[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Who Started the Reddit Blackout?
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       Ask HN: Who Started the Reddit Blackout?
        
       I know why it happened, but who started it and how did they start
       it?
        
       Author : aio2
       Score  : 13 points
       Date   : 2023-06-13 19:44 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
       | pyeri wrote:
       | It grew organically to the best of my knowledge. But the extent
       | and addiction of various mods' dependency on these third party
       | apps was something that came as a surprise to me. Didn't knew
       | they actually depended so much more for moderation tools on these
       | 3rd parties than the official reddit platform itself.
        
         | tesseract wrote:
         | I had been under the impression it was relatively common
         | knowledge that the reason Reddit had been keeping both the API
         | and old.reddit alive was that power users - both moderators and
         | the most prolific content submitters - disproportionately used
         | those interfaces and were considered too valuable to alienate.
         | I have been surprised not to see much discussion about what, if
         | anything, changed about that situation leading up to the
         | current kerfluffle. Have enough power users been moving over to
         | new.reddit and the official apps? Or has Reddit's calculus as
         | to the importance of that segment of the user base shifted?
        
           | lozenge wrote:
           | They want to IPO and that means bringing everybody onto an
           | experience they can control- in terms of ads, showing awards
           | and any other features.
        
         | circuit10 wrote:
         | Someone must have been the first to suggest it
        
           | klik99 wrote:
           | If I had to guess it would be on some private mod chat like
           | discord or something, and probably more than one subreddit
           | mod group decided independently since it's a known way to
           | protest. I am curious too, but it grew so quickly that
           | establishing the origin would be difficult
        
           | pyeri wrote:
           | Sometimes, the time and situation has an energy of its own.
           | It didn't matter whether Leibniz invented calculus or Netwton
           | did, someone had to do it at that time (as a matter of fact,
           | they both did independently in their respective countries).
        
           | seattle_spring wrote:
           | Sure maybe by a few milliseconds, but I guarantee "boycott"
           | jumped into thousands of people's heads the immediate moment
           | they read about the pricing changes.
        
           | runjake wrote:
           | It's pretty common for subreddits to do the blackout thing
           | for various causes (eg. net neutrality) and has been for
           | years.
        
       | pyeri wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
         | mostlysimilar wrote:
         | Now apply the skepticism you feel from this hopelessly devoid
         | of context answer to other questions you ask generative AI.
        
           | pyeri wrote:
           | This "hopelessly devoid" answer has this interesting nugget
           | at the end which I didn't knew earlier (and I strongly
           | suspect many people here also don't know!):
           | 
           | - Use a third-party Reddit app.
           | 
           | If this is indeed true, it means the "dark" or gone under
           | subs are still accessible using third party apps. I haven't
           | tried that because I don't use any but can someone here
           | confirm it?
        
             | Zetobal wrote:
             | way to gaslight yourself.
        
             | lm28469 wrote:
             | Nobody knows about it because it's false...
        
             | mostlysimilar wrote:
             | It is not true. Private is private regardless of client.
        
       | nerdbert wrote:
       | Nice try /u/spez
        
         | aio2 wrote:
         | Hey man, I'm just curious
        
       | el_hacker wrote:
       | I think the first one who talked about it was Christian Selig the
       | developer of the popular third-party Reddit app Apollo. He said
       | that it would cost him $20 million per year to keep his Apollo
       | app running if he had to pay Reddit's new API pricing structure.
        
         | KeepFlying wrote:
         | He specifically disavowed (but supported, indirectly) the
         | blackouts at first. He initially didn't want to risk Reddit
         | retaliating at him for calling for a blackout when (at the
         | time) communication was still somewhat positive.
         | 
         | But he did acknowledge the protest, which I'm sure gave it a
         | lot of attention it didn't have before.
        
         | klik99 wrote:
         | I don't remember seeing him post anything about calling for a
         | blackout, but his posts definitely kicked off my awareness and
         | I think many others as well. I'd be very interested to see if
         | he mentioned it before the 10th, which IIRC (probably not - it
         | may have been 8th or something) is when there was a tipping
         | point and a bunch of mods announced they'd be going black. It
         | seems against his personality, he doesn't seem like the type to
         | call for action like that. Tried googling it but didn't find
         | anything during a quick search
        
       | rpd9803 wrote:
       | i mean I guess Spez started it by trying to monetize the API,
       | unless you meant who started the idea of a blackout as a reaction
       | to that, in which case Im not sure.
        
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       (page generated 2023-06-13 23:03 UTC)