It’s the size of the site. Reddit has too many users and has lost what once made it special. Everyone wants this place to grow to astronomical numbers, but I guarantee it will start declining once that happens. Smaller, more tightknit communities are much better imo.
I think this is a general problem of mass media. A capitalist firm operates under the imperative of unlimited growth. It is not enough to succeed at something, it must expand. We can see this effect take place everywhere from Hollywood movies to AAA video games to news and social media. In order to optimize the marketability of a piece of media, it must be as inoffensive as possible, until you end up with the fully lobotomized outputs of the major studios which never say anything of consequence about history, politics, philosophy, or current events, lest they offend 1-2% of Nazis or landlords on the fringes. You end up with pure slop.
The same goes for social media sites. Platforms like Reddit and Twitter would rather expand then send the Nazis to the virtual gulag. They will only take action if, by their calculation, inaction will impact their ability to expand. Likewise, they dull the edges on all political and philisophical discussion, lest the Marxists make the Liberals too uncomfortable. You end up with hermetic political discussion boards like r/Politics where the topics are limited to the latest WaPo/NYT perspectives on parliamentary masturbation - where labor strikes and political rallies are categorically deemed non-political unless someone like Bret Stevens blesses them with a rambling op-ed.
It’s the size of the site. Reddit has too many users and has lost what once made it special. Everyone wants this place to grow to astronomical numbers, but I guarantee it will start declining once that happens. Smaller, more tightknit communities are much better imo.
I think this is a general problem of mass media. A capitalist firm operates under the imperative of unlimited growth. It is not enough to succeed at something, it must expand. We can see this effect take place everywhere from Hollywood movies to AAA video games to news and social media. In order to optimize the marketability of a piece of media, it must be as inoffensive as possible, until you end up with the fully lobotomized outputs of the major studios which never say anything of consequence about history, politics, philosophy, or current events, lest they offend 1-2% of Nazis or landlords on the fringes. You end up with pure slop.
The same goes for social media sites. Platforms like Reddit and Twitter would rather expand then send the Nazis to the virtual gulag. They will only take action if, by their calculation, inaction will impact their ability to expand. Likewise, they dull the edges on all political and philisophical discussion, lest the Marxists make the Liberals too uncomfortable. You end up with hermetic political discussion boards like r/Politics where the topics are limited to the latest WaPo/NYT perspectives on parliamentary masturbation - where labor strikes and political rallies are categorically deemed non-political unless someone like Bret Stevens blesses them with a rambling op-ed.