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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[–] Saarth@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Also propaganda bots on Lemmy are an absurd assumption. Very few people use lemmy as compared to watching TV or Netflix or YouTube or Twitter or Instagram. Any entity that wants to influence anyone would not waste time, money and effort on Lemmy. The returns on investment just aren't there for Lemmy as a channel (and this is how these media decisions are made as ad companies are often involved in political campaigns).