reddit got bad because spez (the reddit admin) restricted API access to the platform for third-party apps, such that people would be forced to use the official app or web UI, both of which display advertisement and collect user data (e.g. scroll behavior).
the reason why this happened is because reddit is a for-profit company and tries to extract money out of the userbase, at the expense of the users.
another example of a bad decision that reddit made was to push a lot of ragebait (“Am I The Asshole?”) because company shareholders want to see “engagement numbers” go up, and if somebody writes an angry reply to a post, that’s “engagement”. but it makes you angry at the stupidity of the “Asshole”, so it makes your day worse. that is another example how reddit makes money at the expense of the users.
size (number of monthly active users) is not what made reddit bad. commercialization is.
we should probably get rid of the “don’t make lemmy grow, it will ruin the platform if we grow” idea.
You’re not wrong, the API was the reason I got here too… But, the problem with “don’t make lemmy grow…” is not the size itself that would kill it, but the attention that results from it.
More people => (even) more interest in bots for marketing and/or propaganda. Or some billionaire who wants to “own” lemmy and just makes the biggest, shiniest instance, which even pays users until 99% of lemmy is this instance. Or just buys every instance-owner until no free ones are left. Or whatever else wicked ideas one would come up with.
Though in some places in reddit it was not for participation anymore, just for consumption. A post appears, it instantly had 5.4 gazillion comments every minute (slightly exaggerated). A real talk rarely was possible. That aspect though matters with growing size.