Isn't the whole point of making communities private to make Reddit more unusable and therefore try to decrease engagement?

In a couple weeks, the main way many people use Reddit is going to literally be blocked forever. The alternatives are not palatable to many, so the users are basically being unilaterally banished from Reddit. And that's just the opening salvo to monetize reddit.

Give it another year, and your little sub will have 3 ad posts per "actual" post and modded by the Tempe Chamber of Commerce.

> In a couple weeks, the main way many people use Reddit is going to literally be blocked forever.

This is false. Stats showed 3rd party app users were an extreme minority of users.

It's more like mods are a disproportionate number of 3rd party users due to wanting to mod from their phones, and are making the blackout decision for everybody.

> This is false. Stats showed 3rd party app users were an extreme minority of users.

We don't seem to agree on the definition of "many".

Apollo had 1.5 million users. RIF about the same. That's just two of the biggest 3rd party shutting down basically overnight.

That's 3+ million users. I'm fairly certain that 3+ million people counts as "many".

That's about 5% of Reddit's DAU

Percentage wise, it's less than 10%.

So sure, it's many, it's also a very insignificant number.

You could use this as an argument against any sort of protest that inconveniences bystanders.