For me it isn't just about API access, its the steadily accelerating march of enshittification across the whole site. Straw, meet camel's back.

Also, Reddit may be a private company, but their content is generated by their users and most of the labor is done by volunteer mods. If they want to leverage their network effect to extract money while ignoring those facts, they can get fucked. If they'd honestly been pursuing profitability in a non-idiotic and community respecting way (better ad targeting to subreddits? Build an integrated Patron alternative to support creators?) that would be one thing, but they've squandered their VC on nonsense like NFTs while making the whole site worse. I hope they implode, but expect they will just slowly decay.

Reddit moderators work for free and are kind of a big part of the experience. If a lot of them are mad about something, perhaps it's worth considering if a mistake was made by leadership.

I guess I use the site less anyway these days but it'll be kinda fun to watch this play out.

While you're technically not wrong, you are very much missing the other side of the coin. By and far the changes affect power users and those are the users largely keeping lights on at Reddit as moderators. Reddit always has the option of disabling making subreddits private, forcefully swapping out moderators, or etc. But even with their doubling and tripling down the leadership at Reddit understands that without this free labor, their site and company would struggle to keep up.

And? Reddit is a centralized platform full of censorship. Horrible GUI and API, power trips from CEO... It was circling drain for several years now.

If power users move to some more reasonable decentralized platform, this problem disappears.

Lol. I thought this was a french-only thing: TV showing disgruntled travelers during transport strikes saying the stereotypical catch-phrase "we're being held hostage!!"

TIL this is apparently an universal thing. The new account with 14 points of karma makes me suspicious. But, heh, we have a "don't assume astro-turfing" rule.

These Moderators have been working for free for years, IMHO they can do whatever they want. And yes, I'm annoyed by it since I cannot do half of my searches, because I append "reddit" at the end of half of my google searches. But I cannot blame moderators for fighting for what they think is right, with the little power they have.

Reddit went down the drain for several years. Several communities were nuked over years. It needs to die!

Sorry reddit search does not work for you. But moderators did that, not Reddit! There is 2 TB reddit dump on internet, there are services that provide search over that.

That's quite a convoluted argument, it appears to be based more on "core political values" and hypothetical scenarios this specific reality.

Either way, and given the subject matter is a "community", this is a sure way to win a battle but losing the war.

> Reddit is a private company!

> If you want API access, ask your representative and put it in a law!

Are you seriously saying the private companies should be legally compelled to provide api access?

uh..... why should i pay to moderate on reddit (i am the current mod of a sub) when reddit is earning out of my generosity? sure i can and am able to decide if i quit but is there no shame in admitting that without my efforts, reddit would be no better than 4chan?

Let them bring out new people, heck i'd rather jump ship and technically i already have but these new people should know they are and will be spending time and energy and paying reddit to give them the privilege to moderate reddit while reddit earns money. Till now, reddit earning from donations, awards was for survival of the site while all the mods volunteered to keep it a nice place. No one was making money, everyone was working as a community and people were keeping reddit alive by donations.

now, reddit gets to earn while we (or someone else) gets to work for their benefit. nice.

its like they took the concept of gig workers and paid them nothing. heck, the gig workers are being made to pay to do the work. great business

>sure i can and am able to decide if i quit but is there no shame in admitting that without my efforts, reddit would be no better than 4chan?

That would imply that current mods are irreplaceable which is not the case

Most subreddits going dark have had a public vote to ask the community.

Funny how all the commenters with your opinion are green. I wonder what’s going on there?!? /s

You get what you pay for

Found /u/spez