At least for me, the API changes are just a final straw and something which mobilised enough redditors to make other platforms viable alternatives.
Here are the reasons I won’t be going back:
[Removed by Reddit]
Admin power is misused. I’ve seen memes [Removed] where the only logic to their removal is if you’re a little bit of a bigot and are butthurt about it, or if you want to appeal to advertisers over actual people. In general, admin decisions seem less about people and more about business, how else do you wind up with a site where subs that exist to hurt people or put them down thrive openly but NSFW subs wind up a topic of debate or censure? Make no mistake this will go the YouTube direction, where things like LGBT content are determined not safe for advertisers. Having this in the context of a site known for cradling the manosphere and the incel movement and you can see where the dumpster fire is headed. Spez has no backbone so neither will Reddit.
The Advertising
It is so bad, my previous point is largely an issue so Reddit can be an advertising platform and then they fail at being an advertising platform. Other social media that relies on advertising revenue rewards advertisers for honest, accurate, and well targeted ads. Reddit has their audience opt in to their interests, how hard can it be to serve a fair quantity of relevant adverts? Reddit is the cheapest platform to advertise on and it’s treated like a big old billboard. The average CTR on Reddit ads is a third of that on Facebook. If they could manage to target even the right country half the time they could make more money showing less ads, and ads people at least don’t mind seeing.
This is assuming advertising is necessary at all, what’s interesting here, and with the federated internet in general, is that we can have communities that aren’t expected to be profit centres and try out new ways of financing platforms that centre users and not the advertising industry.
The bots
I’ve been on Reddit for at least 6 or 7 years, and it feels like outside the news and current affairs subs, there’s been very little new for about three of them. The place has been suffocated by repost bots. Even now, if you dare to look, you’ll see a lot of Reddit’s current activity is coming from unaware bots on dead subs reposting whatever hit r/all in 2020.
The most blatant bots are porn accounts, spamming their dead eyed content indiscriminately across the platform, spare a moment for the poor users of r/analog.
These issues can be improved on by cutting off access to the API, though I don’t doubt they would just rely on web scrapers without it. Users have already made bots to flag the bots, is Reddit less capable than it’s userbase? Or are they relying on bots to keep the site in a mundane content loop?
The experience
I’m really enjoying using alternative sites now Reddit has given them a userbase. It feels like the internet used to feel before it got carved up between the “platforms” for advertising revenue and I love it. The major points above are massive contributors to user experience but so are the users here, Lemmy and Raddle, the ethos and terms of service for these spaces and small design choices that centre users.
TLDR: I’m deleting my Reddit account(s), not because I want Apollo, but because the alternatives are better.
Oh I had, and I was all the better for it!