Abstract: Consumer collective action is an increasingly common means of disciplining firms and platforms, yet its effects are typically short-lived. While this phenomenon is well documented in the literature, two dimensions remain underexplored. First, the evidence comes almost entirely from product markets, not from platform ecosystems where expressed support and withheld engagement occur in the same environment. Second, transience may reflect cheap talk, but testing this requires observing what the same individuals say and do, which is typically limited. We fill these gaps by studying the 2023 Reddit "Go Dark" protest, in which thousands of communities went private over Reddit's new API pricing. Using a difference-in-differences design on matched protesting and control communities and a panel of 100,000 users, with a large language model identifying pre-protest supporters, we find (1) engagement fell sharply during the blackout week but returned to baseline afterwards and (2) supporters reduced their activity more than non-supporters, a pattern that persists even after subreddits reopen. We then explore why the protests failed to have an effect despite committed follow through, and identify two mechanisms: most users returned to their preferred subreddits (rather than broadly substituting to other communities on Reddit) once they opened, and participation was overwhelmingly moderator-driven, misaligning who organized the protest (moderators with direct grievances) and whose sustained defection would impose costs (ordinary users). Platforms can therefore hold captive audiences and absorb collective action even when committed participants follow through, limiting voice and exit as instruments of accountability and motivating antitrust scrutiny.
Shrabastee Banerjee