I think Reddit won’t exist in 3 years.
The latest update to the app + the crackdown on 3rd party apps convinced me of this.
It’s… terrible now, it was bad before but now it’s just worse in every way. Every other video is an ad, you now need to give an email to make an account, every other thing that pops up while scrolling is a goddamn corporate survey asking about what streaming services I use over and over and over again and making in many cases making a post just won’t work. WTF is happening to reddit!?
Every subsequent update will be more and more like this, less user friendly, less freedom of use, less reliability, soon you won’t even be able to stay anonymous. It really makes me feel that Reddit has crossed the threshold of taking on the mindset of “we have a total monopoly on this kind of service, now we milk it for all its worth because we’re the only mass-forum style platform like this and everyone who wants something like this has to come to us anyway”
They no longer give a shit about credibility, they long since stopped giving a shit about it’s users, the app (which the vast majority of users use) is objectively terrible. Mass banning and power-tripping by mods and admins is absolutely out of control, creating an oppressive, hostile environment for users, as is blatant social engineering/manipulation in juvenile power-plays by the company heads, creating subs with millions of users (most of whom are bots) fostering cult mentalities.
This isn’t the mindset of a company at the height of their power, this is the mindset of a company that’s about to go off a cliff. As soon as something else pops up with a freer, more open and more user-oriented philosophy and equal accessibility (there are alternatives with the former like Lemmy just none with the latter, yet) Reddit is doomed.
We all know how they’ll police it, they’ll have bots auto-ban anyone who mentions these alternatives or not allow any posts or comments that mention them to be posted, have bots dogpile hate on anyone who mentions them to turn off people from checking them out, but these are stop-gap measures.
3 years is just me spitballing, but I’d be surprised if Reddit is still a big thing in 5 years, and we know how big companies like Reddit handle periods of decline. They collapse completely due ti mismanagement and loss of trust and confidence by the customer/user base.
nah reddit will still be huge in 3 years, I’m pretty sure. But with a little bit of luck, the fediverse will be booming and much more like reddit used to be, rather than what reddit will be by then
I feel like it’s going to gain a lot of popularity among people who haven’t really used it in the past and have yet to discover it. While for us long-term users we are going to move on.
The general public does not understand what an API is, and does not really understand the changes Reddit is going through. As long as they download Reddit’s app, they will get sucked in without.