If this had been handled differently, Huffman could have even won the support of redditors to help make the platform profitable.
I'm sure most reasonable people believe Reddit should be able to pay its bills so that we can have it as a resource. Spez just came out of the gate pissing everyone off and then doubled down at every opportunity to explain the move.
Every major forum/social media site has had this adoption curve. The early adopters are dedicated and can actually see their contributions make a difference. As the site attracts more and more casual users the quality of interactions descends to the lowest common denominator and loudest voices.
For that reason, I think there will always be demand for a "new thing" because those early adopter contributors are so good at making it happen.
I've been getting some of my Reddit blackout news from Twitter (lol, I know) and have been disappointed to see how many people declared the Reddit Blackout a failure because of how annoying it is to google for something only to find it hidden behind a private subreddit.
My dudes. Don't miss the forest for the trees.
High quality commenters and posters wanted to leave the answers to some of the most important questions because of the community feeling. And now those exact commenters feel ripped off by the situation. Like the CEO of reddit decided he is the sole arbiter of all access to that freely provided content. These power commenters feel forced to use an app they don't want to use, forced to comply with policies and CEOs whom they dislike. He sold them out. But they won't stick around - they are highly mobile and will move to a new site leaving reddit to sink into the hole it's become.
There's a lot of nostalgia in those old forums but it is nice to be able to take your reputation around the interwebs with you. Not to mention that a lot of those old forum operators had to be technical on some level to maintain their instances.
I have a theory and haven't seen anyone else suggest it yet. While I am sure Spez is the tard monkey he appears to be, he only has one choice.
The board/VC investors are ready to cash out now. Spez is too because this ceo job is a lot more annoying to do every day than trolling people. There is a massive payday just around the corner awaiting him and his buddies. The only metrics that matter are what his company looks like on paper to the likes of Goldman Sachs. He doesn't give a rip about mods, 3P apps, APIs, or even users.
Reddit is (probably) running out of cash. They can't even find a measly $10m bucks for Apollo. They can't afford to NOT get the ad revenue from 3P clients because the bills are so tight right now. You can't meet the salary of 3,000 "Snoos" (reddit employees) by pimping reddit gold all day long.
Spez needs to wrap this up ASAP so this bitch can get put out to sale and he can ride off into the sunset.
Time to just look to the future. reddit will have a lot of traffic for a long time because of it's huge footprint. So instead of making posts and engaging there, bring good content to Kbin and the fediverse.
Make it so useful and interesting that the good traffic starts to divert.