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A related possible issue is that the average redditor seems much more likely to be a loser than the average FB, Instagram or Twitter user. Regularly when people share information about themselves they're the most pathetic people imaginable, without a job or with a shit job with shit pay, frequently mentally ill, few or no friends and romantically unsuccessful. I'm not being a snob here, these people are not average people, they are losers, often giga-losers; regardless of whether they're right- or leftwing politically.
It seems to me that pseudonymity has kind of a witch attracting effect, similar to offshoots of Reddit in general. Losers are afraid to engage with sites where they can be identified and so converge on the major pseudonymous sites, while the opposite is happening to higher status people, they want to be seen. The net effect is a great sorting.
Are these people good or bad targets for adverstiment? On one hand they likely have less discretionary income but on the other perhaps they are more likely to be whales and/or manipulable in general?
I just recently came upon that disastrously bad /r/antiwork Fox News interview, where the top mod of the now-defunct subreddit is revealed to be a 30-something slob whose only job they've ever had is a part-time dog walker. There were a whole bunch of huge threads at the time complaining about how the whole message the sub was supposed to be about was lost due to how terrible this person was at the most basic tasks of doing a national news interview with very softball questions.
There's the obvious low-value snark - hey, prepping for an interview is work, and they said they're against work right? But the more significant and relevant issue is probably that who the heck has time to mod a large sub while having any real responsibilities? And who would choose to do it for no pay without having at least somewhat of a petty lust for power? So the structure of the community is basically designed to draw in and depend on that type of people. It's probably not possible to change it without spending big bucks somewhere, which isn't in the cards for Reddit.
Alas, that sub is not defunct and still has users by the bucketload. I, too, watched that interview, and was appalled. I am more appalled that on its heels the sub seems to have continued firmly on its dubious rails, at speed.
On a related note, does anyone feel reddit has changed in the past few years, possibly since COVID but maybe after? I deleted the redditisfun app from my phone about six months ago but reddit used to be a site I hit nearly every morning on my commute and enjoyed reading through.
Part of it may be that I began surfing reddit around 2014, nearly ten years ago, and the five year olds of that era are now posting on reddit as militant teens. As I turn into an old man the whole world seems to become younger. I am grateful on a regular basis that there was no internet when I was a teenager; God knows what tripe I would have been posting regularly with smug arrogance.
Well that's... both interesting and disturbing I guess.
It does seem like a lot of the best content is gone from Reddit. There's still some decent stuff sometimes, but it seems like it's buried in a mountain of garbage.
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Yep I had the same realization as you. Motte moving offsite helped me stop going on almost entirely.
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