How reddit crushed the biggest protest in its history: Did it, though?
Users were outraged, but Reddit mostly won.
How is reddit post protest, did it really win over protesters? Did the ones who left make a dent? Or like all things before, did it ultimately do nothing?
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Reddit didnt crush the protest, redditors and mods did. Mods acted like mods (their stereotypes mostly deserved) and users were so addicted to the site that they lost their shit that their favorite sub went dark for 2 days. The mods never had leverage and 99% of the users have no desire to lift a finger to meaningfully protest.
Reddit doesnt have any real competition (yet... hopefully lemmy does well) so they dont really care if what theyre doing pisses off users. The site is thoroughly in the enshittening phase of its life cycle and the apathy of its users ensure that reddit has no incentive to reverse this.
The mods never had leverage
Of course the mods had leverage: they could have just walked away.
The reality is that there's no difference between mods and users: everyone is just too addicted to their routines and habits and mindless opening of Reddit and doomscrolling that the vast, vast, vast majority of people just wanted to go back to how things were.
There is no shortage of people that are willing to moderate and Reddit doesnt really care if they do the job well by the community's standards so long as those new mods do what reddit wants. And at this point, the mods walking away in protest is the equivalent of saying "you cant lay me off! I quit!" Redditors do not understand at all who is in control on that site.
/r/interestingasfuck suggests there is a shortage of people willing to moderate -- or that Reddit is willing to let large, popular subs die if they protested.
Reddit has literally kicked mods out of a sub then banned that same sub shortly after for being unmoderated. That sort of stupidity cant be intimidated or reasoned with.
Spez more or less said point blank that he views Musk's management of Twitter as inspiration for how he intends the site to be run. That should have been enough on its own to let people know what level of insane they were dealing with.
Keep in mind that those users who do not want to lift a finger in protest are usually the ones who do not want to lift a finger to contribute. Not a speedy death, but with our new content those lazy viewers will grow bored and find another source. I don't think Reddit has a plan to replace the content. No new content and it will spiral down the tubes. But as some pointed out, the IPO will be done by then and the current administration will be out on their yachts when it does finally implode.
Users that do want to protest can edit all of their posts and delete them. Reddit will undelete them currently, but they pull back the edited posts. If people do this in small batches it won't set off any alerts and the site stops having any relevant content.
