This is an article by Cat Valente during the Twitter Migration, discussing the cycle of enschittification and the history of social media.
We found it very perceptive and helpful when leaving Twitter, and I think people leaving Reddit may feel the same.
As a former user of Prodigy, all I ever wanted was for the Sears catalog to be accessible on there, as it was dying. They could have done exactly what Amazon did, but with the brand power of Sears. Home delivery was a solved problem for them - hell, Sears’ Home Delivery could literally deliver homes! Look it up, you will find houses still standing that were prefabbed and delivered. Yes, we damn well should have shut up and bought things. I say this having been one of the world champs of the Prodigy Carmen Sandiego - one of the kids they wanted to just shut up. If my family could have bought everything from Sears (& K-Mart) from Prodigy, we would have!
Sell me a thing worth buying and I’ll shut up and buy it. Sell me snow in the winter, I’ll just shut up and walk away.
As for LJ, yeah, a lot of English speaking people had no idea about it. I saw it when I looked up the company buying LJ. Many of my friends at the time moved to IJ & DJ. I wasn’t hurt, I wasn’t affected directly, so I stayed until I got bored.
That’s how I feel about social media - I’m there till it bores me. Give me something worth buying, I’ll shut up and buy it.