The last major holdouts in the protest against Reddit’s API pricing relented, abandoning the so-called “John Oliver rules” which only allowed posts featuring the TV host. The article describes it as “the official end of the battle,” which seems an overstatement to me, but it’s the certainly the end of the initial phase.
Did Reddit win? Time will tell!
I used to spend hours per day on Reddit. Now I visit once or twice a month, read-only. My subscription is canceled and all my posts/comments deleted. My “front page of the Internet” is now here.
I’m no big city doctor, but it seems like the people who were strong enough to decide to pack up and leave won.
Tbh, reddit did win. They’re set to become a highly commercialized social media platform, focused on maximizing engagement through generic content.
They may lose dedicated eccentrics looking for a welcoming place to geek out over shit in their niche community. They’ll also lose users who value long in-depth discussions with complete internet strangers.
But, Reddit doesn’t want our need those people. As long as they have the generic subs (like r/funny, r/pics) and the outrage groups (like r/aita, r/publicfreakout), they’ll keep getting views and sweet sweet ad money. And that’s all Reddit cares about.
Everything you described in the second paragraph is exactly why appending site:reddit.com is a thing, it’s a source of genuine discussion of products and expertise. That is what gives Reddit its SEO power in search engines and if those communities go, Reddit doesn’t have much to fall back on. Meme level fluff can be replicated anywhere.
If by won you mean cause controversy, drive away some users, and allienate most of those staying than Mission Accomplished. Nothing positive happened for Reddit out of this.
Really? Reddit retained about 98% of its users and gained full control of the app market. I’d call that a success for them. They got exactly what they wanted.
