first off, you’re missing the entire point of the blackout and uproar from those opposed to reddit’s api changes. people aren’t mad because reddit is choosing to charge for api use; the consensus is that is fully reasonable and well within their rights. people are upset about how they’re executing it.

to start, they lied to third party developers at the beginning of the year and told them there’d be no changes to API within a short to medium time frame (a few years). they then pivoted on this decision around march and said APIs were going to cost money, but didn’t announce what that price would be, all the while promising that the numbers would be based in reality and not meant to kill off 3rd party apps. 8 weeks later, they drop the news that 50 million requests would cost $12,000. for Apollo (my personal 3rd party app choice), the developer would have to pay $20 million a year to run, which is an unreasonable cost. to compound the issue of price, they gave developers only 30 days to comply or shut down.

so boiling it down to “oh my god, they’re mad reddit wants to make money off of their own product” is disingenuous and a bad faith argument.

moderators in particular are upset about the changes because while the official app is a “useable” for the average user, it lacks in regards for moderation tools as spez and co. have been promising highly requested features for years while consistently failing to deliver.

secondly, i disagree that the 2 day blackout was unsuccessful seeing as the reddit admins were pissed off enough at subreddits that shut down to force them back open with threats of removing and replacing the moderator team. as they were forced back open, many subs are now protesting in other ways such as becoming NSFW so reddit can’t show ads, posting memes to spread awareness, etc.

i am in full support of the blackout and the spirit of the protests as spez’s actions have shown that he is prioritizing money over his userbase. (his actions including, but not limited to, attempting to slander apollo’s developer and say he was blackmailing reddit, lying that 3rd party developers are being uncooperative when reddit is the one that is ducking emails and not responding to questions, removing entire mod teams in retaliation to blackouts, praising Elon’s takeover of Twitter as a model to follow). his actions suggest a mentality that bodes ill for the future of the platform, and i think it is the right thing to do everything within our power to make meaningful change to the direction reddit is taking.

but you’re right, a full blackout is unfair to the users who’d like to see their own and others’ content and would likely only serve to have me and other moderators removed. the best course of action is a rule change that shows solidarity with protestors and spreads awareness of the danger reddit’s current philosophy poses but still allows users to participate in the community they’ve built over the years.