The stupid part is that profits are really not optimized by the enshittification profit campaigns - there is so much incompetence in isolated C-suites making these decisions.
I've said it before, but why do social media sites try to monetize through methods which provide no tangible benefits? A blue checkmark, some shitty NFT avatars, being able to badge someone's comment or post - I don't care about those things, definitely not enough to pay for them.
If Reddit wanted to monetize me, give me something tangible. I'd pay $5/mo for a 'pro' tier or something if it had unlimited third-party app access on top of some other real benefits. Instead, Reddit is making everything worse (like their new, awful, web view, or their official, awful, app) and then getting mad that people don't like the shit sandwich they're being fed.
Charge people for pro tiers, charge subreddits for 'pro' moderation tools (and actually build the moderation tools you say you're going to), introduce some kind of subscription service (YouTube Premium, Discord Nitro, that kind of thing) that actually benefits both users and subreddit moderators. Let subreddits provide perks to community members who are willing to contribute, or be able to make them subscription-only (or posts and comments only by subscribers) and the money will roll in.
Generally just make the site better and people will appreciate that. Don't isolate us from the apps we like and then tell us "we're doing it because we care", because no one believes that.
I ran /r/conspiracy for more than a decade - and when I was setting policy to have that sub be a-political, and some other mods complaing about their pecking order in the mod list, I was restructuring the mod list at the request of mods, then an admin's alt account 'complained' (and this mod was the actual mod who requested the org change) and an admin cam in, ousted me, and put said account in charge.
That account is assuradly an admin alt account throwaway.
I think the question is what are the tangible benefits people would actually pay for?
Social media companies have the incentive to figure out how to make more money from their product. I think the fact that none of them have really proposed any pro-tier that is adopted by a majority of users shows that most people aren't really willing to pay for anything they provide.
Reddit doesn't want to have any functionality that makes the site hard to use. They don't want to say, limit how much you can post because you're making content for free for them and keeping other people engaged.
Minor quality of life improvements are easily addressed with browser plugins like RES. It has to be something that can't be provided that way.
So what you get is very niche features like the ability to load more than 500 commments and a shiny badge.
I think it’s the same reason countries don’t simply get better as we expect they should: there’s no omnipotent entity with that exact goal in mind. Instead, we have a lot of people just going for their own interests, playing politics or corporate game, moved by vanity or greed etc. which often do more harm than good for the company’s supposed goals (not even mentioning larger companies tend to attract certain types of people who are more parasites than “builders”).
This why it’s funny that when the Victoria 3 game was released, people realized and it became news that Communism was more effective to make your country thrive. Well, no shit? You’re playing as an external entity which only purpose is to make your State greater in a century, so the more power over the economy the more effective you are at reaching your goals. Real countries don’t work like that, and the same logic applies to companies.
