The last major holdouts in the protest against Reddit’s API pricing relented, abandoning the so-called “John Oliver rules” which only allowed posts featuring the TV host. It's the official end of the battle. The Reddit protest is over, and Reddit won.
I don’t see how reddit “won”. They may have gotten their way by raking devs and users over the coals, but they didn’t win. They got their way. Now it remains to see if any service will usurp them in the future.
Sure they won. Their calculations were correct. They lost some users, but not enough to hurt them
Do you have actual stats for “not enough to hurt them”?
Because that sounds like something only reddit staff would actually know. It’s not like they have a legal obligation to release before and after stats about number of users, average engagement, etc.
They lost users who wanted to talk, now they can optimize their algorithms for users who want to stare at ads.
Numbers are really insignificant. The first day of the protest was annoying for them but the redditors quickly gave in.