I do think this is all deeply blown out of proportion. I asked a few of my friends about their opinion of the debacle this week, all of whom are in the tech sphere mind you, and they all either didn't even know what was going on or didn't care.
Spez is likely right in this regard. This will pass and blow over in short time and people will simply move on. Your average Joe is already using the first party app, and even if he isn't today, he will easily switch over once Apollo et al. are shut down.
It's hard to say. What's the difference between Reddit and 4chan? Technically there's very little. There's nothing Reddit does that 4chan cannot do, technically. The difference is the community, the people dynamic. It may very well just blow over and stay the same, or Reddit may slowly rot like Digg and MySpace did.
I’ve seen a number of threads where regular people are discussing this and it seems plenty of people are just confused, didn’t know it happened, don’t know what an API is, or are rolling their eyes at the mods for unilaterally hijacking subreddits on a long bet Reddit will allow 3rd party apps again. Mods aren’t exactly popular on Reddit as it is. They are not exactly community leaders / established representatives that people are familiar with. They are just the guys locking threads and deleting your comments etc.
People also claim it was democratic since a few sub ran polls. The WoW subreddit ran one in the middle of the day and it got a few thousand votes before they closed it. The subreddit has 1+ million subscribers. So you can understand why some people were caught off guard.
The cultural difference between powerusers and the average Reddit user is probably pretty different (HN isn't representative either). Protests are fun, you get to stick it to the man, but most people just want to read some stuff while on the toilet. They aren’t that engaged.
r/nba closed it during the last game of the finals, the most popular time of year on the sub. People have already migrated in droves to other subs like r/nbadiscussion.
Honestly? The early part of this week, Reddit reminded me of what it was like 7 years ago. Around 2016. Not sure what changed. Maybe r/TheDonald or the pandemic made everyone flock there. The weight of the bigger subs seem to pollute the discourse of the smaller subs in my mind.
Spez is likely right in this regard. This will pass and blow over in short time and people will simply move on. Your average Joe is already using the first party app, and even if he isn't today, he will easily switch over once Apollo et al. are shut down.