I agree that Reddit will become irrelevant to internet power users. However, I disagree that it takes a massive fuckup to lose the critical mass of users.
A simple way to explain this is to imagine that everyone has an individual “I’m pissed and I leave” threshold; if a platform displeases a user more than that threshold, they leave.
For power users, this threshold is really low, so they ditch platforms like Reddit faster. However, that does not mean that the others aren’t getting displeased - they do; it might not be enough to convince them to leave, but it quickly piles up with other things displeasing them.
As such, even a large platform can lose that critical mass of users over time, even without a massive fuckup. It’s just about small things piling up.
Another thing to consider is that power users are more important to a platform than the rest of the userbase, because the power users interact with the platform more. And they’re typically the ones doing janny crap, or finding and sharing content, or that actually have anything meaningful to add instead of “lol lmao”. So once the power users leave, the platform becomes less desirable for the others too, and that’s recursive - as the power users leave, the almost-power users leave too, then the ones after them, so goes on. And there the critical mass goes down the drain.
I agree that Reddit will become irrelevant to internet power users. However, I disagree that it takes a massive fuckup to lose the critical mass of users.
A simple way to explain this is to imagine that everyone has an individual “I’m pissed and I leave” threshold; if a platform displeases a user more than that threshold, they leave.
For power users, this threshold is really low, so they ditch platforms like Reddit faster. However, that does not mean that the others aren’t getting displeased - they do; it might not be enough to convince them to leave, but it quickly piles up with other things displeasing them.
As such, even a large platform can lose that critical mass of users over time, even without a massive fuckup. It’s just about small things piling up.
Another thing to consider is that power users are more important to a platform than the rest of the userbase, because the power users interact with the platform more. And they’re typically the ones doing janny crap, or finding and sharing content, or that actually have anything meaningful to add instead of “lol lmao”. So once the power users leave, the platform becomes less desirable for the others too, and that’s recursive - as the power users leave, the almost-power users leave too, then the ones after them, so goes on. And there the critical mass goes down the drain.