A post from r/apple explaining why they were forced to reopen their subreddit after planning to close indefinitely.
Quotes from the r/apple announcement:
Reddit’s asshole CEO u/spez made it clear that Reddit was not backing down on their changes but assured users that apps or tools meant for accessibility will be unharmed along with most moderation tools and bots. While this was great to hear, it still wasn't enough. So along with hundreds of other subreddits including our friends over at r/iPhone, r/iOS, r/AppleWatch, and r/Jailbreak, we decided to stay private indefinitely until Reddit changed course by giving third-party apps a fair price for API access.
Now you must be wondering, “I’m seeing this post, does that mean they budged?” Unfortunately, the answer is no. You are seeing this post because Reddit has threatened to open subreddits regardless of mod action and replace entire teams that otherwise refuse. We want the best for this community and have no choice but to open it back up — or have it opened for us.
NOTE: The URL linked to this post is a web.archive.org archive linked to a Libreddit instance to prevent Reddit from taking down that post from the internet + prevent giving Reddit direct traffic. Other links linked here go straight to Libreddit urls or to news articles. No links here lead directly to Reddit.
Libreddit is a third-party web client hosted by third-party servers.
Link to full post
EDIT: fixed grammar.
Honestly I kind of wonder if this is all some kind of coordinated power grab to crack down on public spaces in the build up to 2024 elections.
Occam's razor says it's just one arrogant prick being an idiot and dragging everything down with him.
I don't think Occam's razor would reach that conclusion when you look at all the different services that are in decline. There's no one person tying them all together. At least, no one that is publicly known.
Peter Thiel comes close for Twitter - he financed Trump, along with a few sinister businesses, and he tried (and failed) to make a Twitter competitor. Thus it makes sense that he'd tap in his old business partner Elon Musk to remove Twitter from the equation (make no mistake, Twitter isn't dying because of Musk's mismanagement, it's dying because of a leveraged buyout saddling it with $13bn of debt). However that doesn't really cover any other service, such as reddit, Discord, or whatever else.
Regardless, we, the people, are being dispersed and our ability to organise suppressed.
To be fair, Musk tried really hard to swerve out of buying twitter, but since him announcing that he might be buying twitter was a market manipulation he was forced to.
bruh, that's been happening. it's part of why the discussion quality on reddit is in such accelerated decline.
I think the real reason the discussions on reddit have been in decline is because
Spaz is likely looking at a big bonus when the IPO happens.
Maybe, however there's every chance he could be out before then. At which point the golden parachute will activate. Meanwhile, reddit will throw all the shade on him yet change nothing in the course of action.
However he very well could maintain shares in the company after leaving, which of course means he would benefit from the IPO.