I like the idea of federation, but worry about three things:

1. What happens when the instance I’m a part of pulls a Spez? With a federated system, it’s easy enough to join another instance or spin up my own. However, it now means that I’ve got to keep an eye on dozens of community policy statements instead of just one, and none of these tiny fiefdoms are large enough yet to have dealt with the moderation growing pains that truly sink sites.
2. How do they get paid? If even a small fraction of Reddit migrates to Beehaw, we’re talking about several orders of magnitude more server fees. What does it mean for data privacy when all these fediverse sites finally start thinking about sustainable funding models? What does it mean for moderation when Beehaw is large enough to attract bots, shills, and corporate interests?
3. Privacy. The only thing keeping posts and DMs private in the fediverse is a handshake agreement that if you run an instance, you won’t leak things you’re sent from the other instances

I’ll go back if Reddit:

• Makes it feasible for 3rd party apps to continue on the platform. This could be a revenue-sharing agreement, a set price that’s not prohibitively expensive but still fairly compensates Reddit, a flat-out exemption from the Enterprising Pricing, doesn’t matter. These apps have been around far longer than Reddit’s own app, and provide tools (and general polish) the Official App has yet to match seven years in. They deserve to stay and to make a living off of their continued contribution to the community.
• Restores parity access to NSFW content via the API. It’s essential for moderation bots to combat spam, it helps 3rd party apps stay afloat, and it serves a large part of the community. I get that Reddit wants to sanitize the site in preparation for an IPO. I get that advertisers are wary of NSFW posts. That’s not an excuse for removing it from the API. The official ad-supported Reddit app will continue to serve up porn, and the currently proposed API prevents 3rd party clients from using ads anyway. Reddit is making a bad-faith argument that harms moderation bots’ ability to do their job, and cripples any 3rd party app that isn’t driven from the platform based on price (including 2 “accessibility only” apps they were forced to allow during the AMA).
• Apologizes to the Apollo dev for Spez’s libelous statements, and starts a good-faith negotiation with developers to open access for things like the enhanced query system that the 1st party app enjoys, usage statistics that will help devs improve API request efficiency, and revenue sharing where devs can monetize using ads or any other method they choose so long as Reddit gets a cut.

Yes, these demands go further than a simple rollback of the new API policy, but at the same time they don’t. Reddit’s originally stated goal for this change was to keep 3rd party apps around because they add tremendous value to the ecosystem, while stopping the LLM training bots from getting off rent-free when they try to train their AI models off of our hard work. I love that goal. It’s something we can all get behind. I just wish they’d actually do it.

But at this point, even if I go back it will be with one foot out the door. The dam has broken, and I plan to campaign hard for alternatives and switch to whichever one hits critical mass first.