Hacker News Reader

Comment by rany_ | Hacker News Reader

Besides this boycott is at best useless, most are only going offline for 48 hours; it should be permanent until they reverse the decision if they were being sincere.

View on HN

The third-party apps shutting down on July 1st will be the real test. If Reddit notices a significant drop in traffic on that day, they will probably start walking back the change. I agree that this boycott, while the intention is good, won't do much.

Unless a large number of people who don't use 3rd party apps also leave in solidarity, it won't be a "significant drop". 3rd party apps make up quite a small amount of total traffic. And that's also assuming that TPA users _leave_ and don't just switch.

If you have 10,000 users you have 1000 commenters, 100 people posting, and 10 moderators. If you keep 97% of your users but you lost half your mods, 25% of your posters and 7% of your commenters its going to lead to an eventual decline bigger than 3% and it can create a self re-enforcing trend because the people contributing to other networks can drag their connections along with them.

I don't think Reddit is doing anything based on that day's data. I suspect that they will wait for a month before starting to rely on the data for any long-term prospects.

The true number to look at is not traffic, it’s moderation actions. The real problem is the site will get harder to moderate without the API.

And it’s why you have the strike; Reddit is not at risk of dying, it’s at risk of becoming even worse that it already is.

The real boycott is to stop moderating and let the place become a junkyard of spam and disinformation.

Reddit mods are addicted to power. If they don't ban anyone for 48 hours, they get the shakes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com