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Reddit stock collapses 23% as AI eats away at user growth
(finance.yahoo.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
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Oh ya, rant time.
I was a Reddit user since 2006. It was my place to be. Endless posts on everything, every niche hobby you can think of, global and often even local news, learning about cool new things... I loved it. It was always crazy to me to decide to read a news paper and find that pretty much everything in it I'd already knew from Reddit, often finding out days or weeks earlier.
It started out an amazing place, it really did seem like a global town square where we could all get together and talk about everything and anything. But like all the cool online and tech companies the focus became more and more on money, which meant controlling what people say and see and harvesting as much data as possible from them. Large companies need income, and if you aren't the one paying then you always end up the product. So they started pushing more and more ads and fake posts and instead of being controlled by the people it became controlled by whoever throw the most money at any and every topic. Since going public they've ramped up the user fucking big time.
Trying to force mobile users to use their app so they can harvest more data? It's a fucking website. The program you use to look at websites is a web browser. Having 1,000 apps on a phone that are virtually all to use websites is not ease of use, or user friendly, or sane. They seem to have toned this down due to backlash, but for a while you literally weren't allowed to browse Reddit using mobile mode. If you tried it had a popup telling you to get the app and that was all. But if you switched the same browser window on the same device to desktop mode everything worked just fine. That's nothing but saying "fuck you" so your user base.
Getting rid of /r/all so that everything everyone sees on their home page is controlled entirely by the algorithms instead of having any potential of it by being what was most interesting or talked about (even though the insane amount of bot up/down votes and comments was already wrecking that? Fuck you. I've seen people say you can still see /r/all if you use old reddit... but it's fake. It's not actually /r/all as it used to be. When you can click through a handful of pages and get told that there's nothing else that's very definitely not "all." As a formerly socially awkward fat kid I'm certain I've gone hundreds of pages of deep before.
For years we had genuine news reports on different groups and companies using giant cell phone farms to spam up/down votes on the posts they're paid to boost or kill off and actually paying rooms of people to work to control the public opinion/narrative on their product/company/political party/country/etc. Shilling went from mostly a conspiracy to something warping everything on the place.
AI has only made it worse since along with corporate/govt approved or disliked posts notably having thousands of up/down votes with only a handful of comments they can now spam comments as well. Humans are a social species. There is always pressure to fit in. When we see that pretty much everyone is saying a certain thing or has a certain opinion we're far more likely to decide the same.
If someone makes a post saying "Israel killing tons of kids seems bad" it can be well thought out and link tons of evidence, but if it quickly has several comments about Israel having the right to defend itself and the constant child murder being fake news propaganda and antisemitism and making fun of the OP then the people who open it and check the comments will be more inclined to feel that way.
A post on "It's crazy that the US did all this awful stuff to Iran" with lots of links to blowing up lots of little girls in school and sending a delayed second hit so anyone trying to help them dies too, actively causing a shortage of USD there to destroy the value of their currency and push people to protest, etc, and it quickly has many replies are all calling the OP a conspiracy nut and saying the US was trying to bring justice and freedom 'cause the evil Iranian leaders killed 100 million protestors.... then most people who read glancingly without checking and considering all the evidence (most people) and who don't have strong opinions on the matter already will be likely to jump in making fun of OP for supporting middle eastern governments 'cause they're all terrorists.
It's something pretty much all big companies and governments do now. They nearly all have large 'social media' or 'PR' departments that focus on controlling the public opinion on topics. For a lot of companies it started out as customer service, helping people out and trying to convince the public they're awesome by doing cool shit. But it warped over time into more like just trying to convince everyone that shitty things about them don't really exist. Loads of subs main mods or full mod teams are employees, and in a lot of places dissent and complaints are quickly deleted.
And finally... the site-wide AI powered "moderation." Posts/comments can be near instantly automatically deleted and the user banned for a while for pretty much anything. It's not something the sub mods can control or do anything about even though the threshold for causing it changes based on the sub and the topic. You can be auto deleted and banned for posting a dark joke in a sub dedicated to doing that. You can spend a month talking about guillotines everywhere with no issues, but be deleted and banned for simply using the word in a post about US politics. Saying that you hope people in the US are exercising their 2nd amendment rights so they can defend themselves if the worst happens or suggesting capital punishment for federal agents who murder innocent civilians is "threatening violence."
Reddit is no longer a social platform for people to communicate with each other. That Reddit died a long, slow death, but it's gone now. Reddit today exists to collect user data, train AI, sell products, and control public opinion and narratives, and it does that by selling out every topic to the highest bidder.
Sadly most people keep using it instead of coming here because it's what they know and they miss what it was. I miss the days when I could browse endless new things just refreshing /r/all there too. It sucks that Lemmy moves so much slower, and the decentralized concept does make it more work to use and more difficult to navigate. But Reddit moves way slower now too. If you try to use their default "home" feed or the new /r/all you typically see mostly the same shit all day. Instead of constantly fresh it's always stale. Hopefully more people notice that and get tired of the bullshit, and we can make Lemmy the new place where conversation is always fresh and there's a home for every niche you can think of.
You know what else Reddit used to have? More comments like yours. You got it all nailed down in your observations. With intent, thought, and personality.
Same way you wrote a ridiculous yet thoroughly engaging "Elden Ring Journal" here on Lemmy (made my night lol).
That capacity for real people to have both the spaces and freedom to display themselves, whether that was them at their most intent focused in one community, or them at their most relaxed and silly in another, was one of the meta-qualities that their system didn't intend by design but which became hands down the emergent quality that allowed them to even get to being what they became post 2005 and pre-July 1, 2023.
The moment they started doing all the fuckery you rightly noted, they killed the conditions in which that emergent property could thrive.
Reddit doesn't just no longer feel the same because the system's changed, but because the changes were done with no regards for what it did to the organization's spirit, which for a web related property, has always been something defined by its users, and not the creators, all the way back to the first BBS.
I am one of the 90%. I have lurked in online spaces before and since Reddit, watching, and only occasionally sharing any thoughts.
Not because I'm antisocial (ok, maybe a little bit), but because there was always enough spirit to absorb, enough humanity to just bask in the display of shared thoughts between other people, that enough satisfaction was derived just reading, nodding along, and whispering opinions I had no intention to post.
That spirit, that humanity, is utterly dead in Reddit (and most of social media these days), and it behooves us all who care to not see it forever gone, to not see it driven away completely in the face of a dead Internet, to do something about it.
I guess I need to post more on Lemmy until I can return to invisibility, ugh.
Anyhow, great "rant", greater comments, and even greater silly posting, @Abyssian@lemmy.world, thank you for your time and thoughts!
Damn, thank you. It's generally heartbreaking to be a very long winded writer in 2026. It used to be different, but it's like everyone's so used to tiny text messages or tweets that that's become the default post and message length everywhere. Most of us made fun of twitter for the insanely tiny 140 character limit trying to limit online conversation to the length of a single SMS text message... now that's become the bulk of human interaction.
It's awesome to get a lengthy reply back, and even better to hear my nonsense has made you laugh. That's the point. No better way to waste time than trying to make random other humans laugh and feel better for a bit. :)
Lemmy isn't perfect, but it is more honest than Reddit.
Lemmy's problems stem mostly from tribalism, as different instance admins ban and censor anyone they don't like. That makes the environment hostile to users who came here expecting to be able to speak their minds like they did in the old days of the internet.
The tribalism causes the niche communities of Reddit to generally steer clear of Lemmy because, even if you have the technical knowledge to get here, you may find that your fandom or interest is fractured between six or more instances, with three of them being defederated from the other three or being moderated with such heavy bias that the community is almost unusable. You can be shadow banned, silenced, or just plain banned from an instance at the whims of a bad admin, which is really disheartening. Reddit is a mess, but it's all in one place still. With Lemmy, you honestly need multiple accounts on different instances, or else you have to choose between your favorite crochet communities or your favorite tech communities. Say one wrong thing, and suddenly you are robbed of interaction.
I love Lemmy. It reminds me of the Reddit of old. It's also broken and sick. I had to be in five different Star Trek communities because my instance got targeted by vindictive admins. I have to have multiple accounts because some fandoms are locked into highly toxic communities. Some of the best queer memes I've laughed at were in a community that is outright pro-Russia and pro-fascism.
Reddit felt like a grand bazaar for a long time. You could find a community for everything, and it would be active. While there was drama, it usually boiled down to you having a new sub added to your list to interact with. Lemmy is more like the high school cafeteria. Everyone is cliquish, and even if you have something to add to the discussion about Stargate or TTRPGs, if you voiced the wrong opinion in a completely different space, then you can find yourself a digital pariah.
At least with old Reddit, the Reddit of 2010, that didn't happen. We were still a community trying to run things the way Aaron Swartz envisioned. Even if you said something that upset people, the upvote system often allowed that comment to be judged by the community and not one person with an agenda. That's what I miss. Being able to say something or share something and have the community decide its worth rather than a minority voice deciding what people should see and think. It happens on Reddit, and it happens here on Lemmy, just for different reasons.
Really well said, thank you. I haven't used Lemmy long, and only recently started actually posting and commenting much. I've never used another instance, or account. I need to do a lot of actual reading on how Lemmy/Mastadon/Fediverse works and how things interact... honestly, I was just missing Reddit and looking for a place to bullshit, read fun stuff, and make lame jokes.
I've definitely noticed a bit of tribalism. That seems to be the entire internet lately. It's like all the algorithms pushing user retention by only showing people things they'll totally agree with or totally hate has... yeah, caused everything to break down to high school cliques. I'd say intensified, but I vaguely remember drowning in anxiety back then. If you don't agree with something on a topic that the group has an established condoned and expected outlook on, then you can get tons of down votes before anyone could possible even read your message.
That makes me sad. Not because I care about internet points, want to be Mr. Popular, or can't accept that not everyone will like or agree with me. It kills genuine thoughtful discussion, open and honest exchange of ideas and differences and points of view. That was always what drew me to places like this. Sucks to see the internet grow but become so much smaller and less welcoming. It's the internet. It's connecting the bulk of the human population. It should be a melting pot of endless ideas and cultures and points of view, not a ton of relatively small groups of very similar people who have decided it's moral and right to hate anyone with thoughts and ideologies that don't align with their own.
Ironically usually while virtue signalling and insisting it's the folk they hate who are hateful, not them.
Even worse, there were plenty of apps that had better UI than the website and incorporated a bunch of quality of life improvements over the base user experience. Then they forcibly killed all those apps to try and funnel everyone into their little data harvesting abomination, and the stupid thing didn't have even a fraction of the polish of the many third party clients that were just killed off by Reddit's greed for that sweet AI money.
Ya, I ditched when the api thing went down. Coming to lemmy was a breath of fresh air tho. I hadn't realized just how much capitalism had creeped into reddit.
I still need to learn how to post to and find communities that exist on other instances and such... 6 months into using it. I've hit the age where things that are new and different are scary and bad, which is super lame for a huge computer nerd.
I agree with your passion and thought process. In a nutshell, Reddit was the shit, until venture capital got them..
I just learned about the nightclub like takeover of bowling in the US. No wonder it cost me so much last time I took the kids. Venture capital ruins everything it touches.
For sure, private equity groups are ruining everything. Nursing homes, veterinarians, bakeries, housing, healthcare, and I guess now bowling and pretty much every form of human social connection or recreation that can possibly involve money.
A few weeks ago I read a long article about a sudden surge in venture capital buying up local utility companies.
They saw the price people get charged for electricity and water jumping a lot and figured that if they bought the utility companies and added in an extra 30% that was pure profit to them it would just seem part of the data center bullshit already happening.
They're leeches.
You want to know how to nip all that private equity activity in the bud? Let's start to tax the billionaires with a vengeance.
Private equity is all the untaxed, unbanked (because when you have billions of dollars, the banks charge you to hold it) wealth of the billionaires.
Let's tax it like wealth used to be taxed back in those "Great" 1950's that Trump wants to take us back to..
100%. Tax yearly income beyond something like one million at 90% and make sure 'income' includes stock, bonuses, maybe even per diem.
I'm also not opposed to voting the most awful of the most wealthy off the island and taking all of their assets for public good. Like if the whole elite child sex trafficking thing ever gets real investigation, those people for sure.
Having all your lands and titles forfeit to the crown (the people, now) and being exiled as a pauper or publicly executed should make a come back.
It doesn't even take that particularly intelligent of a child to realize that allowing the wealthy to just hoard the majority of money to themselves is a stupid idea.
It's essentially the "I'll keep every penny I ever earn and not spend a single one" on a national scale. Does no use to us once we're all dead.
Reddit was the shit, now it is just shit
lol, in an even smaller nutshell :)
I keep getting surprised by how quickly some users respond to my comments...
Surprise!
I happen to still be logged in. Usually it takes a while :)
My bad, I'd have told you something weird and dumb like it's because we're stalking you or something but I was busy writing another comment longer than anything anyone else seems to make. :P
How about you reply to this comment with another long essay about stalking me or something? I'll measure how much time you take :D
(Just kidding)
I don't know why I bother other than habit. Writing is kind of my thing. I'm verbose. I will spend an hour trying to write an honest, thoughtful (in my opinion), response to something that goes against the current internet socially expected replies even knowing it's just going to be downvoted to oblivion.
I know most people see lots of words, decide it looks too tuff, and move on, but there have to be some people on text based discussion forums who still read words and exchange ideas. Nice to see this huge rant got so many thumbs up and replies. :)
If all we wanted were short quips without any substance, we wouldn't be here. We'd be on Xitter or something. As a fellow long-post writer, who thinks reading rants and writing essays is fun, I'd say we're in the right place. Keep doing what you do - we're here for it!
Only in this case the venture Capital came from inside the house. Spez is all up in this bullshit.
Oh, agreed. They got to him, he rolled over. Instantly, once they gave him a taste of the Epstein class lifestyle.
Here's your ), you lost it about halfway through
Thanks. Good thing you don't need to debug typos and using the wrong words. I'm dyslexic so pretty much every time I read through something I wrote I'll notice a few words that don't make any sense at all. :)
On the auto banning thing, the last time I posted there I got banned because I was arguing that Rorschach from watchmen isn't actually a good guy because he's racist and homophobic. that the movies just cut that all out to make him more likeable and to flatten the morality of the story.
To make my point I put a few Rorschach quotes down. I got banned for the language that Rorschach used. It wasn't even slurs, it was just him blaming the decay of the city on "the backs, commies, and gays" basically.
This is the inherent problem with censorship. It actually does very little too protect anyone vulnerable, but does very much to protect against talking about those who are racist or homophobic or what have you.
Auto mod basically white washed Rorschach.
Yup. My last autoban that made me give up on the place after trying to come back to it lat year was in the WizardPosting sub. I decided to post as a necromancer and encourage everyone to convert the people they come across into handy undead slaves or something and was instantly banned for encouraging violence. I just said fuck it and deleted my account. When you're not allowed to tell a dumb joke the AI decides it doesn't like in a dumb joke sub then there's not much point in me being there.
As a fellow sub 2010's redditor also, fuck man I miss the ol' times. But fuck reddit and what it stands for today. I cannot deal with the constant banning of accounts for engaging in a topic. Can't stand that shit anymore.
If you tried to post a lot it became kind of clear that there was generally a pattern in the things they decided to ban people for.
I try not to be all conspiracy theory, but sometimes it seems like the super rich who own all the media and governments and judges and routinely break all the laws with no punishment also try their best to make everyone feel like even saying maybe we should band together and do something about that is being an evil violent terrorist.
Yep. Pretty much.
And you didn't even really ouch on the insane toxicity that's festered there x_x
They are SO friendly toward racism and bigotry as long as you don't actually say a slur, but then their moderation is such a mess that you can get perma-banned for a sarcastic joke.
It's weird as hell to me how many people there jumped on the chance to call things "clankers/clankas", "wireback", "tinskin", etc. So many don't even try to hide it, lots of comments about using the "hard r" in "clanker."
It seems like a lot of people who generally seem like they're not awful racists were just waiting for something they felt it was socially acceptable to throw slurs at, and a lot of those people seem to be the most fond of just making a tiny change to an existing slur against a group of people. I think AI is a terrible thing that will keep making the world worse and think we should get rid of it and all the AI labs, but zero part of me wants to write about how my daughter will never marry a clanker, coping the same racist tones and words that have been used against people forever. Like... they're not doing that on accident. It's not a cool nerdy star wars thing. It definitely makes loads of people who have heard very similar things directed at themselves uncomfortable.
It's a Three-Card-Monte trick. At least that's the best way I can describe it. One account presents an idea or rebuttal. All the stooge accounts reply in support of it.
The marks (the real human beings) are gaslit into thinking they're crazy for not buying into the game.
It's trickier than that too. I'm sure. They don't all dog pile with the same narrative. Some will have an "okay, but" that generally agrees with the premise but isn't too suspiciously on the nose.
We're social creatures. Not being accepted as part of the group is some evolutionary terror we're not even usually conscious of, but if you open a post, read, and agree with it but then see tons of replies laughing and making fun of the OP and calling them an idiot and a conspiracy theorist it's suddenly going to be way harder for you to voice that agreement. It's way easier to join the group pointing and laughing to try to fit in with the crowd or to just stay silent than it is to join up with someone being publicly mocked.
The narwhal bacons at midnight. France is bacon. I also miss the early days, though there is a bit of that feeling here. You can actually respond to comments without feeling like it's already too late and will get buried.
Nyancat was a delicious poptart... but I guess beans are nice too.
The one step further that I didn’t see - the getting rid of /all and use of the algorithm to direct you to what they want you to see also offers the opportunity to direct you to what’s most profitable, and also to what suits Reddit’s owner’s narrative.
It's in there, you probably just forgot by the time you got to the end of the book. :P
I really hate that they destroyed what used to be an endless stream of new ideas and conversation to make more monies.