Reddit delivered strong earnings, but the numbers beneath the surface tell a different story. Slowing logged-in user growth and AI-powered search could threaten the platform's long-term value.
Yep. I used to contribute to Reddit regularly, easily several times every day at my peak, but I stopped logging in altogether after they locked down their API and killed 3rd party apps. I kept browsing the site anonymously until last week when they forced logins for old.reddit. I’ve found ways around this, but it has cut my usage by probably 75%. Not sure if it’s placebo effect, but it feels like Lemmy activity has picked up noticeably since the change. To the point that I don’t feel like I’m missing very much when I go out of my way to check Reddit.
Reddit used to be a lot like Lemmy, but it’s completely overrun by bots these days. Typically they’re trying to either sow division or simply drive engagement, which I suspect is to help train AI. /r/all is literally 50% posts like “help me understand this unbelievably simple joke” or “As a real human, how does [thing] make you feel?” Then the comments are packed with people telling you not to vote or to distrust your neighbors. It’s just been getting worse and worse for years. It’s sad.
I’ve heard a lot of cooing over the old days of reddit, but the old days of reddit also involved being a free speech absolutist enclave where r/Incel and r/creepshots festered for years. I think it got better in the middle, and that’s when I joined and had a lot of fun for a while… But then Ellen Pao got ejected on a wave of sexist abuse and, well, I guess my point is that it was always kinda rotten so it was inevitable for it to go downhill like this.
Yeah, fair. I suppose I’m glossing over a lot of the bullshit because I didn’t engage with that side of Reddit. I think some of these problems are just with society or the internet as a whole. There are some pretty bleak communities on Lemmy too, unfortunately. I think my problem is more that Reddit themselves have killed off what was good about the site while amplifying a lot of the worst (remaining) aspects in the pursuit of profit.
Agree. At this point it’s the the cons of every decision and none of the pros it used to have 😓 Like, you’re still gonna run into a shitton of sexism and racism because they’ll never get banned as long as they don’t say an actual slur… but also you can get auto-banned by AI for making a sarcastic joke. It’s gotten harder to hold onto a community and moderate it effectively, but there’s still a ton of mod squatters ruining what used to be decent communities. And so on.
The article specifically says slow growth of logged in US users is the reason that the stock fell, not because of lack of opportunities to monetize content. Revenue is up year over year. They just give a different reason for users turning away.
Nothing in the article about user experience at all, maybe I’m crazy for thinking that’s a big part of the problem.
Yep. I used to contribute to Reddit regularly, easily several times every day at my peak, but I stopped logging in altogether after they locked down their API and killed 3rd party apps. I kept browsing the site anonymously until last week when they forced logins for old.reddit. I’ve found ways around this, but it has cut my usage by probably 75%. Not sure if it’s placebo effect, but it feels like Lemmy activity has picked up noticeably since the change. To the point that I don’t feel like I’m missing very much when I go out of my way to check Reddit.
For me, the toxicity is a big push off of reddit. It’s not like I never encounter obnoxiousness here, but it’s not nearly as bad.
Reddit used to be a lot like Lemmy, but it’s completely overrun by bots these days. Typically they’re trying to either sow division or simply drive engagement, which I suspect is to help train AI. /r/all is literally 50% posts like “help me understand this unbelievably simple joke” or “As a real human, how does [thing] make you feel?” Then the comments are packed with people telling you not to vote or to distrust your neighbors. It’s just been getting worse and worse for years. It’s sad.
I’ve heard a lot of cooing over the old days of reddit, but the old days of reddit also involved being a free speech absolutist enclave where r/Incel and r/creepshots festered for years. I think it got better in the middle, and that’s when I joined and had a lot of fun for a while… But then Ellen Pao got ejected on a wave of sexist abuse and, well, I guess my point is that it was always kinda rotten so it was inevitable for it to go downhill like this.
Yeah, fair. I suppose I’m glossing over a lot of the bullshit because I didn’t engage with that side of Reddit. I think some of these problems are just with society or the internet as a whole. There are some pretty bleak communities on Lemmy too, unfortunately. I think my problem is more that Reddit themselves have killed off what was good about the site while amplifying a lot of the worst (remaining) aspects in the pursuit of profit.
Agree. At this point it’s the the cons of every decision and none of the pros it used to have 😓 Like, you’re still gonna run into a shitton of sexism and racism because they’ll never get banned as long as they don’t say an actual slur… but also you can get auto-banned by AI for making a sarcastic joke. It’s gotten harder to hold onto a community and moderate it effectively, but there’s still a ton of mod squatters ruining what used to be decent communities. And so on.
They don’t care about user experience, they care about monetising the content that already exists.
They being Reddit or the article, dealers choice
The article specifically says slow growth of logged in US users is the reason that the stock fell, not because of lack of opportunities to monetize content. Revenue is up year over year. They just give a different reason for users turning away.