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What do you think of subreddits protesting with rule changes (e.g., only allowing John Oliver)? (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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.