You're not alone in observing this. Cory Doctorow wrote a great piece about this phenomenon: Tiktok's Enshittification. It seems to be the fate of any centralized social media platform.
Showerthoughts
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics
- NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
- Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
- Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct-----
Reddit has no intrinsic value. The value comes from the community and mod teams. It was only a matter of time. Reddit found the hill it was willing to die on.
See: MySpace, Friendster, Six Degrees
First off, lol if you think Reddit wasn't full of politics every bit as much if not more than Facebook.
Second, what's happening is the opposite. The older users, the ones that remember a pre-facebook internet, the ones that are not pre-programmed to accept whatever the app in the app store tell them, they are the ones leaving.
The young are actually increasing on Reddit because it's pandering to less tech literate, more TikTok-focused userbase now with the official app. The type of users that need algorithms to tell them what to do because they've long since failed to learn to actually use technology smartly.
The type of user that was shocked to learn there was such a thing a third party app.
Those are what reddit wants, and it's what they'll get.
I'm GenX and find myself slowing migrating away from the internet entirely as it relates to social interaction and entertainment.
I still need it for bill paying and whatnot, but I've grown exhausted from the ubiquitous hate and vitriol of users and the ever increasing greed and attempts at overall control of my existence from the platforms.
I'm starting to feel like some crazy anti government prepper, but towards the Internet and corporations rather than the government.
Wow, I had never made that connection!!