Quote from the post:
Hello everyone, I’ll try to keep this short as I know there’s been a lot going on over the last few days. When we made our announcement last week, we intended to get Reddit's attention on a subject that our team found extremely concerning. /r/Videos is joining a larger coordinated protest and signing an open letter to the admins found here.
The announcement was of exceedingly high API prices which we all know was to intentionally kill 3rd party applications on reddit (Apollo, Reddit is Fun, Boost, Relay, etc.) Since that post several things have become clear; Reddit is not willing to listen to its users or the mod teams from many of its largest communities on this matter. Yesterday all major third-party Reddit apps announced that they would be shutting down on the 30th of June due to these changes. There were no negotiations and Reddit refused to extend the deadlines. The rug was pulled out from under them and by extension all of the users who rely on those tools to use reddit.
In addition to this, the AMA hosted by Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, which was intended to alleviate concerns held by many users about these issues, was nothing short of a collage of inappropriate responses. There are many things to take away from this AMA but here are the key points. Most disappointingly it appears that Reddit outright misconstrued the actions of Apollo's creator /u/iamthatis by saying that he threatened Reddit and leaked private phone calls, something done only to clear his name of another accusation.
So what’s happening? The TL;DR? Effective tomorrow (6/11/2023), /r/Videos will be restricting posting capabilities. Anything posted before the cut off date will likely be the final front page of our community before we go private indefinitely. In the unlikely scenario that Reddit ownership has a sudden change of heart and capitulates on their decisions we will reopen, but until that happens /r/Videos will stay closed. Many other communities have come to similar decisions and we support those who have decided to take a stand.
I think any and all subreddits should go this way.
Reddit is only popular because of the users. We create the content. Yes, a lot of posts on the website are external links but all discussions are generated and concluded by us, the users.
Shutting subs down for 1-2 days and going back to normal is not going to have much of an impact. It's akin to a server blip. If subs shut down indefinitely then reddit has a real problem. 'Normal' users will start to take notice, whereas they currently might not be paying much attention. These subs should go the other route. Shut down and promote alternatives (such as lemmy!) to divert traffic away from reddit.
Pigboy Spez talked about not being profitable. No shit, you dick. This is how you become even less profitable, by pissing off the entire user base.
It's also the mods, working for free while other platforms spend millions on moderation.
I remember several years ago there was another exodus towards Voat, it didn't last long because that place was an unmoderated mess, 99% was spam, unbearable, people got back to reddit really quick and Voat shutdown a few years later.
I really don't understand how spez cannot realize this, piss off all the mods (on top of users) and you're doomed because you have nothing to moderate the platform anymore, see how your investors can be happy about that.
Wasn't the exodus to Voat largely due to Reddit cracking down on a few hate speech subs? Really narrow segment of the user base moving to other platforms vs. what's happening today.
Yes but my point is that lack of moderation is devastating for these platforms, even to those thinking they don't need it.
People who left reddit for voat had even more reasons to stay there because of voat's explicit policy of not moderating anything, yet they didn't and the platform died (literally).
That's why I said I don't get what spez is thinking, since reddit mods are not paid for it, take mods away and reddit dies, regardless of how many people are currently moving away from it (that I believe are still a minority of the entire reddit userbase, many of them probably don't even know what's happening).
Honestly I'm waiting for the day when AI takes care of the moderation. No more biased mods/government actors/who knows what kind of people run the very big subs that manipulate people and gaslight them.
Just biased/manipulative AI instead.
I mean yes, it entirely depends how you set it up. If you want a biased/manipulative AI then sure, go for it
Yeah. They shut down subs like fatpeoplehate. So those are the type of people who went to voat.
the 1-2 day blackout is a shot across the bow. a lot of subs have committed to going private indefinitely on 6/30, I know there's at least some that are planning on that as well, but haven't gone public about it.