I think Reddit will be fine from the exterior. IPO may not go so well. But what really matters is the soul of Reddit died long ago.

Whether Reddit goes on successfully forever or goes down the drain next week I don't really care. Things like this have shown me the Fediverse is the future, that's where I'd rather make my "home" on the internet.

Regardless of how great a service like Reddit may have been, putting all of your eggs in a basket owned by a single company who's inevitable goal is to make money just isn't going to work out well. I'm not faulting a company for trying to make money, that's the world we live in and they're just playing the game. By continuing to contribute to services like that, though, we're only increasing their value, not ours.

The only chance we've got for an internet we actually want to spend time on is one that can't be controlled by a handful of corporations. Hopefully that's the Fediverse, but who knows.

A lot of the mods won't want to give up the power. That's why the original "protest" was only 2 days, it was never meant to be serious. A lot of users have left to come here, but there are way more who will never leave reddit, no matter how bad it gets.

It's not a loss of volunteer manpower, its just a changing of the guard. Sadly there will always be legions of scabs willing to take the place of those protesting.

They will still exist but they will lose a bunch for sure.

Again with this Steven Vaughan-nichols??

I was reading a previous article and it was him raging about the GPL being stuck in the 1980's, then another article it was him raging about the distro maintainers living in stone age. Now it's an article where he is raging about reddit.

Is it Steven Vaughan-nichols posting his own articles?

Reddit is becoming an unusable garbage site.

'Tis.

Let’s understand that Reddit has spent over a decade enjoying its status as a world-leading platform while kicking the ‘we’ll figure out how to monetize later’ can down the road. Along the way, some important social questions have arrived and Reddit is still failing to show leadership in this matter. Let me explain:

Those that say Reddit ‘will continue on’ aren’t looking at the situation through the lens of history. At its core, ‘Reddit is a rare social product that has seemed to become more relevant over time, as a growing user base comes to appreciate its distinctive, human-centered approach to digital conversations.’ A digital third place, built on mutually-shared beliefs and principals of digital altruism – Reddit existed to Give People Voices – aiming to create a safe space for all viewpoints.

So that’s what Reddit is supposed to do as a ‘platform.’ What about Reddit as a ‘company?’ Sadly, boardroom shenanigans have pursued Reddit throughout its entire lifecycle. Reddit lost the public-spirited people like Aaron Swartz, and gained trolls, hate groups, and the soap opera that was the Ellen Pao debacle. As Will Durant said: ‘A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within.’

Actions this year by Reddit have pushed it much farther down the path of ‘less user-oriented.’ Worse, public statements and private actions by the company leave nothing to doubt when it comes to their intentions. “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive,” Steve Huffman the CEO of Reddit, wrote in a recent AMA.

Spez' decisions have ripped the guts out of Reddit's understood social identity and community intent. Those public statements and private actions by the company I mentioned earlier? They aren’t there to make Reddit a more human-centered place. Monetizing API use won’t increase Reddit’s stature as a ‘a safe space for all viewpoints.’ Like when managers decided to launch the Challenger space shuttle, “the concerns about the O-rings that ultimately led to the explosion were buried in a vast sea of thousands of other decisions … leading up to the ill-fated launch.”

Risks don’t rely on your perspective for existence. “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away,” as Philip K. Dick famously said. This recent Reddit move to monetize APIs creates major cracks in its foundations of digital altruism and human-centered behavior. As I said last year with Twitter: “Twitter has every chance to prove to us that it can be a safe, responsible place for us to interact with our readers if they want to. In the meantime, it’s getting too weird around here. I’m mustering at the life boat station now, in case we must abandon ship.”

Originally posted here

Creators have worked to create Reddit. Those creativities are actually important rather than the survival of Reddit as a platform. Another platforms would been created any time if they enjoy creating.

Facebook was "in a death spiral" when their stock hit 80 bucks, it's tripled since and just had their highest DAU. I don't think Reddit is going anywhere any time soon.

I hope not. Actions should have consequences.