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?
What happened for me: I left reddit forever. Never looked back. Don’t use it, don’t miss it. I was quite active over there. Since then I am here.
I had over 14 years on Reddit before the API bullshit, and I haven’t been back since. I only see reddit content filtered through the occasional Kagi summery. Fuck Reddit.
Lately my 70yo mother has been sending me links from there instead of Facebook, so that’s an interesting development.
I was on Reddit from 2011 - 2022. I switched over to Lemmy after they implemented the fees and the 3rd party apps had to shut down. Haven’t logged into my Reddit account since - their app is shut, their new web page is shit, and now they’ve shut down old.Reddit - more shit
A fuck ton of people left and went other places, including here.
I fuck ton of technical individuals deleted their entire post history.
I’ve deleted my several times until they stayed gone.
The CEO did win to an extent, but the entire site became less useful and more toxic.
How come there wasn’t a protest like that when they made even worse decisions?
Most of the protestors that were serious already left.
This. Reddit still exists and is still siphoning value off its content for all it’s worth, but you can’t browse through any old discussion without finding a handful of deleted comments and comments edited to random jibberish. The scars of the APIcalypse still exist.
Newer discussions are too vapid and bot-riddled, and many older discussions are too pockmarked with redactions to be useful.
The “Reddit exodus” gives us another example of how soft people are.
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.
It is run by AI admins now
People promised they’d be back after a few days and they did
Oh cool! So I’ve been on here 3 years haha
Didn’t the admins just ban any mods who kept their subreddit up like that after the three weeks?
I was a reddit user for, idk, 13 years? I forget. Came here in 2023 because of the API shenanigans. The official reddit app sucked then and still sucks today. I open reddit maybe once a year, sigh, and close it again.
Lemmy has become so much better since joining, as far as apps go. Glad I left.
Similar position
Burnt down my profile, left several communities unmoddes
Walked away
A lot of people that protested left.
I left Reddit and ran a script that was supposed to remove all my posts (don’t know if it worked or not).
It was ironic as it happened literally a week after I had bought the premium version of Apollo because I had used it for years and figured I’d finally throw the dev some money. He offered refunds to people but I declined.
Fuck u/Spez
I killed my several hundred thousand comment and several hundred thousand post karma decade old account when they killed Apollo
