Publications like these lower reddit’s future valuations though. I’m not sure whether a two-day uptick in users is worth that. My guess would be that it’s not.
This is what I see as the true value of these "protest" messages above just "more user engagement" since it seems like more eyes on negative press does more damage than the plus of "a few more users interacted with our site for a few days"
And I wish they did. With all the „fuck spez“ and 3rd party app grief, people do surprisingly little to improve the current situation and link to Reddit alternatives.
Continued protests could drive other users away. If they think the content sucks or is annoying, they'll check the site less and that'll affect reddit.
Unfortunately, in the same breath as that mention is them saying erasing that is the work of users. There's enough evidence to suggest it's the admin's handiwork. Some people elsewhere mentioned that those "random" dots do not have a user attached to it.
It all disappeared within a few seconds after no fighting beforehand, and in the absence of an undiscovered 50k pro spez discord server that no one knows about, it's definitely admins. They've gotten much smarter though, using a ton of older accounts as bots rather than editing their personal accounts to have no cool down