Spez isn’t tanking Reddit for leftist speech alone. That’s not the whole picture.
Reddit is A) Trying to go IPO and B) Investment chickens are coming home to roost. The main reason Spez is tanking is for monetary gain and a better-looking public offering. Yeah, discourse is there but also not stifled like on Twitter, I think it’s EXTREMELY reductionist to paint all of Spez’s actions as being against leftist speech when there’s a dozen other factors that have been documented
Honestly, it’s not really all that shocking. People LOVE social media, that’s just the way it is. Plus, having a social is practically required in this day and age for any business, big or small to advertise and get the word out. Sure, Facebook/Meta is shady and untrustworthy, but we are far beyond the point of trusting companies anymore. People are willing to be part of the social universe in any way in order to stay informed and relevant. I mean, how many terrible things has Facebook done with user data? Yet, the layman/woman will still use the platform since it’s just so popular. I don’t use Facebook at all, but if I want to sell something quickly, where am I going? Facebook Marketplace.
Finally, there’s Elon. People were happy with twitter and Elon just had to blow it up in order to feed his ego. That turned off advertisers and influencers (the people making the engaging content) and therefore, anybody following that content subsequently moved on to the next thing. It’s insane but in making such a mess of things, Elon pretty much convinced people that threads was the better alternative.
Social Media isn’t just another part of the internet anymore, it effectively is the internet. Even forum and link-aggregation sites are leaning more into the practices of social media since it is all-encompassing in the modern world. I don’t blame those 100 million people for switching to threads, what else was gonna happen?
The tech bubble is starting to show signs of bursting. SVB alongside other large investent firms going down has shown companies that just being on the internet is not a sign of making money. Essentially the internet bubble is popping…again, as interest rates skyrocket and realized gains become smaller, internet-based companies seem to be scrambling to outpace the likes of Machine Learning and the new technological curve coming. Reddit going IPO, the Twitter shenanigans, etc… Essentially they’ve all realized that their sites and business models are being made obsolete by the “new wave” of businesses/startups relying on newer technologies and novel revenue models.
Tldr; this is the cycle, new tech comes out, old tech dies. It happens all the time, just that this time it’s not happening in our physical world but rather the virtual.
Meta also does A LOT of data harvesting, which is what drives profits for them. Due to anonymity, Reddit could never really do the same. Meta, Instagram, and Whatsapp all serve as different routes of recurring revenue for Meta, they can park millions of users on each platform and sell the data collected to interested advertisers. Reddit could never really do the same, so they come up with the next best (worst) thing.
Amen dude, over $500 billion after inflation paid for nationwide fiber, and telecom companies just pocketed that shit. We should’ve been at 500mb down, 250 up since 2015.