There was a segment today, and one yesterday where they actually put Christian on air for a bit longer and he explained things a little better. The one today was definitely obnoxious. But whatever. There's a lot of nuance in why the API decision is annoying and some of it really does boil down to old users feeling betrayed or having diverging preference. I definitely feel betrayed, and have a preference not to be tracked on my semi-anonymous internet forum.
But to someone who hasn't spent a decade+ on Reddit, the argument makes sense I think. The API does represent an opportunity cost. Whether that opportunity cost is grounded in reality, or MBA brain rot is probably outside the scope for All Things Considered
Yeah, we've literally seen this forum migration happen many times in the short history of the internet. Reddit had some novel concepts in terms of evolving and democratizing the concept, and it was the best thing since sliced bread for a long time.
Federation is a reasonable evolution of the user-run, user-generated concept, which ultimately requires more freedom that a heavily monetized platform can ever deliver. I there will always be a distinction between internet media as a product, and internet media as a utility. The neat thing seems to be that the internet kind of always seems to evolve new versions of the latter when they are needed.