I remember when Reddit announced it would begin charging commercial developers for access to its API, and in response, thousands of subreddits went dark in protest. I think it lasted for a couple of weeks. The CEO threatened the Reddit mods that he would replace them if they didn’t reopen the subs, so nearly every mod reopened and everything went back to normal. The CEO won easily without offering anything, and he was right when he said that ‘this too shall pass.’ Those third-party apps offered accessibility features for disabled people that Reddit still hasn’t implemented today. Now Reddit is getting even worse. How come there wasn’t a protest like that when they made even worse decisions?
I arrived when the API protest hit (rip kbin.social). I think I’m one of the few active Lemmings who’s also still somewhat active on Reddit. However, I was always pretty mindful of how I set up Reddit, only browsed my subscribed subs, and unsubscribed from almost all the big defaults. I have since unsubscribed from (I think) all of the defaults, but I still go there to see AskHistorians, keyboard, sports, and local subs.
None of those things have a really active flow of news and discussion here, and by and large I think I’m still mostly reading comments from real redditors. To be quite honest it’s not bad. However, the bigger communities there are well and truly cooked, and the vibe here for general interest and shitposts is much more my speed. It’s not as easy to find people whose interests exactly align, but people here are cool and interesting.
Ultimately, I accept that even “Small-Reddit” like I’m using is on borrowed time and will likely be dead internet before disappearing completely. When that happens, I’ll be a little sad but I won’t be surprised. I don’t feel like it’s quite there yet, however, and until I’m ready to cut all the toxic tech-bro owned companies out of my life, singling out Reddit when I still find some value in it felt like cutting off my nose to spite my face.
To be fair I got banned multiple times and I also deleted my accounts because of how the mods and reddit operates, shadow banning my comments, banning my account without giving me a reason while actual bots roam the site. I also didn’t like the big communities because of their rules and hidden rules and the mods being horrible and power hungry. One of my account got banned, probably because I posted a picture of Charlie Kirk as a fountain and making fun of him. I liked some subs like r/embedded or r/arduino but it’s not worth keeping an account for them. I hated the mods of the big subreddits and i coudn’t make my own subreddit because reddit would ban me. I hate mods and reddit for their double standards, applying the rules for me but not for others.