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by pessimizer
1575 days ago
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It's been over-corporatized in an attempt for respectability, with the goal of finally making money. That's something that happens in waves, and eventually you're left with nothing of what you started with. Reddit has reacted to every media panic with waves of new censorship and subreddit bans. You can only do that so many times before you've actually handed your site over to people who 1) either never participated in or enjoyed any of the now banned activity or places, and 2) people who were attracted by a site that was wiped clean, and were disgusted by the site during the period of its greatest growth, creativity, and influence. People blame it on Eternal September, but it's really handing a new site, barely resembling the old site, to Eternal September and banning the old site. What reddit is trying to do is to build an entirely new business with new customers, while retconning the brand that it built while becoming a household name. It's rational; there's no reason why reddit should be valued any higher than a 4chan, and they're looking for one. |
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Part ways better PR (4chan rarely had "ban waves", and by design of the site and the community it's harder to make those stick). Part ways different focus; Reddit focused on regurgitating content, not the community. That came a few years later. Curation is always a valuable asset on the internet and the voting mechanic worked well enough in the beginning to curate pretty much any given topic.
Once that was set in stone, it was a seemless shift to target their growing audience with all kinds of ads and other engagement. 4chan remained more or less the same (focusing on image macros and community) while Reddit pursued to pretend to be facebook with it's newer features. The question that remains is will there be enough creators to keep the site in tow once the frustrated "old guard" inevitably leaves.