I’ve been getting some of my Reddit blackout news from Twitter (lol, I know) and have been disappointed to see how many people declared the Reddit Blackout a failure because of how annoying it is to google for something only to find it hidden behind a private subreddit.
My dudes. Don’t miss the forest for the trees.
High quality commenters and posters wanted to leave the answers to some of the most important questions because of the community feeling. And now those exact commenters feel ripped off by the situation. Like the CEO of reddit decided he is the sole arbiter of all access to that freely provided content. These power commenters feel forced to use an app they don’t want to use, forced to comply with policies and CEOs whom they dislike. He sold them out. But they won’t stick around - they are highly mobile and will move to a new site leaving reddit to sink into the hole it’s become.
If this had been handled differently, Huffman could have even won the support of redditors to help make the platform profitable.
I’m sure most reasonable people believe Reddit should be able to pay its bills so that we can have it as a resource. Spez just came out of the gate pissing everyone off and then doubled down at every opportunity to explain the move.