Before the protest, going to /r/all would show you posts with ages between 30 minutes and 3 hours. Today, on /r/all, there isn’t a post less than 10 hours old in the first 40 entries. The content has changed from primarily trending news interspersed with memes to about 90% memes and shitposts padded with a few soft news summaries and opinion pieces.

In comparison, my Fediverse feed has exploded. The quality of content is at the level of pre-Digg reddit, and the commentary at a significantly higher level. There’s still not as much of an audience, particularly in niche communities, but it feels like that’s changing quickly. It’s clear to me that the creative drivers of reddit - the mods, the content creators, and the engaged commentators - have left, and that the traffic is being maintained by a mostly non-participating readership that uses Reddit as entertainment, not a community.

Reddit crushed the creative spirit of its most active populations. Whatever wins Spez is claiming, it’s come at the cost of what made the site worthwhile to begin with.