Because the controversy is drumming up news. He’s the face of that and it’s all for the IPO.
No publicity is bad publicity and all that, but he’s also getting ahead of all the other news so that anyone possible investors might be interested.
None of this is for us anymore. Not us the former users, the current users or us “regular people”. He and his handlers are trying to drum up publicity for big money.
Highly unlikely they’d ever be able to rebuild that bridge but it would start with turning back the API decision. Then hiring Christian from Apollo to help them with building a better app. A significant amount of the leadership stepping down and leaving. Mods getting paid. Transitioning to a platform not reliant on ads. Getting Victoria of AMA fame back. Having mods be an elected position.
If all that happened maybe I’d think they turned into something worth coming back to.
Especially not Linux users. This isn’t grandma with windows 95, or Uncle with his iPhone, Linux users are almost guaranteed to have in the past tried other distros.
They will again. Begrudgingly, but they won’t look back either.