I think the majority of people here understand the new issues with Reddit, but today it struck me that there must be a bigger plan. Almost everyone has a “not sure why I was banned” story. Then there’s the severely limited new user journey that needs to be followed in order to eventually become able to “freely” use Reddit. Eg. You can only post in these groups or can’t comment on this etc. All in the name of spam prevention, apparently.
But what if it was more about something else, eg. At some point they l announce that paying for a Reddit premium account allows you to be unbanned and free to do whatever you want.
What other reasons or ideas can you think of, that mass banning users, (some with years of age and contributions, some of them mods.) could be the first step in a plan to capitalize. It might be very obvious to some , I’d like to hear what you think.
It just seems like actively killing your brand is too stupid of an idea for the Reddit creators.
Also… think of how many new users are sent to post on a selected list of sub Reddits , because they have no restrictions. Why would anyone looking to grow their sub Reddit not want to be on that list, yet it’s so limited. Who decided the list? Why?
There is always a bigger plan.
If we’re truing to look into some sort of conspiracy here, I would propose another one.
Reddit is at the forefront of “dead Internet”. Now being a paid data provider for AI scrapers, it’s in Reddit’s interest to generate as much data as possible at as little expense (i.e. servicing actual users) as possible.
At the same time, they need to show that data is user-generated, so they keep registering users - they just ban them later under any made up reason to not spend resources on them.
As a result - data flows, users think being banned is their fault, and no one can prove for sure Reddit is a dead trove of AI data, providing them with plausible deniability to keep on going and racking profits for minimal expense.
I would love it if reddit management is so selfish that they dont care even about AI, but only their revenue.