Yeah I'm seeing that a lot. Floods of comments about how dumb the blackout was and that they just want to browse Reddit. I know r/SquaredCircle pledged to go dark indefinitely and there was a lot of outrage about it. I'll be very interested to see if it comes back as that was a sizeable subreddit

The new spez company strategy will work because it has been tried and tested in many dictatorships in human history. The elites and workers (mods) in institutions (subs) critical to the state (company) regularly need to be purged of dissenters (protesters) to signal the strength of the dictator and make a coup (change in leadership) seem impossible. This lets those who are against the current course of the state lose their will to fight and pursue other avenues like flight (why I‘m here). It also gives a feeling of safety to those who don‘t care or support, since they need to see less of us dissenters.

Though, in the long run (and I mean many years), I think it will backfire. People like to read all kinds of comments, even those like mine though they are often cynical/paranoid mess. So without dissenters, it becomes a sludge of sameness that appeals only to the most boring people. Hopefully leading to a growth of decentralised platforms like this that could eventually surpass all corporate social media.