I am strongly opposed to what Reddit is doing with killing off 3rd-party apps (while trying to escape the blame, by offering a ludicrously high price and scant time to adapt) and how they're threatening mods (you know, the tireless unpaid helpers to whom Reddit owes a substantial part of its existence), but...
... this is
NOT the way to get them to change the rules. It's morally and legally wrong, plus it'll just give Reddit ammunition to try to claim the moral high ground - "see? Reddit is getting picked on unfairly by all those mean, ungrateful, users and mods who will stop at nothing to beat up poor Reddit!!1!" - despite millions of Reddit users having absolutely nothing to do with the handful of cretins responsible.
I've been on Reddit for twelve and a half years and have been highly active in a variety of communities at various points (it's the closest in feel to the communities we had back on Usenet News in the 80's and 90's), and a bit of time on Reddit using Apollo on my iPad has been a part of my morning routine for years. And I'm very sad to see Apollo summarily killed off by Reddit (much like Tweetbot was killed off by Musk's Twitter). I'm reevaluating whether I'm going to stick around, and looking for alternate (read: non-Reddit) ways to interact with the same communities (I certainly won't be using the official app, it's a dumpster fire in comparison).
The whole situation is hugely frustrating, and it didn't have to be like this. If they had just said, "starting on (some date 3-4 months off), in order to access Reddit with a 3rd-party app, you will need an individual Reddit API key, which you can get by subscribing to Reddit Premium", they would have gotten tens or hundreds of thousands of new subscriptions to Reddit Premium, with very little effort on their part. And keeping the good will of all the communities they serve. I have no problems paying Reddit for access, I find it a valuable resource. What I do have problems with is ads, crappy official apps, and creepy data collection / tracking. Reddit wanted the one path they saw that would get them the most money and control, and I'm glad it's blowing up in their faces. But I'm sad that the great gathering place is getting torn apart, because a CEO is stubborn and egotistical (he's had documented cases of silently editing
other people's posts that were critical of him). And I'm fearful that in the process we may be losing access to a decade plus of valuable insight and answers. It feels a bit like burning down a library. **** /u/spez.
Oh well, in the meantime, some of the malicious compliance (from subreddit moderators who were threatened that if they didn't reopen their subreddits they'd be kicked and replaced) is... delicious (borrowing from
a post in
/r/OutOfTheLoop):
- /r/pics has opted to only allow pics of John Oliver, usually "looking sexy" and is the main cause of the John-Oliver-itis spreading throughout various reddit posts.
- /r/Wellthatsucks (previously about mishaps) is only allowing posts about vacuums.
- /r/memes is only allowing medieval/Landed Gentry memes in reference to Spez's (reddit CEO and co-founder) recent comments regarding the blackout protest and moderators.
- /r/Steam is only allowing posts about steam (the state of water) instead of Steam the Storefront (though it looks like that one may have been overthrown now).
(In many/most of these cases and others, the mods put up a poll asking the subreddit's members whether they wanted to stay closed and risk Reddit Admin intervention, or reopen, or take the malicious compliance route, and users keep choosing the latter. It's hilarious, but it also shows that the Reddit CEO is having trouble being in control and further hurts their valuation before their planned IPO. **** /u/spez.)
