I really can’t wait to see what’s the fallout of Reddit going dark. Does the community really wield the power? Or does Reddit have another ace up its sleeve?
The real fallout will be seeing what the numbers look like after July 1st. When all the third party users are given the unavoidable choice to switch to the official app or not. If engagement goes down then and stay lower, it’s ogre for Reddit.
I’m going to try to ween myself off reddit. I added the Lemmy page to my Home Screen where Apollo used to be and deleted the reddit app. (Don’t feel like sideloading the Lemmy app). I’ll probably still be browsing with Apollo until I can’t any more. 🤷🏻♂️
Edit to add: the death of reddit will be slow. They’re going to stick to their guns, the people who actually make reddit good will move leaving only bots, scammers, and idiots. The idiots will realize they’re surrounded by idiots, while not realizing they’re idiots, and they won’t like that so they’ll try to move here. Depending on how easy it is to move to Lemmy by the time that happens will dictate how many idiots move here. I feel like the current level of difficulty sets a high enough bar to keep the idiots out… for now.
Yeah it’s gonna be quite an interesting event. Most of reddit’s newer userbase doesn’t seem to care, but then again the mods of major subreddits do.
Mods can be replaced. Remember r/TheDonald? Not that I have -any- sympathy at all for those trogs, but the admin dealt with them by deleting all the mods and appointing new ones that would toe the line. There’s nothing to stop them from using that playbook again. A lot of people will leave, but a lot of people will shrug and go back to posting cat pictures.
