Eh, I created an account on lemmy and installed the mobile app a while ago, did a bit of perusing and commenting, but I was still using reddit as my primary mobile browsing utility until today. My sync app stopped working a few hours ago, so I’m here now.
I think there’s at least a fair amount of people doing the same thing I’m doing.
Kids have to at least go through a phase where they develop their own identity (and not everyone does go through that, even then). But most children and teens still have their values tied to an idea of how they believe their idols/parents/friends and so on perceive it, it’s an active part of brain development to decouple yourself from that and stop thinking about your decisions through a lens of how you think other people think about your decisions/likes/thoughts.
It makes an account look authentic, which makes recommendations that account offers more genuine. E.g. advertising, political astroturfing.
There’s so much of that on Reddit with accounts that look real but aren’t. When I started using reddit (like 15 years ago) I was legitimately able to trust most recommendations (I still own and use many of the products I picked up and consider them good decisions), but it’s been at least 7 or 8 years where you absolutely can’t.
same bro, even anon browsing got shutdown lol
If I remember correctly, when it first launched, it was a one time payment actually.
I’m on both, but I’ll stop using reddit when I can’t use sync anymore.
Reddit used to mediate with their users on what the users thought was the best way forward for the site to continue existing. Ads and reddit gold initially were a compromise created by an active dialogue between users and admins.
Once reddit decided they were big enough, that the risk of user loss was minimal, they just literally stopped having that dialogue. Changes to the site continued (more ads, more data harvesting, changes to the UI) with no user input. When that happened, when they stopped listening, it was only a matter of time.