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
this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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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.
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.
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 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.
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.
That John Oliver flood forced BBC to write news article about it and finally bring a large amount of emigrants from Reddit IMO
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 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.
Reddit content generation is provided by users (and reuploaded by bots) and Reddit as a company sets up AmAs. Content cultivation is provided by moderators. Sometimes for April Fools, Reddit would have fun community events that really pumped the numbers (they didn't do it this year, however).
The vast majority of the content is user's. User's goofing and doing the John Oliver stunt or posting pictures of actual steam and valves on /r/Steam is STILL content engagement and still gives positive numbers. Slapping users hands and telling them to behave will drive people away.
When something happens to a community and people start leaving, you'll still have content, but it won't be nearly as good as it once was. Facebook used to be EVERYONES go to for event planning and keeping up with old friends and sharing what you were up to. People would share 1000s of pictures of their lives and people would comment on them. Then, thr community got mega toxic and your average user found a new home. Check out the Facebook usage stats. Quarterly user's plateued in 2020 when everyone was mega hostile to each other during the 2020 election cycle and it never got better. Facebook is still there, but are you really using it like you used to?
When your business is reliant on the community, you do everything you can to make that community happy and using your platform if you are interested in long term viability of your product. Maybe /u/spez suspects that nothing lasts forever and the writing is on the wall and just wants to cash one last big paycheck before he goes and bangs hookers in Thailand, but he's still a douche for trying to capitalize on something he has like 0.5% in making. He'll disappear like Tom from MySpace and we'll all move on. Shame it ended like this.
image below: Facebook quarterly users
The Facebook comparison really resonates with me. I've always been the type of person to just throw pictures of my kids on Facebook for my family's benefit, but was never a daily user. During the reddit blackout, I checked Facebook a few times and realized that it is a complete shell of its former self. Browsing it is literally "ad, ad, content not relevant to me, 6 day-old post from a distant friend, ad, ad, repeat."
It's not like these companies just die and turn off forever. It's a slow and gradual death that's easy not to notice if you're not paying attention. A lot of redditors are acting like it's still business as usual, but they can't see that it's starting to go downhill.
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
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.
It's usefull , especially if they advertise a lemmy as an alternative for good conversation.
Wat else can they do? any other kind of protest gets them banned.
Regarding the "what else can they do", I think they should be advertising alternatives and telling people to leave the platform if they still want to boycott. This John Oliver stuff is fun and entertaining, but symbolic protest doesn't really help all that much (especially it's getting more people on the platform you're trying to protest).
I don't think subreddits have really much of a choice. If they just close completely, they'll get forced open and the mods replaced and presumably it's going to be business as usual for the most part. With the rule changes, they put reddit in a very uncomfortable position.
It's a bit less clear what individual users should be doing though.
While I understand that many moderators want to continue the protest, I just don't think this strategy works. It gets news attention, yes, but as I've mentioned, I imagine it generates plenty of ad revenue for Reddit through the increased activity from everyone wanting to check it out. I don't think Reddit minds all that much—it's not like they mind the press from removing moderators.
Instead, I'd rather see moderators use their position to urge people off Reddit and advertise alternatives like kbin, lemmy, & squabbles. Better yet, they could start making plans to make communities there (like how r/blind has established its own lemmy instance).
The individual users should just be leaving, like (presumably most of) the people in this magazine have done. Moderators don't need to shut down subreddits for people to stop support inconsiderate companies.
I imagine it generates plenty of ad revenue for Reddit through the increased activity from everyone wanting to check it out.
I'm kind of skeptical about that. Lots of people check reddit frequently because they expect interesting content. How many times a day are you going to check a subreddit filled with just pictures of John Oliver, and how long are you going to keep coming back? I don't think the average person is really going to be that motivated to use a subreddit like that normally.
Even if some people might come to check it out right at the beginning it's going to get stale really fast.
Honestly, what I think of them is that I'm ticked off at the mods who are doing this, and the users who are shitposting and pretending that shitposting spam is a valid protest. I'm here, I'm also there, and I'm in other places as well. Reddit's choices as a company don't thrill me, but I understand them. I also understand that since I'm a user and not a customer, my choice is to either accept Reddit as it is when I log in or to leave. If they continue to make it more onerous, more invasive, and actually try to evade adblock, then I will choose to leave.
It honestly doesn't help to tear things down for the users who do want to use Reddit. The people making things worse are only making enemies. They're not actually making an effective protest, rather, they're only causing anger from everyone. And it may seem funny in the short term, but long-term, as someone who's in both places, I've realized that it's healthier to help build 2+ communities than to tear one down.
I was thinking about the long term perception of these protests, assuming Reddit does not change course… and after the users who are ticked off get bored / leave for other platforms, the protesting will be seen as trolling by more and more of the remaining users. Eventually there wont be majority support within subscribers for these sorts of actions. Perhaps Reddits supposed mod referendum would come into play here.
On the other hand, subreddits were always before beholden to the whims of the mod hierarchy, and there’s no particular need to do anything to the existing subs to resolve these protests. After all, there’s certainly nothing stopping people from creating admin-friendly alternative subreddits. I doubt any subs with clean sweeps of the moderator team will be coming back quite the same as before anyways.
Do you have a proposal that has a better chance of reddit to change or alter their decisions without angering this many users?
No, but I think after the "AMA" (more like "ask the exact questions we want quotes for in articles"), it's been fairly clear that they're not changing course come Hell or high water. It's about profit by any means necessary now, or Reddit absolutely will get shut down. Either they make the IPO or the switch flips and it's gone. Ad conversions on Reddit are ridiculously low - even impressions are low due to a common culture of adblock use on Reddit. Any branded content gets ignored, even in communities like buyitforlife. They're pulling out all stops and monetizing literally anything they can.
This ad-unfriendly shitposting isn't going to make them reverse anything but the position of the power switch on the servers from 'on' to 'off'. I think people need to recognize that.
I think it actually drives people away from reddit, since they aren't finding the content they're looking for. Just read this post the other day: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/81954
Sweet. It's good to see that the protests are getting some people off Reddit who wouldn't be otherwise, but I still don't think this is the most effective way to do things. Many of the people upset with these changes are riled up in the "haha funny shitpost" movement and are staying on the platform when moderators could instead be encouraging them to leave. I think this would be more effective at getting migration while also not giving Reddit all the extra activity and ad revenue.
Their problem was they set the subreddits to NSFW but didn‘t actually post any NSFW stuff. I would have just started massposting gay pron via a bot. That rly tickles US advertisement firms and it rly hurts Reddit. But then again most mods seem attached to their community so they probably wouldn‘t do it.
I don‘t think Reddit is overall happy about the shitposts. Nobody will pay you full price to advertise in a shitpost sub. I reckon they don‘t want to pay at all for this. You wouldn’t advertise on 4chan either.
Actually it was the opposite. The one mod team that got reinstated (well sorta) after setting nsfw actually didn’t allow true nsfw content. The bigger examples where subs got demodded did actually allow this
Iirc the goal is to scare off advertisers
We now know that even the SFW protests are working. Sure, regular traffic is back up, but what count are the ads.
https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/88139/Reddit-traffic-returning-normal-sort-of
TLDR; ad traffic specifically is down and continues to get lower, despite protest engagement bringing the ad revenue back up.
I’m a bit confused because I don’t know who John Oliver is
He has a TV show called Last Week Tonight that's currently on hiatus due to the writer's strike. There's videos from the show on YouTube and despite the name of the show most of them still should be fairly relevant.
Thanks, ah I see, he’s one of those American talk-show hosts.
I’m sure the protests keep Reddit admins busy, but it’s clearly not moving the company’s stance on the changes.
I feel horrible for the mods. So much of this impacts them. Years of unpaid work, not to mention their love and passion for their communities, all going down the drain. Future mods should note well how Reddit treats their unpaid help.
As for u/spez, he’s either drank the hypercapitalist Kool-Aid, or he was given an ultimatum by his board. I lean towards the latter.
I think it's useless as you said. This just increases engagement with Reddit and that's what Reddit cares about the most. Going dark was the most effective method and they should have stuck to it.
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