He will probably get wind of this and cover it on his show 🤣

Update on the vote results, for people who don't want to go there:

• Pro John Oliver: 61.7k

• Return to normal: -13.7k.

Spez really should have read r/maliciouscompliance a bit before he bit off more than he could chew

That's a classic reddit moment. There's such a good community on that website, it's tragic that reddit wants to use that against itself.

These kind of protest won't reduce the traffic on the platform though. They might even gain traction and increase it. If it's not linked to reduced ad revenue, I'm afraid it's counter-productive.

Only having pictures of John Oliver is definitely an improvement over normal r/pic.

This is actually the reason I'm here on Lemmy now. I love John Oliver but with all the other dark subreddits it was a bit much, and already had been looking into it. Led to Lemmy by too much sexy John Oliver.

Glorious :) I hope John Oliver picks this up in his show...

This may be the best highlight of spez incompetence 🍿 For everyone talking smack on the moderators, this is exactly what they should be doing. Malicious compliance. Make it hard for Reddit to know what is going on. Love to see it.

archive.ph link for those who don't want to give reddit traffic.

Glad you posted this - its the epitome of malicious compliance! And a fantastic form of protest too. With Reddit admins threatening to demote mods unless they re-open subreddits, this move takes away that ammo. Additionally, after the initial boost in activity due to novelty, the sub will get stale quickly and users will think of migrating to other platforms like lemmy or kbin. I'm all for it!

Edit: This is what I'm talking about. Here is one of those Reddit refugees now!

https://lemmy.world/comment/273363

Welcome, @[email protected]!

I've never been so happy to browse old.reddit /r/pics with an ad-blocker on.

Has John Oliver already had an episode about spez's enshittifying of reddit? Because if not, I guess this is one way to make him at least mention it on Last Week Tonight. xD

Looks like a few other subs have joined. r/gifs and r/art did the same poll

fucking lol!!!! big ol thumb to the eye of the High SlimeLord himself, /u/spez

Incredible move. But I doubt it'll last. Reddit is going to became 9gag and iFunny very soon. Rest in peace old reddit. It was fun while it lasted.

This is brilliant! I had just took a look at /r/pics without logging in and can see its just now filled with John Oliver pics

/r/gifs currently is following suit! If you still have a reddit account go vote ASAP! (Also unsubscribe from all your "business as usual" subs as possible, immediately, if you can't delete your account immediately for whatever reason)

Now this is the definition of malicious compliance!

oh my god i love this. it would be a shame if all other subs followed suit...

that is really fkn funny

I love this kind of justified pettiness. I am pretty petty myself, and its something that I guess is a supposed bad quality, but it can be so much fun.

Omg I really hope some of those pictures make it over here.

Brilliant!

Definitely allowed. For now, anything that fits in the spirit of malicious compliance is fair game, it doesn't have to be text only too.

This is the spirit. Might as well have fun protesting if you're not giving up just yet.

Both are bad choices. When reddit says open /r/pics or else, you just delete /r/pics.

Reddit has NEVER been profitable. It's the classic:

1. Takes a bunch of venture capital funding
2. Builds a huge user base
3. Get bought
4. Parent company tries to figure out a way to make money off of you.
5. When they can't, they try to spin you off and IPO you.
6. You have your "oh shit" moment and realize you actually have to be profitable now.

This is the crap that caused the dot-com bubble in the late 90s.

Their current business model is unsustainable.

They're doing the API war out of sheer survival.

The sad part is, we all went along for the ride, using the service and filling it with useful information, never wondering if it was still going to be there a decade or two later.

Reddit wants to IPO. Having gone through the IPO process twice now with a company, I can tell you, the only thing that matters is money in the bank. The more money you have in the bank, the more you can charge for your IPO. When I worked at CompUSA back in the 90s, we didn't pay any of our creditors for something like 6 months before the IPO to swell the bank accounts. I remember the week before the IPO, we had almost nothing in the store, because we owed everyone money. 30 days after IPO, trucks came rolling in again with product.