All what, 13 of them? And still going after the Apollo developer, who seems to have laid himself bare. Weird.

I’ve definitely been in that position where you put your heart and soul in to a project, and then it gets ripped away from you by forces beyond your control. It sucks, and it can really kill your joy for that kind of thing. I doubt he’s going to want to get involved in another social network, and it sounds like he already has a new project he’s excited about.

…what?

I’m still not clear what the alleged threat was, that the app would… make API calls? earning reddit money? That Christian would say unfriendly things about the company that screwed him? What threat is an app developer to a corporation? It’s just patently absurd.

There’s no way he answers that. There’s no way he answers anything. He will pose for a verification photo and then a team of lawyers and underpaid publicists will answer the questions they plant. This is all a stunt.

Too bad they fired their dedicated AMA coordinator.

I don’t think they will, but even if they did I kind of suspect the apps will still shutdown, they all announced their shutdown at once, I am sure they discussed amongst each other and reached a line in the sand with reddit. If I got that sort of treatment, even if they backed down I’d never trust them again, I’d never want to work with them again and I don’t see how that sort of situation is tenable. So they could completely abandon the changes and still have achieved the result they want. However, at this point they’ve already vilified themselves to those who will ever care, so there’s no reason to back down at all.

I wouldn’t be shocked if there is only comments from suspiciously young accounts that get addressed, posts like “How are you so brave to get up lead us to the promised land every day sir?” and “I don’t have a question, I just want to thank you for saving me from the scourges of NSFW posts”, while all the real questions are silently absent.

Oh man, I’m making popcorn for this, it’s going to be a complete trainwreck.

Reddit knows they have sudo access, and that ultimately the upset users are not that large, just fairly vocal, and won’t miss them. They’re probably planning to let this play out and know they can force the subs open again with new moderators if it comes to it. I think they’re banking on most users merely being annoyed that their favorite subs are closed for a day and then forgetting all about it.

Yeah, the strategy makes sense, I wish them well, I’m not just optimistic about the results.

I hope this protest has a positive effect, but cynically I’m pretty sure it’s going to make a small splash, and then fizzle. Any popular subs that go dark too long well get sudo’d back online I’m sure.