I’ve been wanting to boycott Reddit for a long time, and the list of problems I had with it was very long. It took this API issue to finally get some community action.

But in short, Reddit is moving away from genuine community, and more towards fake astroturfed corporate content with manipulated comments and unabashed bot activity.

I am and always have been against walled garden internets, and against corporations owning and controlling what essentially becomes a part of people’s culture. I let myself get sucked into Reddit despite that without thinking about it, largely because a 3rd party app shielded need from the shittier consequences of that (like ads).

Watching spez display his true colors has just served as a reminder of why it’s not okay to build your communities somewhere that is at the mercy of a corporation. There’s just no way I’m going to support something controlled by someone like that. It’s a matter of principle now.

It’s disappointing to me how many people don’t seem to see it as a matter of principle, or else don’t see a principle as being worth any inconvenience, or being willing to give up anything they have gotten used to at Reddit.

Guy is acting more and more musk-like, that’s enough for me to bolt. But I did exclusively use RIF app for last ~13 yrs. Whenever a Google search took me to native page I was shocked at how unusable it was on mobile

Yes and no.

Broadly, at this point, I couldn’t care less what Reddit does. This is my new home.

In the weeks leading up to my move here though, it wasn’t so much that I was concerned about the third party apps specifically. I did use one - RIF - and the official app is complete garbage, so it would’ve impacted me negatively, but it was more than that. And yes - the certain increase in censorship was another issue, but still, it’s deeper than that.

Both of those things, and much more, are really just aspects of the process that Cory Doctorow has called enshittification, and that’s the thing that drove me away. And if I was still on Reddit, that would be the thing I’d be concerned about.

So it is the case for me that it’s not just about the third party apps, and that censorship is also a concern, but really those things, in my estimation, are just signs of a deeper, underlying issue.

Which I no longer have to care about.

I’m seeing a lot of worrying trends.

The whole idea of Reddit is changing. It used to be the front page of the internet and that encompassed basically everything. Now it seems like there’s a lot of focus on making it advertiser friendly

Then we see Spez basically spitting in the face of the community. Mocking them, calling the unpaid mods “entitled” and just showcasing that he actively seems to despise the users.

Now we’re seeing Reddit do shady stuff like undelete comments. Destroying any trust the community may have had in the website.

The 3rd party app issue was just the kindling that ignited all the other issues

IMHO, the big challenge with what’s happening at Reddit and Twitter is that sensible people with reasonable asks are leaving the platform.

The only people that are left are people that believe the CEO’s disinformation, or just don’t care. So now you have a more extreme echo chamber.

The thing is, when reddit does it there are millions of users ready to make noise about it and investigate what is happening, as we’re seeing right now. Even some large media outlets are getting in on the story.

If an adminstrator of some small instance starts abusing his power, like… what are you gonna do but take it or leave? Nobody else is going to care.

So I dunno, I’m conflicted. I feel despite everything it’s harder to abuse power that much on reddit because it is kinda obvious with so many eyes on you, but then again - I prefer that power being split around so you can just leave elsewhere if you don’t like it.

I think reddit has just continued making more and more moves down their path towards the IPO, and all of those moves together have shown a lot of us that we’re not interested in staying on for the rest of the ride. Complicity towards corrupt or powerhungry mods of massive communities with tangible effects on the world (e.g. r/politics), censorship, revenue-focused anti-user actions, ignoring the community, downplaying the value of volunteer mods and threatening to replace them… Yeah, thanks, no. I’m good over here in the fediverse now.

I’ve also seen people saying their deleted posts/comments/and accounts are being restored.