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.

    • LvxferreOPM
      82•1 year ago

      It didn’t, I agree. Lemmy for example was really slow; the type of site that you’d check once a few days. Nowadays however you can pretty much lurk nonstop here, and you know that you’ll see more stuff that you want to see. Same deal with other sites.

      • @shortwavesurfer@monero.town
        34•1 year ago

        Yep, i created my first lemmy account a little over year ago when i first heard about it. I tried it for a few days and ended up back on reddit. I came back about the time of the blackout and stayed this time. I even totally deleted my reddit accounts and overwrote all their content. Since then i have spent 10 minutes total on reddit and havent loaded it in weeks now.

      • Uranium3006
        3•1 year ago

        I still run out of new posts by the time of my last break at work but we’re well above the threshold of usability, and it’s only uphill from here.

        • LvxferreOPM
          1•1 year ago

          Activity dropped down quite a bit from when I wrote the above and now. (I’ve noticed it, too - now I’m running out of content sometimes.)

          It’s fine in the long run because of something that you said in another comment, corporations making rash decisions.