cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/37870004
reddit got bad because spez (the reddit admin) restricted API access to the platform for third-party apps, such that people would be forced to use the official app or web UI, both of which display advertisement and collect user data (e.g. scroll behavior).
the reason why this happened is because reddit is a for-profit company and tries to extract money out of the userbase, at the expense of the users.
another example of a bad decision that reddit made was to push a lot of ragebait (“Am I The Asshole?”) because company shareholders want to see “engagement numbers” go up, and if somebody writes an angry reply to a post, that’s “engagement”. but it makes you angry at the stupidity of the “Asshole”, so it makes your day worse. that is another example how reddit makes money at the expense of the users.
size (number of monthly active users) is not what made reddit bad. commercialization is.
we should probably get rid of the “don’t make lemmy grow, it will ruin the platform if we grow” idea.
SRS was awful itself. the OG meta ragebait subreddit.
It’s a self perpetuating cycle. Abuse justifies abuse justifies abuse.
SRS wasn’t exactly some paragon of virtue and good judgement, a lot of their posts were ‘gotcha’ stuff taken out of context or joke posts taken seriously. I was on SRS myself a few times, usually due to sarcastic/sardonic comment that SRS users took literally. They often fell into the ‘bonsai kitten’ trap.
I also used to get in fake arguments with other users on one sub, for fun. And people also took us seriously and would ‘report’ our comments as horrible and abusive. The mods didn’t ban us though, because they understood the context, we were taking the piss out of each other and/or roleplaying.