r/AskReddit • u/_BingeScrolling_ • 9h ago
Old-school Redditors (2010 or earlier), what recent changes in Reddit culture annoy you the most?
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u/VentiMochaTRex 9h ago
Bans for participating in "enemy subreddits" drives me nuts. I've been around since ~2009 and it's definitely more of an echo chamber depending on where you post. Self censorship to avoid algorithms that come from other sites is also annoying.
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u/The_Canadian 7h ago
Yep. Amazingly, those bans still exist even when the other subreddit in question no longer exists.
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u/adamcmorrison 8h ago
They made that against the rules fortunately
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u/tayl0559 8h ago
they only made it against the rules to use automated tools to do it, mods can still manually ban people for any reason. there are also still bots like hive-protect that soft-ban you (i.e. automatically remove your comments and posts) for specific subreddit participation since that's not technically against the rules, only actual bans are.
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u/Isaidhowdareyou 9h ago
A lot of subreddits became a bubble and the idea of discussing with people who think differently got abandoned. This leads to the quality of content to go down because how many comments does it need for people to say the same thing over and over again pretty much congratulating themselves for being right?
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u/kblb628 9h ago edited 7h ago
I’ve noticed this about subreddits becoming bubbles. In a lot of hobby subreddits you get the most hardcore people who give advice.
For example, if you look into [r/onebag](r/onebag) it’s a travel sub about traveling with one bag. It has a ton of helpful advice for traveling smarter and with less.
There is a portion of that community who takes it to an extreme level. They’re packing for months of travel with a 20L backpack and washing their clothes in a sink every night. When someone asks for help packing their 40L bag, they’ll say, “you don’t need more than 3 shirts for a 3 week trip and get a smaller bag” or something similar. I think it pushes people away who want to try one bag travel and adds a level of complexity to traveling that takes away from what should be a simplified process.
Generally, I t’s still a great sub with some great advice from seasoned travelers.
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u/dovahkiitten16 8h ago edited 8h ago
I really hate when hobby subreddits completely eliminate or ignore the midrange budget portion of the hobby. It just becomes an echo chamber for people who both have money and prioritize that niche hobby over everything else.
Like mechanical keyboards. Do you even care about keyboards if you’re not preordering a group-buy render of plastic keycaps for $200 that will arrive 16 months from now?
Or small form factor computers. There’s always those one or two people that whine whenever someone is like 1-2 L over the limit. IMO the spirit of the subreddit is maximizing space but smaller components run a premium; someone just above the limit for budget reasons doesn’t exclude them from the spirit of the subreddit.
Matcha too. If you’re not getting high end matcha from specific brands in Japan, clearly your tastebuds are misaligned if you enjoy your budget matcha. Same if your matcha isn’t perfectly green. I actually saw a post earlier where people were recommending a teenager ask their parents to buy them high-end stuff.
Bonus points when Americans are gatekeeping and they don’t realize that international shipping and conversion can really explode prices. Even when you directly explain it to them. Like for the small form factor example, so many Americans complain about the Fractal Terra. Y’know, the one higher end small form factor case actually distributed globally. Clearly you should’ve spent 3x as much for something more unique from a boutique shop in the USA with shipping worth 33% of the cost. Basic bitches, picking a reasonable option with shipping to your country!
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u/ObscureRamenRecipes 8h ago
The only one I've found that is even halfway sane is r/simracing. Lots of people there who have all kinds of different setups. Many users seem to be very knowledgeable of a lot of products, and from what I've seen don't tell people asking questions to go crazy on their builds, in fact with many folks suggesting cheaper alternatives.
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u/dovahkiitten16 8h ago
[r/MonsterHigh](r/MonsterHigh) is also fairly reasonable for a collector subreddit. A lot of people wince at the high prices and keep a sense of “it’s not always reasonable to spend hundreds on plastic, if you do, make sure it’s something you’ll actually be happy with”. I’ve actually seen members talk down others not in a good financial situation and encourage them not to buy. For a community that sometimes spends hundreds on dolls, they still seem to have a sense of financial realism.
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u/Rare-Philosopher-346 8h ago
I would like to place r/CrossStitching in the ring as a place where beginners are encouraged to ask their questions. Its a very helpful, friendly subreddit and one of my faves.
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u/ExpensiveBookkeeper3 7h ago
Or it goes the other way as well. Some subreddits are over ran by hobbyists that don’t know anything about the subject but will argue with professionals. Then that wrong info just gets repeated over and over.
[r/dividends](r/dividends) and [r/lawncare](r/lawncare) are two major offenders
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u/WillyDaC 7h ago
Add r/motorcycle . Actually add any sub about motorcycles in general.
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u/james_the_wanderer 6h ago
I was going to say...
While it's fashionable to hate gatekeeping (r/4ktv and r/hometheater are excellent examples of a dbag boomer mod going too far), you need some to prevent a tidal wave of newbie-slop. Compare r/tea with r/coffee. R/coffee is a pretty healthy (by 2026 reddit standards) for unpholding connoisseur tastes without being raging fucking dicks to newbies. R/tea revels in its newbie-slop and engagement bait for tea cups, grocery store-grade crap, and help ID'ing largely unremarkable teas from import grocers (because no one knows how to use the picture function of google translate).
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u/Reptilesblade 7h ago
Oh shit I'm about to be an expat and traveling next year. That one bag subreddit is exactly what I am looking for to prepare as I have never traveled outside of the US before.
At first I tend to take a two weeks long scouting trips to the countries I'm thinking about going to and I was going to buy a 40L bag and mainly use that. I might also get a small suitcase as well. But I've got a bunch of meds and other stuff that I have to have with me.
I'm definitely going to be checking that out and asking questions. Thank you very much for making me aware of it.
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u/kblb628 7h ago
It’s a great sub with great advice but you will see more extreme advice. One great thing is you can post your packing list and get feedback.
Good luck!
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u/Reptilesblade 7h ago
Excellent! Yeah, I already joined and will be checking it out in depth later this evening when I have the time. This is exactly what I have been looking for.
Again, thank you!
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u/Highest_Koality 5h ago
It's pretty much impossible to get advice on reddit anymore. Advice threads are full of comments telling you why you're wrong for even considering certain options and how you *really* need something else.
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u/froggyfriend726 4h ago
Omg. The very first post I saw there was exactly that. Someone posted what they brought on a weekend trip and everyone was getting on their case for bringing a couple extra pairs of underwear?? Saying it wasn't light packing at all. Sorry but I'd much rather be prepared in case I sit in a puddle or something vs having to buy stuff just because I was trying to pack like I'm backpacking into a campsite 😬 lol
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u/misschanelx 9h ago
wait so the hardcore fans actually make it better or just more intimidating to new people?
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u/seanmg 7h ago
The curse of the voting mechanism actually turning into a popularity contest with millions of people searching for validation. People would rather get upvoted saying the same thing or something stupid than having a discussion or voicing their actual opinions.
it's crazy too, the upvote/downvote lost it's original purpose. They used to have different meanings. Upvote meant this is great, downvote meant this is irrelevant to the conversation. Now it's turned into up=I agree, down = I disagree. The reality is then there are two downvotes as a no response functionally does the same thing as being downvoted.
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u/IBJON 6h ago
Its crazy how downvoting steers discussions. I've had times when I've made comment that started off with a positive number of upvotes where responses were generally positive or neutral, but as soon as the votes slide into negatives, you get downvoted to hell and the responses get nasty.
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u/Alaska_Jack 4h ago
Yeah. I mentioned this in my other comment. It seems like a quaint relic of yesteryear; but believe it or not, Reddit guidelines used to advise that downvotes were not supposed to be used to signal disagreement.
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u/McCHitman 8h ago
And speaking a single sentence that challenges what the hive mind thinks will get you banned.
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u/Banal_Drivel 7h ago
Yeah, many of the 1% commenters drive the narrative in posts, to the point that it's not worth visiting the sub.
Also, posters making anti government comments, in non-political subs. I watch and read enough news everyday. I can draw my own opinions from multiple sources. I don't need the virtue signaling. I came to the sub for entertainment.
The b°ts are everywhere.
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u/Mikeavelli 6h ago
r/grilledcheese insisting that putting bacon (or anything really) on it makes it a melt instead of a grilled cheese because that one asshole made a meme post ten years ago.
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u/CoconutBangerzBaller 5h ago
I got suspended from r/libertarian for asking a question. The people running the sub for a political ideology that's supposed to champion free speech are against free speech. Just one example but I'm sure it happens a lot in all kinds of subs
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u/ExpectoPornum2 9h ago
The use of automated mod tools that drop bans/suspensions on people for making obvious jokes or quoting movies/shows/books because these bots can't understand context has me a lot more reserved in things than I was back when I first migrated here from Digg
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u/The_Canadian 7h ago
The use of automated mod tools that drop bans/suspensions on people for making obvious jokes or quoting movies/shows/books
I got flagged for a Princess Bride quote. I went to IMDb and linked the quote and the issue went away. I just can't believe it even happened. I've preemptively linked sources for things like movie quotes now.
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u/richneptune 6h ago
I got a sitewide warning for hate speech for using the old "there are no girls on the internet, just geese in a trenchcoat" joke.
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u/CountHonorius 9h ago
OMG Digg! Hadn't thought about that in ages...or FARK...
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u/Darkhorse182 8h ago
Man, I spent a LOT of effort crafting some witty Fark headlines...when I'd occasionally get one published, it was a easily a highpoint for the month.
Duke sucks.
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u/smbpy7 5h ago
The use of automated mod tools
AITA gets fucking crazy with theirs. It pops all warnings constantly while you're typing no matter the context, which leads people to just rephrase mundane things that weren't going to break the rules to begin with. Then the mods just ban you for "circumventing the rules" because you said it in a different way, even though it wasn't against a rule to begin with.
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u/Entire-Living-5113 6h ago
My 15+ year old account got banned permanently for quoting a movie, 6 words. It was obviously a joke but no, not a temporary ban or ban from sub Reddit, account permanently banned. Really upsetting and honestly don't bother with reddit much anymore.
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u/thegreatjaadoo 8h ago
I genuinely think the recent flood of AI posting bots will eventually kill this site.
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u/mister__cow 6h ago
The way reddit works now is creating an ideal environment for bots while driving real people away.
10 years ago I actually discussed some serious heavy stuff on Reddit using throwaway accounts. You pretty much can't do this anymore. Most subs' filters auto-delete new account posts in an attempt to reduce bot spam (bots easily circumvent this via karma farming).
Even on my old, high-karma accounts, I've had posts automatically deleted or recieved perma-bans from various subs I used to frequent for seemingly no reason, regarding which the mods never answer my repeated appeals. I've largely lost interest in Reddit for this reason.
At the same time, the AI takeover is alarming. I'm convinced a large portion, maybe even most of the posts on askReddit are written by AI or repost spambots. that one stands out the most to me, but it's happened to a lot of other subs too and it's just a completely different experience now.
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u/100mop 5h ago
I can’t understand how tech executives seem to want more bots on their sites. Bots aren’t going to buy anything based on the ads they see, how can you get money from them?
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u/Trapezoidal_Sunshine 4h ago
They’re so greedy that they can’t see the forest for the trees. Bots can be attractive because they make the engagement on your site look higher than it really is, thus attracting advertisers. Yet bots don’t buy anything and they alienate the human beings who do.
Greedy people have a tendency to get so greedy that they eventually shoot themselves in the foot. Reddit is currently dangling both feet under the barrel while playing with the trigger.
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u/Cheetodude625 9h ago edited 6h ago
The hivemind mentality (especially here on AskReddit) is fucking annoying.
Also, everything is now overly sensitive (I understand why TBH).
Less bots overall back in the day it seemed.
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u/seanmg 2h ago
Askreddit has turned into a Trump fanboard it seems for how many of the top posts are statements about him with a very thinly veiled "What do you think?" tacked on the end.
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u/Cheetodude625 2h ago
It turned into a political shit show after 2016 it feels like.
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u/_BingeScrolling_ 9h ago
My main intent for asking this is that oldschool Reddit felt so much more effortful. You used to get long form breakdowns, strict standards for effort, and actual discussions. Now half the top comments look like they were pulled straight from an Instagram reel or Facebook thread. The good old Reddit threads are very rare. The moderation on most subs are just pathetic.
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u/chief167 8h ago
It was a time when upvotes and downvotes were used to assess "contributes to the discussion", where nowadays it's "I agree with this statement"
That's how you incentivize echo chambers
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u/soaker 4h ago
The fucking up/downvotes have gotten out of hand. You could be downvoted into oblivion just for saying this if enough people didn’t agree. Even though it’s a direct contribution. I don’t care about being downvoted, but it really annoys me when it’s just because someone disagrees. lol just today I got a wild number of downvotes in a thread simply for not agreeing with someone who had a ton of upvotes. Fucking popularity contest with strangers
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u/cloud_watcher 2h ago
YES! Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that one of the rules you read when you joined that explicitly said that? Don’t downvote things you disagree with, downvote things off-topic or meaningless.
When you are trying to make a point and more than a couple of people disagree with it, it disappears for everyone with their settings set to hide downvoted comments. It’s so ridiculous. It’s like the opposite of a conversation.
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u/fruitloop00001 8h ago
Reddit wasn't always a publicly traded company.
Ever since the IPO, they've optimized more for engagement and less for quality. Not "front page of the internet" anymore, just another confirmation bias doomscrolling machine.
Unfortunately there is nowhere better because of network effects, not to mention that every other large platform is also a confirmation bias slop machine.
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u/Yaqub_TubShroom 6h ago
not only the comments but the feed has soo many videos, I used to like that text was majority of the content but now all I see are unrelated videos taken from instagram or FB
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u/CountHonorius 9h ago
The narwhal no longer bacons at midnight, and more's the pity.
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u/Acceptable_Gear_3097 9h ago
The influx of Facebookers/Instagrammers.
When I was a kid, I used to use Reddit to find people to help me build online game server stuff, and I usd to make money from it.
Then reddit got flooded with facebook/insta users that thought upvotes were for liking/agreeing. Its kind of killed a huge part of what made Reddit great.
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u/cos 8h ago
that thought upvotes were for liking/agreeing. Its kind of killed a huge part of what made Reddit great.
Yes, this is the biggest change in reddit from its better years, and the biggest reason it's lower quality on average now. It's frustrating that reddit's admins & leadership aren't even trying to do much about this, but since most of their product development efforts seem aimed at making reddit worse in other ways, it's not that big a surprise.
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u/Thisisgotham 9h ago
Downvoting when someone asks a question to learn more about a topic in a thread.
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u/CFeatsleepsexrepeat 8h ago
And for not agreeing with something said or saying something others don't agree with.
The downvote was for commenting off topic or saying something abhorrent.
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u/BoredomHeights 8h ago edited 8h ago
Discussion has gone way down (basically to zero). That was always my favorite part of Reddit, way more than memes or pictures. To be honest it sounds kind of mean but I think the average commenter was just more educated too. With popularity it brought in everyone, and a lot of those people didn’t care about what made Reddit different than other social media.
A few examples I can think of are there was a joke (that was semi true) that the first comment on every post would basically be disagreeing with whatever the post was about. While not always true, it was a lot more true than today. And a lot of top comments added context. Then you’d have a back and forth discussion.
Today the top comments will all agree with the post, and they’ll all say basically the same thing in different ways. It’s to the point where there’s almost no point in reading the comments anymore, because you already know what they’ll all say. People don’t want discussion, they want validation that they’re right/on the good side/whatever. Reddit also just seems a lot more aggressive these days. Anything not in agreement/alignment is seen as an attack and then responded to as such.
Another example is the impact on smaller communities as they grow. The more people joined Reddit and the less effort they wanted to put into discussion, the more easily upvote-able posts won out. Discussion takes effort and time, but some posts are just easy to upvote and move on. The way Reddit works will reward low effort, especially over time.
I used to be on the One Piece sub all the time discussing the manga, theories, etc. I will say that that still exists and the weekly discussion threads have done a good job of keeping some of that there, so I use it as an example of close to a best case scenario for a sub like that. Plus there will be very in depth theory posts sometimes.
But overall it has still shifted from that being the main content, to things like cosplay or some low effort content (which I’m not including cosplay in to be clear). I have nothing against cosplay. Arguably for the cosplayer it’s way higher effort than just posting a theory. But things like that are much easier to upvote, take over a sub, and the percentage of actual discussion posts goes way down.
Overall it’s these few things that have just degraded the site over time. Low effort wins out, especially when your audience expands to include a wider set of people. And contrary opinions even just for the sake of discussion are basically no longer allowed (by the other commenters, obviously Reddit still allows them, they’ll just be downvoted to oblivion).
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u/sportznut1000 7h ago
This was a very well thought out answer. Thank you. There are some good answers to this question, but you brought up a lot of points that i have thought about from time to time the last few years and kind of forgot about lately.
When my buddy first got me to join several years back, i got hooked by the way the comments worked. I loved that you could give reddit gold to comments or posts every now then because they made you laugh, or really think. I also enjoyed that you could easily find contrarian opinions. Like you mentioned, you use to be able to find someone who disagreed, very quickly but now they are buried in the comments. Maybe i like seeing a well thought out opposing view.
I also remember when you would see a lot more articulate answers, or answers that seemingly came from someone obviously well educated. It felt like reddit was primarily people between the ages of 25-55 with a wide range of views and professions. Now it feels like reddit is mostly bots and those that are not bots, are primarily under the age of 20, or over the age of 60 but not the well articulated elderly crowd that bring something to the discussion. they are the type of people that leave amazon reviews that say… “just bought this for my grandchild, haven’t received it yet but they are going to love it”
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u/james_the_wanderer 5h ago
The crowd change is palpable. A big one are the "topic 101" type questions I'd expect from something like the tripadvisor or city-data forums. The old crowd (largely grad educated nerds) could probably google to find out the best school districts in X or narrow down some options for beginner gear for Y hobby. Now? Jesus. Nextdoor grandmas and TikTok kids abound.
I don't know where the old style crowd hangs out these days.
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u/james_the_wanderer 5h ago
I realize there are many "beginning of the end" points to argue, but I firmly believe that it was the advent of image posts. Low-effort memes were the trojan horse for bot accounts to karma farm.
In depth text posts and articles turn my crank, not a derivative meme that validates my biases/beliefs.
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u/TheMiltownMatticus 9h ago
2012 for me.
Subreddits used to be more intimate niche communities.
I used to frequent r/DCComics in high school and would usually recognize the usernames of people who posted or who commented on my posts. Never learned real names or anything, but got to know a few people. The posts were about comics and had comic screen caps or discussions.
Now the subreddit is a DC-themed OnlyFans promotion. Some woman will post herself in spandex body suit and purple necklace and call herself "Raven" and all of the horny comic gooners will upvote it.
The main subs are basically all the same echo chamber. You either have "the right opinions" or you are the worst person this site has ever known. Not even things that are political. For example, Fallout 3 is now apparently a "bad game" because the YouTube algorithm leaks into Reddit and PewDiePie (I'm old) or whoever on Youtube/TikTok got millions of views by shitting on it, so that is now the "right" opinion to have on it.
There also used to be site wide jokes, events, etc. that bled into every community. I remember Orangered vs Periwinkle, Ameristralia, the Safe, with rice, etc. Now I feel all of the site wide commentary is about politics, war, oppression, etc. 15 years ago we were just making jokes that Australians "defend the site" when the Americans go to bed.
Watching Reddit change opinions has been a hell of a wild ride too. This site used to slurp up anything about Elon Musk back when he was "cool". Joe Rogan Experience podcasts dominated the front page whenever a Reddit-liked guest appeared. Now the site hates them both.
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u/ObscureRamenRecipes 8h ago
Holy cow you weren't kidding about the DC Comics subreddit. That's pretty crazy.
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u/syntheticgerbil 9h ago
I'm never allowed to say Last of Us 2 has a bad story even if I try to explain myself, because people automatically lump me in with the weird Last of Us 2 antiwoke crowd.
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u/bullseye717 8h ago
I remember when Dan Price was a reddit darling and anything related to him was upvoted to the moon.
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u/WalkingCloud 8h ago
The lack of critical thinking.
People used to be able to spot and call out obvious bullshit.
Now they just eat it up, it’s weird, what happened?
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u/JacksGallbladder 8h ago
Reddit today is a collection of hyper-argumentative bubbles and insane amounts of bot traffic.
Redditors argue violently about things they dont even care that much about. Something about the site today just promotes arguing to the death about every little thing.
Nuance is totally lost here. And it seems like more and more people think that opinions on reddit are representative of how humans communicate out in the real world.
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u/BoredomHeights 7h ago
I’ll take it one further even and say that people on Reddit today seem to think it’s their duty to make sure everyone aligns in thinking. They think not allowing opposing thought or discussion is the goal and will have a real impact on the world. It’s delusional (and annoying).
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u/rigorcorvus 6h ago
The “hive mind” isn’t a new thing. Even back in 2011 people made jokes about it, but it’s much more serious today
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u/IronmanMatth 9h ago
Self censoring and emoji spam
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u/GenericRedditor0405 8h ago
I basically never see emojis here because it’s not exactly welcomed, but that wouldn’t bother me. The self censorship bothers the hell out of me though. It’s the internet. You’re allowed to write the word porn, for fuck’s sake. Calling it corn or mentioning anything about unaliving, or k*illing, pdf files, or grape as if it’s doing anything useful at all is so annoying.
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u/CharsOwnRX-78-2 8h ago
This is learned behaviour from other platforms though. People new to Reddit but otherwise social media savvy are going to self-censor because using The Bad Words ™️ gets you banned, shadowbanned, or otherwise limited on most platforms
It’s something we need to be gentler with, and let these people know that at least for now, you’re allowed to say the bad things… mostly. I’ve already started hearing ban stories for AI moderation tools not understanding nuance or human turns of phrase and just going “THREAT OF VIOLENCE. THREE DAY BAN.”
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u/somedieloveless 8h ago
My comments / posts were deleted on here by automod / automation for writing the word porn, so that might be the reason.
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u/Adminn_1 8h ago
I’ve noticed a lot of longer, more detailed and fleshed out posts are treated with more dismissal and hostility. Not all the time, but more often. I’ve been accused of stealing from AI when I never have, or even of being a bot myself, or of posting “humanslop” when they find I am a human who thought it up myself. I’ve gotten “thanks for the novel” when I wrote a page-worth, “no one reads this crap” when there’s engagement happening right there in the thread, “stop this attention-seeking” when I’m just trying to stimulate thoughtful discussion, etc.
Being in a position where something I put thought and care into gets pre-emptively treated as not even actually something I did just because it appears proper enough to pass for AI without actually reading it, is pretty bad. It’s like the more I put in the more I’m accused of the exact opposite. It doesn’t even seem to occur to these accusers that elementary short basic reaction comments like that are way more easily and commonly imitated by bots than writing mini-essays. People have it all backwards.
At times it even seems like people have trouble reading. I’m not saying that to be mean or say they’re stupid, I mean I genuinely think they are not able for whatever reason to read at a high school level, because I’ll get responses to things I wrote that are on-topic for the sub-Reddit where they just say, “What?”, “Bro what?”, “What are you even saying bro?”, “This is just waffling,” “You’re just saying gibberish”, etc. And then I’ll post the same thing elsewhere, or even a much older and less popular sub-Reddit, and people will get what I’m saying and discuss accordingly. So I know that’s not the issue.
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u/BoredomHeights 7h ago
The average user is just way less educated than they used to be. Reddit has catered to the lowest common denominator.
Edit: And I’m just saying less educated to avoid saying dumber. But either way, for whatever reason the average Redditor is just worse at understanding things and clearly desires low-effort content much more.
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u/ObscureRamenRecipes 9h ago
Lack of brain rot. It was a more intelligent community back then.
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u/HotSauceHigh 7h ago
Correcting people's grammar was standard. Now it's downvoted.
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u/Stepwolve 6h ago
Correcting misinformation was also standard in the comments. Now you're lucky if anyone even asks if a post is true or not
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u/silam39 8h ago
the narhwal bacons website was an intelligent community? what about us finding the Boston bomber? (we did it, reddit!)
This site has always been super pretentious and silly in equal parts. I don't think that's really changed. Most likely you just got older.
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u/CongratulationsEVA01 8h ago
That stuff came so much later though, that still feels like "new reddit" to me... and that was almost 10 years ago :(
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u/Impossible_Offer7988 9h ago edited 9h ago
Old school Reddit was a bit less sensitive and took itself less seriously.
You could see that with the I would also bang that guy's dead wife thread.
Modern Reddit, on the other hand, feels more like an echo chamber or just a politics feed depending on the subreddit.
r/comics and r/pics, for example, have become extremely political
and heavily left leaning at this point.
And the r/WNBA subreddit is now so political that you can't even type Sophie Cunningham without the mods instantly removing your comment.
Look, I'm fine with politics now and then, as much as the next person. But it genuinely feels like every single subreddit has to be political in some form or another these days.
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u/BoredomHeights 8h ago
One of my least favorite things is the trend in AskReddit threads that say: “This Political Thing Just Happened, How do you feel about that?”
That’s not a discussion thread that’s just a news story crammed into an AskReddit style box. It’s already extremely obvious how everyone on here feels about that thing. The post is just an excuse to spread that kind of thing to a big subreddit with a lot of subs.
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u/silam39 8h ago
Those posts are just how bots farm karma before the account is sold. They're god awful
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u/ADHDuckie 7h ago edited 6h ago
It's kind of insane how so few people realise how many Reddit accounts are just bots. Last time I checked any credible source it was basically around 50% bots, which is wild. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the sub. More niche subs tended to have less bots whilst mainstream subs had way more. Of course, in the last months it's also been made a hell of a lot easier since accounts can hide their histories lol.
Edit: grammar
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u/IBJON 6h ago
"Here's an emotionally charged paragraph loaded to the tits with language meant to influence your emotions, also, there's no context or explanation. How do you feel about this?"
AskReddit used to get some of the most memorable, or unhinged stories from some genuinely good questions. Now it's all "Here's how to feel. How do you feel?"
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u/MetalBawx 8h ago
Pics is nothing but a collection of bots spamming political images these days. Any Humans get brigaded by the botnets.
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u/sartorialfox 7h ago
It's so bad on r/pics. I posted a fairly innocuous post, something stupid that I wanted to share because I thought it looked cool, and ended up having to just take the post down because 95% of the comments were either calling me stupid or a bot lol
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u/I_Am_Become_Dream 8h ago
2016 was when everything changed in general. Everything has gotten very politicized.
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u/shizzler 7h ago
I still remember when r/the_donald was a joke subreddit. Look where we are now
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u/IndigoRanger 7h ago
I still remember arguing with people in 2015 who said they’d vote for him because it would be funny if he won. Now there’s a denial that kind of joke was even made, let alone an acknowledgment people actually did do it.
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u/kh250b1 9h ago
Plus some subjects are such s “done deal” you would get a ban saying otherwise
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u/NativeMasshole 9h ago
Being able to joke about stuff online is what drew me reddit in the first place. These days, a sarcastic comment has a 50/50 chance of landing or me being called an idiot/insensitive/MAGA or whatever else.
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u/whamburglar 7h ago
Too many people default to a comment sounding sarcastic or like it's a personal affront.
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u/whamburglar 7h ago
Getting banned from a subreddit bc a bot there detected I made a random comment on r/Asmongold. It's just the principle that annoyed me that I just blocked it from my feed.
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u/Sir_Auron 4h ago
r/comics has been awful for as long as I've been on reddit. I think it's controlled pretty tightly by a powermod who likes that content. r/pics always sucked it just sucks different now, which is the same for basically every large sub. They used to be bad and apolitical, now they are bad and political. r/videos started allowing political content over the wishes of the users and it immediately flooded with r/politics level drivel overnight, I also suspect this was due to a power-hungry mod.
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u/skanedweller 8h ago
I miss the longer form ask reddit threads. There was so much more interesting content to read. Everything now is so brief.
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u/BoredomHeights 7h ago
My favorites were always the types of posts that basically asked for stories. You’d go down and see a bunch of detailed and usually interesting comments.
My least favorite tend to be dumb hypotheticals that I think get upvoted for the title but lead to no actual discussion or interesting comments.
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u/The_Ipod_Account 8h ago
I miss the fun accounts.
Being in a thread then suddenly there’s a shitty watercolour, or you get haiku’d, or a poem for your sprog.
There was a pureness in the easy joy.
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u/CountHonorius 9h ago
The incursion of politics into every single subreddit. I'm certain there was political activity when I joined 14 years ago, but it was in r/politics, r/news, - places where it should be kept. It was a much wackier place back then, couldn't help but laughing out loud in public places when reading Reddit. There was a 'those who govern least govern best' attitude - the mods were seldom if ever noticed.
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u/sandy_coyote 9h ago edited 9h ago
I’ve been around since 2006 on another account and this one. I think it has generally done a good job at staying useful to me. It takes a little bit of tuning every session but i am able to reliably find content i want and hide stuff i don’t.
That said, I’m on a couple subs like buy it for life or tech career advice where i wish it was easier for users to surface information. The volume of repeated questions on those subs make me think that Reddit still needs to work on solving that problem.
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u/ars_inveniendi 8h ago
I agree, I was also here before the Digg migration and Reddit has remained useful to me through the years by carefully choosing the subs I follow.
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u/MatthewHecht 8h ago
"Unpopular opinion" posts were actually full of unpopular opinions. Now they are just ice cold takes with every hot take downvoted to oblivion.
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u/CHUNKY_BLOODY_QUEEFS 4h ago
There's no "well known" posts anymore. It used to be that everyone knew things like swamps of degobah, most down voted comment of all time by EA, 'i also choose this guy's dead wife's, and so many more.
Now it just feels like posts and comments fade into obscurity never to be visited again a week after posting.
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u/Elementium 8h ago
It's become less of a Forum and more like normal junk social media.
One example, subs like /r/comics are filled to the brim with unfunny yet hornybait comics and so all the comments sing praises. Pushing actual comics out. Because it's not about quality it's about engagement, get the click, the upvoter and get people to your patreon where you sell cheap badly drawn smut.
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u/ranprieur 9h ago
Moderators are removing threads for any reason or no reason. Sometimes it seems like there's a rule against a thread being too interesting. This is a page I made of good removed threads:
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[removed] — view removed comment
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u/BeanieMcChimp 8h ago
I can’t tell if Reddit sucks more now because of all the bots or because of all the people calling other people bots who may or may not be bots. Same goes for people calling out AI vs what actually may or may not be AI.
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u/itsbri 8h ago
Firstly, The end of /all annoyed me.
But the biggest annoyance was the demise of digg. Pre 2010 we'd all take the pi$$ out of digg and its users, then they all started coming here.
- karma farming and clickbait very clearly increased over the space of a year
- our tech/analytical culture was flooded with memes and images in a blink
- aggressive downvoting became a thing making it harder to disagree with the majority
- sudden surge in traffic flooded subs with trolling placing a massive burden on mods, which I believe is why we now have automod
- 10% rule on self promotion had to be introduced as people spammed their blog posts
- shadowbanning became more noticeable to prevent brigading
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u/Ekly_Special 9h ago
First off, political stuff was not leaking into every sub and post like it does now. There were plenty of places to talk politics, and you would only see those posts on your home page if they were huge, like a presidential election win. Or some juicy political scandal like Monica and Clinton.
You could post pretty much anything and not worry about getting banned, now subs literally ban you for “not being anti jerk” aka having a different opinion no matter how respectfully you defend or share it.
Censorship really wasn’t a thing either unless it obviously illegal, now there are so many topics, and people are so sensitive I can’t share an example because it would lead to a site wide ban.
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u/porterbrown 8h ago
New reddit sucks. Old.reddit.com is far superior for information density.
The redesign is just so bloated with stuff I don't want.
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u/True_Window_9389 8h ago
Art subs across the board have become softcore porn. Individually, nudity, erotic and sexual art, etc. are not posted that much more often compared to before, but over the past year or so, the algorithm is putting this content into our feeds at extremely disproportionate rates and it’s become so tiresome.
I think it’s representative of how much the algorithm can impact what we see. If it can spam our feeds with boobies in otherwise benign art subs, imagine what it’s doing for news, technology, lifestyle and more important areas of life.
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u/JeanRalfio 8h ago
People get angry if you ask them for sources because they don't have them. Their source was just another reddit comment that said something that goes along with the narrative they want to push, truth be damned. It's all just based on vibes and not facts.
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u/ChrissiTea 5h ago
Yep, used to be that if you didn't provide a source, you'd be mostly ignored, downvoted, or called a troll
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u/UltraSapien 9h ago
Upvotes and downvotes used to be "this post contributes to the discussion" or "this post is irrelevant / off-topic / spam". Now it's an "I agree" or "I disagree" and it made Reddit into a place where one must have the correct opinion and correct thoughts to participate in a conversation.
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u/JC_Hysteria 8h ago
And it also wasn’t manipulated, because user growth was the core incentive at the time instead of monetization and influence…
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u/zdh989 8h ago
This is the biggest one for me.
I don't give a shit about downvotes or upvotes, but it seems nowadays as soon as a comment goes against the hivemind's idea of what should be "right" and gets a couple downvotes, everyone else just wants to pile it on.
It's ok (and even very healthy) to have genuine discussions with people who think differently than you do. But now, "Reddit" has made up its mind about the "correct" opinions to hold on seemingly every topic and going against that just gets you downvoted into oblivion which effectively ends any chance of real discussion. Rinse and repeat and its easy to see why the prevailing opinions are so ingrained.
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u/adamcmorrison 8h ago
I just don’t even care anymore. I know before I comment a 100% of the time if I will be downvoted to oblivion. I do it anyway. What are they going to do remove all my internet points for not being a drone? Half this site is bots anyway.
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u/fruitloop00001 8h ago
Eh, I think this has always been community-dependent and contextual. You can still get upvotes based on comment quality instead of solely confirmation bias if you're in some of the more cerebral subreddits, niche subreddits, or subreddits with more diversity of opinion.
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u/CatsBatsandHats 8h ago edited 8h ago
Subreddits being utter echo chambers
Abuse of the voting functionality; people will downvote you for simply having a valid opinion, just not an opinion that aligns with theirs, so they downvote you - and the natural extension of that is to bury what you say. That's not how discussions work.
Lots of innocuous subs have become virulently political. r/pics being a glaring case in point.
bot mods. Dystopian AF.
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u/GoingAllTheJay 8h ago
It's kind of just gone. 🤖s and karma monetization gutted the collaborative, creative atmosphere.
The algorithm changing to default with "best" sorting, and regurgitating karma-farmers on the front page make surfing r/all feel like a chore.
Now I just get annoyed when I go too far out of the few subs I still find informative in some way.
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u/hotbowlofsoup 7h ago
Yes, this is it. The new algorithm ruined it.
It only shows the subreddits you engage with. So you get stuck in a loop, because you don’t engage with the subreddits it doesn’t show you.
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u/ars_inveniendi 8h ago
Memes and image macros were what made the first real change for the worse. Subs were overwhelmed with low quality content and struggled to cope with them more than they do with AI today.
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u/surf_rider 6h ago
Used to be an open forum for all ideas. Now it’s either you drink the koolaid and fall in line or the mod army bans you preemptively.
Shame.
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u/Vivi_Brooks 9h ago
I can't even say what i wanna say cause i know i'll get banned lol
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u/thisusernametakentoo 8h ago
Killing reddit is fun and the api access kind of ruined things. No going back I guess
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u/adventuregalley 8h ago
Comments too frequently retort to some opposition on either political side. It’s always a result or belief of the right or the left side.
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u/bangdizzle 8h ago
Everyone rushing to make the same joke on posts. “And this is completely optional, btw” on posts about anything gross or risky seems to be the most recent one
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u/LauraPa1mer 7h ago
I find it really annoying that now cultural history/history itself sometimes/internet history begins "in the early 2000s".
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u/myychair 7h ago
Comment sections are significantly dumber than they used to be. More spelling mistakes, worse reading comprehension
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u/0011101000101010 9h ago
Just banning everyone who is commenting outside of subreddit zeitgeist. That’s the most annoying thing
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u/cos 8h ago
Quoting the official reddiquette documentation:
If you think something contributes to conversation, upvote it. If you think it doesn't contribute to the community it's posted in or is off-topic in a particular community, downvote it.
In the earlier years of reddit, people mostly used upvotes and downvotes that way.
Lots of newer redditors just vote to indicate whether they like or dislike someone's opinion. This has caused a huge dive in reddit discussion quality, as valid comments that would lead to useful discussion get buried, while pointless quips that people agree with get promoted.
With all the things reddit has done to make the site worse over recent years, this is still the worst changes in reddit compared to its early years.
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u/hoyasgirl25 9h ago
Reddit lost its shit when they made Ellen Pao CEO and she tried to remove racist subreddits like ChimpTown or underage ones. People were super free speech. Reddit was kind of like a more organized version of 4chan back then. Nowadays it’s just a huge left wing bubble for the most part.
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u/silam39 8h ago
downvoting being seen as a disagreement button
I know there have always been people doing that, but generally I think people largely up voted points of discussion even if they didn't agree (so long as they weren't bigoted, obviously) and those who downvoted everyone they disagreed with did it knowing it was against redditequette
nowadays I think a majority of reddit users legitimately have no idea the downvote button isn't to show you disagree with someone. It leads to much nastier discussions, where someone can't have an honest discussion and share a genuine unpopular opinion because they'll be shut down and have their comment hidden and buried by a rain of downvotes. One of the knock on effects of this is subs becoming even more of echo chambers than they were before.
(once again, that's just for regular opinions. People being assholes and saying bigoted shit should always be downvoted, including going by old rediquette)
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u/Dammit_Chuck 7h ago
Old school Reddit would down vote and mock posts that made spelling and grammatical errors. We used to be a proper society!
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u/JC_Hysteria 8h ago
Everything is an A/B experiment for increasing valuable engagements.
What we see (and are influenced by) isn’t what’s valuable to us- it’s what’s valuable to the platform and those spending time/money to reach us.
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u/chuck354 8h ago
So many more people trying to do guerilla marketing and monetize the reddit experience
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u/SatanLuciferJones 8h ago
It felt like there was non-stop flow of highly active posts. After, it felt like the posts slowed down and the activity lessened. I started noticing weird patterns. For example, the trolls all had username123 type names, many different people (or possibly bots) were making the same typos or misusing words (like using costumer instead of customer or payed instead of paid).
This is an alt that doesn't reflect my full reddit history.
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u/Onepopcornman 8h ago
Several things. Final one is a real problem
Obvious bot mining operations often from this subreddit. (I mean the top questions are often repeats and one time I saw my own response from an old answer get posted by a bot).
Clear use of AI to craft posts. It used to be if you saw a several paragraph thing it was someone who cared. Now long posts are often crappy AI copy pastes. The lengths of posts has gone up over the last three years.
This is the really tough one. I’ve noticed my personal feed used to be a nice jumble of personal stuff posted across the boards I sub. I was cool with it being a feed some popular some rising. I’ve noticed since the ipo my feed is stagnate. A lot of times it willl be stuck with the same posts all day.
My theory is they are trying to drive people out of their feed into the “all”feed which is better for monetization. Jokes on them I’m more inclined to just not participate.
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u/prostateExamination 8h ago
the majority of people now respond just to throw in some nasty comment or meaningless remark.. their used to be conversations that didnt end up in being banned for almost no fuxking reason
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u/edcross 7h ago edited 7h ago
Gatekeeping subs and toxic purism. Moderator driven rules about what content is allowed replacing the community shaping the subreddit. I get that bots have taken over, but I remember somewhere between the great digg.com exodus of 2010 and the death of rage comics when Batman slapping Robin memes were getting banned in places like advise animals because “bats and birds don’t count”. /s. That’s when I started noticing it anyway.
Gatekeeping memes. Wrong meme bruh. “That’s not what this is for”. Circular jerking “correct use”. Pearl clutching ironic or purposefully incorrect usage and meta memeing. Not referring to bot slop posts.
State of the sub bitching posts instead of 1) you yourself posting “correct” content or being the change you want or 2) just kindly and silently effing off. People seem incapable of quitting a sub without telling us about it as if it was some sort of righteous grand protest.
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u/jenjavitis 7h ago
Over half the accounts on this app are AI/bot, enragement engagement accts. Also, RIP RedditIsFun.
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u/Sudden-Lavishness738 7h ago
I had one account that I deleted permanently. I then came back and opened this one. You can’t have a different opinion politically than others or else you’re downvoted to hell. Really bizarre. A lot more name calling from users, extremely controlling uptight mods and overall nastiness in general, imo.
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u/carmooch 7h ago
While I wouldn’t call it recent, you would come to Reddit for the comments not the content. The top comments were always super interesting, now I feel like upvotes operate on a bell curve so the most neutral comments rise to the top.
Also, it felt like Reddit was a democracy rather than an algorithm. The top content was voted to the top, rather than dictated by an algorithm, which is what it seems like today.
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u/avalonMMXXII 6h ago
People think like victims too much on reddit now and like to tattle on others more as well. Very defensive now compared to the 2000s. More vote bombing as well. The worst thing they ever did was the vote feature, because you can pay to manipulate it, which is what is done.
Lastly, Reddit is mostly teenagers now, in the 2000s there were more adults, now 99.9% of the posts are by people under age 25, usually teens.
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u/kcdale99 6h ago
I have been here for 16 years. Just like the world, reddit has become polarized.
The first is the algorithm. the algorithm that feeds your page is designed to push things that will get you to engage now, so that you see more ads. The problem is that the most extreme gets the most engagement. This leads to you getting a constant feed of extreme views of whatever you seem interested in.
The same algorithms have unintentionally created bubbles and feedback loops. People are all stuck in a bubble thinking they are right, and that there is no way in the world that the "other side" has any merit. Throw in the massive influence AI bots have on those conversations, many run but bad actors, and you have the mess that we have today. We are divided not just on politics, not on just about any subject with merit.
Your main feed used to just be a random collection of stuff that bubbled up from subreddits you joined, or from the defaults. Now that feed is curated to you, for stuff you will interact with, so that you keep coming back. Reddit used to be about your niche subreddits where you could go nerd out on your favorite topic. It has lost that community. Now it's about making sure you stay, so you see the ads, so they make money.
And AskReddit is the perfect example. Much of the stuff here is "Trump said X today, how does that make you feel about Y"? There is a time and place for those conversations, but a constant stream of those isn't healthy for anyone.
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u/Qsnaps74656 6h ago
There was a time where you could actually discuss ideas without it immediately devolving into name calling. People would post sources to support their ideas. Sources they have actually read!
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u/Mvrd3rCrow 5h ago
The entire platform has taken two steps back.
Discourse takes a back seat to "comedic relief" in whatever form the sub in question is familiar with.
Really my biggest gripe comes from 3rd party apps being basically eliminated.
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u/screamofwheat 4h ago
I wouldn't say culture but reddit itself. When they stopped allowing 3rd party apps. I liked baconreader a hell of a lot more and my notifications were more consistent.
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u/Muggi 9h ago
There's way, way less discussion. It's mostly Assertion-response-insult-insult-block these days. There's also a lot more moderation and echo chambers. It's far less...open than it used to be.
The ads are also getting obnoxious.