Are we defining failure by their standards, or ours?
When my favorite communities were wrecked by being moved to front page, default-for-new-users and flooded with low effort content that may as well have been bot spam, it failed me.
When they made an API policy that ostensibly allowed profitability (despite charging far beyond what they might make from ads on the official mobile app) and avoided training by AI (despite refusing to grandfather in known 3PA and offering to approve new ones), it failed me again.
If I’m soon unable to access the site via the old.reddit interface to avoid intrusive ads, it will fail me yet again.
I won’t be surprised if others add more failures to this list.
Maybe reddit makes money hand-over-fist from these changes without me, you, nsfw content creators, licensing / API fees from all current popular 3PA apps, and whoever else. I’m not eager to characterize this as success because VC’s get their money back.
Accept that much or most of reddit will look normal tomorrow. Reddit will proceed by projecting that everything is normal, whether true or not. Lemmy will continue to be an alternative with FOSS benefits and much smaller communities. Your own habits have to reflect what you want and there’s no wrong answer.
I’m personally elated to find the smaller communities with higher-quality content. Thoughtful comments aren’t buried under piles of karma-seeking horse-beating jokes.
At the same time, reddit continues to offer historical reference that won’t be matched elsewhere anytime soon. I’m not going to rant as if the place has no value, or as if it can be replaced in a few weeks.
Lots to consider.