The Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won.
gizmodo.com
The last major holdouts in the protest against Reddit’s API pricing relented, abandoning the so-called “John Oliver rules” which only allowed posts featuring the TV host. It's the official end of the battle. The Reddit protest is over, and Reddit won.

The title is a bit clickbaity but the article is worth a read. To keep it short:

  • large subreddits stopped protesting
  • 1.8k subreddits are still in the dark, but those are rather small
  • [from the article] “Though the Reddit team likely caused permanent damage to the platform and its relationship with users, Spez got his way. But that victory might not mean much.”

IMO it was a Pyrrhic victory. Sure, the protests ended, and most users are still stuck in that shithole… but the reputation damage won’t be reversed, Reddit managed to seed its competitors (as this one) with the necessary userbase to make them functional, and odds are that Reddit will keep going in its death spiral. And that doesn’t even take into account the amount of bad press that it generated, that will hurt IPO numbers for sure.

  • chaogomu
    24•11 months ago

    A lot of the best mods left. Some made it over here to the Fediverse, but a lot of them just stopped. Which is probably better for their mental health.

    You still have good mods left over there, but there was also a distinct brain drain.

    Some of the best mod tools shut down, and overall the site is just a bit worse to use.

    Now, can the remaining mods train up to the level of the ones who left? Sure, but there’s going to be that doubt in the back of their minds now. Reddit Admins can no longer be trusted to let mods run their communities.

    And the next time Reddit Admins do something that pisses off the community, more people will leave and not look back. The IPO is still looming in the future, and there are a lot of fuckups for Spez to make.

    • LvxferreOPM
      7•11 months ago

      You still have good mods left over there, but there was also a distinct brain drain.

      To add on that: even the good mods to be far less cooperative than before. Accessing the site only once a day, never reporting issues to the admins, plopping lazy automod rules full of false positives, never engaging with the userbase, so goes on. Until the mod suddenly goes missing in action - people noticed that the sub went downhill, but they never noticed that the mod was gone.