Reddit Is Putting Up a Login Wall. Wikipedia Won’t Be Far Behind.
Reddit is making most of the site logged-in only after Google's AI answers cut its search traffic. A paid login might be worth it. A free one isn't.
Tag: Platform Critiques
Not every platform deserves your time, and some actively waste it. These posts are the unfiltered critiques — Goodreads, TikTok, Twitter, Yelp, YouTube, and more — covering where popular platforms fail the writers and readers who rely on them.
Platform CritiquesThe Enshittification of Microsoft Office: Why I Switched to a Free Clone
Microsoft Office turned a typewriter into a subscription, then raised the rent for an AI I never asked for. I canceled it and moved my manuscripts to WordCraft, a free Word clone built with AI. What switched over cleanly, what's…
GhostwritingWhy I Don’t Like Reedsy for Ghostwriting: The NDA Problem
Reedsy accepts about 3% of applicants and wants ghostwriters to show five published books. That bar runs straight into the NDA every serious ghostwriter signs, and once you're in, every message, call and payment stays on the platform. Why I've…
AmazonThe Enshittification of Amazon
Amazon wanted $6.99 to ship a $25.95 bottle of vitamins. The manufacturer shipped it free for four cents more. Sponsored listings that bury the right product, a $2.5 billion Prime settlement, shows that wreck their source material, Echoes that wake…
AEOQuora Sucks: How the Smartest Room on the Internet Became an AI Answer Farm
Quora used to be the smartest room on the internet, with real experts answering under their real names. Then it paid writers like me for questions, cut that pay to almost nothing, cut its moderators, filled up with AI answers…
AlgorithmsSocial Media Sucks: Your Friends Left the Feed and the Algorithm Moved In
Only 17 percent of time on Facebook goes to friends' posts now, by Mark Zuckerberg's own testimony. My reach slid for years and then fell off a cliff everywhere at once. Here's why social media sucks, what fills the feed,…
ADHDHypnotized by Social Media: The Feed Was Built So You’d Never Look Up
Social media feeds hold attention the way a hypnotist holds a subject: steady rhythm, no stopping point, and a reward just often enough to keep you under. The people who built them said so, and in 2026 a jury agreed.…
AEOReddit Sucks: Volunteers Write It, Bots Fake It, and AI Companies Buy It
Reddit runs on unpaid volunteers, sells what its users write to Google and OpenAI, and has turned into a target for bots and marketers because AI search cites it more than almost any other site. Here's why it sucks, and…
AlgorithmsThe Graph That Goes Vertical Is Usually Somebody Else’s
One creator earned $58,697 from five million plays and started selling sponsor slots. Another with 7.85 million subscribers raised four million and bought a building. Both decided the platform was distribution and the business had to live somewhere else.
AlgorithmsSubstack Is Not Collapsing. The Promise Was.
A journalist put his real Substack and YouTube numbers on screen and called it a collapse. The platform is fine. What broke is the promise that reader subscriptions could replace a salary, and the arithmetic says it was never going…
Critical ThinkingBlack Tuesday: The Web Ring War Nobody Outside It Noticed
Web rings were how you found things before search worked. I belonged to more than two hundred of them and ran a dozen, and when I finally closed my account it held 2,900 memberships. On 5 September 2000 Yahoo replaced…
AEOThe Web Got Fenced: What AI Search Costs Small Sites
A link used to be a vote and cost nothing to give. AI visibility depends on corroboration from platforms that charge admission, which is a spending filter wearing the costume of a trust signal. Here is what it costs and…