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.
It depends on the what and how.
The first time they did something like that, they bought out Alien Blue.
Sellig would have been will to sell Apollo - he even brought it up in a call that he had with reddit. So reddit buys Apollo and the other top apps like RiF, rebrands them as official reddit apps, and includes more telemetry and ads. But the basic functionality that makes accessibility and moderation better remains.
Add the above into the mix and I think there’s not be that much uproar at all. People would mostly be happy to continue using the mostly-their-apps as they had before. Other 3rd party apps perhaps do get phased out, but they’d just move on to some of the bigger ones. Certainly nowhere near enough outrage to blackout.