Some Reddit users have noticed that they can’t sign-in to their accounts anymore on mobile, as the option to do so has been removed for them. Reddit has made it difficult in the past for users to access the site on mobile in browsers. The company’s main intention is to get users to use the official Reddit application instead.
It’s like they actively want to drive users away. I know a lot of people have said this, but it really feels like Reddit is about to have its Digg moment.
They want to push everyone on their apps because they collect a ton of metrics that they can easily resell. Metrics are way harder to collect on browsers in a consistent fashion.
It’s a natural consequence of the “enshittification” cycle: The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok — Or how, exactly, platforms die
In other words: yeah, it’s systemic, and Reddit is very likely to continue going that way. Whether it has one, big moment where users just mass abandon it or it’ss a long, drawn-out process of attrition, the end result will almost certainly be the same.
Honestly seems like a lot of major sites are imploding. Stackoverflow’s mods are striking, Twitter is on a downward spiral and likely to go bankrupt this year, Reddit is axing itself, etc.
It’ll be interesting to see what ends up happening to the internet after. I think a return to more niche forums or community-run things like lemmy is unlikely to be fully mainstream, but I think enough folks will shake off the major platforms onto these to get them really active.
Perhaps this will mark the end of an era. Running a social media company requires lots of money, and making it profitable is very hard unless you leach data off everyone. Perhaps investors will learn that there are better ways to make money.
I’m just not really sure what those other ways to make money could be. Other than monetizing a service outright via a subscription or selling a product to the users, I don’t really see a good way for online social media to be revenue neutral or positive.
I was mainly thinking that investors should consider dumping their money on companies that have nothing to do with the social media. Making an online platform like this profitable has been proven to be very difficult, and investors should have learned that by now.
Profit ruins everything. Heck I don’t even enjoy producing art or figurines or whatever if it’s for profit. I’d rather be part of something driven by passion and interest in doing something for others than profit. Infinite growth is a really bad model… if humans grew indefinitely it wild be catastrophic, and claustrophobic…
What’s going on at SO?
This is a good summary of whats going on and why the mods are striking.