The July metrics must have shown them engagement is plummeting, especially content submissions, which have been garbage since the blackout. One look at r/all shows most posts being up for hours and sometimes days at a time - it used to be a matter of minutes. Doubtless this is also reflecting in their traffic metrics as well.
As someone who contributed there since the pre-Digg days, after discovering the Fediverse, I'm never going back. Reddit arrogantly assumed that there was no other platform mods and contributors could go to that would provide what they do. But when it comes down to it, the Fediverse does what Reddit did, with more features, flexibility, and without the threat of centralized mismanagement. The only thing Reddit had that the Fediverse doesn't was an audience of millions, but the audience follows the content, and the best place to create content online is right here, right now, right here, right now, right here, right now.....
Welcome to the next evolution of the web, Reddit, and to the realization that you pushed your audience to evolve past their need for you.
Don't forget they deleted premium and awards completely. They seem to be making the worst possible decisions at every turn. It's absolutely breathtaking.
The cynical side of me thinks that perhaps the recent "enshittification" of large platforms like reddit and twitter is actually part of a larger campaign of class warfare.
There's been a very noticable discontent among average working class people since the pandemic, when "essential employees" realized that's just a euphemism for "your health and life don't matter". There's been a lot of noticeable efforts by workers to organize and exercise their power since then -- Starbucks, Amazon, UPS, the railworkers etc. The most high profile attempts in recent history.
The common denominator has been that reddit and twitter have been the main hubs through which people have been organizing and raising widespread awareness. And they are movements that are starting to bridge political gaps as even right-leaning people realize they're getting screwed by hyper-capitalism.
So part of me thinks the destruction of these platforms is not out of incompetence, but is a deliberate attack on that growing consciousness and an attempt by the corporate world to exert control.
Interesting, however I tend to disagree. Although these sites have been good means of organizing, the corporate overlords had to know that alternatives would quickly replace them if they burned them down. Seems more likely that they are desperately trying to monetize these sites, but just way too out of touch with how hard us working class plebes are being squeezed from every angle and literally can't afford to pay for the most basic form of entertainment like this. Literally, I can hardly leave my house without paying something to exist in a public space. I'll be damned if I pay more than I already do (a device, internet, electricity) to exist in public online spaces.
Unfortunately Netflix' plan to squeeze even more out of people seems to have worked though :/ I was hoping for the same effect there, i.e. that people would instead resort to alternatives like piracy... Maybe these are different audiences though? Or is it maybe more important to people to have entertainment to escape real life (like streaming services) than entertainment with a flavor of empowerment?
It's like... I keep imagining what if I were a Manchurian Candidate CEO and tried to destroy the entire value of my company as surely as possible before being found out, what decisions would I make? And I must say, what spez and musk are doing keeps surprising me at every turn, because even in my imagination I have not come up with schemes as effective as theirs.
Don't worry they've rolled out a subscription now! You can pay $50 a year to see a bunch of reposts and propagand bots while the admins jerk each other off!
while reading you post, I visited reddit. the latest i' seein on HOT All and HOT Popular is 6hours old post and the oldest is 15 hours. It truly has slowed down over there. and I did not see much interesting original content, most are reposts.
Yep - I watched the same thing happen at Digg after they went down the path Reddit is now. Within 3 months of their infamous redesign, it was a ghost town.
Reddit will likely limp on longer, but I think they severely underestimated how badly they've harmed their own business.
I also did the delete post/comment thing with the delete script before api is gone for good. Put up a browser container before even search clicking anything on reddit.(only search for things that still exist, not even logging in.) I only post engage on lemmy now.
Damn that brings back high school memories - thanks! I totally agree it fits as well.
I went with the Fat Boy Slim vid for the evolution theme and the fact that the guy on the bench at the end was the best analogy that came to mind for Reddit in its current state. Jesus Jones seems to be speaking to how I feel after discovering the Fediverse.