One reason that Reddit's API changes killing the best clients was so poisonous is that the resulting non-exodus showed other companies that they can take user-hostile actions with impunity. A big enough mass of passive and undiscerning users will stay no matter what. Hence there being more freedom to take a strategy like this.
I think Reddit's API changes and more did lead to an Exodus of a good chunk of power users that gave the site more of an identity. But what's worse is the official Reddit clients gamify using Reddit so much that, on the whole, content quality is down significantly, even in the smaller niche subreddits that usually had great stuff. The problem is high quality content isn't profitable, endless scrolling is.
People keep saying this but I haven't noticed any drops in quality. The default subs have always been bad, and the niche subs continue to be good, in my experience. Do you have any specific examples?
As someone who has been ingesting a high volume of reddit "content" for the better part of 3 years - the spam/bot problem is _wild_.
I've implemented a handful of methods to detect 'networks' of these bots/spammers/karma farming accounts and, from the subreddits I'm monitoring, it's _more than half_ of the total accounts posting to them. This is across subreddits of all types, sizes and topics. Massive subs, regional subs, local subs, they're all completely inundated with these accounts - and these are the ones that make it through Reddit's own spam detection and whatever each subreddit has in place to handle moderation. These are the posts that do go public, more than half of the _accounts_ I've determined are spam/karma farming/bots. It's an even greater proportion of the _posts_ that belong to these accounts. (Thus, there are more spammers than "real" users, and they're posting more than the "real" users)
And this is with rather elementary methods of determining "spam" from "real" users/content. Those spammers who aren't being very lazy can pretty easily slide through my filters. (I'm detecting 'duplicates' of images and post titles/account descriptions using perceptual hash/simhash and hamming distance only - I'm rolling out text/image vector embedding based duplicate detection now and the numbers are even worse with this in place but I don't have it properly tuned yet) They're literally just re-posting the same content that successful/high karma accounts have previously posted en masse across as many subreddits as they can find/aren't banned from and it's wildly effective.
What's crazy to me is that many of them are in the 6 and 7 digits of karma - obviously spam accounts with > 1,000,000 karma is wild.
It seems to me that Reddit has zero interest in controlling this. Some might argue this is confirmed by the lack of moderation tools available to subreddit mods (which was ultimately the motivation of me building this system - but when they changed the API stuff I changed my goals/intention with it).
Reddit has been user hostile since 2014. It's just that as long as you hurt one part of the community the other parts hate you're fine.
The mods are universally hated on reddit and they were the ones most impacted by the changes. The average user either didn't notice or stopped getting automatically banned for joining the wrong subreddits.
> The average user... stopped getting automatically banned for joining the wrong subreddits.
Still happens, you're just not allowed to talk about it. /r/bannedforbeingjewish (which collated this) is banned,[1] but to give an example, /r/interestingasfuck (13 million subscribers) bans users that are members of /r/Israel.[2]
What's weird is the subs that will ban you for simply commenting in another sub, especially for just one comment, even if your comments are contrary to the theme of the sub.
When r/thedonald was around, I would debate misconceptions americans had about politics in Denmark from time to time (no we're not socialist). And of course I would get banned left and right (but mostly left), and would get the "you post in thedonald, ergo I win"-line regularly.
Reddit was a trash heap then, and it's gotten exponentially worse since. Why anyone go there voluntarily is beyond me. It contains nothing of value.
If you like British panel shows (or any version of taskmaster) then /r/panelshow is pretty great. Not much chatter, but then again, maybe that's part of the appeal lol.
That subreddit could basically not be further from the ones I frequent. There are some ok cycling ones, relatively low traffic, not many people, good content - and especially not only typical computer nerds.
Let’s be super clear, [2] does not ban the user for being Jewish as per [1] claims.
There is no way for the mod/bot to know this rather. It is clearly spelt out in the terms.
“You have been banned for participating in a bad-faith subreddit (specifically Israel) which brigades other subreddits and spreads
propaganda/disinformation/racism/sexism.”
Personally I don’t use Reddit that much, so I can speak to if this statement is true or not, the mods however do think it is.
There's no other nationality in the world where commenting in the subreddit devoted to that country results in being automatically banned from other subreddits.
I am not surprised. With the amount of misinformation that is produced and disseminated from the highest levels of israeli society. See my other posts on
1) Zionism = racist / supremacist ideology
2) misinformation
3) links to a documentary demonstrating how people are being awakened to the truth (and how they realise they have been lied to) Israelism film on YouTube
4) psyops campaigns both against their own citizens , and Americans etc.
Russia does all of the things you’re alluding to at arguably a much greater scale.
Also as you’ve outlined, plenty of the misinformation is targeted at Israeli citizens themselves and banning those people from the opportunity to engage outside of their bubble makes no logical or moral sense
Point noted. I should have prefixed it with zionist Israelis.
There are Israelis that have been awakened to the truth (see BT Salem, Ilan Pappe milo peled etc)
Also many former American Jewish Zionists [1] see Israelism film. You can also watch this to understand how these ideas and misinformation is propagated at an industrial scale.
You will note I clearly specified Zionist , which is an inherently racist/supremicist ideology. Akin to aparthied in South Africa.
Yes, when you say things that sound like Hitler, I will tell you that you sound like Hitler. I’m not clicking any of your stupid links or engaging with you.
However, I know a lot of South Africans and will be sure to warn them away from your company.
Another is: ecosystem partners are often surprised what users actually value. We all like to think that our contributions are critical, but the Reddit example shows a huge disconnect between the value 3P partners thought they were delivering and what users actually valued.
You're making it sound like Reddit was unusable without API/client in the past though. I'd never used a Reddit client before I started using it at all on mobile. I bet a good chunk of users (esp casually browsing, or frequenting exactly one niche subreddit) just used the web.
Not saying it wasn't user hostile or sucked, it just doesn't match the experience I had (or when I talked to some people).
I've found that the API changes improved the subreddits I was in because it made it harder for spambots to operate. Reddit got away with the changes because ultimately the power users were a tiny fraction of its userbase, and they were using clients that hid the ads so Reddit wasn't making any money from them so Reddit didn't care about their wants.
Reddit is not GPL so while hostile it’s incomparable to WordPress core. The user base of Reddit would have to rewrite from scratch. Wordpress can and will be forked if it comes to it. There are enough businesses relying on it that it would be worth it to re govern it under an alternate name.
