[frank_nitti]

I can’t tell if Reddit was actually better when I started using it ~10 years ago, or if I was just more entertained by the novelty of it.

It still does have the important distinction from true “social media” sites that are based around who you add/follow, but they have made some incredibly poor decisions with the platform trying to be less of what made it great and instead trying to blend in with the trendy influencer platforms du jour

[mrweasel]

It feels like it was better, but I think the redesign and to push towards the mobile apps have changed the content. 10 years ago you came for the comments and discussions. The doom scrolling they're currently focused on seems to detract from that interaction. It hard to even be allowed to view all comments, most seems to be hidden away.

Facebook went in much the same direction. Rather than focusing on interactions between people the focus shifted to just keep people scrolling and reducing interactions to easier "Like", "Hate", "Love", share, anything that could be conveyed using a screen tab, rather than a full keyboard.

My theory: Interaction and the quality of the content on a site goes down, way down, when the primary users switch from desktops to phones.

[dmfdmf]

I agree with your theory. I watched it happen on a number of forums for my car and motorcycle that I had followed for 10 years. The forums got rolled up by VerticalScope and soon after they "upgraded" the software for a better mobile experience and the content/quality is now garbage. It really destroyed the forums as a community and VS is just harvesting eyeballs now. Posts are repetitive questions or drive-by posts that go nowhere and do not ellicit any discussions. Nobody is posting intelligent or interesting content while on the can or waiting in line at the DMV, etc.