Reddit’s bottom line in the short term is unimpaired that is how they won.
But in the long term- they are dead. I mused on this before.
Social network need monopoly - otherwise the business model struggles. One Facebook. One Reddit, one Instagram. Facebook, Insta, Snap, and TikTok however are struggling because they are now the same thing in different packages.
Not so Reddit. Reddit was a true monopoly. Nothing else compared. Well no longer. All their hiking have spawned a true credible alternative in Lemmy/Kbin. This will kill them. No matter of it’s Fediverse or something else - now there use than one place for Reddit. That means a third, fourth and fifth place is in the realm of possibility. And they WILL emerge. Others will try to enter the Reddit space.
Reddit had a niche and it was so dominant. No one truly tried to enter my ya niche. But that was not good enough. The enshittified it over and over again. And now the. Have competition. As they will never have a monopoly again. They will struggle to get their ads money. They will struggle with the margins. They will struggle. Yahoo will buy them in 10 years and do the mercy blow.
You miss the bigger picture. The shit journalism and propaganda are still free - funded by … other means . That is why magazine have tried to be free in the internet.
You’re also operating with the wisdom of hindsight. No one knew how to handle internet publishing. We all learned together.