Maybe so, but Reddit is not Twitter; API access is far more important for Reddit because its official client is garbage and can't handle the long-form content that Reddit is known for.
This will have outsized implications for the 1% of users who actually post the content the other 99% come to see in a way that Twitter (and its 280-character comment limitation) does not.
> The very same thing hardly seems to have hurt Twitter.
It has. As somewhat of a Twitter addict, I'm finding it much easier not to log on these days, because the experience and the conversations have really hollowed out. I'm also no longer seriously considering using Twitter for promoting any projects or anything of the like going forward.
Personally, when someone mentions tweets nowadays, my first impulse is to ridicule / discount it all - "what, are you seriously using a service Elon bought to promote far-right topics...?"
Typically it comes out of my mouth in a more moderate stance, like "sorry, I don't use Twitter anymore. Any chance you could link a better forum?"
The most charitable reading of your comment still leads one to question what you would consider the right if Elon is far right. I am pretty sure he is a moderate leaning both ways on differing topics.
I don't care what he "is" or might be; his actions objectively helped the far-right. Whether he did it to troll, to "restore" some imaginary "balance", or because he genuinely believes in far-right topics, he still very materially helped far-right speech - and he clearly did it on purpose.
He is for sure far right. He's against increasing taxes on the wealthy, vowed to lobby against transgender health care, endorsed Republicans in the midterms, launched Desantis's campaign, and constantly rails against woke culture. There is not an ounce of left in this guys body.
I seriously question the motives of people saying this guy is a "moderate." You cannot gaslight America into thinking the far-right is middle of the road.
If Digg is of any indication, it takes a series of negligent and greed-driven actions to scuttle a social media platform, but it is possible.
Reddit has been more or less re-inventing itself for their asinine IPO aspirations, and in doing so it has moved to closed source code, redesigned their interface, adjusted content policies to court advertisers, and now they're finally going after the crowd of enthusiasts who depend on features that Reddit has failed and/or declined to implement.
This all reeks of venture capitalist sabotage and it's the very thing that
ultimately killed off Digg.
No the kill the API thing came after Elon. It was one of the things he did, but indeed this specific thing does not seem to have hurt user engagement in particular. In fact it was probably one of the things that was good for their ad revenue and probably why they did it.
This will have outsized implications for the 1% of users who actually post the content the other 99% come to see in a way that Twitter (and its 280-character comment limitation) does not.