9

What comes around is all around

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

While the article is 9 years old, it's incredibly relevant today. Towards the end is the paragraph:

As described, Reddit is an interesting example where people voluntarily fill the same community leader role that Aol’s volunteers did, although they do so with fewer restrictions and more agency. That said, while we don’t expect or believe that Reddit should be sued for back wages, it may suffer from the same problem as Aol: Reddit’s fanatical users may remain devoted only as long as the site still feels, as volunteers once described Aol, like a “community where people got together to get together.” Reddit has struggled to ratchet up revenues, likely because users would rebel against aggressive monetization.

This may be the moment we are living through now. Or not, I don't think things have been fully decided yet. But what we have been seeing happen to Reddit really fits Cory Doctorow's Enshitification framework. Reddit's growth was based on providing users with a great way to interact. With the growth of the user base, it became desirable to monetize those users, and Reddit has been trying like mad to do so over the past several years. This isn't necessarily bad. Running a popular website is expensive, and Reddit needs money to cover storage, processing and bandwidth costs. However, that monetization may be reaching the point where the users are noticing it and may be less willing to put up with it.

That said, Reddit probably has a lot of life left in it. It still has (and is generating) a lot of content people want. Right now, those of use who feel strongest about the enshitification of Reddit have made the jump to other places. The question remains, can we build a critical mass of content which starts to peel other users away from Reddit, who are less bothered by the commercialization going on? Only time will tell. There was a time where AOL's position seemed unassailable, then MySpace was king for a time. Even FaceBook has been facing issues retaining users. And, of course, there is the slow moving train wreck which is Twitter. Large, successful social media platforms can fall. Perhaps this will be a repeat of The Great Digg Migration which fed Reddit. Or, maybe not. Maybe this will be another "Chairwoman Pao" moment on Reddit. Where users make a lot of noise for a little bit and then things go back to normal. Only time will tell.

this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
9 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

34767 readers
43 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS