The protests worked, and so did moving/editing/deleting our old content. As one person complains,
I’m not here for Reddit, but for the aggregation of niche communities. I follow a lot of obscure manga that have relatively small followings and recently I got into an IT job which opened a lot of technological exploration for me. The worst part about this change isn’t even that we are losing 3rd party apps, but that only members of the communities I frequent are the ones who care enough to protest. Can’t tell you how many times now I’ve looked something up on Reddit and find an answer to the issue I have, only to realize that the community is closed or the post is deleted in protest. Now we are stuck in this limbo where protests seem to have lost their steam, niche communities are being overthrown and killed because of that greedy little pigboy. Seriously, fuck spez.
There’s also something to be said for actually taking a stand and making a difference - and that requires sacrifice. We cannot all leave our content, and therefore none of us should.
I burned 8 years of all manner of helpful information, and I’m proud of it and I’m certain it was the right thing to do. And I think it’s a shame so many people want to leave their stuff up because really - deep down - it’s for themselves they’re leaving it up; make all the excuses you want. Even for the few folks for whom it is actually altruistic: burning it is the only way to make the statement that needs to be made. Have the spine to do it.