My unpopular opinion is Reddit is making the right move and likely their only move. Moderators got what they signed up for and once a community was created and they owed it to their communities to hand over the keys when they ‘quit’ in protest. In the end, anyone unhappy with how Reddit handled the API situation should have walked instead of sticking around to watch Rome burn.
> In the end, anyone unhappy with how Reddit handled the API situation
But they've completely mishandled it. A prime example of that was a AMA where ~10 questions got answered.
In the end it was a way for many moderators to hijack a community and transfer it to their next pet social space (Discord seems to be the current favorite).
Admins are employees of reddit.com. I think you're talking about moderators, who are the volunteer petty tyrants that have always been the worst thing about reddit, and they are the ones "going rogue".
It would depend on the subreddit. r/stoicism (aka r/bro-icism ;) ) seemed very unimpressed and self-involved, and didn't see how the concept of 'virtue' entered into it. r/datingoverfifty overwhelmingly sided with its mods, in part because that subreddit was so actively moderated that women over fifty could post there without getting harassed, and scam artists were quickly run off by the mods. As such, that subreddit had experienced moderation as a positive force and trusted its mods' opinions, and its mods were repeatedly in touch with the subreddit explaining what they wanted to do and why, and asking whether they had user support.
Looks like we saw different experiences, is all I'll say.
What we know is that people who spoke up about this care about it. People who voted in a handful of subreddit-run polls care. But obviously, people who don't use the API in any way are going to be neutral, not positive, about these changes, and so they have no reason to interact with polls or speak up in Reddit's favor. They'll just ... remain silent, and wait for the storm to blow over. Which seems to be what the majority of Reddit users are doing.
Disclosure: I'm a 12+ year Reddit "power" user, and I don't care about the API changes. I didn't vote in any supposed polls on the changes. My perspective no doubt affects my understanding of this issue.
This has been my experience too.
Having said that, it doesn't seem very active at the moment which isn't a good sign. Granted, I have no idea how active the subreddit is to compare.
The fact they didn't move while the platform was effectively shut down proves that the category bof service isn't even that important to them.
Just review how many people are saying they're better off having not been on Reddit and now have zero intent of returning.
I'm one....
Some people set up a Discord and were posting which subreddits had polls going on regarding staying dark or reopening, and their members spammed the polls with "overwhelming support" of staying dark, even though they weren't the actual users of said subreddits.
https://old.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/14ae739/this_...
https://preview.redd.it/qty5883w6h6b1.png?auto=webp&v=enable...
https://preview.redd.it/c7o7zce1tb6b1.jpg?auto=webp&v=enable...
the inevitable move, maybe. The only move (for profits), yes. But they are executing this absolutely horribly. Reddit has never been an overly formal site, and I guess that is built into the culture of the admins as well.
>they owed it to their communities to hand over the keys when they ‘quit’ in protest
Historically speaking, they never did. We have seen mods run a sub to the ground several times and the result was users jumping ship to a new community.
So while inevitable, it is inherently hypocritical for Reddit to suddenly care now as if they ever cared about users.
on the other hand, if you deleted your account and walked you also cannot interact in any polls, unless the polls are off site. So while people are saying "no one left", clearly there is SOME population reflected in how much people here and elsewhere are talking about it.
Disclosure: would be 10 year old power user. Deleted my account 3 years ago, but still inevitably had to lurk in reddit for some communities. I'm just enjoying the fire rising as I inevitably predicted since the 2015 blackout days. Not very happy about the changes given that I used a combination of RES (which at this rate I'll be surprised survives more than 2 years) and anonymous browsing on Infinity to check. The discourse tbh has only gotten more polarizing, even on non-political subs and I wanted a goo d excuse to make a hard stop to reddit. Thank you, Reddit.
BTW: infinity's stance here is to try what Apollo didn't do. Infinity will be paid-only, and if that doesn't stick, it's done. That's basically a kiss of death for how I used Infinity, but best of luck to the devs.
Maybe this is a long requested feature that reddit could have implemented... nah. Clearly it's the mods who are selfish.
No reassurance, no de-escalation, no reasonable transparency of the decision making process. Just dictator moves, lack of communication in general except for a few emotion-driven jabs.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/148w58w/vote_s...
"Hi Reddit, this is the CEO. I admit it, I didn't handle this well. Some of our recent decisions have not been met well by our users. There are great points being made, and I've decided to take this into consideration. Let's start over."
I've unsuccessfully been trying to create a Lemmy account for the past three days. The signup button just spins. I've used many different combinations of usernames, email accounts, browsers, origin IPs, Lemmy instances, etc. Maybe God hates me, but more likely I'm not the only one.
