The Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won.
The Reddit Protest Is Finally Over. Reddit Won.
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.
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I think I won. I found a place I like more than reddit. Maybe we won even. We all got this place right here now. It's nice.
Maybe reddit won. Maybe they wanted to get rid of us and succeeded. Could be easier to milk the platform for shareholders after getting rid of anyone who would protest beforehand.
Maybe it doesn't matter because neither side needs the other anymore. Both sides changed and don't fit back together anymore.
Certainly declaring a winner in this situation is dumb.
I agree. If Reddit won, the victory was pyrrhic if anything. Their whole plan to end 3rd party app support could have been just a small road bump if they had just done it transparently and planned it with reasonably thought out timelines. They instead chose to do a whole front flip over it and get everyone mad, tanking their brand while trying to make it look like nothing happened.
Anyways, congratulations on your victory. Here's your prize: ❤
Ex-Apollo/Reddit 10+ years here. I really can’t understand why they didn’t offer API users the ability to pay for the add-free access they were afforded by their apps (if that’s what it was supposed to be about). Did they really think that they could force people to use the dumpster-fire that is the official Reddit app? ..at the cost of losing a significant, or at least active, percentage of their user base? That’s insane. I haven’t logged in to my Reddit account since and I no longer visit old.reddit.com. Appreciate going cold turkey isn’t for everyone, but … fuck it. When social media companies stop allowing you to view their content in the way you enjoy, it should tell you how valued you are by them.
It's fairly simple: a social media platform's value isn't just a matter of income but also of potential income and how well it can control its users behavior. Preventing users from curating their experience creates more potential avenues for advertising.
What advertisers want are eyeballs (and user data to better their strategies). The API being open means Reddit can't control where all the eyeballs on their platform are looking, which reduces the value of Reddit.
What advertisers want from reddit, and what will increase reddit's valuation, is for reddit to say "We can control where 100% of our user's eyeballs are and what they're looking at 100% of the time". For example, that's why the Facebook feed straight up ignores your settings and shows you whatever it wants.
The API access could make them money but not nearly as much as as they'll make by demonstrating to advertisers how much control over the user experience they have.
Their whole plan to end 3rd party app support could have been just a small road bump if they had just done it transparently and planned it with reasonably thought out timelines.
Um, they did. The jannies couldn't help themselves because they wanted free shit, which led to the "protest" that went nowhere.
How was it pyrrhic? How many users did reddit lose over the past half year?
I think Lemmy won when you came here.
I think we won Lemmy.
We lost reddit though, not the current reddit, but the one that was.
I hope we all win. I miss Reddit. There was a more diverse range of communities that matched my interests. My list is subscribed communities here is growing but some are dead.
That will grow over time and many are. I'm finding there is increasing engagement and comments on many posts and this engagement should breed more engagement.
I think all the mobile apps for lemmy becoming available helps a lot too. Even from several weeks ago the experience is way way better.
Also all of the major instabilities I saw at first are getting worked out very fast
I'm seeing the increasing engagement too
great comment
I don't need to win or anything I gave up on Reddit. What's funny is that I donate to Lemmy and never ever bought Reddit premium.
Certainly declaring a winner in this situation is dumb.
It's not dumb. It's the canary in the coal mine. It's showing that people don't actually give a shit and will continually subject themselves to more and more abuse rather than simply moving to a new platform.
And it's showing this to other corporations who continue to enshittify the internet.
Imo it is dumb that media always frames anything happening like a sports event. This binary win or lose narrative rarely if ever captures the complexity of a situation. It's the strongest in the US where sensationalism is striving to become an art form due to the two party system. When there are only two competing sites politics can quickly feel like a sports event. And democracy dies to lack of actual discussion and lack of options.