[Gorbzel]

Not so much that you’ve missed something or are mistaken, but Reddit is likely promoting those subs because they’re some of the only active high quality (I.e. not bots/astroturfing) ones left.

Not going to go through every example you gave, but the specific sport and team subreddits represent live and ongoing content rather than reposts from a decade ago, with many fans, strong communities, and nowhere else really to go. Consider the decline of traditional, non-steaming live TV networks, where at least here in the US, 98/100 of the top rated events people are still watching the old fashioned way are sports. Same thing.

[chris-orgmenta]

I agree that's a big part of it.

Although to play devil's advocate a little: There are plenty of great subreddits that I had to find on my own that are thriving. Smaller subreddits, but I suggest that's partly because the people that would be interested in them aren't offered them, so it's a self fulfilling prophecy to some extent.

[15457345234]

> great subreddits [...] that are thriving

The issue is, however, that the managers of that community, the ones that make it thrive, have basically no comeback if reddit decides to arbitrarily step in and alter how it's run, which has been done many many times with the admins clearly not operating in a good faith manner.

Subreddit mods are told 'add more mods' and they add more mods. They're then told 'no, add some of _these_ mods.' The mods that are added then immediately go full wrecker and destroy the community.

Alternatively, subreddit mods are told 'you have too many unanswered modqueue messages' - they reply in public 'we have no unanswered modqueue messages' - reddit replies by banning them.

Seen it happen many times. Not a viable platform. The admins simply enjoy fucking with the userbase too much. The contempt they have for the users is so obvious.