The Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won. [Clickbaity title, but be sure to check the article itself]
The Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won. [Clickbaity title, but be sure to check the article itself]
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.
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Anybody thinking this whole shindig was a “pyrrhic victory” is deluding themselves. The protest didn’t do shit outside of bringing people to the Fediverse - or rather, Lemmy specifically. Majority of people stop caring about things nowadays as soon as something is over a week old, and clever marketing and abuse of moderator/admin powers can pretty much cover this stuff up. Hell, there were users on the Fediverse that were going back to use Reddit for protesting on r/place - and some of those people were the same kind that went “I am gonna DELETE EVERYTHING OFF OF REDDIT”.
At the end of the day I’m glad I moved off Reddit as my go-to social media because I genuinely got tired of the hivemind on there, but y’all are lying to yourselves if you think this will massively impact Reddit’s IPO or anything else about them in the future - even their reputation. If Reddit crashes and burns, cool and Steve Hoffman got what he deserves after hiring pedophiles and keeping r/jailbait active for as long as it was active. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Reddit chugs along just fine.
Anybody thinking this whole shindig was a “pyrrhic victory” is deluding themselves. [...] y’all are lying to yourselves if you think this will massively impact Reddit’s IPO [...]
I strongly disagree, for four reasons:
- Bringing people to the Fediverse hurts Reddit. Alts have a chicken-and-egg problem: not enough users to get content, not enough content to get users. Lemmy and Kbin managed to avoid this problem, partially, due to the protests.
- Bad press does impact the IPO. Investors are only willing to invest high stakes of money in risky businesses as long as they promise a great return on the investment; however, the press shows that Reddit doesn't have a bright future (less RoI), and the userbase is pissed (higher risk). As such I do believe that those lowered the amount of money that the "old" Reddit investors will get out of the initial public offering, as new investors won't be willing to pay as much for the shares.
- Disengagement. Profit comes from user visits, but value (ability to generate profit in the long term) is from the content. And yet the revolts disengaged the most the ones who would generate and sort that content on first place; even the ones who might not leave (like we did) won't be as eager to post their stuff there.
- Small subs. The article mentioned 1.8k subreddits still closed, right? And yet small subs are the ones that actually retain users - because they're about everything and a bit more. Those likely won't get new mods or threats from u/ModCodeOfConduct saying "mods, keep working for free or we'll put other suckers in your place".
Could the moderators get a victory? I don't think so; I believe that they should've scorched earth and migrated. Even then, the revolts did damage against Reddit, that Reddit could go without. Reddit might've won the war against the jannies but it didn't benefit from its own victory, well, that's a Pyrrhic victory.
and clever marketing
Clever marketing could do something but Reddit is not clever. (If Reddit was clever it would've killed the 3PAs without a revolt, by boiling some frogs.)
But I wouldn’t be surprised if Reddit chugs along just fine.
I mentioned this in other threads, but my prediction is that Reddit will neither suddenly crash nor stay alive "just fine". It'll slowly go downhill.
I mentioned this in other threads, but my prediction is that Reddit will neither suddenly crash nor stay alive “just fine”. It’ll slowly go downhill.
In other words, Reddit will turn into Digg.
I am going to quote a wise saying I said on New Digg : "An empty Subreddit has been abandoned, a full subreddit will be abandoned"