I remember when Reddit announced it would begin charging commercial developers for access to its API, and in response, thousands of subreddits went dark in protest. I think it lasted for a couple of weeks. The CEO threatened the Reddit mods that he would replace them if they didn’t reopen the subs, so nearly every mod reopened and everything went back to normal. The CEO won easily without offering anything, and he was right when he said that ‘this too shall pass.’ Those third-party apps offered accessibility features for disabled people that Reddit still hasn’t implemented today. Now Reddit is getting even worse. How come there wasn’t a protest like that when they made even worse decisions?
I deleted my accounts and came here. Occasionally, I would still browse reddit - but I haven’t posted or commented since that day. I am not alone, either: the quantity and quality of content on Reddit has noticeably declined. I used to go up to 10 pages deep (250 posts) during a browsing session; for the last year, I have been seeing repeat shit on the second page. Reddit gets boring after, like, 15 min tops.
I can’t use their app: it is terrible. Seriously, the person who designed it should take up farming. The new reddit browser page is just as bad. While typing this response, I navigated over there in another tab to confirm how bad things have gotten: I could see 2 posts. Two. Fucking. Posts. before I had to scroll (which I did not do, by the way). Reddit, get the fuck out of here with that bullshit.
Now that I can’t browse old.reddit.com without an account, they have lost even the meagre advertising revenue my viewing generated.
Reddit did not survive the API protest. It’s bleeding out, slowly. For me, Lemmy is the front page of the Internet now.