Why is this subreddit now just askreddit for movies?
Some time in the last few months, r/movies has been entirely consumed by askreddit-style questions like "What's your favorite hidden gem??" or "What actor fell off the map??"
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What is now causing all these unique, seemingly-non-bot posters to suddenly start flooding this particular subreddit with their discussion posts, instead of going to askreddit? Did the whole reddit protest shit change the moderation rules? Has the subreddit been infiltrated by a secret Buzzfeed content farming cabal? I unsubscribed from r/askreddit because I got sick of this shit, but now it's back on r/movies!
What is going on??
I think the comments are most interesting though
Because the audience for reddit has dwindled since July. Reddits offial site and app push controversial posts over just well yovkted ones. Most controversial posts asks inane questions. Then there's bots reposting those questions for karma and then websites juicing social media for content to get crammed down your throat via SEO.
They should make a second internet just for people
This all started with the boycott.
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I’d assumed things would go back to “normal” after the boycott, but it looks like a lot of power users really did take their ball and go home. (I wonder what they’re doing with their time instead? Hopefully some new hobbies? Time with friends?) Maybe reddit will regret removing the 3rd party apps, after all? Maybe we’ll just accept a future where niche subs become little more than BuzzFeed polls, but we get paid if our poll does well, so users won’t care?
It's because Reddit is trying to drive engagement. I don't know if you noticed, but since the purge of third-party apps, the comment sections have been kind of meager, and things don't get as many upvotes as they used to. Heck, half the comments act like bots anyway. It seems like reddit has been distilled down to those most addicted to it and has taken a hard lean into all the most extreme views.
When Reddit killed third party apps, the quality fell off all over the place. It took me about a month to realize the timing and why r/all had so much AITA rage bait stories and celebrity gossip and stuff now. I think a lot of the quality posters and people who liked more high brow discussions just left Reddit.
Reddit has been dying for a decade or longer, it's just now the people who saw it through all the previous crap, and tried to make it have some semblance of the site it once was, have up and left, leaving it to the brainless hordes.
If I had to name a year when Reddit turned sharply for the worse, it would be 2015 when Gamergate-style ""discussion"" tactics took over everything. It's not entirely Reddit Inc's fault, but they also did nothing to stop it or slow it from devouring the platform. Good moderatrors who didn't tolerate fools could only do so much to preserve their communities when the Admins openly embraced engagement at the cost of everything else.
Oh, was it gamergate that started the trend of calling each other a bot/paid shill?
Idk if it was gamergate that started that, but it was around that time when the 2016 election was happening.
tbf that election brought a lot of awareness to mis/disinformation, propaganda, and secretive advertising. It could have been going on long before to a lesser degree.
I think that goes back to the start of the internet. Maybe has become more common over time
Start of the internet? Is this hyperbole?
IRC bots were common, but they were seen as admin tools, not drivers of participation.
I'd been a lurker for almost a decade, and had noticed the quiet variation in post/community "quality" over that time.. I'd kinda wondered where everyone else went too.