cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/37870004
reddit got bad because spez (the reddit admin) restricted API access to the platform for third-party apps, such that people would be forced to use the official app or web UI, both of which display advertisement and collect user data (e.g. scroll behavior).
the reason why this happened is because reddit is a for-profit company and tries to extract money out of the userbase, at the expense of the users.
another example of a bad decision that reddit made was to push a lot of ragebait (“Am I The Asshole?”) because company shareholders want to see “engagement numbers” go up, and if somebody writes an angry reply to a post, that’s “engagement”. but it makes you angry at the stupidity of the “Asshole”, so it makes your day worse. that is another example how reddit makes money at the expense of the users.
size (number of monthly active users) is not what made reddit bad. commercialization is.
we should probably get rid of the “don’t make lemmy grow, it will ruin the platform if we grow” idea.
Why not have multiple Fedi Classics? That’s part of the beauty of the fediverse, after all. It’s great to be able to connect across instances, but it’s also great to not have to.
In fact, .ml, .grad, and Hexbear might be on their way to becoming something like this “Fedi Classic”, although not by their choice :P
I mean, for me their need to filter out left wing viewpoints is why I’ll never join .world, or use PieFed.
The latter is more troublesome, since they’re defaulting the software, not just the instance.