Just that they are actively recruiting people from STEM.

Most of what made Reddit great was not Huffman’s software but the people that were worth chatting with. Most of those people did not come here, hence the huge lack of niche subjects here by comparison.

Though indeed, even before the whole fuck spez fiasco Reddit was becoming enshittified, as it encouraged people to talk rather than listen - e.g. to make a new post rather than be able to find an existing one. And yes, it also encouraged us to become pedantic assholes, making every one of us defensive - me too.

A fantastic article somewhat related btw: medium.com/…/the-cargo-cult-of-the-ennui-engine-8…, highlighting that social media becomes what the vision of the developers makes it to be. From the size and position and coloration of the buttons - and which ones, like are downvotes even turned on? - and every little thing, Reddit was doomed to become what it was purely bc of its choice to encourage its own profits at the expense of all else.

A favorite example of mine is that since ads go in-between posts but not comments, Reddit encouraged “more posts”, far more so than “more comments”, and not at all searching for existing posts, e.g. they only allowed 2 pinned posts, not 5 or 10 or 20 or something, just 2. So in places like r/Android they would have weekly mega threads where people could ask things e.g. “what phone should I buy?”, but rather than help connect people to those mega threads specifically offered for that, the developers forced mods to do the work to try to stem the absolute tsunami of posts all saying “which phone should I buy?” - almost invariably with no other details, each just a child (of whatever mental age) wanting personalized recommendations attention, but thereby halting the ability of people to discuss things related to Android phones, bc how could you get a word mixed in among all that noise?

Even nonprofit social media is still damaging to us, but to a radically lesser degree it would seem, compared to a for-profit one attempting to predate upon e.g. our anxieties.