Eh maybe. The problem is that IMO there aren’t any obvious alternatives to Reddit. I remember when Digg committed suicide with a pretty bad redesign and most disgruntled users moved to Reddit. I’ve been pretty annoyed with the changes Reddit has implemented in the past couple of years, but I haven’t found another place to go (that’s not necessarily a bad thing). HN is the closest alternative but the scope of topics we discuss is limited. That’s probably part of HN’s success but then where do you go for other topics?
My Reddit habit has been all but replaced with private Slacks and Discords these days. Either hobby / interest groups, or an "alumni Slack" full of old work friends from a company I worked at a long time.
I think that's the future, for geeks and nerds anyway. Small private forums, where you can actually have real discussions without getting drowned in memes and downvotes.
For the masses, I think the cement is pretty much dry at this point. You might see a TikTok replace an Instagram once per decade, or something like that. But whatever people migrate to will probably be extremely similar to the thing they migrated from. It's just what the casual masses want.
I find these terrible for any kind of information discovery. I hate that so many communities are using them as an alternative to a subreddit or focused forum. Hell most "modern" forum software is horrific as well.
I think that the advantage in using some kind of instant-message system like Discord/Slack is that you might end up getting a faster response, which is quite helpful when I'm feeling impatient and want my problem to be solved faster. On the other hand, the questions aren't as easily searchable and archived for future people to find.
I rather like my reaction GIFs and discussion threads. What I want to see is a modern IRC with these features, and an optional per-channel/per-server message persistence to deal with not knowing what happened while you were away, or while the mobile IRC app of your choice was killed by the Google/Apple background task manager that only allows you to dodge it with proprietary push support.
Slack also smacks of terrible usability, and is proprietary up the wazoo. There is no way to automate anything on it unless your organisation gives some approval.
I used to feel the same way, but even the smaller ones are increasingly being co-opted by partisan screechers. Especially in the State/City/Town subreddits.
IMO they are just creating an opening in the market by continuously shooting themselves in the foot like that. I don't really understand it. Requiring a login to view content is the reason why I never got into Tumblr or Pinterest... I'm not going to bother signing up for your site if you don't first show me it has content that is worth my time, these people have it the wrong way around.
As a Reddit alternative, Ruqqus has the UI and responsiveness down pretty good. However, it branded itself as anti-reddit, and attracted a lot of right-wing people as a result. However, their platform is open source, so IMO, it's only a matter of time before someone steps up to the task.
