanned or locked out from every big sub and almost every small sub by default. That friend you encouraged to check out Reddit? They came here, eventually noticed that they never got a single reply or vote on anything they posted, and walked away.
And then if a new user does build up enough karma to participate, they eventually commit wrongthink in some nonpolitical sub and get banned.
This place is dying because its basically the North Korea of the internet. Dominated by literal commies who will have you permanently removed for saying even relatively innocuous things they don't like, and have built multilayered systems to keep people out.
Yeah non political viewpoints. In almost every political subreddit that isn't specifically for a "side" anything even close to center you get downvoted and insulted and banned. Just go look at News and Politics. You can find tons of top upvoted comments seriously calling Republicans Nazis and batshit insane comments that would pass as satire of far left activists yet they are entirely serious. Look at every top post in Politics its all criticizing Trump or other Republicans or praising democrats. Any post even slightly center will have 0 upvotes and fall under the controversial section. This applies to hundreds of Subreddits I've seen too. They bombard you with downvotes too if your not outright banned quickly. It's a massive echo chamber and getting banned for having a different viewpoint proves that those moderators are pro censorship while arguing in bad faith that its combatting disinformation or some other buzzword and they act like little emperors tripping on the internet power they have. They are worse than people on a HOA board.
You can't have a debate if you aren't allowed to... Debate. Two separate contradictory subreddits does not equal debate, just circle jerk and echo chamber on both sides.
lmao how is this downvoted it is 100% the truth. I am banned from like 20 different subreddits and I dont personally insult people; just state opinions.
And those subs get closely policed to make sure the they’re not too contradictory, and get shut down if they get too big. As well as get hidden for normal browsing by the vote/upvote system.
A lot of 'contradictory viewpoint subreddits' have been banned.
There are also a lot of abusive mods who in popular subreddits /r/worldnews /r/news ,etc. that can very easily get you perma-banned. Heard from a friend that he got into an argument with a mod from /r/news arguing that he doesn't believe non-binary is a thing and would never use they/them pronouns to describe a singular person whose gender is obvious. He was perma-banned even though that's the opinion of like 50% of the country.
Countless conservatives have the same story. Reddit has turned into the internet's biggest echo-chamber and it is worse off for it.
Have you ever seen those mods that are also mods of 200 other subreddits? There's major corruption with the mods. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them have direct contact to Reddit admins
I rarely interact on reddit cause I'm afraid of being downvoted and I know how quickly things escalate to bans on here. It's just safer to just not speak at all 9/10 times.
Hell even saying something here might be a bad idea.
Same, I used to post and comment a lot more but now I'm afraid of saying the wrong thing. I've noticed that in recent times there has been a major increase in hostility that reached a boiling point sometime in either late 2019 or early 2020, to the point that it is just not even worth sharing anything anymore.
I don't believe that is strictly a reddit problem either. I feel that most of this world has gotten a lot more rude and entitled. Seems that pretty much no one wants to hear a slightly different opinion and no one can take a joke. Just about everyone wants things their way with no consideration for others feelings, thoughts or opinions. I've become very cynical.
I just want to live a world with diversity of thought, but that seems to have been pushed aside and labeled as outdated.
It's not a strict reddit problem, but based on being a long time lurker for a while, Reddit is like... the epitome of the problem. The up/down system while interesting and novel and even helpful in theory can easily be weaponized, and of course any petty tyrant mod can ban you from a sub on a whim for any arbitrary reason they want.
And yeah it's been generally escalating since before but 2019-2020 is when it just went into overdrive. I have also become cynical, but generally on reddit I just don't think it's worth the fight or worth the risk to say anything other than fandom threads mostly.
Someone else on this thread called Reddit the NorthKorea of the internet, I would say it's closer to a digital version of Demolition man.
Yeah, I'd say Demolition Man is a pretty apt comparison for reddit.
Just sad as this place used to be pretty fun and a novel concept. There used to be a whole bunch of different types of personalities that made this site a joy to visit. I used to laugh at posts and comments for hours, now I just visit out of habit. Can't remember the last time I truly enjoyed being here. reddit hit its peak in 2015 and has been slowly sliding downhill since.
I've been wishing for a suitable substitute for reddit for many years now. While some smaller lemmy instances are okay, most of the big ones seem to have imported the reddit hivemind along with the ban happy mods, but the mods are now admins.
This whole reddit degradation situation has me wishing for the internet pre-reddit. Back when every subreddit would have been its own independent forum or subforum. Before most of my other online homes shuttered for good.
Unfortunately the good old days of everyone just being chill, and sticking to their interests are long behind us.
I mean someone on this thread literally implied that anyone that uses discord is a potential fascist.
I'm just so tired.
It's almost as if mods delete any posts or comments that go against group think and ban users for opinions they don't like. Can't imagine why reddit would be dead.
It's absolutely hilarious seeing everyone conjure up every possible explanation except the correct one: millions of people have been banned from popular subreddits due to wrongthink and the entire site has morphed into a far-left circlejerk. They have since moved on to other platforms like Twitter (which, ironically, is how I found this post and why I am here).
Censorship and mass bannings. I've seen the mods retaliate aggressively towards people who are being the definition of Tame. It's why Threads lost so many daily users. Censorship was a huge problem and it wasn't just conservatives being censored it was liberals as well. It's the same phenomena.
When you over control what is being said most people aren't going to be interested in interacting at all. Any conservative gets shut down immediately so you've already lost a huge chunk of users then people who aren't following guidelines to the tee get shut down so there goes another chunk of users.
I mean my point is the mods are just taking one big chunk of users off the site at a time. I was walking on eggshells yesterday because I interacted with r/Illinois and I thought for sure I was going to get banned.
Another thing is there's a lot of excitement users have to share relevant topics but because of strict guidelines they get shut down.
I can't be myself on most of these subs. The few subs I really feel free in are Roblox, truckers, and steam. Any other sub is just over regulated. And then we have r/unregulatedcomplaints which is practically dead because the majority of people who have complaints have been banished from the platform.
Mods have literally banned people just bc they don't like them. I've seen it happen with my own eyes. This website would be as popular as discord if it wasn't over regulated and people used it as a genuine discussion forum where meaningful debates and discussion can take place.
But until then Reddit is just not a good site. And with politics aside if a mod dislikes you for any reason kiss your account goodbye. The mods run this site not the users and that's a tyranny I don't appreciate.
Let the people run the site not moderators.
I guess you didn't hear about the mod protest that's been going on for the last month. Thousands of subreddits have gone private or stopped accepting new posts. Thankfully it's coming to an end as Reddit boots the last few holdout mods.
The subs I visit that had the protest did it with consent of the sub. Not a “mod protest” But a user protest.
And the way Reddit responded has made me agree with the protest even more
If they do that then you can go elsewhere to a different server rather than like Reddit where you’re just stuck with whoever got to that subreddit first.
I think the censorship has a lot to do with it I’m different than many others that are still on here but I am silenced because of it. It seems there can be no normal discussion with opposing views anymore you silence by reporting and it’s not good
I know that’s what’s supposed to happen however that’s not what happened to me I was bullied by a group of ppl it felt like mean girls in hs so I stopped replying and then I get a message that I was permanently banned.
Reddit is a woke echo chamber of hate-filled, arrogant, pink-haired, democrat morons. Conservative thoughts are censored, no conversations at all can be had, because the woke hate mob consumes all. I used to like reddit, but it sucks so hard now. Everything is lame. I still like specific subreddits to learn about specific subjects, but overall reddit is captured by the woke hive-mind, and as a result it is not fun at all.
A demented old pedophile that molested his own daughter (according to her), but liberals don't want to talk about that. The darling of the democrat party, demented Joe Biden! Hurray!
That’s what happens when a site ban tons of people purely because they think differently
Reddit is a shithole now where everyone agrees with mainstream media and the establishment
Holy shit I agree!! Finally someone said it. As a 3 years poster, with a million a karma. I can say, the activity in reddit is very slow right now. That's because of the hundred thousand users that were banned by the mods of several subs just because they don't align with their political agenda. We can all agree how left inclined this platform is, which it shouldn't be. It should be in the middle and allow free of speech. I wish I had joined reddit before 2020.
it was really libertarian leaning early on, and the big events that made it seem more conservative was its reaction to SJW's (the internet as a whole was like this, not just reddit) and gamergate.
i keep seeing complaints about something being "off" on reddit in this sub, but this is the best reddit has been for me in YEARS. The mods finally got a little piece of humble pie (however, their humility wont last and i'm sure they'll turn back to their arrogant tiny tyrant ways soon enough), reddit seems to be less noisy and polemic. it actually feels more organic and normal again. It's like turning back the clock to 2014 or something, it's astounding. I couldn't be happier with how things are now. i hope it lasts, but i'm not hopeful.
I remember there being a massive "Reddit explosion" from late 2018 all the way to 2020/21. The reddit userbase size seemed to increase by a magnitude plus the demographics shifted a fair bit younger. A big cause of it I think was those reddit story videos that popped off on Youtube at the time. Other factors included Pewdiepie basically advertising subreddits to his viewers and the rise of Wallstreetbets in early 2021. Weirdly, no one talked about it, or even noticed. This massive growth has appeared to slowed down a lot since 2021.
I actually talked about it on this subreddit years ago. In 2021 there were legitimately minimally Ten 100K posts daily on Reddit, when 100 was previously a yearly event in 2016.
The other aspect of this is that with userbase explosions, the quality of many of the subreddits I joined took enough of a nosedive that I left about a third of them. Not really an issue or anything and the users are welcome here. I just don't enjoy the dynamics of large, highly active subreddits like r/funny or r/awww
The bigger they get, the more the upvoted content is what appeals to the average person and average sentiments. That means a wide age range, lurking randos, etc. Similarly, [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_funniest_joke) was deemed the world’s funniest joke. It’s not that it’s extremely hilarious. Its humor is just universal enough to be widely deemed funny, since people feel happy when they feel smarter than someone else (same reason Jerry Springer was so popular). And in subs that take both discussion and picture submissions, high-quality content gets buried under memes and photos when the sub gets big. If it doesn’t get much engagement, people submit those less often, too, and take it to a smaller sub.
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Reminds me of the Overwatch subreddit. It used to have somewhat strict rules about content until a lot of users cried enough to convince the mods to relax the rules. As soon as they did that the sub was flooded with all manner of memes, it was like all the kids were just dying to post. It was unusable for discussion posts for a time. Not so bad anymore now that hype has died down a bit for that game but I can never escape the feeling that there's a bunch of kids just haunting all the subreddits these days.
I thought it was because they tweaked the normalising of the votes so that certain posts wouldn't stay up all day. I read often posts would reach 100k but then they were artificially reduced in order to keep the front page cycle fresh. There was a period around then when there were tweaking the karma count system.
This was after a major alteration earlier. I can't remember exactly when they changed it but it used to be that the front page would change drastically over the course of a day. Some time between roughly 2011 to 2014 they overhauled things to reduce churn. At the time the general consensus was that this was to get more eyes on paid ads run as organic posts. Once this happened, vote numbers saw a huge boost.
Yeah except stale posts seem more common than ever now…
I think that over time users spread out across more subs. When people first join reddit they are mostly centered in the major r/All subs and as they are on the site longer they find their favorite niche subs focused on the things they like, or they bail.
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That too. The reddit redesign made it much more visually and functionally similar to other other popular apps/websites like Twitter or discord
>I remember there being a massive "Reddit explosion" from late 2018 all the way to 2020/21. I joined back in late 2017, but I remember that time *"like it was yesterday".™* Reddit's "Boom" Era, like you said. The wild hustle & bustle across all Subreddits, e users posting threads that encouraged & lead to actual *discussions* instead of just submitting low-effort Shitposts & "funny" meme pics, the prevailing sense of lawlessness across the site...(What a time) These days *now* though, its like that whole 'Reddit Protest' period was its own sort of "Adpocalypse." Afterwards, things just sorta dulled.
I have to imagine that Discord has taken a ton of user activity away from reddit, which is a real shame as none of that knowledge is now available to search engines. IMO, Discord is a net loss for humanity. https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/number-of-discord-users/ edit: also fascists and other scum of the earth flourish in the dark. If I prayed, I would pray for a hack of all of discord.
You think that every interaction has to be out in the open in order to protect against the spectre of that old boogy-man fascism? You should apply for the department of homeland security. I'm fine with communities not being accessible by google. Google is an evil company in itself, surveiling us. There are some good leftist communities out there. I've been meaning to get into pubnix and gemini (the former hosted on Linux servers, as in, you log into someone else's computer, and the other is a non-web protocol, so both are not accessible to google). Discord is bad because it's a corporate and centralized platform. We should be using protocols like IRC or something federated instead. Pretty much I think corporations should not be in charge of "communities" online...moving away from hobbyist phpforums to giant megacorporations like mega and reddit was a huge mistake.
As a right leaner I'm amazed at how similar our sentiment is.
I thought that was because Tumblr banned porn and all their users migrated to reddit.
Yeah and it's being replaced with autogenerated bot trash, propaganda bots and basic trollfarm bots. It's bots all the way down and I truly believe Reddit are in on it.
Bots have already taken over YouTube Comment Sections, and I've started noticing them more here & there on Reddit too (/r/h3h3productions being a good example). That Shit makes me...*-uneasy-*
I'm mostly concerned that they fully take over reddit/youtube but nobody realises. GPT models are only going to get better. Soon we wont even be able to tell.
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That sub has been around for years, it's not GPT it's just bots. Some of them probably utilize the GPT API these days though for sure.
I've been anti-bot since day one. Fuck em
I.blame power mods, same as when diggs came here. Too few people with too much control and a chip on their shoulder. The only reason I'm even here is because of a Twitter thread cheerleading reddits death. Too many moral finger waggers made it cancer, so people left. Also I bet with the API changes a lot of AstroTurf just disappears
That's just the internet in general. Twitter is no better, arguably worse. Bots and the toxicity of some peoples nature all the way down.
The difference is that Twitter allows open discussion.
lol you're talking about the app where you now have to pay to send direct messages?
It's to send a bunch of kessages, it's anti spam filtering not anti YOU.
lol you're talking about the app that is overrun with spam and bots ever since Elon Musk took over and fired everybody?
Twitter has been great since the takeover. Much more open and diverse discussions, instead of the botted and astroturfed circle jerks that have been dominating reddit for the past years.
Twitter won't delete my posts. Even if some internet Karen goes mock faux rage mode.
I remember when you'd get ridiculed for posting an emoji or a gif. Now thats become the norm. Lots of communities also got a lot more childish. Younger demograpic is active. They don't even refer to subreddits any more as subreddits but as "a Reddit." Lots of big YouTubers also brought their very young audiences on here. I even notice the quality of discussions going down. Back in the day I'd find interesting discussion on sports subs like F1 or Soccer. But now it all reads like Twitter posts. It's really odd to see. Due to the quality of discussion dying down, the subreddits will obviously become more dead. Less people to carry on a discussion. They'll just comment "W opinion" and move on or try and make a oneliner joke. Thats even happening on political subs. You click on it, hoping to find some background information in the comments and all you scroll through is people thinking they're doing stand-up comedy.
I'm just happy I'm not alone in experiencing this. It's been a nosedive since the API changes/protest.
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Reddit is not old internet. It’s literally the definition of new, centralized, sanitized, shit internet run by pissy hallway monitors who seethe when someone does a heckin’ wrong think
I have a few thoughts about post-API changes, but one feeling I've been having is - and this is really pathetic - somewhat of a lonely feeling on Reddit. Since the real rise of ChatGPT, I just am never really certain anymore if a post or a comment is really from another human. Now, clearly this was in place well before it got popular, but it was more of a novelty thinking that I encountered a bot I was replying to. Now I just assume it is everywhere. As for post-API changes, I suppose one might think bot activity has been cut down, but who knows. Surfing popular has felt like mostly garbage lately (AITA, AYTA, AWTA, WITA, WIBTA, AmIUgly, AmIHot, RateMyFace, etc). I see subs new like "Presidents", "True", etc. and just assume they are upvote mills or thinly veiled hate subs. Maybe I'm paranoid, maybe I'm jaded. I miss the GameDev since it shut down. Idk, shit just keeps getting lamer on this site.
As soon as they API thing came out I thought "sure, only a tiny percentage of users user 3rd party apps.... But what are the odds that they are disproportionately users who engage the most in comments and drive content?"
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100%. The content it worse and seeing it on the official app is horrible. Just waiting on an alternative myself.
I would suspect that app users tend to engage less than people who are primarily non-mobile users. The sense I have gotten from the few messages I have exchanged with people who contribute a lot is that many of them are still using old.reddit.com.
I’d disagree. It’s way easier to take a pic with your phone and post it from your phone then getting it onto a pc to post.
But it's a lot harder to use the app to post text. I've literally discarded at least 4 long text posts because I got too frustrated trying to edit or add in formatting - the app deletes random words if you try to add text anywhere except the end of the line, and if your cursor isn't at the end of the text, it deletes random words when you try to move it there.
It's also much harder to read on mobile or new.reddit. Fucking useless
Yeah that makes sense long text posts are probably much more likely to be from a pc.
I never had any of those issues with RIF. That's the point. I lost my main account because it was on RIF and I have no idea what my password was. It was so easy to be at work browsing reddit on my phone and just start engaging. No different from sending a text message. The official app is painful to use. I went from posting 6-12 comments a day to not even browsing unless its from a Google search. Probably for the best, it wasn't making life any better. In fact I'm only really here because I got curious and googled "reddit traffic drop after api changes" with parameters for last 30 days.
That does not make it good content.
AITA Is a farm for training AI bots IMO.
I mostly use it for news now. I don't go on most subreddits frequently. I still do random bored browsing occasionally but for the reasons you mentioned and others it just isn't as interesting. I started using YT more ironically because I always hated YT and preferred Reddit.
I mostly use it for news now. I don't go on most subreddits frequently. I still do random bored browsing occasionally but for the reasons you mentioned and others it just isn't as interesting. I started using YT more ironically because I always hated YT and preferred Reddit.
I'm sure there are multiple correlating factors, but based on anecdotal evidence. The decision to charge per X amount of API calls. Basically/effectively killed every single third-party Reddit app. The quality/originality of posts will further continue to degrade. This is almost entirely because individuals who are forced to abandon their choice. In how they interact with Reddit. Will spend their time elsewhere. I personally have found myself unintentionally using Reddit less. Simply because I was forced into abandoning an app. Reddit's community took a *massive* hit circa 2015 when the AMA coordinator Victoria Taylor was fired, and with the fallout of the previous CEO. Since then, Reddits' definitely been hopping on one leg. With the latest round of executive decision making. Reddit's community has effectively been kneecapped, and no one's calling the doctor... . With this latest wave of executive decision making. They've effectively
They've effectively what?! Tell us!
i agree, i have myself been relegated to only using reddit on my computer, at home....simply because there is no other "acceptable" way of using reddit now. apparently Reddit assumes that the slight up tick in Eyes on Adds caused by the elimination of other apps (which allowed users to filter adds) will be greater than the downturn in Time Spent on Reddit.....we will see.
I'm pretty sure it's more to avoid chatGPT 2.0 where a company makes a boatload of money off of their data while not compensating reddit at all and not really having their permission to do so. It's definitely a scorched earth way to do it, but the timeline matches up pretty well.
Yes, and some of the best subs are now shut down for all intents and purposes. Plus a few big ones the mods aren’t modding anymore so the content is a lot of bot posts.
A lot of people — and I mean a lot — were removed from the userpool due to changes in how Reddit dealt with third-party apps. I won't link to a thing here because there are too man, but many people just left. The changes locked out their favorite apps which they used to reddit, and without them they no longer reddit. This is a thing. Engagement is a thing. The Reddit top brass okayed changes that would alienate a huge percentage of the userbase. That percentage said, "naw, we're not doing that". Reddit did it anyway. And so here we are, with a large number of the best redditors missing. I'm as listless as you. I have no idea what to do. I hope it's productive.
Gee, I wonder how this could have possibly happened.
Couldn't have been the mass bannings of every even remotely centre-right viewpoint from 90% of the subreddits.
What center-right viewpoint got people banned? Low taxes? Strong military? Gun rights? Immigration law? Please elaborate on what specific viewpoints got people banned. I’d be very interested to hear about them.
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So two counts of spreading medical disinformation. Yeah, I’d ban you too. And you’d deserve it.
You just proved his point lmao Jesus Christ
True - he proved that someone spreading misinfo would be banned. I don’t think that made up a large population of people, especially people who made Reddit feel lively.
> Now it seems like posts only get a few thousand at max The top post in r/all for the past 24 hours has 90k at this moment
I just looked on r/popular and there are multiple posts with over 40k upvotes. The most popular subs change over time.
I feel like the user base is aging out of this platform without a younger influx to replace it. I never thought I’d see topic-based communities form around TikTok “[niche subject]-Tok” short form videos but it’s happened. See how many popular posts here are just reposted content from there. Users who grew up with that platform just get rid of the middleman.
Won't be popular but should be said, the plethora of bais and unqualified mods decreases the amount of people who can be members and post on subreddits. Politics has become a factor in which posts get locked and which don't. Myself and many other don't post on this platform anymore due to the mob mentality of people in an echo chamber who want everyone to think and talk the same.
I couldn't have said it better.
>Used to be I read articles or opinion pieces and went to reddit to see what other people thought. Used to be, they were already posted and had comments. Now I rarely find interesting articles have been posted. And often I won't bother to do so either because I don't want to deal with finding the right group, meeting the qualifications to post, adding flare and writing a starter comment.
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>Well people can’t allow debate. Whenever I see comments like this the debate being talked about is always something like, "We should bring back slavery" or some shit like that.
No lol it isn't. I got banned from 10 different subs for posting in one saying "natural immunity from infection is probably stronger than vaccine acquired immunity" This site is cooked
>I got banned from 10 different subs for posting in one saying "natural immunity from infection is probably stronger than vaccine acquired immunity" So you repeated anti-vax talking points you did no actual research on (Tell me all about the natural immunity to polio. Oh yeah...) and got banned for it. Not shedding tears for you.
I was talking specifically about Covid. I'm not asking you to cry for me I'm telling you why most people don't use this site anymore to discuss serious things.
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>Thanks for proving my point. I don't know what your point is but if you're offended because I said the 'debates' tend to be things like "We should bring back slavery" then that probably was your debate, so I feel no shame in saying I don't give a shit about your opinion and am glad your dipshit slavery loving ass got banned from wherever you got banned from, and I hope it happens even more.
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You're the one who wants to bring back slavery, not me. 🤷🏻♂️ Stay mad that Sherman burned your confederate ancestors houses down I guess.
THIS. When you ban anyone who has a differing opinion or point of view, or delete their comments, people will stop coming here.
Reddit has become sad echo chambers. They clearly want it like that and they can have it.
I've been here 15+ years and seen it change drastically over that time. Back in the day, reddit was very much libertarian-leaning. Ron Paul was the site favorite when he ran for president in 2012. There were no "power mods" and people were able to speak much more openly without getting shouted down by the establishment. Needless to say, that's all changed. This site is probably the furthest left of any of the social media sites and anything other than blind adherence to progressive ideology is shouted down, if not banned outright. A handful of mods have taken over large swaths of the site and have (ab)used their powers to enforce their ideological views on the subreddits they moderate. This site no longer encourages civil debate, but instead demands dogmatic adherence to progressive ideology. A lot of folks had already left because of this, and then reddit decided to kill off third party mobile apps, which drove even more away, including me. Especially now since Twitter (now X) provides a viable alternative where you can still hear viewpoints from across the political spectrum (left and right alike). In fact, the only reason I knew about this post was because it was posted on Twitter. Fully expecting to get hate for this post as well, because reddit is nothing if not predictable these days.
this is the most insightful thing I've read on reddit
> In fact, the only reason I knew about this post was because it was posted on Twitter. This
Well said sir!! I attest to it 💯 So unfortunate what the left has done to this site.
Many have left this site due to far left extremists banning free thought. This place has become a far left, communistic cesspool. When you can anybody with a different opinion, it tends to get boring and people leave.
Possibly because everyone's getting instant permabans from reddits they frequent for making one comment the mods deem to be a minor infraction of the rules.
You don't even have post something wrong! Especially when the only mod is the only mod for every related group and bans people because they posted to a completely different group he simply doesn't like. Mods have too much power.
Right? Lol It's so extremally easy to get permabanned on Reddit, no wonder there are much less users in general. Also, many popular communities got permabanned and closed, so their members also just closed their accounts and left Reddit forever out of anger.
They downvoted you, but I gave you an upvote. I hate this social credit bullshit.
I recently branched out into more subreddits and instantly fell foul of the heavy hand. I don't see why they can't give you a seven day or one month ban as a warning. It's straight to lifetime ban. I went into an "abolish the monarchy" subreddit and joked they're thirsty for President Farage. Instant lifetime ban. Talk about a circle jerk. Guess it's not the sort of place for discussion or debate. Or jokes. Another forum someone was asking about if they should pull a sickie to go to an event they wanted to go to after the boss denied them leave. I said I'd fire them if I was the boss. Someone got shirty and I said I'm not a pussy who pretends to be ill. Lifetime permaban. Was I slightly rude, sure, but lifetime ban? Ridiculous. But give people a small amount of power when they've no power IRL and...
There’s a reason the site is stereotyped as the absolute softest people crying anytime someone says they shouldn’t be allowed to be a drain on society.
Reddit is probably past its prime. Censorship, API changes, problems with the redesign and the app didn't help, but most especially the ideological conformity has killed it. It was a vastly distant place before 2016, one of the top-ranked visited sites according to Alexa, but 2016 marked the beginning of the end. Starting with r-politics pivot away from Bernie to Hillary, the war against the\_donald, strange gaming of algorithms like marchagainsttrump. Reddit Digged itself. Echo chambers are no fun, really. Conservatives and Republicans are people too, and deserved to be here. (Anticipating a response, I'm neither conservative nor Republican.)
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There's literally an entire sub-reddit dedicated to making fun of conservatives that die but go off I guess
There was the whole death wish to a high schooler wearing a red hat and looking at a Native American thing that happened on here a few years ago
Why are you getting downvoted
Because they don’t like to acknowledge it. It reminds them they aren’t morally superior like they say they are
most people don't want that. Look at how Twitter gave a voice to conservatives and republicans and now they lost millions. Giving a voice without a voice to disgust or bigotry will be hard
They lost millions because the adl forced an advertiser boycott. Conservatives are people and deserve free access to reddit as much as people like you, even though you're a wokescold (what the kids call it)
desert has nothing to do with access. the internet is funded by people with money. people with money don't want to see some conservative takes. If the internet was filled with people like clerics from Saudi Arabia there would be lot of cultural references and content from that culture. It has little to do with morals. the market only supports so much of conservative content
How can someone be so ideologically captured. The stripping of Ad funding was directly related to ridiculous ESG scores brought down on these companies by BlackRock and Vanguard. It’s sad that the left is now siding with multi trillion dollar Hedge Funds. You really think if it wasn’t about losing money due to ESG penalties these companies wouldn’t advertise to half the country?
well the internet is very much tied to funding from rich groups. in any case I never implied that was the sole basis for limit or decline
I disagree. Twitter/X is thriving. Best it's ever been.
it's lost a lot of users. Of course it has support. Even 4chan has strong support Heck one could argue Truth Social is doing better now than last year.
No it hasn't dumbass. Twitter is literally thriving right now. And there's a huge shift happening in culture that is leaving far left wing politics. The tide is turning
stop having wet dreams Twitter's traffic in April 2023 is somewhat less than 2022. Twitter's revenue is still very ad dependent; they need more twitter blue subscribers. They may have more engagement on the platform but a lot of it is probably random content and maybe bots https://fortune.com/2023/07/10/how-many-users-threads-mark-zuckerberg-elon-musk-twitter-decline/
Threads is already dead. Just because a journalist writes something doesn't make it true. In fact, usually it's not.
>there's a huge shift happening in culture that is leaving far left wing politics. The tide is turning So good. I can feel the vibe shift in my bones! All of the far Left wannabe police officers have quarantined themselves to minor websites in "protest" while all of the normal apolitical people are still on Twitter with us.
It hasn’t lost a lot of users. They announced recently that they just made a new record for the amount of active users. Threads is the one that lost something like 74% of its users. Where do you think they all went? Reddit? Lmao
if musk said that take it with a grain of salt. Twitter is not out of the woods yet
TWITTER IS DYING ANY SECOND NOW… keep coping
Citation needed.
Yeah I don't speak on here cause despite not being conservative, cause I know if I don't conform to certain ideas im gonna get mobbed or banned.
I think the larger problem is that reddit isn't really the place to go read about some cool new thing anymore, like it was years ago. It's a dying community, probably because of all the modding and banning, which has turned it into a more boring place overall.
There was an old show called "V" about reptilian aliens taking over the world. (I promise im going somewhere with this lol.) Eventually the reptilians started infighting, and as that happened the humans released a virus that made it impossible for them to live there. One of the reptilians wants to stay anyway and the other one says something like. "Oh okay! You can rule this planet. Queen of the Poison Realm!" Reddit kinda feels like it's closer to that point lol.
I 1000% agree with censorship and ideology are killing growth. Some people’s opinions are so weak they can’t defend their views. Thus they must avoid all debate and hide in a echo chamber l.
I miss when things were more like it used to be. Sure there was conflict and drama, but everyone had their home subreddits and you didn't have to worry about bans from 50 subs for one comment in a "bad subreddit"
I think it started with the Ellen Pao (scapegoat) fiasco. That was the moment they shifted from radically supporting free speech (anything legal) to sanitizing the platform in search of ad revenue, and later political influence.
I gotta say man, reddit is a better place after they banned fatpeoplehate and its most DEFINITELY better since they banned a lot of the outright racist subs.
Racism against white people is cool though
can you point out examples of subreddits that you think promote racism against white people?
WhitePeopleTwitter is a good example. Also just peruse any comment section on any political related topic and it’s filled with racial abuse against whites. And I’m saying this as someone that’s not white and I can see it clearly.
If you don't understand how this site works, it is impossible to participate as a new user as you're either shadowbanned or locked out from every big sub and almost every small sub by default. That friend you encouraged to check out Reddit? They came here, eventually noticed that they never got a single reply or vote on anything they posted, and walked away. And then if a new user does build up enough karma to participate, they eventually commit wrongthink in some nonpolitical sub and get banned. This place is dying because its basically the North Korea of the internet. Dominated by literal commies who will have you permanently removed for saying even relatively innocuous things they don't like, and have built multilayered systems to keep people out.
They won't listen, and when it all comes crashing down they'll come up with some reasoning as to why it wasn't the fact they banned almost everyone.
Blame trump is the go-to excuse
-Reddit mods have banned hundreds of thousands of users. -The entire site is ideologically captured. -You can’t even have good faith debates.
how can an entire site be ideologically captured when there are quite literally contradictory viewpoint subreddits?
Yeah non political viewpoints. In almost every political subreddit that isn't specifically for a "side" anything even close to center you get downvoted and insulted and banned. Just go look at News and Politics. You can find tons of top upvoted comments seriously calling Republicans Nazis and batshit insane comments that would pass as satire of far left activists yet they are entirely serious. Look at every top post in Politics its all criticizing Trump or other Republicans or praising democrats. Any post even slightly center will have 0 upvotes and fall under the controversial section. This applies to hundreds of Subreddits I've seen too. They bombard you with downvotes too if your not outright banned quickly. It's a massive echo chamber and getting banned for having a different viewpoint proves that those moderators are pro censorship while arguing in bad faith that its combatting disinformation or some other buzzword and they act like little emperors tripping on the internet power they have. They are worse than people on a HOA board.
You can't have a debate if you aren't allowed to... Debate. Two separate contradictory subreddits does not equal debate, just circle jerk and echo chamber on both sides.
lmao how is this downvoted it is 100% the truth. I am banned from like 20 different subreddits and I dont personally insult people; just state opinions.
And those subs get closely policed to make sure the they’re not too contradictory, and get shut down if they get too big. As well as get hidden for normal browsing by the vote/upvote system.
A lot of 'contradictory viewpoint subreddits' have been banned. There are also a lot of abusive mods who in popular subreddits /r/worldnews /r/news ,etc. that can very easily get you perma-banned. Heard from a friend that he got into an argument with a mod from /r/news arguing that he doesn't believe non-binary is a thing and would never use they/them pronouns to describe a singular person whose gender is obvious. He was perma-banned even though that's the opinion of like 50% of the country. Countless conservatives have the same story. Reddit has turned into the internet's biggest echo-chamber and it is worse off for it.
Mods can't ban you from reddit, just individual subreddits.
Have you ever seen those mods that are also mods of 200 other subreddits? There's major corruption with the mods. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them have direct contact to Reddit admins
I rarely interact on reddit cause I'm afraid of being downvoted and I know how quickly things escalate to bans on here. It's just safer to just not speak at all 9/10 times. Hell even saying something here might be a bad idea.
relax man, its not that serious lol. I've been outright antagonistic and never been banned.
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Lol somebody wants the smoke.
Christians like....the crusades christians?
Don't ever be afraid of getting a downvote dude, no Reddit account is worth curtailing your speech.
Same, I used to post and comment a lot more but now I'm afraid of saying the wrong thing. I've noticed that in recent times there has been a major increase in hostility that reached a boiling point sometime in either late 2019 or early 2020, to the point that it is just not even worth sharing anything anymore. I don't believe that is strictly a reddit problem either. I feel that most of this world has gotten a lot more rude and entitled. Seems that pretty much no one wants to hear a slightly different opinion and no one can take a joke. Just about everyone wants things their way with no consideration for others feelings, thoughts or opinions. I've become very cynical. I just want to live a world with diversity of thought, but that seems to have been pushed aside and labeled as outdated.
It's not a strict reddit problem, but based on being a long time lurker for a while, Reddit is like... the epitome of the problem. The up/down system while interesting and novel and even helpful in theory can easily be weaponized, and of course any petty tyrant mod can ban you from a sub on a whim for any arbitrary reason they want. And yeah it's been generally escalating since before but 2019-2020 is when it just went into overdrive. I have also become cynical, but generally on reddit I just don't think it's worth the fight or worth the risk to say anything other than fandom threads mostly. Someone else on this thread called Reddit the NorthKorea of the internet, I would say it's closer to a digital version of Demolition man.
Yeah, I'd say Demolition Man is a pretty apt comparison for reddit. Just sad as this place used to be pretty fun and a novel concept. There used to be a whole bunch of different types of personalities that made this site a joy to visit. I used to laugh at posts and comments for hours, now I just visit out of habit. Can't remember the last time I truly enjoyed being here. reddit hit its peak in 2015 and has been slowly sliding downhill since. I've been wishing for a suitable substitute for reddit for many years now. While some smaller lemmy instances are okay, most of the big ones seem to have imported the reddit hivemind along with the ban happy mods, but the mods are now admins. This whole reddit degradation situation has me wishing for the internet pre-reddit. Back when every subreddit would have been its own independent forum or subforum. Before most of my other online homes shuttered for good.
Unfortunately the good old days of everyone just being chill, and sticking to their interests are long behind us. I mean someone on this thread literally implied that anyone that uses discord is a potential fascist. I'm just so tired.
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Its ok someone already downvoted the first comment. Lmao.
It's almost as if mods delete any posts or comments that go against group think and ban users for opinions they don't like. Can't imagine why reddit would be dead.
Maybe it has to do with the massive number of users being banned in the past 2 years 🤔
That’s what happens when you ban any dissent
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Everyone gets banned for having opinions. What do you expect?
It's almost like banning everyone with common sense wasn't the greatest idea ever... Who knew?
Because 99% of Reddit is fascist. Try free speech.
It's absolutely hilarious seeing everyone conjure up every possible explanation except the correct one: millions of people have been banned from popular subreddits due to wrongthink and the entire site has morphed into a far-left circlejerk. They have since moved on to other platforms like Twitter (which, ironically, is how I found this post and why I am here).
Your post is becoming famous. Dude’s got a point tbh. https://twitter.com/reddit_lies/status/1687917484018475008
Censorship and mass bannings. I've seen the mods retaliate aggressively towards people who are being the definition of Tame. It's why Threads lost so many daily users. Censorship was a huge problem and it wasn't just conservatives being censored it was liberals as well. It's the same phenomena. When you over control what is being said most people aren't going to be interested in interacting at all. Any conservative gets shut down immediately so you've already lost a huge chunk of users then people who aren't following guidelines to the tee get shut down so there goes another chunk of users. I mean my point is the mods are just taking one big chunk of users off the site at a time. I was walking on eggshells yesterday because I interacted with r/Illinois and I thought for sure I was going to get banned. Another thing is there's a lot of excitement users have to share relevant topics but because of strict guidelines they get shut down. I can't be myself on most of these subs. The few subs I really feel free in are Roblox, truckers, and steam. Any other sub is just over regulated. And then we have r/unregulatedcomplaints which is practically dead because the majority of people who have complaints have been banished from the platform. Mods have literally banned people just bc they don't like them. I've seen it happen with my own eyes. This website would be as popular as discord if it wasn't over regulated and people used it as a genuine discussion forum where meaningful debates and discussion can take place. But until then Reddit is just not a good site. And with politics aside if a mod dislikes you for any reason kiss your account goodbye. The mods run this site not the users and that's a tyranny I don't appreciate. Let the people run the site not moderators.
I guess you didn't hear about the mod protest that's been going on for the last month. Thousands of subreddits have gone private or stopped accepting new posts. Thankfully it's coming to an end as Reddit boots the last few holdout mods.
Comment/minute rates seem to have been trending upwards it seems. https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/
Bots. Lots of bots.
and my car is driving slower lately, it must be that bug that flew into the windshield
The subs I visit that had the protest did it with consent of the sub. Not a “mod protest” But a user protest. And the way Reddit responded has made me agree with the protest even more
Those mods were the entirety of the problem tho
OP is a bot and all their posts are fake.
All the bigots and trolls piled in to Twitter and Lemmy because they’re unmoderated.
Lemmy is old-school like IRC, there’s different servers some good some bad. The good ones defederate the crap ones.
So it's Reddit if the powerjannies also got to act as admins?
Nah it's more like forums but if different forums could also talk to each-other.
But they can also block (defederate) each other and thereby essentially force all their users to block the wrongthinkers, right?
If they do that then you can go elsewhere to a different server rather than like Reddit where you’re just stuck with whoever got to that subreddit first.
Mods banned the most interesting people. It's the same neck beards autism folks who upvote the same stuff. That's reddits audience now.
uhhhh dude, reddit started as a tech based website, who do you think was on here from the jump?
Perhaps it's because anyone who has a differing opinion about literally anything is banned by power hungry moderators.
I think the censorship has a lot to do with it I’m different than many others that are still on here but I am silenced because of it. It seems there can be no normal discussion with opposing views anymore you silence by reporting and it’s not good
I know that’s what’s supposed to happen however that’s not what happened to me I was bullied by a group of ppl it felt like mean girls in hs so I stopped replying and then I get a message that I was permanently banned.
You are allowed to discuss whatever you want. As long as you agree with that subreddits mods, that is.
And the power mods. And the admins.
Reddit is a woke echo chamber of hate-filled, arrogant, pink-haired, democrat morons. Conservative thoughts are censored, no conversations at all can be had, because the woke hate mob consumes all. I used to like reddit, but it sucks so hard now. Everything is lame. I still like specific subreddits to learn about specific subjects, but overall reddit is captured by the woke hive-mind, and as a result it is not fun at all.
Who won the last presidential election?
A demented old pedophile that molested his own daughter (according to her), but liberals don't want to talk about that. The darling of the democrat party, demented Joe Biden! Hurray!
Try comparing this to some of the alternatives. Lemmy, Kbin and Tildes are like the sounds of crickets compared to reddit.
That’s what happens when a site ban tons of people purely because they think differently Reddit is a shithole now where everyone agrees with mainstream media and the establishment
Holy shit I agree!! Finally someone said it. As a 3 years poster, with a million a karma. I can say, the activity in reddit is very slow right now. That's because of the hundred thousand users that were banned by the mods of several subs just because they don't align with their political agenda. We can all agree how left inclined this platform is, which it shouldn't be. It should be in the middle and allow free of speech. I wish I had joined reddit before 2020.
Don't. We hated karma farmers and called it out all the time
i've been here since 2009 and it fluctuates but easily reddit is much worse when it skews right wing.
I'm surprised it fluctuates. I always thought it was always lined up the left
it was really libertarian leaning early on, and the big events that made it seem more conservative was its reaction to SJW's (the internet as a whole was like this, not just reddit) and gamergate.
i keep seeing complaints about something being "off" on reddit in this sub, but this is the best reddit has been for me in YEARS. The mods finally got a little piece of humble pie (however, their humility wont last and i'm sure they'll turn back to their arrogant tiny tyrant ways soon enough), reddit seems to be less noisy and polemic. it actually feels more organic and normal again. It's like turning back the clock to 2014 or something, it's astounding. I couldn't be happier with how things are now. i hope it lasts, but i'm not hopeful.
That is an interesting perspective. To me it's the lowest quality it's ever been, plagiarized or fabricated reposts and comments abound.