Stack Overflow was once a haven for tech questions & explanations in the early 10's. At some point, the mod team soured and started deputizing members that started shunning and deleting comments for thinly justified reasoning. Things like asking a question that was asked 8 years ago would get your question deleted, ignoring the fact that tech reasonably could have changed in those 8 years. The site was not only generally toxic, it was difficult to actually use. Searching on google your question "stack overflow" was the main use case in the late 10's. LLM's have been the final nail in the coffin for SO, and the usage charts reflect this. Why bother carefully searching and phrasing your question to get a sassy answer 8 hours later, when Claude will give you an answer in 5 seconds with approximately the same accuracy of an internet stranger?
So - is Reddit headed the same way as SO? The mods of individual subreddits have been toxic for ages. Political subs curate hive minds, niche topics exclude members that are less informed, etc. Reddit admins, the ones that are emplyoed by the site, are also generally anti-user. Banning members without cause, poor or no explanations of what the ban is for and generally just policing with an iron fist & a rubber brain.
Reddit fills a different niche from SO, being more entertainment focused. But I feel it's the same mistaken model of moderation that will lead to the same demise in ~5 years.
Thoughts?
fracus•5mo ago
Reddit isn't comparable, as AI has not replaced human opinion.
NotAnOtter•5mo ago
This doesn't hold up when looking at usage charts. There is a clear peak around ~2015 with a steady decline through to now. LLM's came to market in their current form in the last couple years, and took a couple years to be broadly adopted. There was a clear and obvious market fall off way before AI / LLM.
> Reddit isn't comparable
I agree with that in isolation; but since I don't agree with the AI premise this isn't especially relevant. I don't think AI will replace Reddit, I think one of the other major platforms will absorb it's users like Reddit / Hackerrank / better documentation / back searching absorbed SO's users through 2015-2021
fracus•5mo ago
NotAnOtter•5mo ago
As I said in my original post, LLM was the final nail in the coffin. I'm not arguing they aren't related. I'm saying they SO was falling long before LLM's took over. This isn't difficult logic.
fracus•5mo ago
NotAnOtter•5mo ago
You seem to think they weren't failing before LLM (simply rapidly losing member activity), which is a narrative that I won't follow.
fracus•5mo ago
muzani•5mo ago
This was the "stage 4 cancer" point of no return. Statistically, it chugged on for a while, and then the dips happened and people just blamed AI, when it was really just a zombie past this point.
Quora is still going on strong despite AI.