You gotta appreciate the irony of Reddit demanding free labor from mods of a sub that is about labor abuse.

I think this is the main thing for me. I’m less shocked by Reddit’s decisions (it does make some sense that they need third-party apps to die, even though they could have done it a bit more sensibly), than by this one guy’s deeply disingenuous handling of it all. I can’t stand dishonest obnoxiousness at that level. I think if they admit wrongdoing and fire the guy, I might go back even if they don’t change their other plans. Provided all the interesting subreddits are not dead, obviously.

Although I’ll be honest, for now I’m in the Lemmy honeymoon period, so right now I wouldn’t, I’m enjoying it too much here (and I don’t have time for 2 of those!). But if the honeymoon wears off and they fire the guy, I might.

Definitely the email metaphor helped me at the time too.

Agreed. The same thing needed some getting used to when I moved to Mastodon earlier this year, but eventually, you start thinking in “instances” without realizing. I don’t know if the general public will go through the same transition of getting used to the fediverse, but if they will (and I think it’d be a good thing if they do), then this kind of instance-based UX won’t be an intriguing novelty anymore.