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?
Genuinely reddit got a wholelot worse because of this and multiple other actions.
The quality of user dropped as the content became social media. You were less likely to get informative comments or even informed comments.
A lot of users jumped ship to fedi or gave up altogether. These older users would have been part of the selling point.
Popular feeds. Difficulty accessing r/all. Algorithmic feeds.
I actually did make an acount and revaanced the app to finish out a project I was getting advice from reddit on. The app sucks. Old was perfect. The app was showing days old stories on major subreddits, defaulting to “best” or “hot” but giving shit.
I remember when Victoria got fucked over and that was the highlight of the over commercialisation.
Do not use the app it sucks so much.
I still use Joey for Reddit somehow, though I only use it for local stuff since there’s no equivalent on Lemmy
And just to highlight this for OP’s question: “How come there wasn’t a protest like that when they made even worse decisions?”
Basically, everyone who would protest have left.