I just saw this post over on r/modcoord which is basically a massive list of subreddits participating in the blackout protest. If I’m being honest I haven’t seen this much anger and coordinated frustration since the era right before the digg exodus.
Assuming more and more subreddits join in, it’s going to send a pretty massive message to the users who interact with a blacked out subreddit. Then I’m trying to imagine what happens if after a massive coordinated blackout, Reddit continue on the current trajectory. Is Lemmy even prepared to handle the amount of potential incoming traffic that API closure could lead to? It’s absolutely bonkers to me that the Reddit team might just stay the course…
Agree. But I can’t find a specific inflection point. I still recall one of my first comments was some low effort smarmy joke that would engender upvotes on digg, and thus must have been good for Reddit. And the only response was something like “we don’t really do that here bud”
And they were right. The culture was much closer to say news.ycombinatir.com now, but with much more open subject matter.
I do know they changed how quickly things can be put on the front page after Boston. And then clearly there were things that were selectively placed there and suddenly certain, if not most subreddits couldn’t be on the front page. So that’s the main place I can point to that changed the type of content and culture from one of a popular vote to a more delayed and curated narrative.
I’m okay with it dying at this point.