The IPO is really the only thing that matters to reddit right now. Their entire decision making system is based around how to increase value and profitability as quickly as possible so that the IPO is successful (my guess is that this is in hopes of leaving investors holding the bag.)
Although they don’t care to do anything about it, this current behavior is exactly what will make them unstable in the long-term. Having better organization, and a better business acumen, and being better to their community will net better profitability. But none of that matters as long as short-term, the IPO pays for the sins of the past.
Insightful comment I heard from someone else - once Reddit reopens the subs and the third-party apps have shutdown, moderators won’t be able to moderate properly and we’ll see all sorts of terrible spam. It’s likely the largest subs won’t be able to cope.
This by itself might not be able to hurt the IPO, but if they IPO after July 1st, it might be a whole new ballpark. (In other words, the lack of effective moderation - caused by the loss of the third-party apps that helped so much with moderation - might ruin the subs and cause Reddit’s value to drop.)
I moderate a somewhat busy subreddit, the main tools that I use are probably not going to be affected by the API changes. But I only moderate while on desktop. Moderation via Reddit’s app was horrible, and the third party app I use is somehow worse.
Even though the tools I use shouldn’t be hit by the API changes, I’m still going to scale back my reddit presence considerably. Reddit betrayed my trust here, who knows what they’ll do next.
This is exactly it for me. Trust is easy to lose, and difficult if not impossible to regain once it’s gone. And that’s precisely what Reddit did.
There been a suggestion of a monthly blackout until they change course. Imagine if there was a blackout on IPO day.
Why even go back? Kbin was kinda dead a week ago which sucked, but I have no loyalty to Reddit.
It’s going to be hard to get people on board with the fediverse. It’s just not as user friendly. It’ll be a cool niche but it’ll never be a Reddit-size product. Which, maybe that’s totally fine. Maybe we get better conversations here due to that.
