People haven't been using the alternative, and that's the problem. Reddit and tech giants have grown complicit. They do not believe people would do it to them, or they think they could survive thousands of people trying to do it to them, if one can then many can.
I'd say that's a kinda a stretch, peaceful protests maybe, but peaceful and legal protests aren't the only type of protest as anyone who knows their history would be aware of. Violent and illegal protests are very much still possible even under this change, and they can very much hurt Reddit depending on how far they go.
Events like this could be considered a type of protest in the future, and while this one didn't do very much damage, ones which are more extreme very well could.
This shouldn't be surprising, do cyber companies think they are immune to the nasty kind of protest just because they can put artificial limits on the peaceful kind? Violent protest has happened all through history, it will no doubt continue into the cyber age, and it may get a whole lot uglier than just a few broken windows or a few cuts and scrapes.
That's not a good method though on it's own, there needs to be effort to undermine them. And since they don't want to do peaceful protests, the only option left are the more violent and less legal ones. The ones that compromise their platform and its data.
Hopefully he won't, Reddit may seem more powerful in this scenario, but they aren't invulnerable to threats or attacks. Hopefully enough angry people decide to do what's necessary when the time comes.
Peaceful protest, non peaceful or non legal protest is allowed only on the merit people decide to do it, regardless of what kind of mind games they try and use to stop it. If this happened once, it can happen again, just in different ways.
Sh.itjustworks deleted my comments so I'm reposting them.
Exactly, they've only decided to cut off peaceful and legal protest, they don't get a say though in non-legal or non-peaceful protests, especially involving cyber attacks against them.
reposted because SJW (fitting name) deleted all my old ones.
The old alternative is better IMO, makes change happen one way or another. Specifically the unsanctioned, and non-peaceful protests. Boycotts don't work in the days of ad-revenue, since ad-revenue funded companies have immunity from user dissatisfaction in that regard (can replace a substantial amount of users with bots that look at ads and they still get ad-revenue).
What we need are old-fashioned style pitchforks and fire protests against them, but in the digital age, using cyberwarfare, like this.
(reposted because SJW deleted my others)
The violent ones produce change one way or another. They're significantly less desirable for leaders, and that's kind of the point.
This is not a smart choice, they do know that the alternative to peaceful protests like this is violent protest right? They want to challenge that or do they think it won't be done because it's "illegal", that didn't stop these guys now did it?