[The Verge] Reddit protest updates: news on the apps shutting down and Reddit’s fights with mods

www.theverge.com Reddit protest updates: news on the apps shutting down and Reddit’s fights with mods

Reddit communities went dark to protest recent changes.

Here's the list of highlights from the article, as it's a good TL;DR:

The Reddit app-pocalyse is here: Apollo, Sync, and BaconReader go dark
How Reddit crushed the biggest protest in its history
Reddit will remove mods of private communities unless they reopen
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman isn’t backing down: our full interview
Why disabled users joined the Reddit blackout
Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit — and why users revolted
A developer says Reddit could charge him $20 million a year to keep his app working

Reddit @lemmy.world

Reddit protest updates: news on the apps shutting down and Reddit’s fights with mods - The Verge

www.theverge.com /2023/6/8/23754780/reddit-api-updates-changes-news-announcements

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49 comments

so... nothing new?
- Pretty much, but it's useful to have such a summary to refer to. Specially in the future, as it'll be harder and harder over time to remember what was going on in Reddit, and why so many people left it. And one of my objectives with this comm is to document what happened with Reddit, it would be great if we did the same when Digg went downhill.
  
  I’ll tell you what happened with Digg:
  Kevin Rose swears he'll listen to the community and not introduce a major overhaul which will bring several unpopular changes
  a month or so passes and Digg leadership thinks everyone is stupid and forgot
  Digg 4 launches and literally everyone leaves for reddit over the next couple of weeks.
  Fark and Slashdot collectively die laughing, then of being old curmudgeons
  there, now you're all caught up
  
  did many people actually leave? Haven't seen any statistics yet

As someone who lives in the SF bay area I pray one day I see Steve Huffman in person so I can personally tell him to go f**k himself (yes I know, I know, r/iamverybadass) ;-)

I'm curious how Reddit thinks this is going to go. Community went NSFW and started posting NSFW content. Admins switch NSFW off, despite there being NSFW content. NSFW content continues to be posted, only now it shows up next to ads.
Like, the toggle exists for a reason. It's not "incorrect".
- I think it's pretty clear, by removing the ability to moderate NSFW content from their mobile app, that they're trying to phase NSFW content off their platform completely. They're going to slowly make it more and more difficult to post/browse anything NSFW on the site, until they announce an outright ban on it.
  
  That's what a ton of the casual users that keep their site chugging along are there for though...
- It's now clear to me that, since being sold to Condé Nast, Reddit has never been run by smart people who know what they're doing
  
  A community site built and moderated by the good will of others isn't sustainable when the folks running the site tell the community to go fuck themselves.
  
  It wasn't Erin by Emery people before Conde Nast bought them. The only reason the site still exists is because Kevin Rose fucked up really badly, not through anything the admins did
- You missed the part where spez does not care one bit.
  When advertisers actually start pulling their ads as a result? That's when he'll care, but not until then. In the meantime he's flexing, enjoying the feeling of "power" that it gives him.
  
  I mean, they will eventually. There's a reason those policies exist.
- Maybe they plan on banning everyone continuing to post NSFW material on non-NSFW subs to remove the dissenters.