Yesterday I read the excellent article by Cory Doctorow: Let the Platforms Burn and this particular anecdote The thing is, network effects are a double-edged sword. People join a service to be with the people they care about. But when the people they care about start to leave, everyone rushes for the exits. Here’s danah [...]
I think this is reading way too much into it. Reddit changed when the official app launched and regular people joined and started using it like a social media site. The quality of conversation has declined since then, until we ended up here. Losing API access was just the push we all needed to leave.