It is so frustrating seeing how people received the protest.
“it’s not working” “Reddit doesn’t care” “they can do whatever they want”.
Well yeah, if that’s the attitude!
How do people not see that the protest disrupted the entirity of Reddit? Just about every weekly active user felt it.
How do they not understand the impact on revenue (especially ads), and how Reddit cannot feasibly sustain it, and were banking on the idea that it’ll eventually die down?
The fact of the matter is, if Reddit became worried that the protest will continue in strength indefinitely, they would be forced to roll back. The loss impact would greatly outweigh whatever measly profits they make from this API change that no one will buy.
Yes, this was a lot more for Reddit than just profits. If Reddit had backed down, it would have impact much greater than just third party apps. It remind people once again that users hold the power when they’re United. They can decide how to run their communities. But Reddit just could not afford this to happen, which is why they fought to convince you that the protest isn’t working and you should back down. And unfortunately many of us did…
That’s a very gloomy view on things.
I don’t think just “post-2010” people think like that, it’s always been a large majority of people who thought like that… and as the user counts on the internet approached 30% of world population in 2010, we started to see what the average people think: the immense majority are lurkers/consumers, not builders/creators.
For reference, in 2023 we’re about to reach 66% of world population having internet access, expect things to become even more revealing of how most people think.