I think it’s the fallout of allowing private companies to monetize the internet. Way back in the early days of the internet, it was a pretty de-centralized experience. Then we started centralizing things, companies realized there was revenue to be made, and those companies (because they were corporations) valued the money over the people. Capitalism, basically. Only way to fight this is to take the internet back to what it was in about 2006.

If people don’t use Reddit or Twitter or Facebook, those companies have very little value. The value in any social media is generated by the people who use those things. If there’s no people, there’s no value.

Given how much they have lied about already and the crap Huffman has pulled in the past, I would not doubt it in the least. I am sure they are doing all sorts of mind-games crap like this to try and keep users from fleeing. They have to be freaking out right about now.

All I can do as a user is take my content and time elsewhere. Which is why I’m here. Hoping that like has happened on mastodon, we will slowly move past the “Reddit news” phase and just transition into people contributing to communities and building apps for Lemmy/Kbin.

Reddit is only valuable because of the content users provide. If you don’t post valuable content, the site is worthless. Reddit can force subs back open, but they can’t force users to submit the content that makes the site valuable to begin with.