reddit got bad because spez (the reddit admin) restricted API access to the platform for third-party apps, such that people would be forced to use the official app or web UI, both of which display advertisement and collect user data (e.g. scroll behavior).

the reason why this happened is because reddit is a for-profit company and tries to extract money out of the userbase, at the expense of the users.

another example of a bad decision that reddit made was to push a lot of ragebait ("Am I The Asshole?") because company shareholders want to see "engagement numbers" go up, and if somebody writes an angry reply to a post, that's "engagement". but it makes you angry at the stupidity of the "Asshole", so it makes your day worse. that is another example how reddit makes money at the expense of the users.

size (number of monthly active users) is not what made reddit bad. commercialization is.

we should probably get rid of the "don't make lemmy grow, it will ruin the platform if we grow" idea.

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[–] TrackShovel@lemmy.today -2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

No, what made Reddit bad was incivility, bots, trite comments, and theme accounts (and my axe!). It was massively popular, which exacerbated this stuff, and it incentivized upvotes.

Lemmy has upvotes but people seem less interested in them.

Here, we have the ability to mute toxic groups (defederate). We are decentralized, so it's not just one dickhead in charge. Our users are, for the most part, civil and somewhat intelligent and funny.

I was with Reddit from 2012-2015ish and then lurking on and off until the API shit storm, and we are nothing like Reddit in my opinion - not that that was the intent of the original post but still

[–] jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 minutes ago

the "I also choose this guys dead wife" is what gave the site character