this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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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?

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[–] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 11 points 4 hours ago

I said I'd leave when they did that, and I did. Been here ever since. I think a bunch of people did the same.

There's a kinda sunk cost thingy to leaving Reddit, especially when you've been there like ten years and have loads of karma and awards and stuff. But really none of that means anything and it's not hard to walk away from.

[–] Zwrt@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 5 hours ago

Subreddits that refused where to be taken over by reddit themselves, there was no way to win and remain there.

The only appropriate answer was to leave and many people did. What remains there is people who never cared and llm bot accounts to boost perceived value.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 31 points 7 hours ago

I'm over here now. I don't care what happens there.

[–] HerbGrower@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 hours ago

They had their 2 day shutdown in protest and then came back like nothing happened. Why would reddit bother listening to them?

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 6 hours ago

I stayed on reddit for a year or so after and there was an extremely noticeable decline in quality. A load of massive subreddits completely died after the mods were booted off, and replaced with worse ones.

[–] dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world 9 points 7 hours ago

Well Reddit requires a login to view any content now, old reddit included

[–] lithiumground@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

Prefer Lemmy

[–] abc@suppo.fi -1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

It served the same purpose every protest has for the last 2 decades, i.e. made the protesters feel so good about themselves for an hour.

[–] anarchy79@lemmy.world 41 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Well we're here, aren't we?

[–] Gonzako@lemmy.world 7 points 8 hours ago

Yeah, the API pricing thing was how I got to lemmy

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 7 points 20 hours ago

Yeah this is the most Ironic platform to post this.

[–] jmsy@lemmy.world -1 points 8 hours ago
[–] COASTER1921@lemmy.ml 46 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

This is what made me switch to Lemmy. The official app just wasn't mature enough on Android at the time and I didn't like the principle of it. So here I am 3 years later.

[–] MintyFresh@lemmy.world 7 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Same. I hadn't realized how much capitalism and bot driven BS had creeped into reddit. Twas like a breath of fresh air.

Then again I did install Linux on my computer shortly after joining lemmy, so maybe I'm a sucker for y'all's propaganda too.

I did the same, and yeah, the Linux evangelism here got me too.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 21 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (3 children)

I mean…my handle here is proof enough what happened.

I used Narwhal, IIRC Reddit made it official and then killed it when they started their own app, I bought Apollo because good app and dev, then reddit killed that one too. Along with all the other BS they did, that was the final straw. Been here ever since.

[–] mechoman444@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Ya... I used boost. I use boost now for Lemmy.

I used reddit because boost was so good. I only go on reddit now if I'm extremely bored. And even then I don't spend much time on it.

I also like the engagement here even if reddits riffraff is here more than there.

[–] anarchy79@lemmy.world 5 points 21 hours ago
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[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 49 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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.

[–] marzhall@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

And just to highlight this for OP's question: "How come there wasn’t a protest like that when they made even worse decisions?"

A lot of users jumped ship to fedi or gave up altogether.

Basically, everyone who would protest have left.

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[–] Obituarykidney@lemmy.world 53 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Everyone is saying people folded, but what I recall happening was Reddit gave an ultimatum. "Open your subreddit back up or we will replace the mods". And that's exactly what they did. Then after killing third party apps they enshittified everything in the web/mobile web version too to try and force people to the app. They've even removed r/all recently.

[–] HerbGrower@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 hours ago

So fuck all solidarity. IIRC it was mostly a 2 day protest too. If more agreed on an indefinite one and all refused. Let reddit replace mods I guess, have fun.

Could even go for directly attacking the platform. Upvote shit posts, downvote good ones.

[–] treesapx@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

To me, it was a stark period in the decline of reddit quality. What little remained of the community at large died then. Reddit has been a ghost of its former self since.

[–] Obituarykidney@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Yeah it's full of bots now, and without r/all you have to seek out specific subreddits or use their curated feed. Both of which kind of just sucks.

[–] Phantom_Engineer@lemmy.ml 41 points 1 day ago

Three things happened:

  1. RedReader did get a free api key for being accessible for screen readers. All the other third party apps got left in the dust.

  2. The people who were seriously mad came here. Lemmy was still a bit of a ghost town before these protests, and it was around this time that it gained enough traction to be a viable platform imo.

  3. The people that didn't leave got waited out by reddit and went back.

[–] topperharlie@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago

I mean, we are all here, in a community that as far as I know didn't exist in a significant way before. Was it a sizeable chunk? we will never know because (a) Reddit needs to cook their numbers to look good to investors and (b) big social networks tend to have a lot of inertia and many people will just stay, I have many friends that are still in twitter because "is a good place to follow good programmers".

IMHO reddit is the same direction of Facebook, so heading towards irrelevance, but no idea how far, and some people are even still on Facebook, so who knows.

The problem is that there are no real popular alternatives, and not many people want to be somewhere like fediverse, specially losing a significant amount of users. But also for the complexity of the decentralized nature. Coming from someone that tried making jabber a thing for the longest time as opposed to msn messenger: is not gonna happen.

Normies be normies 🤷‍♂️

[–] Knoxer@lemmy.world 36 points 1 day ago (3 children)

People started calling out who wanted the better for reddit "tantrums" so the good part of reddit left, and many of them are here on lemmy networks.

As results Reddit's quality today is basically Facebook. no difference.

[–] fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com 10 points 1 day ago

I think that's about the time that Ask Peter starting showing up a ton. Quality tanked.

[–] GalacticRobot@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I think that's basically it. Reddit was full of bots, and now it's just bots arguing with each other and trying to shove whatever they are promoting in front of you. Add in the slow death of old reddit, it's simply not worth going to the site any longer.

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[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 1 day ago

Literally why I'm here. Never looked back

[–] demizerone@lemmy.world 6 points 23 hours ago

People don't value their data or freedom.

[–] Crescent@fedinsfw.app 68 points 1 day ago (7 children)

I came here and havent been on reddit since the API stuff. RIP RIF.

Recently I've been struggling though. The number of posts that just worsen my mood has been increasing and I have began to associate Lemmy with upsetting content.

To be honest I still have hope for this platform but I've been looking around. I'm not planning to go back to reddit yet.

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[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 40 points 1 day ago (3 children)

The brain and the heart left reddit back then, the gut and the asshole remain there.

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[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Because plenty of us who left are still here

[–] Tomato666@lemmy.sdf.org 29 points 1 day ago (1 children)

RIF stopped working. Now I only end up on Reddit if the search results says something I am looking for is there, and if there's somewhere else I try that source first.

Lemmy is okay, and I need to filter it, but that was the same on Reddit.

One the plus side I spend less time online 🎉

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[–] BilboBargains@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago

The enshitification is real and the way to fight this is by collective action and escalation. When the mods took action collectively it shook Reddit and forced them to ban the offending users. If the userbase maintained the pressure with a boycott there is no way Reddit Inc could withstand the pressure. However, the asset owning class have configured our society to prevent collective organisation and protest. Power is being concentrated in fewer and fewer white mens hands. This Epstein-class of people tend to be psychopaths and narcissists because those are useful attributes for amassing power. We see the effects of this everywhere we look in the form of censorship, punitive legal statute, lobbying, corruption, inflation and the rise of fascism. Open source projects such as Lemmy, Wikipedia, Mastodon, Linux, Signal, etc, form the basis of an antidote.

[–] roserose56@lemmy.zip 34 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I came here! Not everyone followed because the didn't understand the concept of lemmy, and in general fediverse.

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[–] inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Because most people on a day to day basis don't give two shits about this type of internet drama over third party API's as long as they have their entertainment that suits their needs and it's still easy to access and provides them what they want at a price they're willing to pay.

Most people who are using social media aren't tech people who even know what a API is much less care and most people don't care about whatever app they're using to access social media as long as they have an app. As for mods, let's face it, they weren't and aren't going to give up their little slice of power over an API in the long run, on reddit and here.

Also, while you say reddit has gotten even worse, which is a subjective opinion that you and most of us all share, their stuff still works for the users at the end of the day with their extremely large user base and still thriving niche communities which lemmy just does not have due to the much smaller user base.

I think most of this is spot on, but the hearsay was that the subreddits who did participate in the shutdown were threatened with an ultimatum, which while I don't think is possible to prove either way, hints that it would have happened regardless. Tho I'm usually all-too-ready to don my tinfoil hat when it comes to reddit trying to look appealing to investors; I witnessed a number of hentai/porn subreddits get banned and users actively request to become new mods only to be ignored.

Even if you discount the mods, there's definitely a certain inertia you see in groups like this (like what's going on with Discord right now) -- people don't want to leave in part because they've got their little in-group and don't want to have to go through finding or founding a new group elsewhere. I think it's particularly prevalent with those niche communities that don't ever really break containment; the community would already be small enough without fracturing to the eight winds. I'm liking Lemmy so far but as I am trying to drum up activity in one of those niche communities (RWBY), it's kind of disheartening how little relative traffic there is across the place.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 536 points 2 days ago (58 children)

A big ton of people left Reddit and ended up here.

A fuckton more people rolled over presenting their belly to Spez and stopped protesting and continued to use Reddit as if nothing had happened.

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[–] Hikermick@lemmy.world 55 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

I left during the strike and haven't been back since, abandoned my 10 year account. Been here ever since. Gotta admit I miss some of subs that pertained to my hobbies. They were initially small with little activity until Covid, then they all blew up. Lemmy is okay but it'll take years to get enough members for niche communities to function.

BTW what "even worse decisions" are you referring to?

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[–] Zacryon@feddit.org 94 points 1 day ago

What happened for me: I left reddit forever. Never looked back. Don't use it, don't miss it. I was quite active over there. Since then I am here.

[–] Trampampoline@sh.itjust.works 168 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (16 children)

You're currently talking to the results of that protest. Many here are a result of it. It isn't for not unless you and I are.

ur account ain't that old, buddy

As old as my last .ml ban lmao.

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[–] theblackbox@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

I'm another user who left during this and came to Lemmy. As a non-tech person, though, it really wasn't the easiest migration, and I do think you can see through Lemmy's content sometimes (love for Linux, well-upvoted IT memes, programming humor, etc.) that it is a different crowd that was able to make the migration in general.

My city's subreddit is incredibly active, very human, and still gets a ton of traffic. I usually check it once a week just to keep up with what's happening locally, but I don't log in and just scan the feed titles. That type of valuable local platform is unlikely to ever exist on Lemmy, which is sad.

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