I don't actually think that's the case - my reading of that whole kerfuffle was that the blogger had overreacted.

Really? Do you use this criteria for everything in your life? Show me a ceo that isn't a maniac and I'll show you someone that hasnt had a proper psychological screening. Lemmy has blown up the lore on this guy anyway. Not much evidence he's any more of an asshole than most ceos.

Once old.reddit dies I'll never go back

I'm the same way, but that's because I find the text formatting, comment layout, and page framing to be almost completely unreadable without it.

My ten year old monitor is at a nice 1980x1020 and when I view a post on base reddit, it crams the post into the middle of the screen, displays one or two comments below it, and then displays... other posts? Or something? It's mind-boggling, difficult to sort out what's what, and I can't figure out who's needs are being met with a layout like that.

When I click on a post, I want to see the whole post, laid out across the majority of my screen real estate, and I want all of the comments visible beneath the post, with multiple comment sorting options.

I just realized what I'm basically asking for is a forum layout.

You know, that thing that worked for decades.

I'm putting up with Lemmy even though I have a few minor gripes (mostly related to sorting and search) because the community is part of what's important to me, but the main reason I stick around anywhere is the ability to read content I'm interested in. When the on page formatting of that content sucks, I quit reading it.

I quit subscribing to newspaper websites (and ultimately quit visiting them for news entirely) when the on page advertising squeezed out the actual journalism. I could adblock, but the formatting is still a disaster and barely resembles a news article if you print it out and hold it up to a newspaper, so screw that noise.

I'm sometimes willing to be okay with being "the product" when it's my choice and I know what I'm trading for it and judge the value of what I'm getting in return to be acceptable.

When I do that, though, and major changes I don't like get made to what I'm "getting out of it" with no way for me to go back to what I did like, it's a rug pull and a breach of trust.

For all of the market analysis everyone is supposedly doing, you'd think at least ONE major player would figure out that noone likes it when their routine grinds to a screeching halt because someone decided to move the user interface around and now nobody can find anything.