Reflecting on what happened. I remember the exodus from last time following the controversial changes from Reddit regarding third-party apps and the general lack of care of the very users that make Reddit what it is by the admins and of course, u/spez. I contributed to the migration at the time with guides to the fediverse (kbin/lemmy), helped with the moderation here (speaking of the mod team here, I have a lot of respect for the mods here, in my time here I was very glad to meet like-minded individuals using their personal time to not only help keep this sub going but continue to fight to keep it open amid Reddit’s admins censorship), and helped keep the hype and discussion revolving around the migration to the fediverse going, some of my posts reached a LOT of people, even made it to other sources like hacker news and we also had some media coverage, we had a lot of positive traction even if I got temporarily censor-banned from reddit just for that to be later reversed as it only helped the migration gain more traction as people found out fortunately. But due to personal family issues I stepped aside for a while and by the time I came back, everything was as good as dead, people were back to using Reddit, but part of me wasn’t surprised. The blackout initative was somewhat effective in sending people to alternative platforms even if it’s main goal was to get reddit reverse it’s decisions, something that was never going to happen, and as someone who was part of r/ModCoord back then in their discord, it was clear the moderators were leading the charge of the exodus, and sadly just as I thought, it was short-lived and was always going to be. We had discussions to start a mass-migration by the moderators to Lemmy or alternatives, but it died off as just a discussion, we held a few conferences but nothing came out of it. As someone who has moderated on Reddit for years now, I can tell that despite the bad taste that reddit left within the moderation community, the blackout initiative was fighting a lost cause: Trying to make reddit reverse on something it was so obviously adamant on, Reddit was always merely informing us of their changes, not asking us. Another problem with moderators, is that despite hating what reddit has become and continues to become, many moderators are sadly still driven by power, and it didn’t take much from the reddit admins than send threatening messages to moderators of the possibility of losing their position if they take part in any iniatives that opposed reddit decisions. Today I am here making this post, because I think it is time for the migration/exodus driven by the people, the normal user participating, not the moderators. All of you reading this post. # Temporary migration/hype whenever bad changes happen and going back to using the same platform will never solve the fundamental issues Every bad change that happens here is an indication of how things will only continue to get worse and the downward trend. We have a living proof on Twitter thanks to Elon Musk, following his acquisition, X/Twitter became a censorship hellhole in which Elon has total control over, it has become a propoganda machine powered by bots and people that predominantly agree with Elon’s views. If you haven’t noticed yet, Reddit is going down the same path, just slower. A quick glance at r/Reddit shows that majority of the people are unhappy with Reddit’s decisions and direction, especially their inability to listen to the user, and frankly they don’t care about us, we know this from the 3rd party changes if not even before then. And it’s not just Twitter, majority of the social media in our world today is from big tech corporations, like facebook, instagram, and more that have a major control in what people get to say, Reddit was one one of the few platforms that has allowed the user to have more control thanks to it’s forum-like nature which by design is more people driven, despite the actual platform being centralized and corporate greedy, from which we have long started seeing the disadvantages of. Today, the censorship on reddit has increased more than ever, and the quality of what once was Reddit has significantly dropped, the platform is now filled with bots more than ever. Reddit is a closed, centralized, corporation that aims to please venture capitalists and investors, not you the user, this is a fundemental flaw, a fatal flaw and a living proof of it’s consequences in what was known as Twitter before that is finally for fueling a mass-exodus to bluesky, but I do hope that exodus keeps happening in full force for good. Reddit is only continuing to get worse, the platform is increasingly getting more automated, and as someone who is a moderator, I can tell you moderation is increasingly getting automated and reddit has recently been testing and surveying the idea of AI moderators, while I am not someone who is against using AI as a tool in the grand scheme of things, it is clear this is one of the many actions to come by Reddit to make sure something like reddit blackout never happens again, because they now know an unpaid labour force can entirely upend operations if it’s unhappy, and for us, this means that if we continue to stay here, our voices against reddit will continue to be more and more censored and controlled. It is also clear that Reddit has become more and more controlling of it’s moderators when we are literally doing unpaid work out of our free time, regardless of if the interest is in the power or a genuine hobby to help keep a community going. There is nothing stopping Reddit from becoming just as bad as X/Twitter, but it’s not too late for us, now is the time for a permanent exodus/migration. # What Reddit has done and continues to do is not okay, let’s make that clear. People have seemingly forgotten what happened, and continues to happen, let us not forget that the below are some, of the many changes Reddit have done despite us, the users, have expressed our disinterest several times: * API Monetization, killing third-party apps: Charging exorbitant fees that reddit knows third party devs can’t afford, effectively killing third-party apps despite users and thrid-party devs themselves pleading to either reverse or reconsider the fees.