I miss Reddit's size

IntendantTradwife@kbin.social to Reddit Migration@kbin.social – 133 points –

I know Kbin will grow in time but I miss how huge Reddit was.

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Reddit feels like it grew exponentially the last few years. I noticed a huge increase in the number of accounts with auto-generated usernames and accounts referring to Reddit as an "app." To me it also seemed to become increasingly toxic with this new wave of users. Hoping for a big reset with one of these new offshoots.

Around 2019 is when I noticed that shift.

I had an account from 2010, and over the course of the 2016 US presidential election is when I started noticing the shift. Society seems to have shifted in general. MeToo and BLM coincided around that time, as well.

2013 for me. There definitely was a shift in volatility in 2016, but I felt there was a far more drastic shift in 2019.

There was absolutely a phase shift in the atmosphere of Reddit when it grew exponentially.

Used to be, people were willing to discuss topics in ways that had at least some nuance. But nowadays you get attacked for discussion that doesn't fit the narrow guidelines of "acceptable".

Still, the smaller communities of Reddit retain some of the open-minded discussion that's lost in big subs.

Hopefully here we can grow to a respectably sized community, while still allowing the freedom of dissenting opinion.

Without algorithms that target division to increase numbers, that might actually be possible here in a way that's non-existent on the corporate platforms. But it'll be a difficult achievement.

You also forget about those memes or pictures whose specific joke was understood only when you saw them through a phone. Like, we people on the computer do exist too.