The /r/videos mods are going all out and someone made this lovely graphic to explain why subs are going dark next week.
While I’d love to have my users on Lemmy, I also hope that this actually does something for Reddit and they reverse course on their planed changes.
I’m not putting it past reddit to suddenly backpedal and/or lower the API charges significantly then say they listen to their users/communities. And then slowly push 3rd party apps away. The damage has been done for me.
And then they still won’t allow NSFW content but somehow people will forget about that part…
I am skeptical. The pricing on the API wasn’t merely unrealistically optimistic, it was “eleventy morbillion dollars” high. People only negotiate on numbers when they actually want to be paid. Reddit doesn’t want to be paid, it wants the apps to die.
These execs that are pushing for IPO are probably so out of touch that your sentiment is well placed.
They might still be well aware of the damage they’re causing with this move. What if they think it’s all worth it because of all the money they will be getting in the future? What if they think it’s a risk worth taking? Besides, business comes first.
I’ve said before, but I think they made a calculated decision to intentionally throw away all of their 3rd party app users. Essentially, some of those users will go to the first party app, but either way, none of us are giving reddit any ad revenue anyway, and that’s how Reddit makes money.
Their calculation was wrong for several reasons:
This is probably great for (very) short-term income, which is what Reddit wants before they go public. But obviously, it’s bad in every way beyond that.