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I think it's regression to the mean. When reddit was relatively small it was possible for them to have a group that was, on some dimensions, above average. As reddit becomes larger and larger those dimensions return to the population mean. That feels like, and is, a decline in quality. Reddit has an inherent problem in that the only people who are moderators are the people with the time and inclination to be moderators. These people tend, to borrow the previous language, to be below average in certain dimensions. Reddit naturally incentives low effort content. A thoughtful essay that takes thirty minutes to read will fall off the new or hot pages simply because the people who see and read it are still busy reading as the submission decays. A funny meme that can be consumed at a glance will get quick upvotes and enter a positive feedback loop where more people see it, more votes, more people see it, etc. Finally, reddit's developers seem to have no idea what they are trying to do. I mean "developers" in a broad sense encompassing the entire company developing the product. They reproduce useless and obnoxious features, clutter their UI, degrade the core user experience and so on - chasing engagement metrics. Perhaps these, um, improvements, appeal to a certain audience, but my intuition is that audience repels a different sort of audience. In short, I do think reddit has gone downhill and is accelerating. My account there is 12 years old but I stopped using it regularly 4 or 5 years ago. |
This is true, and applies to pretty much the entire web at this point. Back when it was people blogging, and getting replies on other blogs, there was time to sit and ponder, and edit things, even after posting them, before they were read.
We all want that feedback to know we've been heard, and our time spent writing and editing wasn't a total waste. The walled gardens optimized on filling that void, and turned it up to 11. They did it via algorithm and structure of computer mediated spaces, all optimized by corporations that MUST seek profit, by law.
I'm thankful every day for Dang, and this little peaceful contemplative space. I try... not always successfully, to accept when I've disturbed the peace and gotten the odd downvote by the community here.