First Reddit API change, and now Twitter is rate limiting. Is this the implosion of corporate social media?

I suspect these changes come from very different motivations. My guesses —

Reddit's changes are a desperate attempt to please investors. This is a standard tactic for tech startups that are having trouble showing a profit: figure out what the company has been giving out for free, and start charging for it. They looked at API traffic and said "what do we have to do to monetize this?" and the current situation followed directly from that.

This is not just a vague appeal to "the market"; there are specific big-money investors involved, and they will have been communicating directly with Reddit management on what they want to see from the platform. CEO Huffman is probably listening to specific advice (or demands!) from those investors, and making policy changes to appeal to them.

Twitter's situation is quite different. The goal of Musk's takeover was political: to reverse Twitter's user conduct policies, which had led to Donald Trump and other fascists being banned from the platform for shitty behavior.

Twitter is falling apart on a technological level right now because most of its skilled engineers have quit, leaving the company no longer capable of responding effectively to technical problems.

Don’t forget YouTube disabling the video player all together if they catch you using an adblocked

I don't get that though, it's not possible to block YouTube ads, so the adblocker, ublock etc, is only blocking ads on other websites unrelated to YouTube. It's got nothing to do with them.

So.... What gives?
- They work great on desktop browsers, maybe yours isn't configured right?
  
  And on Android there are alternatives...
  
  I watch a lot of YouTube though (mostly science channels) so I will probably be forced to start paying. I don't like it.
- Bravo browser on Android does a great job at blocking ads on YouTube. After the demise of Vanced this is how I watch YouTube.

It's clear that something is going on. At least for Reddit and Twitter, they need to make money. They've made that pretty obvious but it is curious why now. Facebook and others didn't seem to have this issue. YouTube sounds like google just Google

I'm not sure how Lemmy will last if it grows massively. But I'm here for a good time not a long

Wikipedia has done well for itself using donation runs and grassroots support, so if there are ways for instances to do similar the decentralized nature of this will work out ok.

Elsewhere the issue is many of these large services have grown to the size of effectively being a public good, but good luck maintaining a public good in a profit generating way as a private company seeking the next quarter's growth.
- That's a good point. Wikipedia isn't a for-profit company so they don't have to show insane profit every quarter in order to calm shareholders. I donate to Wikipedia all the time cause I appreciate what they provide.
Facebook and others didn’t seem to have this issue

maybe because Facebook already required users to login before seeing most of the content?
- Could be. but i would argue that would be worse than a free-to-view website that just ran ads as you didnt need sign up or anything to view them.

Lemmings!

Let's please not start the "redditor" like bullshit here, thanks.

Yes. You will gradually see all corporate centralized social media wall itself off over the next couple years into a tiny, heavily monetized little walled garden.

The free-money monetary policy that has funded the explosion of Internet companies since 2000 is over. Inflation is up and central banks are putting emergency tourniquets on the cash pipes that these companies need to burn endlessly to keep the "free to use" model operating.

And invidious seems to be under legal threat from google as well.