He’s right that Reddit’s “aggressive posture” is what’s annoyed a lot of users. When I first heard of them adding API costs, I didn’t care, because I didn’t use 3rd party apps. But their attitude since then is why I don’t want to use Reddit now.
They could have apologised for the inconvenience caused by their changes. They could have said something like “we recognise there are users who are not happy with these changes, and we apologise for the inconvenience, but we are in a position where we have to cover our server costs, or else Reddit may not survive into the future”. If they had put it like THAT then I bet most people would have understood where they’re coming from.
But instead they say things like “oh it’s only a small amount of users who are unhappy” and “this will blow over like all of these controversies do”. Basically saying “we don’t need to listen to you, fuck you, fuck your opinions, we assume you’ll use Reddit anyway”. AND didn’t they say they would respect mods protesting by shutting their subreddits? And then they’re like “no fuck you we’ll just force them open”.
So the impression they give off is not that they’re doing these API changes out of a financial necessity to ensure Reddit can survive into the future - instead, like many users have said, it seems like they are literally just trying to milk as many profits as possible in the short-term, so they can cash in as much as possible on the IPO, and then they can quit Reddit and retire to the Caribbean.
The story seems to be from a marketing-focused website, so it makes sense that the author is addressing advertisers, and how the events with Reddit will affect them.
Also, surely this story proves that the protests absolutely have had an effect. It’s causing advertisers to think twice about spending money with Reddit. And as stated in this TechCrunch article, fewer advertisers are visiting the ad-buying part of Reddit’s site.
So, the people who complained that these protests are pointless, that they won’t change anything, have been proven wrong. The protests are effective. So if people want change in this situation then they should continue with MORE protests. My protest is that I’m not using Reddit.