But reddit's "Vocal Minority" is much larger, and much more vocal than most. Almost to the point that it might actually approach the majority of active contributors.

Yeah, no matter what there will be naysayers, but the majority of comments in the announcement thread for the affiliate links thing were negative.

Combine that with the reddit demographic's love of a controversy (no matter how trumped up) and you have a ticking time bomb that makes mistakes hurt for much longer and much worse than most platforms.

Just look at their previous "algorithm change" fiasco. They changed the front page algo, and after about a week they changed it back because of outcry. For the next several months people continued to complain about how everything was worse now, and that they were lying about "reverting" the algorithm. It's insanity.