Ripples Through Reddit as Advertisers Weather Moderators Strike
Reddit Migration@kbin.social – 14 points – 
adweek.com
Reddit is redirecting some impressions away from existing communities, and some advertisers are pausing campaigns.
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Damn. Too bad the mods settled on a two-day blackout. Shoulda gone for a week to start…
I think it's good that they went for a seemingly small period, at least at first. This is a great way to convince the users to join the protest, which is the fuel of it, as asking so many people to forget about Reddit for longer easily could result in more people ignoring the actual boycott because of the scale of the change to their internet habits.
Having many services welcoming redditors is a great help, of course, but it's much easier to convince a large number of people to keep the protest going now that many have found alternatives they like - perhaps some won't migrate completely, but they may use Reddit less as a result. The amount of these people could have been significantly lower had the people had to consider going off Reddit for a similarly significant longer period of time.
The 48 hours of boycott may seem like a small step, but this step is a stepping stone to huge impacts later on, as we're already seeing by the attention the whole situation is picking up.
We're far from the credits roll in this movie.
After June 30, the mods who rely on 3rd party apps have a hard choice, since the in-house Reddit apps blow. And mods are unpaid, so why put up with shitty treatment?
Checking on ModCoord - there are a bunch of the big subs in it for the long haul. https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/148ks6u/indefinite\_blackout\_next\_steps\_polling\_your/
Hopped onto reddit just now only to comment on that post that my little sub is staying dark indefinitely.
That is the only way this works. I’m glad to see the big ones aren’t capitulating!
Right now the blackout is just a gesture. The crunch will come after June 30th, if they really go through with it.
Even if people do go back after the 30th, killing off Apollo, RIF, Bacon etc. will drastically cut traffic to Reddit. I use the desktop version maybe once a week and it’s barely for 10 minutes. All of my traffic went through Apollo. Good luck with your ad rates when your traffic plummet.
Reddit no longer cares about traffic that does not result in ad impressions. That potentially millions of 3rd party app users may leave has nothing but good consequences in their eyes (less resources spent on free users), and if even 1% of those convert to their 1st party apps or website that's a net gain for them.
The blackout is meant to show these users are not freeloaders but are part of the backbone of the content and interaction within these communities. Having ad networks take notice is a good thing for the protest, but if it will be a flash in the pan it won't cause any meaningful change.
I think many people were caught in the hype that they couldn't get this perspective. Two days was never going to mean anything in the short term, and reddit had everyone backed into a powerless position from the very start of the API. Consequences to HQ from here on will be hard to quantify and drawn out, but imho they're still squarely on the path of enshitification.
But the problem is those people are potential content creators. They are arguably more advanced users, and therefore more likely to create content. And that content drives engagement, which drives ads.