I’ve been thinking a lot about why I decided to come here and I know it started off as a “they can’t make me use their shitty app!” while simultaneously using test apps that crash and navigating less content than Reddit. What is the primary motivation for all of this anymore? Is anger enough of a motivation to keep people away from a platform long term?
I have a feeling that most folks are more loyal to their communities than they are the company themselves - meaning that no matter how bad the corporation is, sacrificing what they truly care about is not really worth it no matter how poorly they are treated.
If the community goes away, THEN reddit goes away.
But if the only way to access their community is through some shitty app, I don’t see it stopping many people.
I’m sure if they had handled it with more honesty and been up front about the fact that they’re choosing to kill third party apps for business reasons some of the frogs who left would probably have stuck around to be boiled for a little longer, but I personally believe that it’s the ethos behind the decision that most people are responding to more than the decision itself or the way it was communicated.
The creep of enshittification just became too much to ignore at that point and the enshittified path forward became crystal clear. Reddit signaled to everyone paying attention that decisions will continue to be made based on what makes money rather than what’s in the interests of users.
Yes, my KBin experience is worse than my Reddit experience as it is today but I have confidence that my KBin (or other ActivityPub based platform I may choose to migrate to) experience will improve as time moves on while my Reddit experience would have continued to degrade. When that became undeniable to me I choose to pull the cord and start fresh now rather than wait until the rise of one met the fall of the other.