EDIT: Is this even a list of subreddits that "pledged to go private"? Looking at r/askscience, they never pledged to go private, just to go read-only, like r/books. So why are they and r/books even on this list?
I’d wager that with these 7,245 subreddits “dark”, over 99% of Reddit users are at least somewhat impacted (fairly confident in that) but also that a large minority now face a hardly recognizable front page (hard to put a number on that).
Reddit thinking they can piss off moderators an incredible level of not understanding what makes their company run.
My normie friends who all have instagrams and tiktoks are not on reddit because it's full of "reddit people", and those people are... weird to them. They still make fun of me for being a "reddit guy" despite having deleted my account years ago. Reddit wants to go public, and I think they know that they have to shed that reputation if they're going to be successful with that. They must have known what a shitstorm these API changes would cause, so maybe it's all already priced in, and they're ok with a mass exodus and they have some horrible plan to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Of course, that would completely ruin reddit, but the point is to make money above all else.
Forget about twitter or forget about Twitter's latest issues and decisions? Because I used to open twitter 3 times a day to periodically check in on recent research and stuff. I stopped doing that (maybe once a month now) because all of my fav researchers would get vitriol in the comment sections.
I'm participating in the Reddit blackout (as a 15y user), and I love to see the collective action, but not sure if it's really going to bring about long term change. Egos are clearly involved here, so I think Reddit's future hinges on spez's personal ability for change and growth. I'm not optimistic.
Maybe then, reddit will get off its ass and build proper tooling for moderators.
So far, work productivity is up, but bathroom reading/scrolling is down.
