this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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The users had the leverage and always will, without them there is no content and no money. It shouldn't have mattered if they replaced the mods if the users wouldn't have given up.
Again, the VAST majority of users never cared about it. You’re overestimating just how many people actually cared.
Reddit has been garbage for years, with most content being linked to or created by bots. There’s been little organic original content for a while.
I was on Reddit since 2007 and watched it grow and become a shithole.
Pepperidge Farms remembers the saydrah debacle
simpler times.
Yes, I complained a lot about the bots, reddit doesn't ban then because it's in their interest andIi pointed out that some are bots and that it's impossible for humans to reply to the post I made in 3. Also reddit can know who is a bot and that no human posts every 3 seconds. They removed some features where you could see who is a bot.
The users did give up. I moderated one of the subs that took part in the blackout, and we got a lot of complaints from users over it.
And what did the CEO learned? that he can do stuff like this and every thing will be alright and the users will just accept it eventually. "Bark but no bite". The CEO held no actual leverage and still doesn't have the leverage.
No leverage? I think having full control over the platform, the ability to boot out any moderators still protesting and force subs to reopen, is all the leverage.
There's nothing any of us could've done to change the outcome. We voiced our displeasure, tried to protest, but Spez was able to quash all of it by forcing out anyone who didn't accept it in the end.
The users would have won if they did actually nothing, it the sense that they wouldn't interact with reddit at all, tf is Spez gonna do when the entire business model is based on user content? He would have given up because there was no way he would have accepted to lose his entire business or a large part of it.
I don't think you realize how unrealistic it is to expect the entire userbase of Reddit to all collectively agree to get up and leave. Spez knew he didn't have to worry about the impossible.
You don't need the entire userbase or even close to the entire userbase. Just enough to make it lose more money then charging for the API. The shareholders are money driven.
Even that sizeable of a percentage would never been realistic. Spez knew this, and he was right.