You're right about people eating this shit up of course

But the question is if people will willingly remain on a Reddit which is just like Tiktok or YT shorts or Instagram, etc and has no differentiator

Especially with their lousy mobile experience

If there was a clear successor existing with a team that could scale fast, there wouldn't be a Reddit strike but a Reddit exodus. Lemmy and other garbage is not it...

So, dumb question incoming:

How hard would it be to make a thing with the same API as Reddit so the apps that are currently about to shut down can instead change base domain and keep going?

Including existing OSS servers, assuming there already is some (complete!) open source one somewhere — I can google for the attempts ("plebbit" was submitted here for discussion only last week) but I can't trivially tell if they're any good.

Probably not hard to write an adapter at all. But it's not the API that made these apps popular and appealing. It's the Reddit community. The apps would write their own adapters if there was an alternative social media website with this community.

If you flipped the switch on the apps, you'd have your community in no time

Iirc such things already exist.

Though I'm not certain, my guess is Reddit is calling everyone's bluff; they've run the numbers and know that the long game is in their favor if they Tiktokify. Every social media platform eventually declines, and they must know that they have to adapt-or-die to maintain a similar rate of growth.

You forgot:

- million dollars mansions tours

- asking strangers in the street how much is their rent or what's their salary

- asking strangers in the street to do X for money (e.g. do 10 pull ups for $100)

- tourism videos in "dangerous" places such as South America, Africa, Middle Orient, East Europe, Asia (i.e. everywhere not in NA and West Europe)

- silent walking/driving 4K videos in Japan/China/South Korea

- "one day in the life of a programmer/student/[whatever] at [prestigious company/college name]" videos, showing a person waking up, taking a shower, eating breakfast, etc.

-A stickman comic which just has the stickman saying something people on reddit agree with instead of a joke

...and reviews.

The amount that the market pays to inject adverts into youtube product reviews versus 'proper' content is staggering. A good guitarist is better doing a review on headphones, than actually playing a guitar. A runner is better doing a review on the latest Nikes rather than giving training advice.

Can't believe I forgot that one!