Ironically, if Reddit has been up front and said they were killing third party apps, and kept their mouths shut they would have faired better. For a stupid play like this, speaking only makes it worse. This is going to be taught in business school on how to kill a business.

Definitely I would have gone back if not for the complete and total disrespect spez has shown towards the community

I don’t usually fault companies for messing up if they own up to their mistakes and make it right. Everyone is going to make mistakes and things will go wrong at times. It’s how a company handles events when everything goes sideways that shows whether they are good or bad.

In Reddit’s case, they could have acknowledged that their API plans were too aggressive and overpriced. They could have paused any API pricing changes and worked with third party developers to come to a solution where Reddit is paid, but third party developers don’t have to shut down due to immediate and insanely high costs being demanded. Everyone could have walked away benefiting and Reddit’s reputation (in my eyes) would have been intact. I’d likely be posting there right now instead of here on Lemmy.

Instead, Reddit decided to double and triple down. Their CEO decided to accuse the developer of Apollo of threatening Reddit and, when phone call audio proved this was a lie, blamed the developer for “leaking personal phone calls.” Then, that same CEO claimed that the API was never meant for third party apps (ignoring and trying to rewrite history) and said that any moderators who kept their subreddits blacked out would be replaced. All while claiming that the moderators should rest easy because Reddit would definitely provide tool themselves to replace lost third party tools despite no sign of this happening and trust being totally shattered. (And so much more that I’m not including because this comment is too long already.)

So Reddit messing up? That could have been forgiven had they done the right thing afterwards. But now, after completely botching the response? I hope Reddit withers away to nothing and the CEO’s IPO dreams die on the vine.

There’s a term for that. The Streisand Effect, I think.

Thanks I’ve been trying to fill in those claims with links so this one is great :)

This appears at the top of the page until you dismiss it (at least for me): https://i.imgur.com/Uo3t2TI.jpg

Here’s what it links to: https://mods.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16693988535309

Yesterday they were linking to some much more blatant propaganda/history whitewash, here’s the link: https://www.redditinc.com/blog/apifacts

I went back on briefly today for the first time to:

• Make sure I had read all my replies.

• Check the Boost subreddit to confirm it was going dark at the end of the month. (There was an update so I was wondering if there was some hope of it saying online.)

• Check is the two subreddits I actually still care about are closed. (One is. Another isn’t.)

I didn’t read any posts (except in the Boost subreddit to confirm that it was being shut down) and definitely didn’t comment or post anything. After that brief check in, I’m not going back for some time.

The only redditing I plan for the future is googling for specific questions in niche communities.

Same, though you could possibly find some non Reddit answers to your questions

Imagine you’re an employee thinking you’re going to have stock worth 100k, and suddenly it’s worth 60k and falling.

That’s why I nuked all my posts and edited every one of my comments to point to kbin / lemmy before deleting my account. They may revert my changes, but I at least wanted to try to prevent them from benefiting from me in any way.

Presumably Twitter also crunched the numbers

Twitter is responding to official inquiries from authorities with poop emojis. The people running numbers have been fired.

To be fair, there was a viable and easy to use alternative (Reddit). And the community was largely tech savvy.

Today there are more computer users, so the average tech literacy is higher, but the tech literacy of the average computer user is lower. People want slick, easy to use, centralised solutions.

I’m not too concerned about this though. I think realistically the fediverse could achieve a critical mass to keep it going, but won’t be too large that it becomes just a bunch of noise (like Reddit).

That’s the spirit. We don’t need to complete obliterate reddit to make it the better alternatives viable. We just need to get a minimal mass of people here to keep momentum growing.

I keep thinking of Taleb’s essay where he talks about how effective a intolerant minority can be on affecting change in general behavior.

I hope the real thing is more just stop doing their volunteer work. I hope spam and bots run amok, NSFW gets posted everywhere, reports to unanswered and people devolve into screaming matches.

Power users maybe, but the last days have shown how little spine some mods have. The moment Reddit threatens to kick them as a mod they tuck their tail and say “We we’re all in until they threatened to take out mod positions. This sub now goes back to normal because there’s no world where we get removed as mods.”

I’m in a subreddit called redditalternatives, and lately not many people are posting in it anymore.

I imagine that’s because they all jumped ship already.

honestly, part of the reason I made a lemmy account at all is because it feels a little like reddit when I first started using it – pretty niche, and less toxic and low-quality because of it.

reddit in the last few years has become very toxic. The smaller communities are still okay, but on all of the main subs it’s just page after page of the same snarky jokes and tired memes.

so while more growth would be nice, I’m fine if most of reddit stays on reddit in the short-term. the fediverse can be its own thing.