What it says on the tin, really. I think this is going to be an issue when they get around to the smaller communities… It’s going to suck majorly, as most people’s default will remain with reddit for community discussion like this…
Just because some users decide to stay with reddit does not mean they deserve to have their community destroyed.
Beg to differ there. Reddit has shown it’s hand. They want to profit off free content while giving nothing back to the people who create that content. Back them at your peril.
The actual users or the community I should say, is not profiting off of anything. Don’t conflate the users of the service or app that is Reddit with its management.
Let’s be clear on one thing: as with any private social network, Reddit’s users are the product, not the customers.
I didn’t conflate them. I never said the users were trying to profit. Reddit is trying to profit off user generated content that is free given and moderated while whining that others are using the api they gave away for free to do the same thing, except those developers actually provide better user experiences and accessibility than Reddit does. Reddit has shown that the only thing that matters is the money they can extract from the free labor of others, so staying on that platform is acceptance of those consequences.
Reddit is making it much more difficult for the moderators to build and maintain communities. They’re also cutting off accessible apps for using Reddit, eliminating a portion of their userbase.
Brass tacks, the community will come back (or another one will form, like r/Star_Trek or something) if people are willing to do the work. This requires them to be okay with doing unpaid labor for Reddit even while Reddit is making that labor harder. They also have to be okay with crossing a picket line.
I’m not defending reddit as a corporate entity, I “defending” its users and the community and argue against punishing them to punish reddit.
That’s a fully general argument against strikes. We shouldn’t punish Piggly-Wiggly’s customers by striking; they might not be able to get their groceries somewhere else. We shouldn’t punish drivers by striking at the auto shop; some people won’t be able to get their cars repaired.
The big difference is that r/StarTrek is nowhere near as important as a grocery store or auto shop. People need to eat to live. People need to get places. People don’t need to discuss Star Trek online at all. Much less do they need to discuss it specifically on Reddit. So the argument is more like: we shouldn’t punish customers of Sam’s Nail Salon by striking; they might have to go to Pat’s Nail Salon a couple blocks over instead, and that’s just not fair.
