Yes, paying premium to use 3PA would have gone over more smoothly yet if you consider how touchy and prone to aggressive posturing a large number of their mostly male userbase is the vocal minority would still have made significant noise about how unfair it is to 'pay-to-play'.
Any sort of significant change to Reddit by any CEO, whether it be Huffman or Santa Claus, was going to illicit a significant toxic response.
What has put me off Reddit more than anything is the level of uncalled vitriol and mean spirited comments by not only the users but the temper tantrums and petulant behaviour by a number of the mods. And when push came to shove most of these mods crumbled like my grandmother's hip after her fall down the stairs.
An intelligent leader would have found a solution that aligned incentives between the company and its users/customers and communicated it in a way that most rational users/customers would accept. I'm a sample size of one, but the freedom to choose my client and maybe some smaller perks would have converted me from a long time free user to a premium user assuming the price was reasonable. Instead it converted me from a free user to a non-user.
Sure, but unlike the current situation it wouldn’t have mattered. Pay for third party apps with free access to them for mods and none of this ever happens. You don’t have widespread blackouts because a handful of people whine about a change like that.
Any sort of significant change to Reddit by any CEO, whether it be Huffman or Santa Claus, was going to illicit a significant toxic response.
What has put me off Reddit more than anything is the level of uncalled vitriol and mean spirited comments by not only the users but the temper tantrums and petulant behaviour by a number of the mods. And when push came to shove most of these mods crumbled like my grandmother's hip after her fall down the stairs.