The protests worked, and so did moving/editing/deleting our old content. As one person complains,
I’m not here for Reddit, but for the aggregation of niche communities. I follow a lot of obscure manga that have relatively small followings and recently I got into an IT job which opened a lot of technological exploration for me. The worst part about this change isn’t even that we are losing 3rd party apps, but that only members of the communities I frequent are the ones who care enough to protest. Can’t tell you how many times now I’ve looked something up on Reddit and find an answer to the issue I have, only to realize that the community is closed or the post is deleted in protest. Now we are stuck in this limbo where protests seem to have lost their steam, niche communities are being overthrown and killed because of that greedy little pigboy. Seriously, fuck spez.
Is reddit making bank? From what I know, the answer is: No. Even currently reddit is not profitable.
So, unless reddit grows, spez loses. If reddit becomes “the place you go to for niche questions”, while bleeding on the front of hopeless and passionate addicts who make content for big subs, that is a problem. Because only big subs get big views, meaning big ad revenue.
Reddit needs to gain more people. And if not more people, then more engagement. And if not more engagement, then more high quality content from a passionate userbase, leading to more people and more engagement. With “being the place for niche questions”, you will not ever get that sweet and necessary growth. You will get a stable influx of users. But that is probably not enough. As soon as niche subs are the one attractive feature of reddit, its business model is probably dead. Because, unless reddit grows, it is already dead.