This article is on Medium, which has a paywall. I’m a member, but not logged in. I was able to read it so it may depend on how many times you’ve read Medium articles.
One point he made that I found interesting was:
So, in light of all of this, should Reddit even exist? Is there really a point to a web forum in 2023? Aren’t we past all that?
He thinks we are. I never thought about it before. Maybe in the case of some Reddit subreddits and other forums, but I don’t think so in general. I’ve got a lot great information from forums.
Reddit is one of the most valuable websites on the entire internet. It’s being miss-managed, and therefore it either needs new management or it needs to be replaced by something else.
The reddit community has tried to get new management put in place and seems to be failing, so plan B is to replace Reddit with something else.
I don’t think just “getting rid” of reddit is an option at all. It needs to be replaced with something better. And that something is not Medium.
Understanding why those 2 points matter is important:
Users are pumping the site full of free content willingly
A subset of those same users are moderating that content for free & others are creating tools and apps to make interaction with the bare framework a better user experience
The management know it’s a goldmine but are clueless in how to monetize it fully
Point 1 was how sites like Facebook and Twitter became huge and made billions off selling that data and the data points generated
Point 2 is how they fell down because they didn’t understand that they were content moderation businesses but failed to invest in that or use the Reddit model of getting users to moderate it themselves
Point 3 is what will cause Reddit to either collapse or die a slow death when the majority of its user base begin to realise they are producing and curating content for free and for a team that holds them in contempt.
A lot of users want to leave because they see that contempt but don’t get that they are still willing to offer their labour to others for free if they would just build a new playground for them. And not even a fully featured one because Reddits framework is a rickety piece of shit. Just enough of one for them to decorate themselves with 3rd party tools, which is basically what they did with MySpace.
[Edit to add] Extended point 2 which underlines the point that Reddit is very much like MySpace in that the users are shaping their experience of the site, not the other way round