I honestly don't know if this is allowed here but I thought this is malicious compliance at its finest.
If you don't want to drive traffic there I'll repost what the mods posted below:
POLL: Decide on the future of /r/Pics!
Hello, /r/Pics subscribers!
Boy, what a whacky time we've all had lately, huh? Reddit decided to kill off third-party applications, a protest got planned (and possibly exploited by bad actors), the site showed up in the news, various communities started opening back up, others decided to stay inaccessible, and then the CEO of Reddit implied that a bunch of moderators would be removed from their positions!
Crazy, right?
Anyway, we – the so-called "landed gentry" – definitely want to comply with the wishes of the "royal court," and they've told us that we need to run the subreddit in the way that its members want. To that end, we figured that the only reasonable thing to do was directly ask how you'd like things to progress from here.
Which of the following should we do?
-
Return to normal operations
-
Only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy To be clear, if people choose the second option, screen-grabs from videos will be allowed (provided that there aren't any visible logos, inserted graphics, or other digital elements present). You could – if you wanted to – look through episodes of Last Week Tonight on YouTube, find moments featuring John Oliver at his sexiest, then post images of those moments here.
It's entirely up to you! Whatever the /r/Pics community decides is best, we'll respect!
Vote, friends! Vote now!
(You can vote by upvoting either of the comments in the thread below.)
Voting has now closed.
Our final tally is as follows:
Return to normal operations: -2,329 votes
Only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy: 37,331 votes
It would seem that the community has spoken!
Henceforth, /r/Pics will only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy.
(Said images must adhere to all of the community's other rules, including those mandated by Reddit.)
Happy posting!
Both are bad choices. When reddit says open /r/pics or else, you just delete /r/pics.
Reddit has NEVER been profitable. It's the classic:
This is the crap that caused the dot-com bubble in the late 90s.
Their current business model is unsustainable.
They're doing the API war out of sheer survival.
The sad part is, we all went along for the ride, using the service and filling it with useful information, never wondering if it was still going to be there a decade or two later.
Reddit wants to IPO. Having gone through the IPO process twice now with a company, I can tell you, the only thing that matters is money in the bank. The more money you have in the bank, the more you can charge for your IPO. When I worked at CompUSA back in the 90s, we didn't pay any of our creditors for something like 6 months before the IPO to swell the bank accounts. I remember the week before the IPO, we had almost nothing in the store, because we owed everyone money. 30 days after IPO, trucks came rolling in again with product.
That would be true if they made i fees reasonable or at least gave more time. This change caused mobile apps to shut down. The revenue from that is $0.
This change sucks. But, from what I read, Reddit have NEVER been profitable. If they were smart, they would modified the API so it included ads. I don't think Reddit is long for this world. Even if these protests were effective, reddit is eventually going away. They're too big to make a profit now.
When you say "NEVER been profitable" is there a reliable source for that or is it spez?
Hosting a link agregator is cheap, it is purely just text. Yes they now host images and videos, and I think they shouldn't do that if the cost is a problem, also they could always discontinue it.
Going back to the API. If they really need cash they could work with developers. They could reduce the fees and give 3 months heads up like they have been asked.
The whole spectacle didn't sound "we need money to survive", it sounded like "we could make more money from users by forcing them to switch to our crappy app, by shutting down 3rd party apps"
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4477033-reddit-unprofitable-despite-growth
There are few other sources that say reddit is unprofitale.
What I'm saying is that their core service doesn't cost much to run. They could have small team to run everything and would make a lot of money, but their goal is to make it a billion dollar business, when it is not.
BTW: I also find the article funny, on one bad it says they are seeking $15 billion valuation, then it says it doesn't generate money. So that creates a question, how come a company that doesn't generate a profit costs $15 billion?
That happens all the time with publicly traded companies. This is the reason why we had the dotcom bubble burst in the last 1990s.