The only reason people are protesting api pricing is because they want to protest. The actual concern here isn't what they are protesting.
They want to quit but they can't. They likely even realize they are addicted. They likely even realize the content they view is censored and curated to manipulate them.
If you mean want to quit but can't in the sense that there is no other place on the Internet to have a like-minded community forum around fountain pens or a particular bank or third-tier game shows, yes, this is true.
But if you mean in a broader sense, of "I just can't quit you!", then no. Reddit steamrolled all of the older forums--and, before that, Usenet and Echomail groups--I used to participate in. Much like how so many sellers of niche products have moved to Amazon, Reddit is where the quirky forums have moved to.
I don't use Reddit as a general-purpose site. It's simply the place where the community that discusses the topics I want to gas on about live. And, yes, I object to what Reddit is doing so I will leave it if the changes come to pass.
> The only reason people are protesting api pricing is because they want to protest. The actual concern here isn't what they are protesting.
No...? It's a decision that impacts millions of people that rely solely on third-party apps to have any decent experience on Reddit at all. The "official" app is a hot dumpster fire and lacks incredibly basic accessibility features, among other shortcomings. The official app is a joke but instead of making it better to entice more users onto it (and thus see more ads), they just exploded the entire community.
It mostly wasn't the rank and file users making the most noise. It was the moderators who rely on the API for a series of tools (including third party tools like Apollo) to moderate the larger subreddits.
For me, it absolutely was a sign to evaluate my usage. I may go back, I may not. The local city subreddit is a good counterpart to my local newspaper, but the real dangers for reddit are twofold: individuals will be less likely to provide free labor (on which Reddit depends both for content generation and moderation), and it gave its most passionate users a timeout on which they started evaluating alternatives.
I'm purposely avoiding reddit right now even though several niche communities only exist there. I've been using 3rd party apps for maybe 15 years now (Alien Blue first and now Relay for 10 years). I'm directly affected by this and I think they handled it poorly.
The only reason people are protesting api pricing is because they want to protest. The actual concern here isn't what they are protesting.
They want to quit but they can't. They likely even realize they are addicted. They likely even realize the content they view is censored and curated to manipulate them.
Just quit reddit already and be happy.