[jfasi]

If the community decides to leave, it won't be because of API pricing, it'll be because the content and spaces they used to enjoy were taken offline because of a minority of moderators.

[chongli]

Moderators and content creators. The majority of Reddit users are lurkers. They never contribute anything, they don’t even comment.

The people who post all the links, all the pictures, all the text posts, all the most valuable comments (as opposed to the drive-by meme comments), these are the people most pissed off at Reddit. When Reddit loses them they will have nothing left.

All those lurker eyeballs they want to monetize will leave because they have nothing to look at.

[loktarogar]

I think you didn't see the amount of popular support these actions had. Many subreddits put it to a vote to go dark or not. The ones I am a part of were 90%+ in support.

[LexiMax]

If "the community" is upset at the moderators, they can take solace in the fact that the communities are almost certainly coming back - it's just a matter of if it's under new management or not.

The real question will be if that new management is up to the task, and somehow, I feel like trying to scrape together a new mod team for thousands of subreddits on short notice is not going to work out like they had hoped.

[goda90]

There are lots of users that are unhappy with Reddit for this. I've stopped using it this week.

[GeorgeTirebiter]

I looked at one reddit: r/science. That is blockaded now. A 'private community'. This is (was) an aggregator of SCIENCE news and information. How does blocking the flow of potentially life-saving information help "the cause"?

Reddit is dead to me, too. This is beyond sad.

[SmokeInFog]

I left precisely because of API pricing. I'm not using Reddit's shitty mobile app. I see the writing on the wall. old.reddit.com will be gone within a few years along with RES. I won't suffer that.

Fuck 'em.

[fzeroracer]

I mean if they follow your plan and replace the moderators of the subreddits I enjoy then I'm done with Reddit. Reddit can't expect to freeride off various communities and then kick out mods without a reasonable excuse, and this definitely does not classify.

[jfasi]

And if they allow popular subreddits to remain private indefinitely then a lot more users will leave than just the ones who oppose the API changes. Better to force communities back open and let the most obstinate users leave than keep them private to satisfy the feelings of that obnoxious minority.

[ehnto]

Which happened because of API pricing? The moderators are why the community works at all at this scale. They're also how reddit makes the site palatable to advertisers. That's just the current controversy anyway, Reddit inc has been making numerous user hostile choices and their choice to push third party apps away is clearly not for the benefit of the community.