Two IMO on-point excerpts of the article:
The highest-ranked replies are very critical of the post. “What good is our feedback when reddit seems perfectly happy to ignore all of it?” wrote one user. “What’s the point?” Another pointed out that Huffman called mods “landed gentry.” “Show, don’t tell,” wrote another user — to which the admin replied, “Agreed.”
“A beginning of what?” replied one user. “This solves nothing, and just wastes everybody’s time.”
Reddit’s administration is sounding more and more like an abusive SO trying to gaslight you into staying in the relationship. “Baby I’ll listen to you, I swear.”
That’s a great analogy, specially if the hypothetical doggy park (or picnic spot) had multiple kiosks selling stuff - so the park owners already had some profit. As soon as the fee pops up, the owners do get a bit more short-term profit… but then people stop visiting the park, and that reduces the associated profit from both the fee and the kiosks, making the park even less profitable in the long run. And the alienated customers might not come back, even if the park owners realise the mistake and get rid of the fee.
My bet is that they’ll leave. Not due to the alienation, but because the content there will become trash. They’ll simply disengage, and their disengagement will snowball into more disengagement.
This is exactly what happens most of the time. Check out the short Twitter thread on the thermocline of trust.
This is a better link to explain that concept: https://every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the-biggest-hidden-risk-in-business
Like it wasn’t alr bad years prior.