It happens with all types of products, we’re just reaching the point where it’s happening on social media products. It’s the same reason why shrinkflation is a thing.
When markets are young, and when products are new, you grow and profit by building the best thing you can. If you can build a great product and it takes off, things are good. But as markets mature and new user/buyer growth isn’t feasible anymore, the game changes to seeing just how much profit you can squeeze out of each buyer/user before they quit your product. So just like other products move to cheaper ingredients or components at the same price, social media companies need to provide the lowest quality product that still maintains revenue. They’re banking on people accepting the worse product.
Unfortunately what a lot of companies are finding out, social media isn’t as vital to people as they think it is. People are willing to walk away when pushed too far, which is what Twitter and Reddit are seeing now.
I deleted my 13 year old account.
I just cannot support what Reddit is doing and the direction they are going.
He managed to paint Reddit as the victim in this, double down on their decision, and then paint the moderators and App developers as the ones hurting users.
Insanity.
They had a power blip and lost all the CCTV cameras around the track. This session may be hosed.
I had trouble with Mastodon, primarily because I had a very curated list of people I followed and most of them didn't move to Mastodon. Those that did are clearly using some type of program to just copy posts over from other platforms.
But for Lemmy, it feels different. I've been able to find most of the same communities I was a part of over there. The fact that they are smaller and less busy means I can spend less time scrolling, but still feel like I got my "fix" in for the day.
I too had been on reddit for about 13 years, since Digg fell apart. While I don't think Reddit will fall as far as Digg did in its heyday, I do think there is room for an alternative now. I'm also hoping to contribute and see how this all develops.