Reddit makes a slew of bad, user-hostile decisions.
In June 2023, Reddit killed support for third-party apps like Apollo. The company pretended it wasn’t killing apps, but it would have cost developer Christian Selig $20 million per year to keep the app running.
More recently, the company announced it’s killing RSS feeds and public API access. Reddit says that AI crawlers and Google’s AI search results are killing traffic to the site, and so now the CEO says the site will soon require that you log in to use Reddit at all.
All of these changes serve Reddit. None of them serve its users.
It’s fair to have strong, negative feelings towards Reddit. I get it.
But Reddit holds a special place in my heart because of a life-changing piece of parenting advice I once got from the site.
The advice I read years and years ago was a way to get kids to snap out of grumpiness. It wasn’t exactly this post, but it was along these lines.
The idea as I implement it with my kids — and have for most of their lives! — is that when they’re grumpy, I look them right in the eye and tell them “I’m going to do a mind trick on you. I’m going to make… you… smile.”
There’s no reason this should work. But wow, it really does. My kids start smiling by the time I say “mind trick.” They cannot help it. It helps break them out of grumpiness or doldrums or sadness. It’s awesome. It’s a family thing. I learned it by accident from a Reddit post a thousand years ago, and my life and my kids’ lives are better for it.
My point in all this is just that while yes, there’s plenty to be angry about and disappointed about with the Internet… There’s good out there, too.
Now, I’ve written three whole pieces about X, so I can already hear it: Wait. Isn’t “there’s good there, too” exactly what John Gruber has been saying about X?
Not quite.
I’ve never said there’s nothing good on X. I’ve said the opposite, more than once. I miss Twitter. I miss the jokes, the conversations, the people, the stuff I discovered there. If you asked whether Twitter ever gave me something I’m still grateful for, the answer is yes, a hundred times over.
Being grateful for what a place gave you isn’t the same as endorsing what it’s become.
I’m not gonna rehash all the things that make Elon Musk awful, and which taint the platform on which he’s not merely the landlord, but also the one with the biggest megaphone.
Reddit’s sins are a different kind of bad. Killing Apollo, killing RSS, walling the whole site behind a login: Those are greedy, short-sighted, user-hostile business decisions. They make Reddit worse to use. They don’t turn it into a megaphone for its owner’s war on people like my kid.
And to be clear, if Reddit’s CEO started using the front page to cheer on far-right rallies and call his critics traitors, I’d write that post too. The mind trick wouldn’t save him.
I’m going to keep doing the mind trick, though. I learned it on Reddit, but it’s mine now. Good advice doesn’t stay where you found it, and you don’t owe the place you found it your continued attention.
