Reddit Blackout

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It was nice to have all the assholes in one bidet.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

Essentially, Reddit is trying to force users to use its own app which is an aesthetic nightmare, barely even seems to work, is choked to the gills with autoplaying ads, and to top it all off, doesn't even have basic support for people with disabilities.

Outside of lacking accessibility features, I have never observed any of these issues, and I use the Reddit official app almost exclusively. I say "almost," because the rest of the time I'm browsing on PC. This whole thing strikes me as overblown, and the protests range from poorly thought-out to downright immature. Anyone who actually thought privating the subs would accomplish anything is an idiot. Yeah, let's do a form of protest that puts all the cards in Reddit's hand. Fucking brilliant strategy right there.

Every sub I actually care about is back to business as usual, and half of those never went dark to begin with. I look forward to reading everyone's shocked reactions on July 1st when nothing changes and life goes on.

[Hydra009]

Outside of lacking accessibility features, I have never observed any of these issues, and I use the Reddit official app almost exclusively. I say "almost," because the rest of the time I'm browsing on PC. This whole thing strikes me as overblown, and the protests range from poorly thought-out to downright immature. Anyone who actually thought privating the subs would accomplish anything is an idiot. Yeah, let's do a form of protest that puts all the cards in Reddit's hand. Fucking brilliant strategy right there.

Every sub I actually care about is back to business as usual, and half of those never went dark to begin with. I look forward to reading everyone's shocked reactions on July 1st when nothing changes and life goes on.

You know, I don't just make stuff up for shits and giggles.  The ad creep is very much a real thing that TONS of people have complained about.  These sorts of promoted ads would display with great regularity on the official app.  IIRC, it was like every 5-10 posts.  It was basically like trying to watch Youtube without an adblocker.  And heaven forbid trying to browse reddit from your mobile browser.  Sheesh.

While I didn't use the official app for very long because it annoyed me (there are many third party apps for a reason), I was able to do a side-by-side comparison with my brother between the official app and RIF.  We have identical phones, btw.  There really were substantial differences in layout and usability and he really did struggle with ads and the memes he wanted to share with me often wouldn't load while I was able to share my stuff more easily (RIF does have ads, but it was at a much less frequent rate and just displaying the same exact audiobook ad over and over, which was less intrusive and so bizarrely insistent that I found it more amusing than annoying)

Technical issues are very much a thing.  "Barely works" may not be your experience, but rest assured, it is a fairly accurate depiction at times, especially in comparison to the third-party apps.  And I don't anticipate that situation improving when users basically have no choice but to use the official app.

And yes, we could argue till the cows come home if these subreddits have done the right thing in a mature way or not.  But when everyone from r/awww to r/apple of all places says that you're being money-grubbing, maybe that's when you should take a look at the ol' mirror.

And yes, I could probably rejoin and be perfectly fine - if and only if I browse it on desktop - r/awww has come back up to normal operations, r/pics is still John Oliver, and the other couple of subreddits that I like are down forever or shells of their former selves.  But as I have pointed out, that sort of content is imminently available on other platforms on much less adversarial terms with their own users and moderators.

You say that things won't ultimately change on that site and I think you might be right.  Where we perhaps differ is WHY things won't change.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

And yes, we could argue till the cows come home if these subreddits have done the right thing in a mature way or not.  But when everyone from r/awww to r/apple of all places says that you're being money-grubbing, maybe that's when you should take a look at the ol' mirror.

Regardless if my anecdotal evidence is representative of others or not, I can't take people seriously when they do ineffective protests and make criticisms that anyone with business sense could have predicted would go in one ear and out the other.

Reddit has no incentive to respond to these protests. None. Zero. Users aren't the customers, we are the product being served to the real customers: advertisers. I'll give some credit to the subs who went pornographic, since that actually impacts Reddit's wallet. But only some credit, because ultimately they're still handing all the cards to Reddit.

A boycott would do the same thing while also taking away much of Reddit's ability to retaliate. But, evidently, the outrage isn't as strong as people's addiction to the platform. This was famously exemplified by the moderators of a sports sub, r/NBA if I remember correctly, who continued to use the sub for themselves while it was private. The main dip in users during the blackout, as far as I've been able to ascertain, was from people trying to access Reddit posts via google searches, but being met with a private sub. Regular users appear to have continued right on using subs that remained open, for the most part. Even including people supposedly in favor of the protest.

It's not that I don't sympathize or understand, but I'm gonna call a clown show what it is.