> Reddit has always struck me as a company with no creativity
I thought reddit was really clever for the first ~7 years of operations. They replaced forums, fostered communities, gained a reputation as a place to get real people's takes, and attracted people willing to have interesting conversations. The upvote/downvote system that is now so common was made popular from reddit. They brought awareness to important political topics surrounding net neutrality. They were leaders in early Web2.0, where each user saw content that appealed to them, because everyone could choose which subreddits were in their homepage. It was highly social and highly engaging.
After a certain point in 201X the dark patterns began to appear. I was almost fully disengaged by the start of 2013. I can't remember the details, but I remember being increasing disappointed with reddit every time I returned for a brief visit.
I remember when they fired Victoria Taylor who was the ambassador for their celebrity AMAs. At that exact time, AMAs were absolutely hopping with celebrities and even President Obama. Reddit was getting huge media coverage and that was likely lots of new traffic.
...and then they killed it...
They still have celebrity AMAs but that was the peak and it immediately lost most relevance.
Victoria getting the boot really was a major turning point for a lot of users I think, certainly for me. The site hasn't felt the same since.
I still have some pretty negative feelings about that whole situation, and am confused every time I'm reminded of it. Why wasn't there more explanation? Why didn't they at least replace her with someone who played a similar role in a similar way? Did they not realize that people really liked her approach, or did they just not care? A lot of goodwill was burned that day.
I'm kind of vaguely intrigued by the current situation, but I'm realizing I mostly stopped actually caring much a long time ago. It feels like there's been a vast & growing chasm between the better parts of the community and the site's management for quite a while. They did not in fact "remember the human".
Yeah I feel the same way. Reddit was this organic thing and IAMA being created out of nothing and growing into something unique and interesting is just one example. It was fun and interesting and Victoria was part of the Reddit organization that was in on that.
When they let her go, it was a signal that Reddit corporate doesn't want to be a part of the fun. They just want to do their own thing that nobody likes while the rest of us do our own thing. Reddit the site started being hostile to Reddit the community instead of embracing it.
Hey, whenever someone is building a very strong reputation that could survive outside of Reddit, they get shutdown. Maybe there's a pattern? I'm genuinely asking.
There was a dedicated AMA app and it was poised to become an independent revenue stream. The leadership's outright destruction of the AMA platform in their attempt to monetize it looks like a microcosm of what they're doing to the entire site today. If they start booting moderators during the blackout, that will complete the congruence.
None of that was all that original... Slashdot had the links & stories with votes and a thriving, nested comment section (although it was curated), and link aggregators were a dime a dozen. And I mean, there was Digg. They put it all together in an effective way, though.
I thought reddit was really clever for the first ~7 years of operations. They replaced forums, fostered communities, gained a reputation as a place to get real people's takes, and attracted people willing to have interesting conversations. The upvote/downvote system that is now so common was made popular from reddit. They brought awareness to important political topics surrounding net neutrality. They were leaders in early Web2.0, where each user saw content that appealed to them, because everyone could choose which subreddits were in their homepage. It was highly social and highly engaging.
After a certain point in 201X the dark patterns began to appear. I was almost fully disengaged by the start of 2013. I can't remember the details, but I remember being increasing disappointed with reddit every time I returned for a brief visit.