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Comment by khalladay | Hacker News Reader

Does subreddits going dark for 2 days matter? Seems like an insignificant ampunt of disruption to make much of a difference, or am I wrong?

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The initial plan was 2 days. Then Spez did his AMA where it was clear they were not interested in compromising, not planning to change anything, even seeing the enormous protest forming.

So while some subreddits are still planning on 2 days, a growing number of them are going dark indefinitely until reddit rolls back this plan.

Also, quite some people seem to be removing their accounts along with all their post history. Maybe not in numbers that are significant to make it a ghost town, but in some subreddits you already see gaps appearing in prior discussions.

For some niches, Reddit's comment history is basically like a knowledge base and it's slowly being torn apart. If the group of signal-noise contributors that nukes their whole history grows, it devalues Reddit in another way as well.

I nuked 12 years of content. Yes i know its archived and like still available. But at least on the public site i withdrew my consent (my thought process/reason) for them to have my content that i can now only provide with thier completely shitty apps

Many are now committing to either going dark indefinitely, or to reassess after the 14th, maybe with a poll to their members on how to proceed. This will definitely be going on for more than 2 days.

If my Reddit communities are making polls, I won't even know to vote "keep it dark". I don't cross picket lines.

History is littered with fits and starts of people working together to bring about change.

It does matter that people have identified a trend of corporate behavior, and are finding ways to take stands against it.

I don't know how widespread the sentiment is, but some mods have decided after the disastrous AMA that they're going dark indefinitely, until Reddit walks back the changes.

Don’t you remember the Reddit net neutrality blackout? That did… uh… raise… awareness… kinda?

Victoria Taylor blackout in 2015?

also ... nothing.

That one was trickier because there were no demands that could be met. Victoria didn't want her job back after all this.

does anybody remember what net neutrality was about? That's right redditors memory is probably less than 48h long

Only means Reddit is going to end for me a few weeks early :(

It would not matter if that were the only thing occurring, but as a discrete event in a significant cluster of events, this leads to more awareness and more reassessments by communities looking at what value and future reddit actually provides.

Yes, I think it does. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36283553

Why only 2 days? This could happen again or it could keep going. Thus shows reddit what they are without all the freely contributed content and mod work.

If they do it for more than 2 days , other subs will spring up

Do people forget that making a subreddit is free?

Some subs are going dark indefinitely

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