Excerpt:
Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago. This suggests the problem is way fewer users, not the same number of users browsing less. The huge and universal dropoff also suggests that people left, either because of the changes or the protests, and they aren’t coming back.
Kind of. It wasn’t just the change itself, but also how it was done.
Reddit showed complete lack of care about its own userbase (specially blind people and moderators) and that it’s an extremely scummy company, even for company standards. It could’ve pulled the unreasonable API prices to kill off 3PA but it would need smarter people in charge of the decision than the ones who did it.
I’m no business expert, but the thing is I was a heavy user. Had they made the API changes reasonable and worked with the devs, I would have been happy to pay for the service i used so much (I already paid for the app, what’s a few more bucks a month?)
But them to charge such exorbitant fees, be dicks to users and creators, then treat those who were upset like the bad guy? That’s a spectacularly bad approach to business.
Had they made it part of the original Reddit Gold subscription, or worked that into a new subscription for roughly the same price (~$60 a year) I would have been all over that, no questions asked.
You would have kept most of the power users/mods/whatever and had them be a revenue stream in the process.
Instead they lost both the potential for earnings and the contributions they brought to the site. How stupid did they have to be?