I remember when Reddit announced it would begin charging commercial developers for access to its API, and in response, thousands of subreddits went dark in protest. I think it lasted for a couple of weeks. The CEO threatened the Reddit mods that he would replace them if they didn’t reopen the subs, so nearly every mod reopened and everything went back to normal. The CEO won easily without offering anything, and he was right when he said that ‘this too shall pass.’ Those third-party apps offered accessibility features for disabled people that Reddit still hasn’t implemented today. Now Reddit is getting even worse. How come there wasn’t a protest like that when they made even worse decisions?
Reddit is currently boiling the frog with ads and forcing log ins. I was a rif user and signed up for Lemmy during the app-ocalypse, but I was weak. I ended up going back to Reddit with the official app despite how much worse it was. Now the official app is so bloated with auto-play video ads that it takes up more than half of the scroll feed! I finally hopped out of the pot.