I remember when Reddit announced it would begin charging commercial developers for access to its API, and in response, thousands of subreddits went dark in protest. I think it lasted for a couple of weeks. The CEO threatened the Reddit mods that he would replace them if they didn't reopen the subs, so nearly every mod reopened and everything went back to normal. The CEO won easily without offering anything, and he was right when he said that 'this too shall pass.' Those third-party apps offered accessibility features for disabled people that Reddit still hasn't implemented today. Now Reddit is getting even worse. How come there wasn't a protest like that when they made even worse decisions?
Some subs went dark and never came back. Some went dark, came back only because Reddit appointed new mods and removed the old ones. There was a big shift in the top 25 or so most popular subs around that time. Total number of upvotes on the top posts also started trending downward around that time, not that I have any evidence that is a result of lowered traffic.
