My assumption here is that Huffman may win the battle, but he might lose the war. Even if he manages to get the rampaging mods under control, how much damage will he do in the process?
r/pics will probably end up going NSFW, which gets another major sub to lose ad revenue. Can Reddit manage to get all these subs back on topic without pulling some fascist takeover of the mod teams? These malicious compliance subs aren't explicitly breaking any rules, and taking action against them will just fan community outrage more.
They can obviously ban NSFW material, but that'll force a migration far faster than any blackout ever could. Not to mention 3rd party apps going dark on July 1st, which might see a not insignificant drop off of mobile users.
Reddit has likely begun its slow descent, and u/spez's best long term strategy would be to reverse course and keep the public API. Of course, he'll never do that since that just communicates to any investors that you have no control over your community. Not sure how he digs his way out of this one.
Hell, just coming out with a statement that you're delaying the paid API by six months would fizzle out most protests. But they have dollar signs in their eyes with ChatGPT using Reddit for data and they want that money now.
Favourite game music?
Ok continuing on from my last thread, he's a different question....
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is fighting a losing battle against the site's moderators (qz.com)
The company wants to charge for API access. Its volunteer moderators have other ideas