this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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As hopeful as that take may sound, it is just not something that I can observe as true.
This post is evaluating the next steps for the protest and currently sits at 800 comments. Of those, the majority, be it a vocal minority or not, is heavily against the continuation of the protest. They are vocally stating their mind that the protest harms the community, is an abuse of power, and more than simply not wanting it to continue, they want others to know that it shouldn't have started at all. I find it disheartening to read, but honestly, it's a gaming community, I kind of see it as expected, awful and immature people is the norm.
But, let's assume that the people who do agree just left, then, right? The loudest are are always the angry people, and the content ones stay quiet. I can make that assumption and look around for them then.
Except, the local alternative here is completely deserted.Putting aside unverfiable places like Twitch, I go and prod other established websites. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Discord, Steam, even /vg/... Everywhere dedicated to the game that I check, there's no noticeable uptick of people. I can't find people looking to actively talk the game except on other communities within reddit. /r/LearnDota2 and /r/TrueDota2 got more threads than usual. Those people making the comments are frustrated, but the ones that supposedly aren't and are willing to browse around are just... Either still on Reddit, or completely Missing. They didn't go to an alternative community and aren't participating and building a new space. They're just sitting and waiting for their existing space back.
I guess I'll have to wait 2 days to find out if they actually just went out and touched some grass, or if the majority is spiteful of this move and everyone sees reddit as their one and only solution.
I honestly, genuinely think that a "No Moderation" protest would go down better than a "Blackout" one. Some people have no idea the impact the loss of the API will have on their lives and even actively suck reddit's corporate dick defending them, saying it only costs 24 cents to have moderation bots working (ignoring the setup for those moderation apps, while in the same breath saying reddit costs money to run). They need to see what value they're losing.
No moderation would get them immediately banned and replaced. It's not a sustainable form of protest. It may lead to lower moderation levels in the short and medium term. But in the long term it means the permanent replacement and takeover of subreddits by admins and their puppets.
I seriously doubt reddit has that level of manpower or cronies to spare. The site is seriously not sustainable if they have to do the paid labor it would require to do all of this themselves.
Doubly so on weekends. Which would, conveniently, be when such a protest could start. The 1st of July is a Saturday. Imagine you being the guy being told "We need you to stay in the office on Saturday playing frontpage whack a mole against our entire userbase. There WILL be porn in there. So much porn."
My idea is they have lower quality alternatives for free as well, which are the bootlickers. I'm sure there are many bootlickers ready to take on free labor (and half-ass it due to being inexperienced and/or stupid) who would readily replace existing moderators if Reddit admins allowed that.
It would obviously fuck the quality but yeah.
Lmao. Yeah they'd have to get many many bootlickers for this hahahah. I know they'll struggle, but I think they'll manage, they'll just have to spend an ungodly amount of effort and probably a bit of those sweet profits on this.