In the beginning it wasn't meant to be a protest. It was meant to be a blackout to show everyone 'this is what reddit is like when the people you depend on leave' and make everyone aware of the issues, and it accomplished that in a massive way.

The protestors were the ones doing it until the proposed API changes were called off, but of course reddit smashed that by shutting down communities and replacing mods.

> It was meant to be a blackout to show everyone 'this is what reddit is like when the people you depend on leave'

Sorry but this is just revisionist history. If this was the intention them the mods and third party app users would have just taken 2 days off. They didn't do that, they set their communities to Private. It was a protest.

It's not "revisionist history", it's what happened. I was on Reddit for 3-4 hours each day and watched the entire thing very close. It was a way to show reddit admins who they're giving the middle finger to, and what reddit will look like when those people are gone. There's a reason it was called a "blackout" and not a "protest"... The protest wording only came up once the blackout had already started.

So really, the "protest" is your revisionist history.

I'm not the person you're arguing with, but I'm a decade old user that hasn't been on Reddit since before the blackouts started. As far as I'm concerned, the blackout and protests have always been the same thing.