No it’s their content. You gave it to them in exchange for a platform on which people can find out about it.

You also get from it the good feeling when people ‘upvote’ your content. It’s a pretty good deal in that you only pay for it by seeing some ads.

You’re free to setup your own blog and send emails to your friends about the links you like.

I think you're missing the point. Reddit is not entitled to a user base. They have to provide a product users are interested in using. Right now, a lot of users are upset with Reddit and have decided to stop using it. It doesn't matter whether you agree with them or think they are being reasonable.

We'll see who ultimately comes out ahead. I figure it will be Reddit, but that doesn't mean anything about this is difficult to understand. This is how being a consumer works when you're upset with a provider and can't vote with your wallet.

Their TOS literally says otherwise

I granted a license to the content; I retain ownership

Obvious and inconsequential as what you want access to are the links submitted by other people which you don't have ownership of.

And we are just talking about links, which in most cases the submitter does not own the referenced content anyways.

> If Reddit thinks it's theirs, they will soon notice that nothing is left of their business when those communities have moved elsewhere.

Where are they gonna move to?

I'm not being facetious, I'd really rather like to know - where on earth are all these moderators going to start up their new groups on?

If there was a viable alternative they would've found it by now and there wouldn't be a strike, there'd be a desertion. The fact is that even if the moderators want to move, the userbase isn't necessarily going to follow them.

My best guess is that somebody will write a clone. It's not rocket science.

> My best guess is that somebody will write a clone. It's not rocket science.

Maybe they will, but there's nothing to move to today.

With nothing to move to, the users aren't going to move. Having a viable place next week might be pointless.

There are multiple reddit clones, I think the biggest one is Lemmy.

Did you really think there was nothing else? Services like reddit are big because of their network effects, not because they have so special sauce that no one has been able to replicate.

Anything federated the isn't a Reddit replacement, too much friction and users don't want to join multiple instances just to see all comments on a single topic.