Introduction
As of today, June 5th, 2023, a large number of moderators, curators, contributors, and users from around Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange network are initiating a general moderation
Really not that clever to strike at the same time as reddit. Media coverage would've been greater next week I'd say. But hopefully they'll be successful
I think Reddit has bigger audience than SE.. that being said, Reddits fame is not ubiquitous like Twitter or instagram.. so news site will just give a small article as opposed to “That bunga-bunga perverted ex Italian president is dead!”
For anyone who's interested in an alternative, check out https://codidact.com . It's much smaller right now, but it's open-source and the community is nice.
It's amazing how many for profit business exploit the good will of people passionate enough to contribute towards the sharing of knowledge without compensation and still treat them with no respect.
This is part of the reason I struggle with contributing anything to review sites, Google maps, etc
Conceptually, this is the outcome of companies owned by those who wish to maximize their investment. Eventually organic growth slows and it's time to squeeze more juice from the lemons they already have even if they need a hydraulic press to do it. The flip side is that without that investment money these platforms would probably not exist at the scale users are used to. It'll be interesting to see if the fediverse manages to scale well or not.
They've already been on strike. They went on strike on the 5th. They're asking people to refrain from voting, close voting, and accessing review queues.