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I don’t think the software is make or break. The issue is Reddit having a very online user base who don’t really want to give up on ready access to millions of other people who hang around on forums all day. Getting an entire community to uproot itself and go elsewhere is not easy. Our move took months of planning and I think we still lost somewhere between 40-60% of our active users.
This is why most such protests are met with deafening silence. They know that they have no real option to leave. They can turn the page black as long as they want, Conde Nast doesn’t care because once the users get bored they go back to posting and commenting as usual. It’s basic negotiation— if you can’t live without the product, then the other guy can do pretty much anything he wants. You will whine, but eventually you’ll go along.
It's a pity that Reddit is so solidly entrenched. They still have room for enshittification, unfortunately.
I don't think that Digg ever had nearly as many users. And the bigger ongoing issue is that most Reddit-clones are seeded by weird people, which makes them off-putting. Some might even say the same for this place, though I obviously think more highly of it.
Once they've finished cracking down on power mods, the ability to organize against them will be largely gone.
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