They can’t get to see content that they used to, and despite not creating it themselves, or doing ANYTHING other than consuming it, they feel entitled to access it, as if it were “theirs”.

I completely agree with you.

I was a mod on an advice sub (that I recreated over here), and people would message modmail after posting and say “why is no one commenting on my post”. Like, you aren’t entitled to free advice, you’re asking for it. But people would get legitimately angry whenever they wouldn’t get any advice, or if the advice they got wasn’t what they were looking for.

The thing that made me the most angry were the people who would delete their post after getting advice. Like people wrote comments for everyone to read, not just for you, and then you go and defacto make those comments private?

I fully believe that audience of people does not understand that they aren’t the center of the universe and that there are actual people on the other end of comments…

I was also a mod over there (recreated the same community here, but it’ll take time to fill in if it ever does). In that sub, despite well over a million subscribers, less than 200 people wrote the valuable comments. If a sizable chunk of those 200 leave, then the sub dies. And several wrote to modmail about the fact that the sub did not participate in the blackout and that they were done with the sub (and frankly, I don’t blame them, I’m also out).

A million members doesn’t matter if the couple hundred experts pack up and leave.