Reddit and the Transience of All Things
Do you ever get emails from Reddit alerting you that SkyGirl69 has started following you, so you click on their profile to see who this user is and to find out if they’re following you because of that incredibly witty comment you made the other night on that one thread that’s still causing you to snicker today and then it turns out to be just another Spam Bot? Oh, the disappointment.
If you’re like many Reddit users, these Spam Bot alerts have been pouring into your inbox daily lately and you’ve possibly even stopped clicking on the profiles altogether.
Do you ever feel that vein on the side of your neck start pulsing in rage when you run across the third repost this day in r/urbanhell of that same abandoned castle neighborhood in Turkey that you see here weekly, it seems? Bot repost accounts are the bane of modern existence for regular users.
Now, imagine if instead of seeing Bot accounts reposting this picture three times a day, they’re reposting it 15 times a day. 20. More than that. It would make the subreddit unreadable. Subreddit moderators use tools on third party apps such as Reddit is Fun and Apollo, to weed out as many of these Bot posts as possible. They still get through, of course…but it’s not nearly as bad as it would be without moderation. Why do mods use third party apps to moderate their subreddits rather than the official Reddit app? Because, as most Reddit users have long been aware of, the official Reddit app is a steaming pile of crap. Goodbye mod tools and hello Bot accounts taking over your daily feed. That’s the situation that will occur if mods can’t use third party app tools. And Reddit as a company seems to be totally uninterested in bettering its official app or in listening to any of its user base.
As of the end of June 30th this year, third party Reddit apps will be forced to shut down completely. Reddit’s CEO, Steve Huffman, is making Elon Musk-level shitty decisions and seems to be intentionally driving the company into the garbage as quickly as he possibly can. We saw what Elon Musk did to Twitter. Reddit users and subreddits have come together in site-wide protests and even a black-out on June 12th-13th to protest this killing of third party app access to Reddit and to try to get the CEO’s attention. Some subreddits, such as the massively popular r/AMA, have gone private in protest.
Huffman participated in an AMA recently to address questions about his leadership which is so out of sync with the company’s user base. It was, to put it the best possible light, a public relations dumpster fire.
In the past twelve years, I’ve used Reddit almost daily and this really will be the end of an era for me and for so many of Reddit’s dedicated users. What happens next time I need to be hospitalized or am laid up sick for several days? Reddit’s always been there for me to fill these lonely voids that pop up unexpectedly in the normal course of life. Other social media platforms such as Facebook, the Gram, etc. just don’t cut it. You open one of these apps and it’s an immediate barrage of those random people from your hometown who you’ve had no contact with for 25 years outside the annual ‘happy birthday’ messages you exchange on these platforms, old coworkers you never had more than a passing acquaintance with in the first place, and the occasional ex who pops up here and there and it’s never a good thing. Pinterest just makes me hungry. My Kindle app is great but my attention span is less so most of the time. YouTube has too many ads. Reddit was the ideal destination for so many years. The sense of community when you talk about the daily NYT crossword with the same group of people day in and day out, year in and year out, on r/crossword, the ridiculously high quality rabbit holes to fall into on r/askhistorians and r/science, the cute birdy pics on r/partyparrot.
All things, good or bad, come to end at some point, of course. And, as with so many things you used to love, this isn’t something that will shrivel up and completely die on a specific date or time for you to grieve and eventually come to terms with. Reddit will still be around to access through the web or on the official app. But the quality will steadily plummet downhill due to the lack of moderation of bot accounts and a user base that will become smaller by the day.
We had a good run. Now I’m “dating around,” trying out other apps that could be potential Reddit substitutes. So far, I’m extremely underwhelmed. Oh, well. Such is life. Maybe this is the sign that I should write a book.
