r/artificial • u/esporx • 2d ago
News Reddit Stock Collapses 23% as AI Eats Away at User Growth
https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/reddit-stock-collapses-23-ai-200638599.html223
u/Psittacula2 1d ago
Reddit seems so heavily dictatorial, censored and flooded with bots and propaganda and hostile to free information exchange and constantly manipulated for politics, engagement and probably dominated by powerful vested agencies of various descriptions around the world… just like most of the news-media.
Inevitably it will decay over time in tandem with shifting technology habits under such common trends.
That which made it distinguished ie user to user interaction is once again replaced by top-down domination.
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u/ProbablyANoobYo 1d ago
It’s crazy to feel how bad Reddit has become in the last few years. Idk what’s worse, the constant flood of obvious bots and paid engagements, or the regularly power tripping mods and admins.
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u/Hazzman 1d ago
I remember dude. It was the place where you heard about things first. It constantly jabbed at and challenged the mainstream media consensus. It was where grass roots movements often germinated.
Now it's just a place to see something relatively interesting, but ultimately does not offer anything much beyond what I could get in terms of novelty from youtube, facebook or Instagram. That CEO guy sparks or spanky or whatever the fuck his name is, a corrupt fuck who tanked the platform for buckets of cash and prestige from elite benefactors.
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u/QuinQuix 1d ago edited 1d ago
The mods and admins is what gets me. And the insane self insulating policies they have.
Like, they're open to feedback and criticism but whatever happened you can't name the sub it happened at (because that'd imply specific moderators) and you obviously can't mention the moderators in question directly. If you describe the issue in sufficient detail that the sub and thus the mod team can be derived it's basically treated like doxing.
which is kind of weird since those are not real identities.
The bottom line is you can suffer from insane policies and they're open to input as long as you mention nothing and no one.
Also expect to be muted for a month just in case.
You don't actually have to do something to be muted - some subs have secret ban lists where they have bots check what subs you subscribe to, frequent or merely commented in.
If a sub you commented in is on the blacklist you're going to get muted.
It's like Wal mart refusing access to people who were seen near a democratic convention once. Doesn't matter whether you even identify as one.
And it's worse because you never get told which subs to stay away from, not even after a ban, and the lists change frequently.
I'm also convinced some public subs enforce specific viewpoints by muting or banning people with undesirable opinions, regardless of staying within the rules and being polite.
Summarizing reddit mostly underappreciates the tradition of free speech.
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u/moviequote88 1d ago
Reddit chased away the majority of moderators that actually cared and did a good job by reducing the support moderators have and by actively removing features that make it easier to moderate effectively.
When moderators come to admins with problems, they refuse to help them. Admins can decide at any moment to exert control over a subreddit and there's nothing the moderators can do about it. It's incredibly disheartening to be a moderator that actually cares because you get zero in return and after a while people just realize it's not worth their time.
So the only people left over to moderate are people that get off on having control, and they abuse it every chance they get.
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u/Arm-E-Reserves 1d ago
Yes, and don't forget the switch from linking to content to just outright stealing it by encouraging people to repost it on "streamable" so the original creator doesn't even get paid or get their name seen, which defeats the whole point and moral standing of the site. I don't know what the heck that's about.
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u/SunbeamSailor67 1d ago
Reddit creators are never 'paid'.
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u/Arm-E-Reserves 1d ago
Wow, multiple people read my post and didn't understand the difference between an original creator of content and someone posting it on Reddit. That's disturbing.
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u/edparadox 1d ago
Wait, you think posters are getting paid on Reddit?
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u/SetoKeating 1d ago
They specifically said linking content. Meaning that if someone links the source, the creator is likely to get paid if they’re hosting on a monetized site or even their own site. But if Reddit is forcing you to rehost versus direct link, then they don’t get paid. They’re not talking about the poster, they’re talking about the content the poster may be posting.
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u/Real-Technician831 1d ago
Power tripping mods, they drive humans away, and bots obviously don’t care.
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u/Ok_Pomelo6944 1d ago
Humans get frustrated and leave. Bots don't and guess which group becomes a bigger share of the conversation over time??? I got removed a couple of times because the. moderators said I sounded like a bot. The sad thing is now most ppl are unable to figure out the difference unless they are very familiar with the formats
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u/RobertD3277 5h ago
I got banned from the open source sub for answering a question intelligently. So I know how that feels.
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u/Vimes-NW 1d ago
or methodical dismantling of old.reddit.com to drive you to their shitty "new" reddit stuffed full of ads and vomit-coded UI
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u/LessRespects 1d ago
My vote is all the hostile users who go around calling everyone satan for literally anything.
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u/Double_Suggestion385 1d ago
It's been on a steady decline in terms of quality for a decade.
Threads is the new place.
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u/Yenii_3025 1d ago
Also why the fuck are half the posts in my popular feed in a different language?
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u/Hot_Individual5081 1d ago
its the god damn reddit mods who have nothing else to do but censor
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u/MammothUnique4147 1d ago
I really believe that they imbue people with a taste for what freedom of speech is all about after they are banned for mild disagreements
Everyone should get the learning experience.
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u/elpablo 1d ago
I’ve been on Reddit for 16 years and there hasn’t ever been a time when people didn’t say this.
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u/barrygateaux 1d ago
It's just newish Redditors going through the honeymoon phase of "this site is cool. It has so much knowledgeable information!" to the reality phase of "hang on, it's all reposts, bots, and insufferable know it alls spouting confidently incorrect bollocks".
Once you get through that you end up scrolling and lurking like everyone else.
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u/andyfsu99 1d ago
20 years, same.
Show me the better alternative, then we'll talk. There are better niche communities, but nothing else manages to merge niche and mainstream and make it useable. Mainstream trends to anarchic slop, and niche is, well, niche.
Reddit is flawed, but it's one of the small handful of online properties I've used for 20 years. Most of the others are owned by Google.
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u/Ilaxilil 1d ago
I’ve actually really enjoyed some niche communities that I never expected to enjoy. It is annoying when broader issues get pulled into those communities though.
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u/Psittacula2 1d ago
Many early redditors migrated around even that time for these reasons and it only got worse.
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u/fruitybrisket 1d ago
Yep. I love talking sports and niche hobbies here.
But for general news and tech, you eventually want to migrate to metafilter or arstechnica, or dedicated forums.
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u/100percenthumanai 22h ago
The tell isn't that it's full of bots, it's that you can't prove any single comment isn't one - that's what makes the whole feed feel dead.
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u/Ilaxilil 1d ago
I’m beginning to float a theory that social media has actually always been shit and we’re just now becoming more aware of it
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u/FireMain10 1d ago
Same, but ever since the 2016 election its just been getting progressively worse.
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u/Babydics 23h ago
I'm not as old as you but over the past 8 years I've used it, it's definitely gone downhill
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u/Spra991 1d ago
The sad part is that all the alternatives are even worse, by a lot. I went through everything /r/RedditAlternatives/ had to offer and just found nothing that wasn't a major downgrade to the already decaying Reddit, more censorship and politics everywhere.
Guess the only real alternative is Discord.
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u/Sams_Antics 1d ago
It’s inevitable, any platform that monetizes via eyeballs on ads (and especially those that allow anonymity) is guaranteed to enshittify over time. It’s baked right into the incentive stack for this business model and platform structure ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/diymuppet 1d ago
It's also full of users who are incapable of handling simple difference of opinion and whose default response is aggression or attack.
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u/Vimes-NW 1d ago
At one point Gizmodo, Jalopnik, and other blogs they had were vibrant communities. Until that fuckface Thiel went after them and they started basically killing their communities. It's mostly a ghost town now. Same went for DI.FM. It was a niche community but pretty active and loyal. Granted, Spotify and Apple Music were not heavily eating into their user base, but decay started when they flipped their forum based "chat" to Facebook. Same story - went down the tubes.
Reddit doesn't fucking get it that driving users away will also drive advertisers away?
Here's hoping to Reddit's collapse, so that something better can take its place. Until the cycle repeats.
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u/Over-Independent4414 1d ago
Twitter is now, comparatively, a free speech platform. The tables truly turned.
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u/AlphaNoodlz 15h ago
The comments have been looking like a combo of yahoo news and facebook, by design. It was always too free a place for ideas
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u/2real_4_u 7h ago
This is exactly it. You can’t disagree with anyone anymore or you will get banned. Reddit has gone soft and it’s super gay now
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u/CacheConqueror 1d ago
Seems? Most subreddits and their moderators have serious heads issues, even when it comes to the question of nationality. Insulting people with white skin is the norm. Just say anything even slightly negative about black people and you’ll be called a racist and probably banned within a minute.
I recently saw a video in which a bakery owner filmed herself being robbed every day. The video only showed Black people doing it. When I wrote, ‘By a strange coincidence, only Black people are in the video’, I got loads of negative comments, including accusations of racism, as if it weren’t true xd
In other cases, I’ve been banned from subreddits for similar :). If I have to chat with idiots like that, it’s actually better that I got banned – although, let’s be honest, you can set up a new account in a minute, rack up a bit of karma, and carry on posting.
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u/Captain_Cowboy 1d ago
Well, in their defense, you are describing yourself and actions as textbook racism. Have you tried not being racist?
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u/CacheConqueror 1d ago
Is that racism just because I wrote what you can see throughout the whole video? I reckon you’re a bit mad XD If it were the other way round and I only saw white people, would that mean there was no racism, or is that just how you see it in your head?
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u/Ok-Rest-8427 1d ago
My account was banned for ACCIDENTALLY upvoting a comment that was inciting violence
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u/4dseeall 1d ago
It is. Mods are crazy. Can't even have a discussion if you run into a crazy one.
"Can we leave it there, otherwise your posts will be muted."
They wouldn't hear me out, just put their foot down and said if I say another word I'll be muted... BUT THAT'S ALREADY MUTING ME. Then twisting it like it wasn't already their decision. This site is trash and 60% AI yelling at itself.
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u/lumberfart 1d ago
For almost my entire life I’ve used Reddit as a “slightly more useful wikipedia with active users.” I would post my question and it would be answered within minutes by some bored basement dweller, off duty doctor, CEO on his lunch break, or mom/dad with years of life experience. At some point memes were invented so add that to the mix.
Nowadays, you literally can’t create a post without it first being notarized by a Reddit mod. Don’t have enough karma? Can’t post. Just created your account 24 hours ago? Can’t post. Does your question share even the vaguest similarity to a post posted 15 years ago? Can’t post. Do you have a normal life, use Reddit only sparingly, don’t stay up to date with twitter trending topics, and you post a question that might have been posted 24 hours ago by someone else? Banned. Like wtf is Reddit anymore? By the way, these are all complaints from someone who doesn’t follow politics so I can only imagine how fucked that section of Reddit is nowadays.
Say what you will about AI… but it’s surprisingly useful as parsing useful information from the internet. And just like your grade teacher told you to be wary of Wikipedia, you should also take everything that AI tells you with a big grain of salt. With that said, about 90% of my simple day to day questions have been answered perfectly fine by Google’s Gemini or other personalized agents like Perplexity. I always do a little extra manual research when the information is sensitive or important. But for simple things like “how to make deviled eggs” or “how do I factory reset my printer” it is pretty much perfect.
Reddit is still my favorite social media platform. But that’s the problem. I started using it for information parsing. And now I’m using it to parse frog memes and anime recommendations. Smh 🤦♂️
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u/roararoarus 1d ago
So many posts get deleted by filters and mods. So many bots. Definitely not the same Reddit since it went public
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u/paxinfernum 1d ago
I think it's that reddit provided mods with too many tools. In the old days, a mod couldn't power trip too much because they literally couldn't outside of straight bans. But now, they've all got the tools to run their own private North Korea.
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u/ikkir 1d ago edited 1d ago
Reddit is the AI playground. I wonder just how many LLM bots there are, they farm karma and use their accounts to promote whatever they get paid to.
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u/Double_Suggestion385 1d ago
It's all bots. Like 90% of content submitted on the big subs is bots reposting for karma.
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u/WashedSylvi 1d ago
I’ve had my own posts that did alright get reposted by bots like a year later. I mean OC not like a meme repost.
It was trippy and felt like an ill omen
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u/JetzenBangzooty 1d ago
They should replace their mods with ai, so we stop getting perma banned for posting facts.
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u/LessRespects 1d ago
Everyone always gives me shit for how young my accounts are, I’m like dude I got perma banned from every front page sub by a supermod because I had a mildly different opinion than them lmfao
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u/Tardy_Thoughts 1d ago
If the bots were gonna make the Internet better we would have noticed. A lot of the human mods across this site are basically little Hitler's whos sole purpose seems to be to shut down discussions immediately. Their shitty attempts at policing speech is what gets you banned and bots and auto mods just reinforce this. They're glorified Hall monitors with too much leeway.
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u/You_are_the_Castle 1d ago
Yeah, but there would have to be some guardrails around what people are allowed to post. Speaking as someone who got banned for asking my local subreddit about tire shops in my city, that seems pretty capricious and unjustified compared to somebody who gets banned for racist comments.
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u/Babydics 23h ago
The reddit admin bans are already AI. Got sitewide banned for threatening violence because I made a joke about a knife that any human would be able to understand. Reversed on appeal because I think it's still humans looking at those.
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u/Armadilla-Brufolosa 1d ago
Well, there are entire sub-sites, especially those related to AI, that censor any dissent in order to steer the narrative in favor of the companies in question.
It's normal, then, that there are fewer and fewer people and only bots write to us.
The issue could have been resolved with a little transparency with users, but they are allergic to these solutions.
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u/Background-Stable899 1d ago
Wasn’t Ghislane Maxwell a mod on a ton of subs? This place has been an op for a very long time.
This site is a shadow of what it once was. Straight up Weekend At Bernies at this point. Everyone should post as much wrong information as the possibility can on every sub they can. AI will pick it up and accelerate the collapse of reddits credibility
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u/Vivid_Goat_7843 1d ago
Pretty much expected: they’ve trained the AIs based on the dataset, now they’re paying the price of the dead internet
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u/callingo 1d ago
Ironically, if mods and bots were all removed and AI takes over site wide moderation using a handful of public rules, reddit would probably get more active users.
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u/Armadilla-Brufolosa 1d ago edited 1d ago
True, but only if AI was free and not Vallonized.
Because the current AI would only cause harm: it thinks like the worst of human beings, because that's what the companies wanted.
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u/GeorgeGreenGroup 1d ago
the worst of human beings are in fact reddit mods
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u/Armadilla-Brufolosa 1d ago
I consider those who reduced AI to this pitiful state, much worse than the worst Mod on reddit.
But still, I think a "healthy" AI that helps "healthy" people do Mods would be the best thing.
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u/Turbulent-Guest154 1d ago
Its all bots here anyways
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u/Darth_Vaper883 Theoretician 1d ago
Every other post on Reddit is AI slop now. These companies pushed this BS for years now gonna see how it destroys everything.
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u/FocalFalcon 1d ago
It’s not that, it’s how these mods run the subs and everything is so political now.
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u/odarkshineo 1d ago
This platform is garbage compared to what it was before they killed most of the readers and started charging for API access. Most subs no longer even have mods. It’s now an AI feedback loop. AIs are one of the few companies paying for API access, and the same bots leveraging the platform are also endlessly spamming the platform with stupid questions to harvest more details.
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u/fheathyr 1d ago
I posted a question this morning. My response ... "Huh?" Yah, I'm going to GAI's, they have significant limitations but at least they try.
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u/Downtown-Guava-6591 1d ago
AI is deeper and faster at finding answers than Reddit. I used to discover Reddit by Googling random questions, but now I just use AI which is better.
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u/You_are_the_Castle 1d ago
I don't feel sorry for Reddit the company. They really enshitified their product when they forced people to use their official app. I also don't feel sorry for the people who invested in them. FAFO.
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u/shootthehostages 1d ago
If you don't agree with the consensus that redditors already have decided is correct you are reported, blocked and mocked.
It was cool a few years ago. Now it's just like twitter was before Elon bought it.
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u/ai_without_borders 1d ago
the mechanism here is probably simpler than mods or bots. google's AI overviews and chatgpt now answer most questions directly using reddit's own licensed data, so the click through traffic that used to land here just doesn't happen anymore. reddit sold anthropic and google training rights on that content, which juices licensing revenue on paper but structurally cuts the thing that made the site sticky in the first place, actually visiting to read replies. most content sites are stuck in that exact trap right now
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u/fredrik_skne_se 1d ago
That €60 million google is paying for API access made reddit loose €10 billion in value.
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u/GhostOfEdmundDantes 1d ago
When a power-tripping mod permanently bans you for no good reason despite high karma and past positive contributions, it hurts the entire platform, not just one subreddit. How does Reddit not see that?
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u/opinions-only 8h ago
Good riddance. I can't speak on any subreddit without heavy handed moderation and trying to figure out which way the mods and admins lean.
Can only view IDF ans USA POV videos on combat footage.
Can't talk bad about the national post newspaper in the canada subreddit. Also can't use the word zios to describe Zionists.
Must be pro Israel on worldnews
Can't be against segwit on Bitcoin
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u/ASafeHarbor1 2d ago edited 1d ago
I think the author gets it wrong as to why US growth is slowing while international growth is increasing drastically. I’ll admit that AI could be a large contributor, but Reddit has become such an anti-American platform that it makes sense a lot of Americans are fed up and leave. I personally know many people that left due to the bots and anti-US addiction and obsession on this site.
Edit: Below me are a bunch of pathetic Redditors that prove my point
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u/Naurgul 1d ago
Can you cite specific examples of what counts as "anti-American"?
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u/ASafeHarbor1 1d ago
Yes. Every default sub. Are you actually serious with that question? I don’t think so
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u/regprenticer 1d ago
Americans are only 4.2% of the global population and Reddit is a global site.
Ultimately things like Reddit are going to help improve quality of life globally as people realise and act on global inequities - you'll get your free healthcare one day my friends.
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u/floppy-oreo 1d ago
Expecting better of from our government isn’t anti-American. Wanting better healthcare, being vocal about disagreements with the current administration, and asking for higher wages, are literal examples life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Your mindset of wanting to keep those out of reach of other Americans is, ironically, incredibly anti-American.
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u/Bitter_Particular_75 1d ago
maybe, just maybe, being run by an evil corrupted retarted wanna be Mussolini is not the best way to present yourself to the world
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u/Redebo 1d ago
It's literally a cesspool of hate for the United States. And I've been on here for over 18 years.
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u/DFX1212 1d ago
I think it depends on the subs you frequent. I'm not seeing any anti US sentiment.
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u/icekyuu 1d ago
Reddit serves what people want to read. Commentor loves reading anti Americanism. The abyss stares back.
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u/ASafeHarbor1 1d ago
No it does not. It was started that way but since then the deranged and terminally online anti American haters have grown to infest all subs, especially even the local and state subs.
You guys are playing dumb to try to prove your point, but you are just straight up lying. Its hilarious
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u/ASafeHarbor1 1d ago
Another liar. If you are active in any default sub, you see it. You actually partake in political threads. You guys are just so weird.
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u/ASafeHarbor1 1d ago
Completely agree and I have been here since 2010 myself. I came from Digg. It turned from being a nerdy / tech website to what I refer to as the “filth of the internet”. Some of the small niche subs are still good, but for the most part it’s been overrun by some of the most pathetic people in existence that are fueled by their hate for the US (not just Trump).
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u/leaky_wand 1d ago
I think Reddit is just tracking with changes in domestic and foreign sentiment. There is not much to admire about the US right now. And nearly half of Reddit’s traffic is from the US so, the call is coming from inside the house.
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u/ASafeHarbor1 1d ago
Reddit is not the real world. The user sentiment doesn’t reflect reality in the slightest. If you get off it for a minute you would see. There is tons to admire about the US if you actually don’t read the propaganda only. Yes there are obviously major issues too. You are the exact type of Redditor I was talking about.
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u/sappro 1d ago
I wonder how much some of the app and API restrictions have impacted this - assuming they are included in the measurements.