As time as gone on over the past decade, practically every social media platform requires you to create some type of account just to see what's going on there.
Obviously, the big 3 all do it, being Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, which Twitter actually lasted the longest of not doing it (until someone bought it a few years back.)
But even more niche platforms with less attention have hopped on this "mandate" like Pinterest, and even....Tumblr??
But what really set me into a fit of mini-rage was the fact that now, old Reddit is requiring people to give them some information. WHY? Who tf cares about old Reddit other than nerds and people with good taste in UI?
Effectively, this is them asking for an email or phone number, whichever way you like to set up your accounts. And social media, or rather the internet as a whole never used to be this way.
And while I know there are more pressing matters of VPN crackdowns, or digital IDs being pushed, I feel like mandating accounts was actually like the archetype to all of that stuff that would come after.
Taking an educated guess, while remaining fairly not totally nuts, I think this trend is often due to data harvesting. Many of these companies (including Reddit now) are publicly traded on the market, and these companies all prioritize shareholder profits (FORD v. DODGE.)
A good way for the company to rake some money in is by selling user information to the highest bidder. It's getting to that point where free websites aren't truly free at all.
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