I used old.reddit.com exclusively, so the app thing never affected me personally. But when the admins started extorting those devs, and lying about it... I started looking for the exits. The day I wrote it off entirely was when they casually announced they'd reject and ignore the site-wide protest of moderators who do all their work, for free.

You can't own a community.

You can enable them... or you can abuse them. Reddit chose abuse. The enshittification had been undeniable since 2016, when fascists choked the front page, and the admin response was 'everybody play nice.'

The company doesn't make anything. The site is an empty box. Every worthwhile conversation on some arcane niche, every thread pruned of idiot bastards, is something users made. It's not even like Facebook or Youtube, where a significant chunk of (eugh) "content" is profit-driven. A forum is just people talking.

Moral disgust aside, I immediately knew - the quality was fucked. Posts would keep happening. Comments would abound. But the only reason Reddit worked was that voting filters the best stuff toward the top. The same filter does not work on crap mixed with crap. That's all there's going to be. Bots and fascists yapping at one another in approved tones of voice. r/Funny with five hundred names.

Dumb bastards tried to sell a recipe for stone soup.