By banning porn. Out of all the things that could motivate people to search for alternatives, this might be the most durable driving factor.
Outside of that I think it will be a slow decline in quality. Eventually quality content will decrease more and more, and low effort memes and bot content will take over.
Honestly the porn has gone way downhill. Or so I am told by friends of some casual acquaintences.
Delete old.reddit
All the longer term users who keep the ecosystem functional will leave in frustration. That is, the ones who didn’t leave already over spez deciding to kneecap third party clients.
Once those users are gone, the death spiral starts.
Tbf Reddit revenue comes from ads that are based on traffic, so even if 99% of the accounts are fake bots they still make money. I think that loophole will keep them on forever
I mean, not long term though? Advertisers and Marketers don’t invest if their ads don’t have some ROI. And no bot is going to engage with an ad to the point of actually result in a sale for obvious reasons.
I expect Reddit to die in a couple decades for the simple reason that no social media platform will out last a generation of users. I could be wrong, as the modern social media landscape isn’t even one generation old, and perhaps there will be multi generational social media platforms, but I just don’t see it.
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
I know you’re quoting TS Eliot, but this for real. Just like MySpace, Digg, Cracked, and many similar sites, they will still exist for the longest time, but gradually evolve into an entirely unrecognizeable form. Then one day they’ll all shut down, and people will react with “the what-it now” and “that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time.”
After the IPO, Reddit stock plummets and Steve Huffman leaves with a big payout. Reddit Inc appoints a new CEO who starts to push deeply unpopular changes in the name of turning a profit. There is a major exodus to other platforms.
Reddit goes the way of Digg v4.
My money is on slow decline in content quality. It might not ever die per se, it might just become Craigslist or Digg.
