Good read. Interesting that the author’s takeaway is that folks consider Digg v4 to be a catastrophic launch because of the myriad technical issues. I don’t even remember there being technical issues, I just remember logging in one day to find a website I enjoyed replaced with a bunch of crap I wasn’t interested in.
This is why I’m excited for the Reddit third party apps change. In a few years nobody will remember that this is what precipitated the fall of Reddit. It’s already turned into an echo-chamber of nonsense, ruled by all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy. Even the smaller subs catch the contagion year over year. I’ve been a Redditor since before the narwhal baconed at midnight.…
I have always been pretty left wing (have been a member of and organised for a range of left wing political parties) but Reddit was what very much moderated by belief in 99% of left wing politicians and would be politicians. If the kinds who rise to the top of subreddits ever saw power in our societies we would see the terror and widespread violence. There's a performative aesthetic idea of what being left wing is based on positions on issues, knowledge, rather than an actual mindset and series of real beliefs about what is the right thing to do.
It comes down to what I had always seen as the territory of the right but now realise that people of any political persuasion can do it:
1. Blame the system for your own problems
2. Other your enemies and make their problems personal failings
3. Claim that justice would be their destruction rather than their rehabilitation
And for social media companies these lonely, angry, miserable people drive huge amounts of engagement.
Reddit has huge governance issues as a community that stems from the fact that the corporate leadership cannot serve two masters. In retrospect when they did the big slow down on the "hot" algorithm was the moment it could not be saved.