I follow Reddit exclusively via RSS. I moderate a product support subreddit and contribute my technical expertise to various Apple-related subreddits. But no more. Reddit is now dead to me.
This is like Twitter all over again: they attract technical users with openness, supporting RSS and a 3rd party API. Then after they get enough users addicted and locked in, they close the service, killing the open web.
The future of Reddit is clearly continuing enshittification, just like Twitter/X. AI scraping was merely a current convenient excuse. They hate RSS feeds because the user controls what they see, not the force-fed algorithm.
As a deeply involved Redditor (even a sub mod) you should already be aware that things like RSS and Old Reddit are used by a minuscule amount of people. The world moved on, and the vast majority of users are on the app or on the New Reddit website, generally on smartphones -- and that is precisely why the culture of the site has long since degenerated into what it is now.
So, Reddit killing old features isn't about trying to chain freethinking people to the algorithm, since there just aren't enough such people left to be significant. You can take the site's statement at face value; this really is about stopping unpaid scraping by bots.
> there just aren't enough such people left to be significant
Right, and the reason for that is because of the previous actions they'd taken - killing third party apps, refusing to do more than the bare minimum to support moderators, etc.
At some point, they realized they wanted people to be on the New Version & the App. And hell, it was probably the correct business decision - they're not running it out of the goodness of their own hearts on free hardware. But it definitely means that Reddit is just not a place I use anymore.
People may still be taught that RSS is not an xml protocol that bla bla, but that it is one of the few remaining windows to get content delivered to readership in their own very terms and not in the ones of some pro-enshitification shareholders. There will always be people preaching rss and open platforms, the need is not gone.
Path forward is to build as close of a replacement as possible on https://atproto.com/ otherwise the enshittfication dance always continues. Doesn't have to be perfect, it just as to be able to avoid corporate capture, like water running through clasped hands.
In the 2020s any comparable social site, even if libre, is generally people posting from smartphones, a medium that on a societal level discourages longform text and nuanced discussion. That means they will share many of Reddit's pathologies.
I'd say the best Reddit replacement now is the same replacement for most of the modern internet: Anna's Archive. Reading edifying classic literature and university-press publications is going to be superior to almost anything on the web now.
Yes, but social sites serve many other purposes too that books don't. Social sites help share information, questions, and complaints. Books are for more established knowledge, not frontier concerns.
Depending on the topic, there is probably no acceptable substitute; which means, maybe Facebook, Discord or an awful videos-site (TikTok, Youtube) could act as a substitute, but then you had to use Facebook or watch Videos and let's not talk about Discord..
Reddit has gobbled up all kind of smaller specialized forums over the last decade, and established itself as the primary point of interest if you want something outside the walled social gardens. All attempts to rival them seem to have lost, and now we are at the endgame, and nobody seems to be there any more, who could take on the fight for the niche-problems of us powerusers.
I feel like Reddit nowadays is pretty much the same kind of content as all the other platforms.
The difference is that Reddit is even worse. It’s like a distillation of all the most angry indignant rage inducing crap from the other sites all into one.
Reddit is strictly subdivided into subtopics in a way that most other platforms are not. Consequently, the type of content varies widely among subreddits. We can't really talk usefully about what "Reddit" is like. We need to talk about what r/foo and r/bar are like.
I moderate my own subreddit, and it's definitely not "angry indignant rage inducing crap". That's the other thing: Reddit is moderated in a way that most other giant platforms are not. Of course the standards of moderation also vary widely among subreddits.
But all the big subs and even the moderately sized subs and even the smaller subs have become crap. I’ve (sadly for me) wasted much time on Reddit over the years. The type of comments I mentioned have become the default on every subreddit that isnt tiny and niche. It’s impossible to have a genuine thoughtful discussion on any non-niche hobby or subject without it being flooded by the kind of negative comments I mentioned in my previous comment.
Is no one looking at the problem? It is not caused by Reddit, it is not caused by RSS, it's caused by misuse of something many of us value by/for AI. AI is not just biting the hand that feeds it, it's killing it.
Seriously, f** Reddit and their CEO. At this point I hope someone will destroy Reddit and force all the communities to liberate themselves on new free platforms. But I also know this will not happen, and even if would happen, the users are so cooked, they would just end up on other enshitificated platforms, or become even more entangled with their parasocial AI-relationship.
The free internet has lost the fight. Liberty is just business now.
The headline really undersells the star of the show, ‘Reddit improves value proposition of their training firehose product’, in favor of presenting them as a victim.
> Sorry about this - we're sad too, RSS feeds have had a great long life on the open web.
> We know RSS feeds have been a beloved open web tool.
Correction: RSS HAS a great life on the open web, RSS IS a beloved open web tool.
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