A ton of moderators have been making changes to their subreddits’ rules (e.g., only allowing certain posts, going NSFW, loosening rules a ton) to protest without getting kicked out. Do you think this strategy of turning a subreddit into shitposts is effective or not?
I’m curious to see what the people in this community think, so please share your thoughts.
My opinion is that these forms of protest, while fun, don’t actually help. Most bring more attention and activity to the sub if anything, giving Reddit more ad revenue (which is really all they care about). And the few that are actually harmful (e.g., allowing NSFW content) are being shut down by Reddit.
It’s been made clear that Reddit doesn’t care about what its users want and is willing to reorder, remove, and shadowban moderators to protect profits, so I’d like to see more people moving away from the platform. Even if the alternatives still need development and are missing important features, mods should start making plans to establish communities outside of Reddit.
If the goal was to create more work for Reddit’s paid employees, annoy Spez, draw more attention to the whole debacle, and motivate more people to try other platforms, then it’s been a success.
Personally I find it entertaining, the way any disaster is entertaining from afar.
More than happy when subreddits switch to NSFW mode because that actually has an impact on revenue, which is why the admins are so upset about it
Seeing the response from reddit admins, it clearly has had some effect. It may not be as impactful as everyone may like but anything is better than just rolling over and submitting without a fight.
That John Oliver flood forced BBC to write news article about it and finally bring a large amount of emigrants from Reddit IMO
It was fun for a while, but like any joke on Reddit, it’s also been run into the ground to the point of obnoxiousness, and you kind of see users becoming tired of it in responses to protest updates.
Which I don’t really blame them for. From a user standpoint, it does seem a little like a moderator/admin spat that they’re just caught in the crossfire of. They’re used to their cozy little community, and don’t have much of a desire to leave it, or see it shut down. In fairness, there aren’t very many good alternatives, either. Kbin and Lemmy are nice and all, but they both much younger, and much more limited compared to Reddit, in addition to having problems like some instances (like Lemmy.ml, or Kbin.Social) crashing under the load of new users, whilst also being less intuitive to begin with, if you’re coming from Reddit.
As an alternative, I’m a bit more partial to the /r/politicalhumor method of just giving everyone moderator permissions instead. That way, nothing really changes if the users don’t want it to, and it’s effectively unmoderated without having to deal with potentially unsavoury content, or making as big of a mess of the sub.
From a Reddit perspective, changing things to John Oliver would get his attention, but at the end of the day, that’s still more content for the site itself. Reddit Inc isn’t going to care too much about what the content is, as long as they can spin it as “more content”, and still put advertising revenue on it.
I think I’m on a Reddit alternative to get away from Reddit.
I think it’s useful as a protest because it makes things more annoying for the “average” user. Those of us who’ve already migrated to kbin or lemmy are the ones who were always more likely to go somewhere else. Having obvious, visible, and sustained protests on Reddit (especially in large subs like r/pics) makes it so the average “I just want to use Reddit” user will at least notice something is up, and possibly annoy them enough to go seek out alternatives. And it also causes journalists to write news articles about it in mainstream publications, so even people who aren’t on Reddit are finding out about it. Sure, it might drive up ad revenue in the short term, but I think it will have the longer-term effect of getting more people interested in moving off of Reddit.
This is a fair point. These forms of protest do get people to notice that there’s something happening when they wouldn’t have otherwise, and I can see the benefit there.
However, I don’t think this is necessarily translating to more movement out of Reddit than there is into it. On one hand, some of the people already against the change are being pushed to leave Reddit by the Reddit admins’ handling of these symbolic protests. On the other hand, many of the people protesting are sticking around and viewing all the entertaining shitposts, and the news attention seems like it would bring people who weren’t on Reddit anyway to come over and check out what’s going on. As far as Reddit users who don’t care about the changes go, they seem to be more upset at the moderators doing this and are thus going to other subs.
TL;DR: I think these protests are stirring more “this is funny” and “these moderators suck” than “I want to leave Reddit”.
It could help in the long term, but I think we’ll more likely see Reddit admins or annoyed users get mods to fold. For the time being, I’d like to at least see more subreddits sharing alternatives and pushing protestors to just leave the platform. Some are, which is nice, but many are opting for these funny yet ineffective methods without actually trying to push users to leave.
I think this is a case of people doing both at the same time.
You see things like this a lot, on the internet and in politics, the framing of a situation as a binary choice, the idea that we only have the option to do one thing or the other. It’s bullshit. We can do as many things as we’re damn well capable of doing. Sometimes even at the same goddamm time.
I have no doubt that there are reddit mods currently migrating to whatever alternative they’re going with while also simultaneously trolling the shit out of reddit on their way out.
Good for them, the more attention they raise, the more fun people have, the more it’ll be noticed when they get the boot.
I don’t expect it to have much of an impact on Reddit/u/spez’s decision but it /does/ help show Reddit’s thought process/response patterns as they take more and more draconian measures to try to “bring the subreddits under control.”
I’m *half expecting - and would be amused by - them forcibly opening a subreddit and then “demanding” that “everyone go back to posting normal memes” - like the collective mob/reddit’s population is beholden to their whims.
Hopefully, as each decision continues to ripple out, more and more people discover alternatives like kbin. I’ve been working hard to avoid reddit as much as possible but I’m getting more and more the desire to reach out to the mods of the subreddits I miss and ask them to move over here.
I mostly just don’t understand how Spaz still has a job. How the fuck can a problem this bad lead to him still having a job??
“company get money → u/spez good” is probably the thought process among the circus ri—I mean board of directors.
His bosses either told him to do this or approved it when he asked. Something like this does not happen without board approval.
he’s doing what the board of directors want. ultimately he’s gonna become the lightning rod and then they’ll replace him like they did ellen pao
I find it very entertaining. No clue if it will work or not but now reddit is emailing me pictures of John Oliver constantly and it’s always a coin flip if it’s actual porn or not since it’s always marked NSFW.
At least it makes some noise for “normie users” that could have looked the other way and kept business as usual despite stickied posts (“Oh no more technical protest crap, just let me see more cats videos!”). This (more or less) indirect visibility can pique such users’ interest and lead them to assess the situation differently and eventually follow the rabbit further down.
It also acts as a ZAD (Zone to Defend) after the initial blackout protests.
It’s been a week in Kbin for me. I don’t care about that site (Reddit) anymore. I’ve been back twice, and it’s teenage humor at best. I had been there just 3 years, and it felt like I had seen it all. Re-post after re-post.
I’ve left Twitter already. I didn’t leave Facebook or WhatsApp completely because I still have family members posting there, but go there maybe once or twice a month. Reddit, where no one in my immediate network goes, or knows whom I am can go even faster. It was staring to feel like a circle yerk, just like Twitter.
While those communities that are re-opening with those shitposts, ultimately are still benefiting Reddit; there’s one thing they’re accomplishing: They’re driving true content creators to move away from Reddit. And long term, that will give places like Lemmy, Kbin and Mastodon a critical mass of attractive content that can tip the balance.
As long as there’s traffic, Reddit profits. And the more infuriating or stupid/funny your content is, the more Reddit profits. Karma farming had already killed the community feeling there. Those who have stayed are more vested in their popularity points, than on a real community. And yes, Reddit and Twitter will survive for those that seek to be popular…but that’s not for many of us anymore.
I think the Fediverse is really where the future lies ahead, and it’s great to see it growing.
I think you messed up some copy-paste reformatting there
I did! Thanks for letting me know. I’ve fixed it…I think.
First paragraph still has two sentences twice, but otherwise I think you’re good!
You’re a good person. Thanks for keeping my back.
No problem, that’s what internet strangers are for
Idk, but I can’t imagine it being very effective. I don’t think most reddit users actually go into subreddits directly. I think most people engage on reddit through their front page and multireddits. When a sub puts garbage up it will just be removed from their multi reddit list or front page. Once the removal is done the content in the protest sub won’t be missed or seen.
I think ultimately anything that makes Reddit less pleasant and usable will cause more people to migrate over here (ie the fediverse) which is good.
Reddit done and over with. They need to go under w/o getting sued by their long-term partners.
Shitposting on Reddit is making it unusable
