Money, Mods, and Mayhem
The Turning Point
In 2024, Reddit is a far cry from its scrappy startup roots. With over 430 million monthly active users and more than 100,000 active communities, it’s a social media giant. But with great power comes great responsibility, and Reddit is learning this lesson the hard way.
The turning point came in June 2023 when Reddit announced changes to its API pricing. For the uninitiated, API stands for Application Programming Interface, and it’s basically the secret sauce that allows third-party apps to interact with Reddit. The new pricing model threatened to kill off popular third-party apps like Apollo, whose developer Christian Selig didn’t mince words: “Reddit’s API changes are not just unfair, they’re unsustainable for third-party apps.”
Over 8,000 subreddits went dark in protest.
The blackout should have reminded Reddit’s overlords of a crucial fact: Reddit’s success was built on the backs of its users. The platform had cultivated a sense of ownership among its community, and now that community was biting back.
One moderator summed it up perfectly: “We’re the ones who keep this site running, and we’re being ignored.”
Disappointing article. It doesn’t mention what I see as the biggest issues reddit faces right now. First of which is that the sense of community has evaporated due to the proliferation of bots, corporate shills, nefarious agents, and god knows what else. Discussions no longer feel like they’re happening among regular humans anymore, and either the subject matter experts reddit used to be known for have left or their comments are getting lost in a sea of garbage. I’m not sure Cunningham’s Law even applies at reddit anymore, although that’s not unique to reddit but rather the general condition of the Internet nowadays. Which leads to the second major issue: the deteriorating quality of posts and comments. Not only is reddit awash in reposts and Facebook-level content, the subs are apparently all interchangable at this point; I stop by r/all occasionally and while posts that don’t quite fit the sub isn’t a new problem, now it’s like the subs don’t even matter; MadeMeSmile-type content is ending up everywhere while meaningless catch-all subs like “r/awesome” are proliferating. I think this is due to bots and the influx of “Facebook users,” neither of whom are going to be discerning when dishing out upvotes.
The recent situation with r/wholesomememes really showed what’s behind the curtain: a house of cards all made up of bots and karma-farmers. The dead internet theory is alive and well at reddit, and who’s going to buy advertising (or content for AI trading or Google searches or whatever other Hail Mary attempts reddit is currently making in their desperate attempts at profitability) on the site once businesses realize their audience is all machines and other advertisers?
As a long-time user of Vkontakte (VK), the russian Facebook, I’ve seen it here. Big communities oriented towards diferent groups became parts of one long human centipede, because average content made them more clicks and views they could then sell to advertisers. With a deteriorating price of ads it meant that’s the only way for them to be afloat, and the feed’s algorhytm favored them.
What admins done next is some sloppy tries at cultivating OC or rather downing the visibility of what they’ve seen as a copied or low-effort content. As mechanics of it were obviously kept in secret, it lead to trial-and-error investigations of how it works and how to evade it. Predictably enough, it was dumb and introduced some unwritten rules for OC creators to be treated like legit posters, while repost farms were first to get the gist of it.
Later, they introduced a random semi-manually approved ‘checkmark’ called Prometheus, with a fire emoji, that they selecrively put onto some communities for a limited time. As it was promoted, it temporally ups the visibility of one’s posts, and it has been verified to boost views to non-subscribers. But, as our classic character Chadsky (!) once said, ‘Who are to judge?’. If anything, it made the favoritistic manipulation even more obvious and left the black box of algorythm a secret to mods who, unlike most subreddit mods, really made it their paid work with hired editors and stuff. It reshuffled the informational landscape and highlighted some small creators, but also brought even more garbage due to what (now admins) see as safe and potentially popular.
I suspect Reddit may try something like that at some point.
The bots are why I never looked back. Within an hour posts are flooded with cutesy one-liners. Why would I enjoy conversing with a fucking robot?!