this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2026
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Makes sense, Reddit feels like a shell of it's former self.
After the apicalypse many subs seems to have died, also the new UI that has been pushed for a decade or so, seems to promote consumption of content and discourage creation of content, further reducing new content.
Reddit has been many, many times by AI companies, why keep scanning if the content stays 98% the same, with most new content being of mostly lower quality, simply due to people posting AI shit.
This was a very predictable outcome.
As soon as Reddit's history got scanned by AI models, it lost 98% of it's future value.
Don't forget that you can't use VPN now, use the web version on mobile, and most accounts gets banned as soon as they are created by the automod.
You also cannot view it without being logged in now. Which gets a groan from everyone in chat when a friend shares a Reddit link.
I have no clue why they decided chasing off users and being less useful was somehow going to help them. Particularly when they were the place to go for huge segments of the population.
You can still browse anonymously with red reader. Suggest getting it off f-Droid, but it's also on the play store. No iPhone version though.
Another reason to switch to Android/GrapheneOS.
Firefox (including the one on Android) has extension called libredirect which... redirects to those privacy oriented frontends for lurking.
I was heavily addicted to Reddit and I'm glad they allowed me gradually get off of it with the API (never installed their app) and now blocking read only access (which made me use libredirect).
Given that content quality is also degrading I never felt urge to to use the app, now I don't log in (using the lurking portals makes it more disruptive to leave a comment, I always log in using private tab) and I suspect I eventually will stop using even that (there's only few subreddits that I am still interested in).
j
The reason: greed
You can without being logged in, but not old reddit. If you’re getting the “join the most alive place on the net” (lol) popup, ublock has optional anti-annoyance filters that fix it.
Is that pop-up on the "new" Reddit?
Yeeeh. There’s a “oh you gotta log in” pop up on “new” reddit now, and old reddit makes you log in. Site’s gone to shit
Just within the last week or so old.reddit.com was effectively disabled and stopped working. (I think it might work if you log in, but i quit doing that 3 years ago). It was a nice resource and it’s said that it’s such a shell of what it was. Right when the internet is really needing human voices too
They are only doing one segment of users at a time and I'm guessing their metrics are telling them 90% of those users don't play ball and just stop visiting. I'm guessing they might go back on it in a bit.
Doubtful. It was inevitable that they would do that eventually.
Users using old.reddit are undoubtedly the least valuable users.
They wouldn't turn it off for everyone all at once in order to avoid creating a large number of upset users all at once.
They fingerprint your device, if you get a new phone or reset i (you can restore, just logout on safari and clear cache, use a new user, etc. google automatically logging me back in to an alt that got banned alongside my main got it banned) I'd just quit and find better hobbies, reddit feels like it isn't a waste of time but it really is.
Yeah it is a waste of time and I have been seeing that more since switching back to the fediverse.
Also thanks to the mods of /r/worldnews for helping kick my reddit checking addiction since I got banned and keep getting flagged as ban evasion lmaoooo
Fuck spez and etcetera
In my case it was r/publicfreakout which always feels ironic
Never forget that they killed the API for a mere $60M AI deal.
Like, is spez apologized and restored API access, and made an effort to kick fascists off the platform, I might consider going back. But as is, I will watch with glee as he fucks over everyone stupid enough to buy his IPO.
Besides apologizing and changing course, spez would need to leave before I considered going back. The way he behaved during the API BS ended my capacity to trust him in any way. Reddit as an organization, maybe they can turn things around and return to their purported values, but spez is not an honest person and will do or say anything if it serves his own interests.
60M USD is insanely cheap for that data, remember, it was categorized and structured into threads and subthreads in specific categories, not to mention all different languages already being mostly sorted and ready for consumption.
They could probably have got a few hundred million USD for it if they held out longer.
Most of the people who bought during the IPO probably already cashed out.
I swear Reddit started changing as soon as Trump won. I think reddit did such a great job of exposing Republican lies and grifts that some rich ass hole just said we will express interest in investing if you start censoring your content and now here we are
They pushed donald and conservative to the front page constantly with less upvotes/comments than any other post there
It feels like the decent into fascism started there in general. We need to backlash so hard we make up for lost time and then some. Fuck conservatives for subjecting us to this, and fuck "centrist" liberals foe enabling them every step along the way
Nah, I think that when Trump won, reddit and other platforms realised there was no need to pretend to be apolitical or balanced.
/r/the_donald was one of the most active forums pushing Trump.
The r/AskRedit thread that got me banned permanently was asking how people thought the Trump presidency would end. You could tell by the amount of "Post deleted by user" and "post removed by reddit" that the general consensus was that eventually someone would hit the bullseye and finally ventilate this sack of shit's skull. I observed that it's telling that they are so against even discussing threats of violence, that it makes the mods complicit in the crimes of the regime. Fun fact: The mods did not like getting called out like that.
trump the 1st time actually. thats when they started banning heavily, also the same time russia realized reddit was ripe for stoking division/infighting. remember all those subs that were considered illicit by the gop.
Was always going to happen.
The most valuable data is always going to be on open platforms that prioritize ease of use, because that's where people will go. But then the company starts looking at all that data and how much it's worth.
Before they can charge people for it, they have to make sure no one can get it for free. But in doing so chase off the users who were making that content.
Leaving them with a locked down worthless ecosystem.
Nothing is meant to last forever tho, and reddit won't be the last.
reminds me of how Gaia Online's user run economy crashed so hard due to Admin mismanagement that it became a cautionary tale in economy textbooks. https://youtu.be/vyzQnsa8SA0
Your last paragraph is a major point that I think a lot of people don't think about, and I'm surprised Reddits executive team didn't bail as soon as the AI was finishing the scrapes.
They didn't need to bail since they did the IPO and could just sell their shares. I haven't kept an eye on how much insider selling has gone on but I am sure they all have made bank over this past year, it is public info if anyone feels like looking it up. I would expect if the stock prices continues to tank and stays down you will start seeing executives abandon ship for greener pastures.
not to mention the NSFW purge. Like it or not, that was a HUGE part of reddit's success.
I hope they purge piracy, roms, emulation. Currently that is a huge valuable resource, and getting rid of that might lead to those users coming here. Those types of contributors are the ones who add value with their content.
What? I remember years ago when making maps of Reddit community connections was all the rage. On the maps weighted by posts and subscribers, it looked like Reddit had a sizeable NSFW section. On the ones weighted on traffic it looked like Reddit was a porn site with some other special interest forums.
They killed off the old ones by timebombing the subs with strict requirements for activity. They started complying with takedowns, which nuked wide swaths of NSFW reddit. The death of gfycat was another sudden and massive removal of content.
The NSFW part of reddit didn't go away though. It's transformed into OnlyFan spam. So it's not really porn. It's redlight district ads. Hot local girls want to meet you!
Wait what did they do to the NSFW subs? They were still active when I was banned a few years ago
they removed the r/nsfwrandom search string, and banned hundreds of the NSFW subreddits due to "lack of moderation." You can still go to many of them, (that remain) but you have to actively punch the subreddit into your address bar, and then you can only link to other related subreddits through the Subreddits' own link list (which is only up to date if you're lucky). Searching for them is still possible but access is a crapshoot due to the aforementioned subreddit bans.
i heard many of them got purged from another forum. some people make it a business to push or promote thier content/agency on these subs. funny how reddit target these people and not the propaganda bots.
man, reddit was fucking awesome when it was open source and they actually card about users. Spez has made his billions. He really doesn't give a fuck about reddit anymore. Just milk it for whatever is left.
It pains me, because I was on reddit since a year after it was founded, and i left when they blocked TPA. It was such a big part of my life for so long. And now it's just bots and AI. Fuck reddit, and fuck spez
Redit is Fun app was the best times. When they killed off third party apps it pushed me into a lurker, since I refused to use the official reddit app and didn't want to go to the effort of patching old third party apps to get them working.
RIF was epic. I believe the dev moved onto tildes.net after reddit screwed him over.
Thirst traps, obvious bait posts, and peter explaining the dumbest fucking things on earth.
alot of the repost on the "insteresting type subs, are AI". some of the news are reposted as well.