I’ll start believing in Reddit’s commitment to direct democracy when users will be able to also vote out admins and u/spez if they don’t like their decisions.

Until then, it’s just corporatism under the guise of some fluffy words.

That meme is 11 years old now.

Shocking.

It’s pretty crazy how u/spez seems to focus on some random third party app developers making money off of Reddit.

He tries to couch this in language about AI and the cost of maintaining an API and that the API was never meant to support 3PAs, but then loops back to what sounds like insane hatred and envy of third party developers.

And then, in the same interview, he points out how unpaid moderators who do all the work and make Reddit all the money have too much power.

It’s lunacy.

Yeah, we don’t know yet. On the one hand, it’s still the early days of (some) people leaving Reddit - and who knows if they won’t go back.

On the other hand, the API payment structure and the shutdown of 3PAs hasn’t even happened yet. Even people who are completely oblivious to the situation but who are using a 3PA will have to decide if they’ll be able to deal with the shitty official app, if they’ll just stop browsing Reddit on mobile, or if they’re willing to take a look at alternatives.

Yeah, we’re not in disagreement here.

Otherwise why would businesses pay to host interesting content for free?

See, I think that’s the problem.

Wikipedia is one of the all-time great projects on the internet, and it keeps chugging along all without forcing miserable ads on its users or charging them a subscription fee or selling their data to the highest bidder.

And their donation drives are perfectly fine, and I’m perfectly willing to give them some money every now and then as long as they’re asking for what is needed to keep the site up and running.

Maybe not everything should be run as a for-profit business, with an overriding goal of monetizing clicks and maximizing profits?

A few months ago, the message was also “Reddit is not going to start charging for API access.”

I’m not saying old.reddit.com is going away in the very near future, but I also wouldn’t put too much trust into whatever spez says on any given day.

I hear you. Yes, not a fan of people being hostile just because something is different.

I’m just hoping that people who enjoy this experience will stay and that more people who also like this experience will join, and that people who want everything to be exactly like Reddit will return to Reddit or to some Reddit-like platform that works exactly like Reddit.

but the problem is these people want it to be done by the service/devs/whatever.

I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt. Coming from a centralized service means people are used to things working in a certain way, and they may just not have considered all the advantages of not being forced into a single, centralized service.