Excerpt:
Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago. This suggests the problem is way fewer users, not the same number of users browsing less. The huge and universal dropoff also suggests that people left, either because of the changes or the protests, and they aren’t coming back.
I would probably still post on reddit if I could do it from my phone in an app that actually works instead of being a glorified ad platform. They killed 3rd party apps to bully users to switch to the official app to boost the usage stats to have a better angle to haggle for their IPO. Problem is that the official app is just excruciatingly painful to use if you are accustomed to a proper reddit browsing tool.
The backhanded, sneaky way they did it with all the denial and lies was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Instead of being upfront and calling a spade a spade, they commited to a hostile takeover and removed all doubt that reddit is going to stay a platform for the people.
If they would have been honest from the get-go I might have continued posting.
I feel like spez just wildly overestimated the level of love/addiction the average user has for Reddit.
Clearly he figured that people were so attached to the platform that they could be coerced into using the official app.
In a beautiful miscalculation, it appears that many, many users would rather just leave entirely than to use it.
The app which, by the way, they also bought out (somewhat forcibly if I am remembering correctly) from a third party then ran it into the ground.
Couldn’t have said it better.
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