The 'Oh we're protesting with a two-day blackout' was the wrong way to go about the announcement since all that says, as has been pointed out, is 'see you Monday then.' Yet it wasn't just a two-day protest. Some came back but many didn't.
The News, be it outlets or people like Rossman, want grand gestures. They want Results. Having people trickle leave isn't dramatic, and it's hard to keep track of especially if reports are true that deleted accounts are undeleted and posts are unscrambled for the sake of searchability. As of this writing my account is listed as deleted and posts I care to find are u/[deleted] but that doesn't mean it isn't happening. If that's happening then it's impossible to tell who's Quit quit, walked away, or deleted their accounts only for it to be undeleted.
While tinfoil; the undeleting of accounts would track for someone desperate just before an IPO.
The alternatives are still in their infancy, at least when it comes to lemmy, hive, and kbin. PHP forums never went away. Hell, Ye Olden BBS's didn't go away. However, there's no monolithic Giant emerging to come to eat Reddit's lunch. So it's easy to paint any dissent as ' Redditors are never happy.'
The stereotype of 'all Reddit mods are the same. cling to fake power and they all are neckbeard pear-shaped basement-dwellers who never bathe haha look at how pathetic they are.' That is seductive to fall into as a narrative because like it or not a LOT of people want someone they can kick down at. Mods flipping to back a fash like u/spez for the sake of fake power gives people someone they can point at. 'We didn't get results because of YOU.'
Yet these are the same people who are organizing malicious compliance reorganizations of subreddits and policies have changed. Mods have been told 'comply or be replaced.' We don't know if admins handed the old username over or not to both smear the outgoing mod and to preserve a false continuity or not. We only know some subs have unlocked after the gun got leveled at their heads.
As someone with a patchy at best history against authority in online communities my sympathies are actually with the mods. Unpaid, having to herd cats, get shit on from the userbase, shit on from on high, and without anything major and high profile? They're getting shit on by otherwise 'liked' personalities such as Rossman when they tend to be the people holding thigns together day to day.
This is not a game of instant results. Modern culture has shifted to NOW! NOW NOW NOW NOW! RESULTS NOW OR IT IS A FAILURE! This is a long game of bleeding reddit dry of relevance. Reddit won't be killed, but it will be a shell of itself and it won't be seen as The Place to go to for answers.
As others have stated, news outlets lie. They don't have a story here so they will make one. Protesters crushed. Who knew internet-addicted Millenials are too spineless to see things through. Millennials are killing protests. Etc etc. Boomers get to feel smug.
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