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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[–] KatherinaReichelt@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago

Reddit basically has fucked over their voluntary mods. If you have a bigger subreddit with several millions of users modding that is nearly impossible. You'll get all those trolls, crazy people, nazis and fanatics with too much time. You'll have to deal with astroturfing campaigns from companies with millions of dollars of budget and state sponsored desinfo campaings. You also will have do deal with all that cultural war bullshit. You subreddit can be about cute baby cats, but you will have to deal with MAGA bullshit, somebody will bring the war in Gaza into your place or post Putin with a cat. Karmafarming bots. Users will really insult you and accuse you of powertripping and being a Nazi.

You will have to do everything in your free time. Reddit will not pay you. Reddit will not really support you. You are alone responsible to build a mod team. You can't pay them either. Spez will laught at you while earning millions. He will insult you if you speak up. You can't close your sub. And then you will get burned out and leave. The sub will then be overrun by absolute trash.