Oh, for sure. They created a drug that suffocated all non-externally-rewarded social interaction and drew users in. But they created that drug in service to advertisements.

Tangentially related but I think upvote/downvote culture is one of the biggest social changes that we unleashed on the world and should’ve walked back long ago. The intent of the idea is good but I think in implementation it’s too ripe for abuse.

In those old forums, you couldn’t (easily) bury things the way you can today. We basically handed an incredibly powerful weapon to anyone interested in controlling a narrative - especially so with the centralization of everything.

(I want to be clear that I’m aware old forums could be gamed still, and I’m mostly trying to underscore how messed up I consider upvote/downvote/ratio culture).

I ran one too, I don't think it's so simple as that mechanism! Our forums had reputation counts and posts were the attribution point.

We had 'likes' but with actual accounting! For better or worse 'status' could be built with this. Likes, on the other hand, are fleeting

Both systems have perverse incentives, I think the audience - size/shape - matters, and how it all reflects/bounces.

Conspiracy moment: it's harder to fake 'grass roots' things with a smaller/tight knit community, we've been corralled. Once something is as big as Reddit, everything you're seeing is manufactured.

Personally, I think there's truth to the "Dead Internet theory;" less bot focus. Humans maintain responsibility with our choices.