Article from August of this year (not too cancerous once you get through the first two splash screens).

Reddit shares DROPPED despite increase revenue. Why? Objective signs of enshittification:

  • declining active user base
  • massive increases in revenue.

People are leaving so the ones that remain must be more heavily monetized, which leads to more people leaving--the enshittification death spiral.

Reddit will no longer be reporting logged-in users as a separate metric lol

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[–] 80 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (17 children)

Reddit disables...

  • APIs that many popular apps use to help users view Reddit and for users that hate the new interface
  • disables .compact and .mobile views which pockets of users like that hate the new interface
  • bans users on VPN
  • forces "old.reddit" to require a login which alienates users that hate the new interface

Reddit: "Why are people leaving?"

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  • [–] [S] 39 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    And most recently: blocks even read access without a login (sporadic).

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  • [–] 26 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    This I couldn't believe - on my phone you get three scrolls to view the site and then are told. "To view more content download the app". Seriously fuck that.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    FWIW you can avoid this, and still get old reddit without logging in via a Firefox (and probably other browsers) extension that automatically makes reddit links old.reddit

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    I bet they will go log in only next and really kill their product. The draw of reddit, for me anyway, is that it's anonymous.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Agreed. Don't know why reddit corp doesn't understand this.

    "Everyone that was young, left. The changes kept coming in without asking their users what they wanted. They should have held focus groups or product testing. I think when you focus on the money, you lose sight of where you’re going."

    Seems like apt critcism, eh? Except that quote isn't from an article on Reddit, its about Facebook. What confuses me most about Reddit corp's restrictions over the past couple of years is we already have a walled garden social media that requires login to consume. Its called Facebook, and audiences are leaving that one even faster. Why would Reddit look at that declining user base and say "yes, thats what we want"?

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  • Login only makes perfect sense - you want data and tracking, and forcing a login as a condition of entry both permits easy tracking, and also lowers the barrier of entry for interacting (since you don't need to create an account, as you already just did).

    It also makes it easier to block bots.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    also trying to force users to use the APP, by constantly refreshing the page if you backspace. currently sink it/ yeold reddit extension can bypass the login pages, and make oldreddit usable on mobile for the time being.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Literally all those changes where strictly because reddit is only valuable for Ai training data.

    It started when google bought access to said data, and we where forced to stop using third party apps.

    Google dropped out of the deal and no one wants reddit. Reddit is full of bots, and pro palastine "hate speech" so in order to be valuable for Ai training data it has to use ai to moderate and kick out anyone who doesn't produce valuable data, or is potentially a bot. They only want verified I'D users who don't bring up issues that show up on googles front page.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 month ago

    Who knew if you actively enshittified a product less people would use it?

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  • [–] 23 points 1 month ago (2 children)
  • [–] 16 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    If people would just stop using reddit, but alas people will not "just" anything.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    I mean people are still on fucking Facebook for Christ's sake

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    I pop on occasionally and it's a cesspool. I don't even see many of my friends in my feed, just rage bait posts from outrage groups.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago

    ALso AI is scraping reddit less and less, because of the lack of users because so many USERS with multiple accounts were being banned. now its overtaken by AI just posting , and reposting.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Maybe the bigger story here is how all these fuckers hide their numbers. Streaming services and so on. It's all about fooling the suckers, er, investors.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 month ago*

    Streaming services do report their membership, just not what shows...

    And I honestly don't trust this article I posted, could be AI; seems weird investors wouldn't want to know how many logged in users there are vs bots. Not knowing that would make reddit on par with a penny stock. It's crazy to me that Reddit would stop reporting logged in users, though, of course, they can massage that number as much as the SEC will let them, which given their cozy relationship with the corrupt Trump regime, is probably a good deal.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    If OP is referring to full screen ads when they say "splash screen" then the URL fragment #google_vignette at the end of the link might be the culprit

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    It started when they began auto hiding and removing comments based on account metrics.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    Reddit tried to force me to use the app instead of a browser, so here I am.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Seems like you forgot to link the article?

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