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Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible
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this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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Let's be honest with ourselves - no, it won't be wildly unpopular. This change affects very few people and the people still using Reddit at this point likely won't care much, and I have doubt any future change would cause much outrage either.
Because think about this - who is actively complaining and gnashing their teeth about the continued downward spiral and still scrolling, posting, moderating there at this point? I'd love to believe more people would jump ship - but if it ever happened it would take a far larger-scope fuckup than anything we've seen so far.
You know they're going to keep escalating.
The fact that they felt the need to do this says a lot.
Not in any way the average user cares much about.
The causal social media user cares for two things:
A constant uninterrupted stream of content
Dopamine in the form of upvotes/likes/what have you
If these two things aren't interupted, 90% of users won't care.
Then why go to the trouble of making this change?
Because Reddit is in the unique position where a small amount of users can affect a vast swathe of their platform - moderators.
Most mods don't care, by volume. The ones that do are often also the ones that are more active, more engaged, and more entwined with communities outside Reddit.
During the protest last year, polls come back favorably pretty much everywhere to shut down - but after the shutdown actually happened, a tidal wave of lurkers who never vote and never comment came out of the woodwork to complain and call it all stupid. Public opinion of all users is likely against practically any protest that could happen.
I don't like it, but that's how it is. The best realistic outcome is that a large contingent of content creators and more informed users leave the site - but how many of those are left that haven't already vamoosed and are still willing to leave under some unknown worse circumstance?