He is possibly correct. Now it is up to the community to call his bluff. The reason he says it will pass is because traditionally subreddits have only gone dark for a day or two. This would be the first time in Reddits history that is extended.

Some have pointed out that other subreddits will be made and fill the void eventually. This is true, but this still shifts the tone of the content and overall vibe. I think this is what the CEO is relying on. Eventually people will just sort of move on and the subreddits that went dark will get replaced.

You will start to notice all platforms really digging in on the need to chase profit all of the sudden. Even at the cost of growth. The economic environment has changed and to me it is obvious what that means. Any company that had been ignoring profit in order to grow now needs to completely flip it around.

A lot of media companies are unprofitable and can never make a profit. Live streaming platforms are one of them. The biggest one is also not profitable. They have been increasing their advertising operations in order to make profit and still have not been able to. They have made extremely hostile changes towards their viewers and creators.

If the economy flips and we start printing money again these platforms will be fine. But until then they are all going to freak out. My conspiracy is without cash flooding the economy VC and advertising capital just vanishes and that is what triggers these companies to pivot out of growth mode.

Hell from their warped perspective I bet they think they are just firing their users to cut costs.

I don't really know what will happen from here. Will be interesting to see if the CEO's bluff gets called or what this looks like a few weeks from now.

I think this is the end of reddit

I think he's right. The age of protests has passed. It's time to vote with your feet and money.

A Sovereign Individual is not governed but also free from toxic corporate power.

These social media sites like Reddit and Twitter were built in the fiat world. No way they work in a bitcoin world as they are designed now. I think what we are witnessing is the consequences of retraction of easy money. These companies need to make money now and the user is the product. These protests can come from a good place but are a waste of time. Just leave... use the next gen tools that are not build on this failing system and the models built on top of it. I get why these platforms are closing their API's. They have to monotize or die. I think they will die but your continued use of these platforms slow this death. Personally, I don't care if they die or go on. I have my own lines. If these protests make you feel good, ok that's fine but IMO it is a waste of energy. Just use the new gen tools like Bitcoin, Stacker, and Nostr.

Unpopular opinion but I kind of understand Reddits stance here.

Reddits content is incredibly valuable for large language models. It is one of the few resources that have the heighest weight in commoncrawl together with Wikipedia and Stackoverflow.

They would be objectively giving value away for free if the API was just there.