Every time I see a comment, a post - or in this case, a piece of artwork - sounding the opinion of "wtf is Reddit doing, they are shooting themselves in the foot" I feel like I have to point out that that isn't what is happening at all.
Reddit knows exactly what they are doing: They are saying "thanks for nothing, if you aren't $$$ to us, then get the fuck out."
They are very, very, purposefully showing a large portion of their user base the door. They aren't focusing on making Reddit "better", they are getting rid of the undesirable part of the population that won't mindlessly consume their increasingly aggressive moves to monetize and weaponize their platform, whether it is in the form of advertising, or corporate or political propaganda. Destroying 3P apps and upsetting the older demographic of Redditors isn't a blunder, it's a calculated move on their part in order to create some sort of dystopian shitscape forum where /u/Independent_Ad_6969 can post about how great person/movie/product/company is and get thousands of people to agree without a thought.
That said, Reddit got to where it is because of the high quality of it’s content. This move will likely have repercussions in that area.
But perhaps the goal is to IPO quick and get money out before it’s too late. It sounds like they did this once before, when they sold Reddit and later regretted leaving money on the table.
Most /all or /popular content has been low brow for years now, stale reposts, unfunny memes and low-value questions. Reddit (Inc) could whip up a reposting bot that reposted old content for the image based subreddits in a couple of hours, and it would likely be a massive success among the majority. Likewise you could construct an AI bot to repost question type content. A reddit employee could post headline news items. Between those 3 acts you could keep the majority of what remains on reddit 'happy'
Who do you think provides their content? We're not just leeches and lurkers. Yes, we consume content, but we produce and contribute considerably. This is what they're missing. Without users, Reddit will just become a cesspool of promoted trash.
they want exactly the leeches and the lurkers, those are eyeballs to curated corporate propaganda. they don't care about intelligent purpose full users, those won't click the force-feeded braindead content
I want to say that this is a bit too much towards conspiracy-theory territory to be accurate. And it may be.
But... I also feel like this isn't so impossible a scenario.
I don't think it is the most likely explanation. From my point of view, the most likely explanation is normal corporate money-hunger combined with a stubborn unwillingness to listen to / work with the community, instead going the route of 'I have decided and I'm not going back on my decision'.
I want to say that this is a bit too much towards conspiracy-theory territory to be accurate. And it may be.
Yeah, maybe using "weaponize" in the original post is too strong a word. I'm not trying to spread any sort of conspiracy bullshit. The real point I'm trying to make is what you said here:
the most likely explanation is normal corporate money-hunger
This hits the nail on the head.... This was not a Ill prepared plan. They have have plotted and discussed this for months on end carefully evaluated every possible outcome.
This protest would have come as no surprise.
They essentially weighed up internally that the fallout would not be significant enough to end them and it it was worth the calculated risk to heavily monetise the platform.
They have lost many users sure but those that don't care far outweigh those that do unfortunately. I have closed both of my accounts after more than 10yrs using the platform and won't be going back.
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