What was once a beautiful and accessible tapestry of independent contributions
Reddit has been flooded with bots for decades. Bot engagement was a strategy the firm used to outcompetes Digg, as admins discovered any kind of engagement in comments juiced human participation.
The site’s had quality contributions in the past. I’d argue it still does, in the more neglected and low pop corners of the site. But it’s central thesis of stack-ranked engagement and search optimized meta-tagging fueled the worst kind of online participation straight back to the early days.
Reddit’s last ten years of decline has more to do with the overall decline of the Internet as a service than anything the admins have done directly. Humans have been crowded out by automated promotion tools and AI Slop everywhere. Reddit’s just a big popular spot that got hit hardest.
Reddit has been flooded with bots for decades. Bot engagement was a strategy the firm used to outcompetes Digg, as admins discovered any kind of engagement in comments juiced human participation.
The site’s had quality contributions in the past. I’d argue it still does, in the more neglected and low pop corners of the site. But it’s central thesis of stack-ranked engagement and search optimized meta-tagging fueled the worst kind of online participation straight back to the early days.
Reddit’s last ten years of decline has more to do with the overall decline of the Internet as a service than anything the admins have done directly. Humans have been crowded out by automated promotion tools and AI Slop everywhere. Reddit’s just a big popular spot that got hit hardest.
It was never a good site.