It can go one of a few ways.

  1. Apart from the few subs that remain offline, it’ll basically be back to normal. Those that do remain offline indefinitely just get forcibly reopened or recreated by admins, especially huge subreddits like /r/videos. Smaller ones just get redicted to /r/topicnew or some other creative name.

  2. A lot of subreddits and more importantly moderators and users leave the site permanently. In order for this to happen however, there’d have to be a consensus alternative, which there isn’t ATM. Otherwise, these communities are pretty much lost forever unless the mods put a message to go to X alternative service in the “subreddit is private” banner. Tbh, I don’t think people are gonna stomach losing years of their lives in an instant so they’ll just re create subreddits unless the mods provide an alternative.

No matter what though, they’re not backing down on the effective removal of the API (still leaving the sneaky clause “you can pay us if you want but it’ll be a king’s ransom” for AI, even though they can just trawl the web manually lol). They’ll probably announce some crappy customization features to hoodwink those who don’t know what an API is and lie to them and say it’s “API v2” or whatever.

I just honestly don’t know how it’s going to shake out and I’m scared im going to lose these communities. I don’t give a single solitary fuck about Reddit the company anymore, and I never did really. I just hope all of the subreddits find a new home and don’t just shrug their shoulders and say “welp, guess that’s it guys”.

  • hackitfast
    4·
    2 years ago

    Here’s my take, I grabbed it from my reddit comment, it’s slightly out of context so excuse that:

    I do think reddit will continue to function, but its communities and services will undoubtedly begin to change following July 1st as users begin to shift to different platforms like Lemmy, Kbin, and Squabbles.

    And don’t think that as reddit aims for quarterly growth, they won’t try to pull more shit on their users. It’s only a matter of time before reddit is an amalgamation of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

    RPAN probably failed because either nobody wanted to use their first party app, or were using old.reddit.com. RPAN was their first attempt at reddit trying to “catch the waves” of services like YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram Reels. The most recent r/place was the second attempt at getting people to use their mobile app.

    Expect reddit to keep adding “trend catching” features over the next year or so while you’re confined to reddit.com without RES, and reddits mobile app. Unfortunately, reddit will eventually it will be a shell of what reddit once was, and the users that choose to stay will be the ones willing to put up with their shit.

    So yes, of course the point is to make money! Though it will almost always be poorly reflected on its users, and they’ll go any length to make sure they’re doing just enough to keep you here but not enough for you to want to leave. Users will make their decision to stay or leave over the coming months as you see this “enshiftification”.

    Here’s a good article on this, it’s very interesting:

    https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/