Reddit was never going to just go away as a result of this. Even if every blacked-out subreddit remained private forever and everyone who was aware of this protest walked away, there’s plenty of oblivious users and remaining subreddits to continue operating.
The “win” condition for the protesters is some or all of the following:
Give Reddit bad publicity in the mainstream press
Cause a drop in ad revenue. Money is life as far as Reddit is concerend.
Harm Reddit’s valuation in its IPO. Money is life.
Help Reddit replacements get established, restoring competition that Reddit thought had long ago vanished. (You are here).
Nothing was going to stop Reddit from going ahead with their API change, all we could hope for was to make it hurt for Reddit. And in that regard I do believe we’ve scored a solid win. The Fediverse is now competition for Reddit, and as they squeeze and squeeze their users for money over the years to come there’s now an escape valve that users can flow out of under that pressure.
My goals in aiding protests were just as you say. I wanted to help consolidate the instances I use, and the communities I use. I’ve always known reddit will stay there. I don’t even think I’m wounding reddit. That beast is too big. All I can do is piggyback some popular posts and get a few hundred to a thousand people to fill up my instance and make me a bit happier about this whole debacle :)
We’re a swarm of mosquitoes. We bite Reddit and it’s painful, but really the only way we’re going to kill Reddit is if in the process of swatting at us Reddit forgets that it’s holding a machete in its hand.
Fortunately Reddit shows signs that it is indeed doing that.
Thing is, Reddit is so big that it can only die due to stupidity on their end
So I see it more as Reddit, instead of swatting, going full bug spray mode and spraying so much they poison themselves instead of a little poison that’s just enough to keep the mosquitoes down (in this case, things like the over priced API, brushing off the protests, the threatening mods, and other self destructive behaviours. The API was going out during dusk, the brushing off protests was going, “It’s fine” instead of applying repellent, and the threatening mods and other behaviours from here on out being them getting swarmed, panicking, and spraying the toxic shit in obscene amounts)
Reddit was never going to just go away as a result of this. Even if every blacked-out subreddit remained private forever and everyone who was aware of this protest walked away, there’s plenty of oblivious users and remaining subreddits to continue operating.
The “win” condition for the protesters is some or all of the following:
Nothing was going to stop Reddit from going ahead with their API change, all we could hope for was to make it hurt for Reddit. And in that regard I do believe we’ve scored a solid win. The Fediverse is now competition for Reddit, and as they squeeze and squeeze their users for money over the years to come there’s now an escape valve that users can flow out of under that pressure.
@FaceDeer
My goals in aiding protests were just as you say. I wanted to help consolidate the instances I use, and the communities I use. I’ve always known reddit will stay there. I don’t even think I’m wounding reddit. That beast is too big. All I can do is piggyback some popular posts and get a few hundred to a thousand people to fill up my instance and make me a bit happier about this whole debacle :)
We’re a swarm of mosquitoes. We bite Reddit and it’s painful, but really the only way we’re going to kill Reddit is if in the process of swatting at us Reddit forgets that it’s holding a machete in its hand.
Fortunately Reddit shows signs that it is indeed doing that.
deleted by creator
Thing is, Reddit is so big that it can only die due to stupidity on their end
So I see it more as Reddit, instead of swatting, going full bug spray mode and spraying so much they poison themselves instead of a little poison that’s just enough to keep the mosquitoes down (in this case, things like the over priced API, brushing off the protests, the threatening mods, and other self destructive behaviours. The API was going out during dusk, the brushing off protests was going, “It’s fine” instead of applying repellent, and the threatening mods and other behaviours from here on out being them getting swarmed, panicking, and spraying the toxic shit in obscene amounts)