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I was looking at reddit today, and the front-page felt like nothing happened. I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled and clicked into comments. Everything is popping off buzzing with activity. All the subreddits I was subscribed to that went dark are now back up and business as usual.
I knew we were a minority, but I didn't expect this level of apathy. It feels like Spez was 100% right and this did in fact blow over. What's your take on it it? I didn't expect Reddit to immediately be a failure, but man I guess I expected a bigger impact than that.
I don't mean to toot my own horn too much, but it went exactly as I expected. Reddit is a huge business, it was never going to let a bunch of volunteers dictate its policies and business practices. And people are apathetic sheep, so an effective boycott was not in the cards either.
That said, it remains to be seen whether or not the protest was a failure. If nothing else, it motivated a ton of people to seek out alternatives, and those alternatives are getting better, in no small part due to the influx of new users, while Reddit is all but certain to continue getting worse. Digg suffered a sudden drop in popularity following its disastrous redesign, but it kept limping along for years afterward. Did Spez win this battle or did he doom his company? We'll see in five years or so.
I’m also thinking about the ongoing Hollywood writers strike. I still use my streaming subscriptions oblivious to the fact that the industry is largely at a standstill. The blackout is great for raising awareness but it’s a whimper compared to the rebellion we were hoping for.