Yeah, I was massively disappointed. I hope they can get Jason on as a guest.

Thanks. Yes I understand where you’re coming from. But I also agree with your other responder. I wouldn’t be too quick to underestimate people. I’m not white, I’m over 35 and in a sexual minority.

I think that if someone has made the effort to learn how to use Reddit because they were able to find a community they belong to outside of Facebook or Twitter, understanding Federation isn’t a huge learning curve if you’re already using email.

Even if you’re a non technical user, there are enough of the massive subreddits that went dark that these people wouldn’t be able to easily ignore what was happening, or be at least mildly interested in why it was happening.

To me, the changes with Reddit’s APIs simply highlight the disconnect between Reddit as an organisation vs Reddit as a platform for building community.

Maybe it’s a naive view, but other than the moderation tools, the reason that communities have grown to be safe places is because of the unpaid work of moderators, not because of Reddit’s leadership. If users appreciated why moderators and 3rd party app devs are pissed off, they would understand that the power of their community comes from the bottom up and moderators hold a lot of influence.

Regardless, it will be interesting to watch moderators wait for other moderators to decide which should come first, the chicken or the egg.

I would have thought that being a moderator of a small subreddit would mean that you would be in a position where your users would follow you, rather than the other way around. Did you participate in the blackout? Did you get about feedback from your users about whether they support the protest?